Reika Mihara reviews for Nikkei on July 5th, 2024
In June, Syrian-born author Samar Yazbek visited Japan. Her novel The Blue Pen (translated by Ayumi Yanagiya and published by Hakusuisha), which has recently been translated into Japanese, is based on the chemical weapons attack that took place in August 2013 in the Eastern Ghouta area, on the outskirts of Damascus. Yazbek stated, “Literature is a tool to resist violence. Writing is my mission.”
The Assad regime suppressed the pro-democracy demonstrations that spread in 2011, leading to the outbreak of civil war. Eastern Ghouta, in particular, a stronghold of opposition forces, was subjected to brutal assaults by the government, including the use of sarin gas, which claimed the lives of many civilians. “I wanted to bring the victims of the massacre back to life in my book and give them a voice,” Yazbek reflected.
After facing arrest and detention due to her anti-regime stance, Yazbek fled Syria in 2011 and relocated to France. She was deeply shaken when Razan Zaitouneh, a human rights activist in Eastern Ghouta who had been informing Yazbek of the situation there, was abducted in December 2013 and subsequently went missing. “I decided to write a novel to honor the memory Razan left behind. Though her fate is uncertain, I continue to wait for her return.” Yazbek recalled, “I wrote about violence without using violent language.” The story’s narrator, a young girl named Reema, loves literature and painting, and she describes horrific scenes in innocent terms. For instance, during a bombing, she writes, “At that moment, I saw stars in the sky, shining high above, in a color that seemed somewhere between blue and orange.” Yazbek explained, “Literature allows people to empathize with the pain of others. Readers of this novel will be able to imagine the lives of the Syrian people.”
While continuing to write novels set in Syria, Yazbek is also working on a documentary about the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. When clashes between the Israeli military and the Islamist group Hamas broke out in Gaza in October 2023, Yazbek, who was in Doha, Qatar, began interviewing refugees after witnessing the “steady stream of people from Gaza, many with limbs amputated.” She is determined to “weave the memories of those who survived the massacre into words.”