What would you do to protect your freedom? Would you risk your reputation? Undergo interrogation, detainment, and abuse? Would you continue even when your friends and colleagues started going missing? Continue despite the threats? Would you leave everything behind, leave the only home you've ever known, before silencing yourself?
In We Are Syrians, Naila Al-Atrash, Radwan Ziadeh, and Sana Mustafa share their harrowing accounts about working to protect freedom of expression under an authoritarian government. While these are individual stories of courage and defiance, together they tell the larger story of the Syrian conflict and the conditions that brought about the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history.
Adam Braver is the author of five novels. He is on faculty and a writer-in-residence at Roger Williams University. Abby DeVeuve earned her B.A. at Roger Williams University, where she had the opportunity to connect with the Scholars at Risk Network and case-mind for an imprisoned Iranian chemist. She currently works at Cengage Learning, an educational technology/publishing company in Boston.