The home that was our country

When the Arab Spring began in 2010, author Malek returned to her family home in Damascus, Syria, to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which the family had to abandon in 1970, when Hafez al-Assad came to power. Exploring the apartment, Malek recalls the multigenerational story of her family, reaching from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present. She also relates the stories of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Armenian, and Kurdish Syrians who lived and worked in close quarters with herself and her family, and who experienced the horrors of war under a dictatorial regime.