The post-Arab Spring novel on the Syrian war

Since the Arab Spring started in 2011, stories about the revolution spread differently.

Novels became an important tool for writers to understand and express what was happening. These writers wanted to capture their communities’ changes, destruction, and personal stories before Western media could influence the narrative.

Fadi Azzam is one such novelist. He began with his popular book, Sarmada, which had magical elements. Later, he wrote Huddud’s House, focusing more on realistic portrayals.

Huddud’s House follows four main characters — Fidel, a famous filmmaker; Layl, an upper-class medical doctor; Anees, a successful surgeon; and Samia, a revolutionary lawyer. They are connected by friendship and love but repeatedly separated by the dictatorship and war in Syria.

This epic story is about Syria right before and during the war, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, divided the country, scattered its people, and ravaged the land.

It is also a tale of love in all its forms: romantic, parental, platonic, and patriotic.

The novel starts on a film set in Dubai, but things quickly change when Fidel gets a sudden call to go to Damascus to shoot a commercial for a new hospital.

This scene sets the tone for the rest of Huddud’s House. The main characters, along with other Syrians, are suddenly pulled from their normal lives into the harsh reality of the war.

The conflict, hinted at by recent protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and fuelled by the growing anger at the corrupt and neglectful government, finally erupts.

The stakes in the war are high. The rulers will protect their regime at all costs against rebel groups, which will form with its objectives, while foreign powers will intervene to protect their interests.

However, the true victims are the ordinary people who only want to survive, and the genuine revolutionaries who strive to protect Syria’s land, culture, heritage, values, and history.

Fadi Azzam illustrates this through the book, which embodies Syria.

This ancient house, which holds the country’s history in its books, artefacts, and walls, has endured repeated destruction but always emerges stronger, symbolising the resilience of the Syrian people:

The human side of revolution and conflict

Through the main character’s experiences, we witness events from the start of the revolution to the beginning of the war. These include obliteration, massacres, and the mass exodus of the population.

Even though these characters aren’t marginalised, they’re very aware of the struggles faced by those who are. They also face their own challenges in opposing the regime.

Through their relationships with influential people, we see how regime loyalists manipulate situations. As the story progresses and these characters become more relatable, they help us understand the conflict better by bridging the gap between opposing groups.

The characters also offer a close examination of how individuals with choices behave in challenging circumstances. Unlike ordinary people, Fidel, Layl, Anees, and Samia are presented with options, and throughout the novel, the central question is how they will act upon them.

Fadi Azzam’s characters are depicted as complex individuals with both strengths and flaws. They hold strong values and principles during peaceful times, but these are severely challenged in wartime.

As events unfold, they sometimes act in ways that contradict their values, while at other times, they revert to them.

Ultimately, it becomes evident that only those who are genuinely committed to the revolution for change consistently act for the greater good.

These individuals stay committed to the revolution and stay in Syria to protect what is left. In contrast, those in the diaspora are removed from the harsh realities.

The disillusioned and the privileged often flee or pursue personal interests as conditions worsen.

Themes of love, war, and identity explored

Huddud’s House is a story rooted in the Syrian war, but it is also a book about love. Fadi Azzam explores the characters’ fears, desires, anxieties, and inner power through love, just as he does through war.

The characters face the turmoil of love, especially when it is forbidden, from separation to falling in love, and from longing to reunion.

Even war cannot extinguish love, and it appears to feed off the chaos it wreaks, as Anees reflects when reunited with his lover:

This love extends beyond the romantic to paternal, platonic, and patriotic love. True friends show their love through their actions during the worst of times.

For instance, Issa risks his life to bring his two friends together, and Helen, Fidel’s British ex-wife, helps him despite her unrest. 

Nearly all the characters realise they love Syria despite its deadly flaws when they experience exile and long to return to its streets, sky, smells, and people.

Whether in culturally different places like London or more familiar ones like Dubai, they feel trapped in meaningless lives without purpose, especially when forced to move for survival.

This feeling is something many Syrian refugees might relate to as their country remains in a state of war.

Huddud’s House covers more than just these two subjects: it also touches on Islam, Sufi teachings, the Gulf and European countries, love and sex, prisons and torture, and the Western media’s distorted portrayal of the war in Syria.

Despite some parts being overly detailed, like the paragraphs about Layl’s new friend in the Emirates, the novel is a gripping read.

It blends history, action, love, and politics with poetic language and vivid imagery: “The only sound to be heard amid the enveloping silence of the desert was the hissing of the sands.”

Or “It was a place where the valves suddenly opened, and everyone spoke at once. Fifty years of silence suddenly exploded.”

The masterful translation by Ghada Alatrash from Arabic to English beautifully captures the novel’s essence.

Huddud’s House is not just enjoyable; it’s essential reading. Drawing from the author’s life in Damascus, London, and Dubai, it mixes real stories with fictional characters.

The epigraph stresses the importance of sharing real stories and preserving a nation’s memory and history — essential for achieving freedom, justice, and democracy.

Saliha Haddad is an Algerian journalist, writer, teacher, and literary agent

Follow her on Twitter: @sallyhad3