Interview conducted by Caroline Pernes for Télérama, November 8th, 2025

She spent fifteen years giving voice to the victims of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In her new book, she gives the floor to around twenty survivors from Gaza. She tells us about her fight to document the horror and human suffering.

Long a Syrian political refugee in France, Samar Yazbek has been investigating the Syrian revolution and the violence committed against civilians for nearly fifteen years. A novelist, journalist, and activist, particularly engaged in women’s rights, she has published several important works on the subject, most of which have been translated and published by Stock: Les Portes du néant (2016), Dix-Neuf Femmes. Les Syriennes racontent (2019), and La Demeure du vent (2023). In her new work, Une mémoire de l’anéantissement. Les Gazaoui·e·s racontent, she turns her attention to Palestine and gives voice to twenty-six Gazan survivors receiving medical care in Qatar. It is a moving book, both a work of memory and a plea for justice. We met her in Paris in October. With a bright gaze and insisting on speaking in French, she spoke about the difficulty of documenting horror.

You collected the testimonies of about twenty Gazan survivors receiving treatment in Qatar. How did you meet them?
I had not planned to document Gaza’s tragedy. I had left France and was heading to Sudan to work on the subject of Sudanese women raped and tortured by paramilitaries when I had to go to Qatar to join my daughter. She had a serious horse-riding accident and ended up in a wheelchair. For a year, she couldn’t walk. I left everything to be with her. After October 7, 2023, I learned that Gazans had arrived in Doha, at the al-Thumama complex, for medical treatment, and I volunteered. There were women, children… The first time, I saw a young boy in a wheelchair, and I knew I had to stay, to do something. It was very hot, around noon in the desert, near an international airport. The atmosphere was surreal.

I’ve been working for several years on a project about collective memory. I wrote Feux croisés. Journal de la révolution syrienne (2012), Les Portes du néant, Dix-Neuf Femmes. Les Syriennes racontent, all about Syria. The suffering of the Gazans had to be part of it. I believe, like bell hooks, that the personal is political. My idea was to tell the personal stories of these survivors, their intimacy, to document their suffering.

How do you ask traumatized people to recount the worst moments of their lives?
It’s difficult. Even if many want to tell their story, it takes a lot of time to build trust. I lived with them and tried to show them that speaking about their suffering, the most horrific details, is about seeking justice. These are normal people—brothers, sisters, parents, children… It was very hard for me too. Sometimes I am scared; I feel that even if I try to distance myself, the suffering follows me.

Why do you avoid political questions in the book?
We have been observing this conflict for seventy years—through newspapers, television, social media, debates, conferences… We talk about the war, the bombings. But we don’t talk about real lives, the daily existence of those living under bombs. Gazans are made invisible. What does “a Palestinian” mean? It’s a human life. My work is about making these people visible, humanizing them. This is not slogans or information. I am a novelist, journalist, activist: at the core of my work are questions of truth and justice. I fight against lies, violence, cruelty.

Power dynamics are visible in the smallest personal details, as in the singular story of Abdallah, his face disfigured at 13, and the account of his mother burned alive before his eyes. This is my way of documenting events. I believe that direct narration of real life has incredible power. As novelist Susan Sontag said, it allows us to face pain.

You do not use the term “genocide.” Why?
What is happening in Gaza is genocide. That’s what the people I met told me. But I don’t use the word in my book because it is a legal term. As a novelist, I prefer to speak of annihilation, which allows me to connect it with the rest of my work: exploring nothingness, the end.

The people you meet are severely injured, many have amputations. How did it feel to be in contact with these “bodies on the margins of life”?
Shame. We are losing our human value. I’ve been working for fifteen years with people who have lost everything: their lives, their homes, their loved ones, their legs. This complex is like a small city for amputees. It was very intense, and I cried a lot.

But when I was there, I felt like I was standing before an apocalyptic painting, a scene by Goya or Bosch. It’s absolute atrocity. All these lives, these half-alive people. We need a moral revolution.

The testimonies mention unprecedented weapons, particularly drones constantly hovering above Gazans…
The Israeli army uses artificial intelligence to kill Palestinians. When a survivor, Shaima, told me about her father’s death, I didn’t understand at first. She spoke of the “zanana”: that’s what Palestinians call these killer robots, because of their noise. They move among the population, flying above people as they walk.

A drone entered Shaima’s family apartment, went room to room, killed her father, and left. I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie. The psychological violence is unbearable: people feel they can be killed at any moment. I’ve been documenting war for years, I was on the front lines in Syria, helped carry corpses. But I had never heard of anything like this.

Sexual violence barely appears in the testimonies. Why?
I believe there were many rapes in Gaza. But no woman wanted to talk to me about it. Shame prevents them: in their society, a raped woman is guilty. I didn’t want to insist; it seemed inhuman. I chose to collect their words as they came.

The last testimony is from a 21-year-old man who says: “You cannot imagine the horror, no matter how I describe these scenes.” Did you sometimes feel powerless, as a writer, to convey reality?
Yes, I sometimes felt powerless. My fingers tremble on the keyboard, and I remain still for thirty minutes, wondering what I should do. Only silence lies before me. I can’t find the words, I can’t invent the right expression. Nothing is ever enough. To document horror, to speak of atrocity and cruelty, I sometimes feel weak as a writer. But this is not the first genocide committed in the world.

The testimony—and the book—ends with a question: “Why?” Is that the word that stays with you?
Why do we kill each other? That’s the question I ask in all my books.

What is your perception of the current situation in Gaza, now that a fragile ceasefire has been signed?
I try to stay away from politics. Like when I worked on Syria, I have become pessimistic. I have lost hope and do not trust our world. But we must keep fighting. This book is my way of nurturing hope.

Photo credit Al Jazeera