Freedom Hospital--A Syrian Story

Hamid Sulaiman's Freedom Hospital--A Syrian Story was published in 2016 (translated by Francesca Barrie).

Following the Syrian Arab Spring in 2011, Sulaiman fled Syria on August 17, 2011 and first settled in Egypt and in France in 2012. In both Egypt and France, Sulaiman found that many foreigners had little or no idea what was happening in Syria. He writes, "I realised that the absence of a free press in Syria had led to a massive lack of understanding, and while official Syrian media outfits were transmitting nothing but pro-Assad propaganda, pro-rebel media were no less guilty of churning out propaganda of their own." Perhaps no one can capture exactly what is happening in Syria, but Freedom Hospital is how Sulaiman sees it. He doesn't try to explain the situation, justify it, or be neutral. Rather he bears witness and gives a voice to the events he has seen.

Freedom Hospital is a graphic novel about a clandestine hospital in the fictional town of Houria, near the Syrian-Turkish border. Though Houria is made-up, its layout and buildings are representative of many small Syrian towns. Sulaiman based Yasmin and the other protagonists' stories on events that he witnessed before leaving Syria. Some of the images were taken from YouTube footage, and Sulaiman incorporates slogans and excerpts from speeches.

The novel begins in spring of 2012; 40,000 people have died since the Syrian Arab Spring. Yasmin has set up a secret hospital in the northern part of Syria. Her town is controlled by pro-Assad forces, but is relatively stable. Over the course of the ensuing months, the situation becomes more violent and unpredictable.

I liked this graphic novel. I found that although the protagonists have names and faces, the style of drawing at times renders them faceless, blurry, or anonymous. Yasmin and her friends could be any number of actual people; Houria could be various small towns in Syria. The images and events depicted in Freedom Hospital are neither true nor false; they just are.

The Five Love Languages of Children

The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman, PhD and Ross Campbell, M.D.

You may be familiar with Chapman and Campbell's workshops or other book about the five love languages in marriage. I had heard about them, but didn't know what these 5 love languages were. In this book, Chapman and Campbell explain how to identify your child's primary love language, how to speak your child's primary love language, and the emotional, social, and behavioral benefits of doing so for you and your child. Every child needs to hear the words, "I love you." But, beyond saying "I love you", love is translated and expressed in one or more love languages. The five languages are: physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service. All children speak all of the love languages, but they tend to favor or respond best to one of them. For example, I suspect my daughter's primary love language is physical touch, but quality time is a close second. Speaking your child's love language fills his or her emotional tank, leading to a happy, responsive child.
 I found this book helpful for communicating with my child and the chapters about discipline and using the love languages to discipline in a positive manner were informative.

The Other Einstein

In 1896, Mileva (Mitza) Maric arrives in Zurich to attend the Polytechnic Institute. Female students are uncommon at the University, female students of physics are even more unusual. As she entered the classroom for the first time, she heard her father's words echoing in her head, the familiar Serbian tongue a comfort, "You are a mudra glava. A wise one. In your heart beats the blood of bandits, our brigand Slavic ancestors who used any means to get their due. Go get your due" (Benedict 3-4).

The Other Einstein is the story of Mileva Marić, Albert Einstein's first wife. Mileva was a brilliant physics scholar in her own right. Her role in Albert's theories is a debate in the physics community. Marie Benedict  writes, "the question of what role she truly played in Albert's 'miracle year' of 1905 became an examination of how Mileva was forced to subsume her academic ambitions and intellect to Albert's ascent and how she had to disguise her own discoveries as his. Her story was, in many was, the story of many intelligent, educated women whose own aspirations and contributions were marginalized in favor of their spouses." (Introduction). Unfortunately, this gender inequality still transpires in academia. It is only by seeking, defending, and fighting for one's due that such inequalities can become a thing of the past.

The events of the book take place between 1896 and the Einstein's divorce in 1914. Mileva narrates the entire story. Early chapters present a vivid portrait of a lively young woman arriving at university and struggling to find her footing in the male-dominated world of physics. Upon meeting fellow student Albert, Mileva felt lost, "Lost as in directions. Lost to myself. Lost to him." As their research and romance progress, Mileva becomes a shadow of herself. Einstein pushes her aside and relegates her to traditional woman's roles of child-rearing and housekeeping. The Other Einstein becomes a bleak portrait of life in the shadow of a genius. One example of Einstein's dominance is his erasure of Mileva's name on their published theory; his reasoning is that they are one--one stone, Ein stein. As one can guess, Mileva did not get her due, at least not from Albert.


Go get your due!

In The Woods

In The Woods by Tana French is a psychological thriller published in 2007. It is the first in the Dublin Murder Squad series. French's writing is different from what I usually read and it took me a while to become accustomed to her style, but I loved this novel.

Three children,  Germaine (Jaime) Rowan, Adam Robert Ryan, and Peter Savage go missing on the afternoon of August 14, 1984 in the woods of Knocknaree (outside of Dublin). When the police are called, they are only able to find one of the children--with his shirt torn, shoes bloody, and no recollection of what happened to him or to his friends in the woods. Twenty year"s later, Detective Rob Ryan (the boy who was rescued) and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve year old girl in the same woods. This investigation is Ryan's best chance of solving the mystery of his own past.

The wood of Knocknaree is a character in its own right, living, breathing, and driving much of the novel. "The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion. Its silence is a pointillist conspiracy of a million tine noises--rustles, flurries, nameless truncated shrieks; its emptiness teems with secret life, scurrying just beyond the corner of your eye....These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the microlandscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing an t they could find their way out without putting a food wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams....These children will not be coming of age, this or any other summer. This August will not ask them to find hidden reserves of strength and courage as they confront the complexity of the adult world and come away sadder and wiser and bonded for life. This summer has other requirements for them" (French 2).

French writes a complex and multi-layered tale. At the end, what happened in the woods is clearer, but the truth remains elusive. Our narrator, Detective Ryan, cautions readers of this. "What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception" (French 3).

Little Women

I love the movie Little Women featuring Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Christian Bale. I recently tried to watch the latest adaptation on PBS. It was terrible. I decided to actually read the novel. I enjoyed it and discovered new parts to the story of the four March sisters. My favorite sister is Amy or Jo. I like Meg in the movie version, but not as much in the novel. And truth be told there is nothing wrong with Beth.

cover illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

So often people prefer the print or screen version of a story. For me, I usually prefer the version I encounter first. I prefer to read Agatha Christie and the only Poirot I will watch is David Suchet. I prefer to watch Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, but I might give the novels another chance. Little Women has its merits in both print and screen forms.