Like Rafik Schami, I’m a Syrian, but unlike him, I’m a Moslem,albeit a very secular one. I also share with him the fact that we’ve both been living in the ‘West” for a very long time, the US in my case, and that we both,obviously, care deeply about our country, its culture and its history.So you can imagine my feeling about the way he portrays Syrian Moslems, who, by the way, costitute the majority of the population. In his world , we are mostly non-existent, and when we do make a cameo appearnce, it is as corrupt officers,back-stabbers, ignorant politicians, hypocritical,semi-literate clerics,bandits, etc., this being a mere sampling of our portrayals in the novel. Let me hasten to add that we certainly have our share of allery of rogues, but we are much more than that.Even when it comes to the physical reality of Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, Schami reduces it to the Christian Quarter, which while so rich in its history and architecture, does not reflect the entirety of that great city.

I recognize, of course, that novelists should not be held to the same standard as historians. I simply cannot understand why he makes the Syrians who rose up against the French during the period 1919-1925 as mere brigands and bandits. While they most certainly included in their ranks people who were out for spoils, the leaders and the rank and file were simply fighting for independence and trying,against tremedous odds, to shake off the yoke of French colonialism. Also, in the same vein, I take exception to the cavlier way which he portrays Anton Sa’adeh,the Lebanese founder of the Syrian National Party. Although it is true that he was strongly influenced by certain German Nazi theoriticians,portraying him as a mere, thuggish, incompetent adventurer does a great disservice to the modern political history of the Near East.While I’m no partisan of his or a member of his party, I think that no objective observer would begrudge him his great influence on many educated youth which, to a lesser extent, continues to this day, esp. in purging the virus of sectarianism from the young and inculcating in them the spirit of secularism, which , particualrly in view of what is happening today in many parts of the Near East is no mean feat.

Finally a word about the publisher and the translation. Interlink deserves much wider recognition in the English speaking world for the very intersting tiltes it puts out every year. It especially renders a great service to all those intersted in the Middle East.However,the translation of this particular book leaves a lot to be desired; at times, it was ungrammatical and sounded strangely unidiomatic.