When Canadians privately sponsor a Syrian refugee family, the agreement lasts one year. What happens at month 13?
Syria
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Leaving Aleppo: ‘A distant star / Exhausts its light on the sleep of the dead.’
Pauls Toutonghi lovingly recalls his grandfather, Philippe Elias Tütünji, a writer, poet, and translator from Aleppo, Syria. Tütünji immigrated to America during World War II and never gave up his dream to achieve success as a poet in his adopted homeland.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Brontosaurs Whistling in the Dark
Reflections on Angela Merkel’s and Germany’s attitude toward refugees, from a daughter of refugees who themselves fled Germany in the 1930.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Leaving Aleppo
Pauls Toutonghi lovingly recalls his grandfather, Philippe Elias Tütünji, a writer, poet, and translator from Aleppo, Syria. Tütünji immigrated to America during World War II and never gave up his dream to achieve success as a poet in his adopted homeland. Working menial and low-paying jobs to support his family, and “full of immigrant ambition,” […]
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, read stories by Mark MacKinnon, Rachel Cusk, Carmen Maria Machado, Suketu Mehta, and an excerpt from Bill Hayes.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Six Years Later, Over 400,000 Dead: The Graffiti Kids Who Sparked the Syrian War
Mark MacKinnon tells the story of Naief Abazid — who, at the urging of some older boys, graffitied a school wall on a lark in Daraa, Syria, at age 14. The “writing on the wall” enraged Syria’s Baathist dictatorship, and became the source of ignition in the Syrian war.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Refugees Welcome Here: Bringing ‘Family No. 417’ to Canada
Michael Friscolanti reports on the 14 everyday Canadians who — galvanized by the sickening image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi face-down on the beach — banded together to sponsor a family of Syrian refugees whose names they did not know, in a bid to “do what’s right. To do something.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Between Their Arab Past and American Present
Lauren Alwan narrates her family’s migration from Syria to California to explore how people’s evolving identities help gain them a foothold in America and create unintentional tensions across generations.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
“Discourse Is a Battleground”
Yusaf Khalil interviews Syrian scholar Yasser Munif about the roots of the Syrian civil war and how the West is trying (and failing) to help.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Syria and the Left
Jacobin‘s Yusef Khalil conducted an wide-ranging interview with Yasser Munif, a Syrian scholar of grassroots movements, to break down the key moral and political issues feeding the Syrian war.