The Home That Was Our Country

Starred review from January 9, 2017
Malek’s (A Country Called Amreeka) multigenerational memoir is a brilliant combination of geopolitics and family history. In an accessible way to general readers, she chronicles the complex and devastating history of Syria, from the Ottoman Empire’s rule and the shift to French colonization to the country’s independence and the rise of the Assad regime. Malek begins with her great grandfather’s success as a businessman in the early stages of Syria’s independence in the 1940s and continues through Bashar Al-Assad’s authoritarian regime and Malek’s migration from her family’s reclaimed home in Damascus, eloquently exploring grief, resilience, and loss. She is a deft reporter and storyteller. She offers first-hand accounts and her astute political analysis as she traverses countries including Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, France, and Syria. At the core of this book are the chilling effects the regime of the Assad family—beginning with Hafez (Bashar’s father)—have on the Syrian people: sectarian rifts, disappeared citizens, extreme censorship, a bloated refugee crisis, and countless deaths in a nonstop war with humanitarian aid cut off. Malek courageously tells the stories of unforgettable family members and friends, including underground humanitarian aid workers who continue despite the risk of torture and execution.

December 15, 2016
A Syrian-American journalist/civil rights lawyer interweaves narratives about her family with the history of modern Syria. Malek (A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories, 2009, etc.) moved to Damascus in the wake of the Arab Spring. Brimming with optimism, she intended to finish restoration work on her grandmother Salma's house while helping Syria transition from "decades of stifling and corrupt dictatorship." But by 2013, she had returned to the United States, disillusioned. In this book, the author narrates a multigenerational family saga that begins with a charismatic maternal great-grandfather but focuses mostly on Salma's life. When a newlywed Salma moved into the house that Malek would finish restoring more than 60 years later, Syria was independent from Ottoman rule and French influence. Like Salma's life, the country was "more potential and possibility than broken promises." Both Damascus and Salma's apartment building were home to people from all walks of Middle Eastern life: "Turks, Kurds, Arabs...all of different classes, some Christian and others Muslim." By 1970, the year Hafez al-Assad staged the coup that would catapult him into power, Salma lost the rights to her apartment, which Malek's parents would not be able to reclaim for three decades. By the time they did, Syria had become a place in which the government divided the people from each other through tactics intended to breed fear and distrust. After anti-government, pro-democracy protests and uprisings swept through Tunisia, Egypt, and other parts of the Arab world, Malek decided to return to the place where she had been conceived but from which she and her parents seemed destined to be separated. However, as an independent, unmarried American female, she felt unwelcome. Some of her relatives wanted her to leave because they feared for her safety and their own, while others saw her presence as a way to "curry favor with the [al Assad] regime." Moving and insightful, Malek's memoir combines sharp-eyed observations of Syrian politics, only occasionally overdone, with elegiac commentary on home, exile, and a bygone era. Provocative, richly detailed reading.

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January 1, 2017

Born in Baltimore to Syrian refugee parents, Malek is an award-winning author (A Country Called Amreeka), journalist, and civil rights lawyer. While her original intent was to trace her family's history over the course of the last century, what Malek has produced is a valuable collection of stories of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Armenians, and Kurds as they interacted in Syria since the waning days of the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century. Based on her own travels, the narrative recounts the fate of her ancestral home through her final departure in 2013. Readers will be moved by the insights and analysis included here: her own alienation as an Arab living in the "provincial" suburbs of America, the difficulties of traveling as an unmarried woman in a Muslim country, and the struggles among the different ideologically driven political parties that have scarred her homeland. Most poignant is her concluding query: How can Syria ever emerge again, let alone prosper? While she gives no answers, her powerful story will cause thoughtful readers to pause and ponder. VERDICT Using scholarly sources in English and Arabic, Malek's extremely timely and highly readable narrative humanizes one of today's most complex political tragedies and will intrigue readers interested in current world affairs.--Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2017
Lawyer and journalist Malek's powerful memoir beautifully captures the history of her family and of their country. Born in Baltimore to Syrian immigrant parents, Malek (A Country Called Amreeka, 2009) always felt connected to her Syrian family, especially her grandmother Salma. Her narrative begins in 1889 with Salma's grandmother, known for opening her doors to anyone in need, and Salma's father, a charismatic community leader. Malek traces their stories through Salma's life in Damascus, her parents' engagement and move to Maryland, and her childhood visits back to Syria. As an adult, Malek lives and travels extensively in the region. She experiences daily life under the oppressive Assad regime, where citizens live in constant fear of informants and state violence. In 2011, Malek moves to Damascus to renovate her grandmother's apartment while reporting anonymously on the rise of resistance, activism, and armed conflict in Syria. She operates under the ever-present threat of the secret police, known for detaining and torturing suspected dissenters. Malek's writing vividly captures the personalities of her family members and friends as well as her own impressions of Syria, allowing readers insight into the personal stakes of the ongoing war.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)