Samar Yazbek on Redefining Collective Memory

On Redefining Collective Memory

In Conversation: Between Samar Yazbek and Olivia Snaije

In 2024, the Syrian writer and journalist Samar Yazbek was preparing to go to Sudan. There, she intended to document the stories of women who had been raped and tortured by the paramilitary. But before she left, she went to Qatar to visit her daughter, who had been hospitalized after an accident. At Doha’s al-Thumama medical complex, Samar discovered more than a thousand severely wounded women, men, and children who had been evacuated from Gaza for treatment.

The genocide was ongoing. And, as Yazbek writes in the introduction to her book Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life, admirably translated by Leri Price:

“It occurred to me that the whole world had come to this: missing body parts, people with amputated limbs, half-bodies living on the margins of life like remnants of a bygone age. I felt like we were on board a ship hovering in mid-air, suspended within a destiny of impotence and loss, among delusions and ghosts I couldn’t quite make out.”

Yazbek decided to document the personal stories of these survivors, giving a voice to the invisible and to those who lost so much of their physical selves.

Documenting the terrifying inhumanity and depth of suffering also takes a severe personal toll on those doing the documenting. Here, a sober Samar Yazbek generously offered her thoughts on the process of how she put the book together between March and June of 2024.

Editor’s note: We are running this interview early — Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life is not available in English until 21 May in the UK and August in the US — because the conversation is essential. We we revisit the conversation.

In your introduction, you mention relying on bell hooks’ theory, “the personal is political.” Could you elaborate on this?

Samar Yazbek: It began with the revolution in Syria in 2011. I started by questioning others. Gradually, I realized that you have to allow people and victims to speak from their intimacy, so that political ideology and news didn’t dominate their narrative. So bell hooks’ theory made sense to me, and I tried to follow it. I believe that intellectuals and activists need to revolt and invent a different narrative—one that is documentary and that reveals the truth.

Truth is difficult to document, particularly in the Middle East. My experience with my books such as In the Crossfire, 19 Women, or The Gates of Nothingness was deeply challenging. With each project, by showing truth and intimacy, I discovered a world. I spent three years with bell hooks’ important theory in order to create a collective memory. One that reveals the truth of ordinary people’s suffering. We can give victims a voice. At the same time, this is their form of resistance. I try to touch the profound meaning of resistance with words, via narrative. Intimacy explains everything which is at the same time part of a political system.

You’ve spoken about how this book project came unexpectedly, that you were working on another book when this one inserted itself into your life. Did you have an initial idea of how to structure the book? Did the structure change after the interviews?

SY: I started by visiting people. I tried to become part of their lives. I was terrified. It was like a village where people were missing arms, legs, with their families. And after writing several books on Syria, it was hell. Suddenly, I saw amputees, and I didn’t think I could handle it after the trauma that Syria had been.

I had already written three books of testimonies. I knew I had to interview 30 to 40 families and then choose which stories to keep. So I organized it in my mind, but the selection came after all the interviews were finished. I tried not to repeat the same things. It was like a puzzle in which the stories intertwined. I chose the testimonies to give as complete a picture as possible—to tell the truth of the Gazans’ suffering. I recorded the testimonies. Each time, Palestine and Syria were in my mind. I thought of the 19 women I had interviewed. I had never heard such horrible things. It was a moral shock for humanity and for myself. I forced myself to continue. These people deserve it, and they are so dignified. It’s absolutely horrifying and shameful for humanity.

When reading these testimonies, it feels like they are statements for a court of justice. Have you been contacted by organizations?

SY: No. I wasn’t contacted for my previous books either. But I had imagined justice for them; to show the suffering. I’m disappointed. But I tell myself we must find another way. My goal is that this might serve later, to show the truth and achieve justice.

You asked people the question, “What were you doing on October 7th?” But they all refer to a violent past where Israeli attacks were part of their lives. This contradicts the Western narrative, as if everything began on October 7th.

SY: I wanted them to tell their life stories. They all told me they grew up with war. Abdallah said awful things—that there is no childhood, that he was never a child. That Gaza is a big prison. At first, I thought of removing all that, but in the end, I kept it. I wanted them to talk about their intimate lives, their daily routines, not politics. But it’s still powerful when they speak, not in a news-related way.

