By Samar Yazbek
Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist. Her novels Planet of Clay and Where the Wind Calls Home were both finalists for the National Book Award for translated literature, in 2021 and 2024. She is also the author of two acclaimed nonfiction accounts of Syria’s war: A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is the author of the new book Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza, from which this essay is adapted.
