Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
My Damascus

My Damascus

Amiry, Suad

Paperback

Biographies General

Publisher Price: $20.00

ISBN10: 162371883X
ISBN13: 9781623718831
Publisher: Olive Branch Press
Published: Oct 26 2021
Pages: 234
Weight: 0.75
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
A nostalgic voyage that reveals the Syrian capital's majestic past

Writer and architect, Suad Amiry, was born in an old neighborhood of Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. In My Damascus she takes her reader by the hand through not only the narrow alleys and lively souqs adjacent to the grand Umayyad Mosque, but also into the intimate spaces of her rich merchant grandfather's Baroudi Mansion.

Through a web of interwoven personal stories and an intricate mix of simple, complicated or sometimes devious characters, Amiry travels across space and time, spanning three generations of family history. The Baroudi women animate the story and sparkle like no others: Teta, Amiry's grandmother, rendered mute after her husband's great betrayal; her cousin, Norma, torn between love for her adoptive mother and longing for a real mother she will never know; Fatima and Ghalia, Karimeh and Laila, maids and aunts, in a kaleidoscope of vignettes.

Through them Amiry traces the social and political history of Greater Syria from the Ottoman Empire era until its present-day devastation, juxtaposing them with the most intimate, loving, often contentious, family relations and secrets. In the end, her Damascus becomes a metaphor for a dispersed family and a lost past, as well as an elegy for a city she can no longer claim as her own.

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