My Road From Damascus: A Memoir

(Paperback)

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Humorous, witty, horrific, and poetic, Jamal Saeeds story is Syrias story: surviving 12 years in brutal military prisons, an enchanted childhood, his loves, Syrias deadly upheavals, and his familys escape.

An extraordinary account of survival in Syrias 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 of Deafening and Remembering the Bones

Jamal 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 Saeeds severe years in Syrias most notorious military prisons but also his life during the countrys 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 familys harrowing escape to Canada.

While many prison memoirs focus on the cruelty of incarceration, My Road from Damascus offers a tapestry of Saeeds whole life. It looks squarely at brutality but also at beauty and poetry, hope and love.

Reviews

"Written in poetic prose in which the reader can trace the cadence of Saeed's native Arabic -- and which illustrates why Syrian philosopher Antun Maqdisi once likened Saeed to Maupassant -- My Road from Damascus explains that love and loss are intertwined and shows how the former can help us withstand the latter." --Quill & Quire
"This memoir tells not only of his time in Syria's most brutal military prisons but of village life, youth, love, poetry, and a country and society warped from its potential." -- Quill & Quire
"A lyrical, extremely rich narrative of loss, memory, and trauma." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Author Bio

Jamal Saeed spent 12 years as a prisoner of conscience in Syria before being invited to Canada in 2016. He continues to raise awareness about Syria's ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis through his work as an activist, editor, visual artist, and author. He lives in Kingston, ON.