Hostages of Memory

Hostages of Memory was originally published in Damascus in 2009. It has been translated into Kurdish and Czech, with the Czech translation published in Prague in 2016 (as Kam domů, Chatúne..?!), and is currently being translated into French.

The novel chronicles the story of a Kurdish woman, Khatoune, and her two sons, Alo and Ahme, as they move through villages in the Turkish-Syrian borderlands in the 1960s, fleeing from the consequences of an event in Khatoune’s past which she stubbornly keeps secret. The family comes to settle in the town of Amouda, in Syria, and though viewed suspiciously by the locals at first, Khatoune and her boys manage to build a life for themselves, lifting themselves from extreme poverty into something resembling a dignified existence. But misfortune is never too far away; the dreams of Khatoune’s sons, and perhaps Khatoune herself, are cruelly shattered, and the family divided in two by the border. As Khatoune’s grandson, Hawar, begins to grow and mature, he begins to discover the truth about his family – and also learn more about the ancient land that they call home. But the violent, harsh reality of the modern border is never far away, and it has many painful lessons in store for Hawar.