It starts a bit awkward, with the photography. The syrian writer Samar Yazbek huttrar and do not really want at all to go out in the rain, and prefers not to be photographed, but she is after all a pro and realise that we must have pictures. There is nothing to pray for.
Another is that when she is interviewed. The intensity is screwed up, instantly. There is much she wants to say, important things. She leans forward towards me, looking me stint in the eye and talking fast and loud and persuasive – in Arabic. It is as if she did not quite realise that I don’t speak Arabic, but our interpreter takes the elegant hand on the call and it almost feels as if we speak the same language.
unlikely much for their 48 years. She has studied Arabic literature, worked as a journalist, had its own cultural programmes on the tv, done the screenplay for the film and tv series, wrote journalistic books where she’s documenting the revolution and the war in Syria and a number of very good short stories and novels, as ”A dark glimmer of light,” and ”She who walks”. In addition, she has started the movement for Women now for development and is now in Sweden to talk about his latest book ”Nineteen women. Stories about the syrian resistance”. The list of prizes and awards she received is long.
Samar Yazbek is alawit, as well as Bashar al-Assad, a relationship which initially made it easier for her to engage in the revolution on the opposing side. But finally, it became too threatening, she was forced to leave the country with her daughter. Yazbek settled in Paris, and have come to a stop.
The 19 women in her latest book is motståndskvinnor. Those who fought for a democratic Syria. It is there she wants to show up in this, the third book in the project.
” We lost the revolution. The dream was shattered. But with this book I want to show future generations that, yes, we resisted and we want a democratic Syria.
Photo: Lisa Mattisson
– the Middle class were the ones who drove the revolution and who has been responsible for much of the resistance. We wanted to have a democracy, we fought for a democracy and we never wanted to be the victim.
” I’ll write a book and I’m going to devote to the poor women, those living in the camps, and those who paid the highest price. And then we are talking really about those who are the victims.
Although the women of Samar Yazbek interviews in the ”Nineteen men” usually have managed to leave Syria and live in exile, their experiences in prisons is horrendous. They humiliated, tortured and ravished. Treated like neglected animals. There are a förlossningsscen that is almost impossible to read.
” I want to give voice to the revolutionary motståndskamp that women have borne and who has been silenced down. During the revolution and during the war has the truth been distorted in many ways. And if we say the truth, we are also creating the opportunity to change.
It is sometimes difficult for the interpreter to come into the conversation with Yazbek – this lively woman in narrow blue jeans, brown jacket and välmanikurerade nails, who takes his role as engaged intellectual, in all seriousness, talking in the mouth of his interpreter, who saktmodigt waiting for her have breathing pauses.
Photo: Lisa Mattisson
– The syrian women are suffering of a multi-faceted violence in a way that men don’t do, but it is also the syrian women who more than any of the others taking it upon themselves to tell the truth about what has happened. They describe jihad crimes and Bashar al-Assad’s crimes. They describe to and with medaktivisternas crimes against women, the bearers of the patriarchal structure in the revolution.
” I believe that when I let the women tell the story, it sounds completely different than when men do it.
– There is no reconciliation in this fake fredsuppgörelsen that the international community consists of us with.
” I’m not at all optimistic. I see that Syria is forwarded to the death. A battleground for an international war, a new kind of war which we have become accustomed to. A new kind of occupation, in a system that is postneoliberalism, where Syria is exposed to other countries ‘ economic power and control. For example, Russia, which has signed an agreement with Syria to take up phosphate. A contract that lasts for a hundred years. There are many people who win that Syria is not a democracy, but a war zone.
” I don’t believe any longer in mankind or humanity, and I have no confidence any longer for the world or for the UN.
” But I hope to make an international agreement will be Bashar al-Assad to disappear within a few years. And when he has gone, we can return to try to recover some kind of humanity in our country.
” Yes, Sarah, the first. She represents the history of the me. Very beautiful, small, she has such innocence. She has all the beautiful values a man can have. They are there, in this dark, ugly, terrible. She represents the syrian revolution’s soul as it was in the first two months.
– It is sammantvinnad in my livskamp. I have lots of problems, I work hard and I travel all the time.
– But the storytelling, it is my existence. It is only when I write fiction I feel that I really exist. As I experience the happiness. It is like an infatuation.
” Now I write on a novel, so now I’m happy.
