Ian Birrell

Trapped in hell

In an understated gem of a book, Marwa al-Sabouni, an architect from Homs, describes a country ripped apart. Foreign correspondents Janine di Giovanni and Charles Glass do the same.

issue 16 April 2016

The mechanic, blinded in one eye by shrapnel, spent three days searching for his family in the destroyed buildings and broken streets of Darayya. Finally he found his father’s body in a farmhouse, alongside those of three boys, already starting to decay. ‘Can you tell me why they would kill an old man?’ he asked, before adding: ‘This is not my Syria.

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