My Road From Damascus

- Blurb -

Humorous, witty, horrific, and poetic, Jamal Saeed' s story is Syria' s story: surviving 12 years in brutal military prisons, an enchanted childhood, his loves, Syria' s deadly upheavals, and his family' s escape. An extraordinary account of survival in Syria' s most notorious military prisons that is written with "brutal clarity - and yet, there is a poetic quality to the telling. " - Frances Itani, award-winning author ofDeafeningandRemembering the BonesJamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of the al-Assads, he was imprisoned on three occasions for a total of 12 years. In each instance, he was held without formal charge and without judicial process. My Road from Damascus not only tells the story of Saeed' s severe years in Syria' s most notorious military prisons but also his life during the country' s dramatic changes. Saeed chronicles modern Syria from the 1950s right up to his escape to Canada in 2016, recounting its descent from a country of potential to a pawn of cynical and corrupt powers. He paints a picture of village life, his youthful love affairs, his rebellion as a young Marxist, and his evolution into a free thinker, living in hiding as a teenager for 30 months while being hunted by the secret police. He recalls his brutal prison years, his final release, and his family' s harrowing escape to Canada. While many prison memoirs focus on the cruelty of incarceration, My Road from Damascus offers a tapestry of Saeed' s whole life. It looks squarely at brutality but also at beauty and poetry, hope and love.