In periods of political transformation, freedom of expression is often presented as one of the clearest signs of a move toward a more open society. Yet the right to speak does not necessarily...
Aliaa Amina Ahmad writes about how women's space in the public sphere in Syria has shrunk amid the upheavals of recent years. By highlighting discrimination, digital violence, and patriarchal power...
In Rudi Suliman’s poem, memories of a house, the people who once lived there, and the events of the war are brought back to life. The loss is not only of a place, but of a home that holds history...
Drawing on the literary portrayals of power and violence, found in the works of Shakespeare and Joseph Heller, writer Fatima Khoder examines how similar mechanisms operate in present-day Syria. The...
“A Final Crossing” follows the migration journey of a Syrian family forced to leave their home and country and cross into the unknown. Narrated by a doll that accompanies the family, the story...
The poem draws on a personal memory tied to the Tadamon neighborhood in Damascus, where one of the most brutal massacres of the Syrian war took place. The poet returns to the moment when the killer...
In a time of massacres, the boundaries blur between the worlds of the living and the dead, between survival and its opposite. Sieve is a story about a woman who finds her name on a list of the dead...
There are throats that neither knives nor bullets can kill; the more the body closes in around them, the wider they become. Whenever their owner tries to choke them, they emerge through another wound...
In this interview with Syrian writer Osama Shaker about his debut novel The Cell of Hayy al-Daqqaqin, Mervat Shehadeh opens a window onto Damascus in the 1980s and onto writing as an act of rebellion...
Text: Mervat Shehadeh
October 08 2026
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