We Are Syrians

Umayyad Mosque (Great Mosque of Damascus) (Llanos)

We Are Syrians edited by Adam Braver and Abby DeVeuve

This short book edited by Adam Braver and Abby DeVeuve collects interviews with three Syrian activists. The interviews are lightly edited and, while the editors’ questions are sometimes included for necessary context, mostly read with the immediacy of a first person narrative.

Taken together, the three interviews represent three generations’ experience of Syria under the Assad regime. In the first interview, dramatist and activist Naila al-Atrash describes growing up in Syria as the granddaughter of Sultan al-Atrash, her use of theater to subvert the repressive Assad regime, and her eventual decision to flee the country as violence there escalated. Intellectual and activist Radwan Ziadeh is the subject of the second interview. He recounts the media and intellectual environment of Syria under Assad, the attempts to strengthen civil society during the brief Damascus Spring, and his own work as an intellectual and journalist. The final interview is with Sana Mustafa, who was a 19-year-old college student in 2011 when the Syrian revolution first began as peaceful protests before spiraling into civil war under the oppressive Assad regime, the violent influence of foreign interests and ISIS, and the blind eye turned by the international community. Mustafa speaks of her involvement in the revolution and her experience seeking asylum in the United States after her father was detained by the regime and her mother and sisters were forced to flee the country.

This book provides a much-needed opportunity for readers to hear directly from Syrian activists as they speak about their life and work.

Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to: detainment and imprisonment; torture (not vividly described); harassment, searches, and interrogation by security forces.