Syrian Dust

The Italian journalist Francesca Borri texted me last week. Her message read, “I am just back from the Maldives…the non-Arab country with the highest number per capita of ISIS fighters, I have been a month with them.”

She had interviewed me a few years back and I remember her as being of high integrity and intellectually sharp, unlike most journalists these days. She was back in Ramallah, while awaiting permission to enter Gaza, and wanted to see if we could meet up. She had a book of hers she wanted to gift me.

We met for ice cream a few days later. Francesca proudly passed me her newly translated book, Syrian Dust, and we chatted about her coverage of the war in Syria and her work elsewhere. An amazing person she is, to say the least. We parted and on my way to the car I opened the book to read the inscription. It read, “FOR SAM…MAY BEAUTY NEVER ELUDE YOU AGAIN f.” I was not quite sure what she meant. Then I read the book! I now know exactly what she meant.

Syrian Dust is about the collapse of Syria, but it’s more than that. It’s about the Syrian people paying the price for all of this madness. If you have had, like I did, a hard time understanding how millions of Syrians would risk taking their family, or what remains thereof, and cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat to chance making it somewhere, anywhere, read this book.