JULY 20, 2017
I lost both Syria and my grandmother in 1980, when I was 6 years old. Though men — especially one man, Hafez al-Assad — dominated Syria, my early experiences of it were dominated by women, especially my grandmother. To me, she was Syria and Syria was her.
My parents were living in the United States but committed to returning home. Then two tragedies struck in quick succession. In June, while we were in Damascus as usual for the summer, my grandmother’s brother was murdered, with no consequences for the killer or killers — a commonplace occurrence in Assad’s Syria. In October, while visiting us in the United States to try to escape the grief, anger, and impotence she felt following her brother’s death, my grandmother suffered a stroke that left her “locked in.” [full story]