People are what’s most important. They talk about Gaza 20 years ago, what it was like before October 7th. Their stories revealed the raw truth of their lives—ones marked by a violence that has accompanied them since birth, invisible to the world. In Gaza, they grow up in what resembles an open-air prison, encircled, locked in, bombed again and again, year after year.

You are no stranger to violence and torture. How did you feel collecting these testimonies? How were they different from or similar to others you’ve gathered?

SY: I have lived with horror and atrocity. But when I write about victims, it gives me a vital force because it’s what I must do. One day, I’ll have to stop. At the same time, I’m giving a voice to people who are abandoned, whom everyone has forgotten. When we transform stories like this with words, it makes me happy because it’s my way of resisting, since I can’t find justice for them.

The brutality of these testimonies was greater. I had never interviewed victims who had lost their bodies. My view of humanity changed. I was there with people who were almost no longer physically present. But when they spoke, they were there. The atrocity was even greater.

Since the people you interviewed were all severely wounded, the body and physical pain take up a lot of space in the narrative. In one interview, a woman describes her physical pain as taking the place of mourning, almost distracting and even saving her.

SY: They had no time for mourning. Their bodies and families were gone. In my view, they never went through a stage of mourning. The bombings didn’t stop for two years and there wasn’t any time to do anything. They were in survival mode. It was surreal. I struggled to believe it. Yet I saw it with my own eyes—I saw their stories through their torn bodies. I had the feeling that in Gaza the Israeli army tried to erase everything, as if it were a video game. You can see this with these bodies. But they failed to kill their dignity and spirit.

At times, it seems like the pain is collective. What does collective memory mean?

SY: We must redefine collective memory by resisting the one imposed by tyrants, brutal powers, and those who occupy our countries and erase our memories. Collective memory needs to come from people’s daily lives, from the ordinary details of their existence, which may seem simple or insignificant, but each fragment carries an essential human truth.

We must talk about them. Their suffering is different, terrible, but they are the very substance of history. Today, we must write a collective history of humanity that starts from this point: justice for those victims who refused to be just victims and continue to resist to stay alive. These stories I collected and wrote are also part of my own attempt to resist alongside them.

I found the relationship with hospitals interesting—they are supposed to heal, but in this case they cannot heal people and are under attack. Can you talk about this and the importance of all the hospitals mentioned: Al Shifa, Nasser, the European Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital?

SY: These hospitals, which were also a refuge for people, were bombed deliberately. It was horrible when the Israelis attacked the hospitals—they tried to kill the people they had failed to kill the first time. I have no words to express this. There are no words to make sense of all of this.

This book is part of a larger project to document exceptional violence in the region. You had already documented The 19 Women, and you have projects on Sudanese women and another book on Syria. And what is your broader motivation, with these books?

SY: Through the words and stories of those who are invisible, I try to get at the truth—or at least fragments of it—about the savage world we live in. I was born in a war zone, grew up surrounded by violence, and was part of a generation that wanted to change the world through activism, words, literature, and art. I continue to believe in our role as intellectuals to understand the world around us and seek the truth. Everything I do is motivated by justice.

I am speaking here about my documentary narrative project, which began more than fifteen years ago, not my fictional projects. Literature is a reflection of the reality I tell, but it is a different path.

My driving force is justice for victims; the search for a humane future for humanity. And resisting injustice and evil, trying to build something good.

I was about to leave for Sudan. What is happening there remains invisible: women are being killed, raped, and tortured. I haven’t yet been able to move ahead with this project, but I am determined to write about them and listen to their voices. What the world ignores must not remain invisible.

I’m still working on two documentary books about Syria. I’m still not sure how to present them, but I can’t live amidst all this injustice without writing about it. It’s painful. But it’s my life and I’m commited. I have no other power than words and narrative to confront the barbarities we live.

Is the barbarity the same or different when it is inflicted in the context of a civil war, or by an occupier—an Israeli on a Palestinian? From a philosophical or legal perspective?

SY: No, it isn’t different. But the details are different—it’s very hard to compare. With the people of Gaza, it is short and relentless. Like erasing an entire village. The Israelis’ digital technology is very advanced: a man can sit in a small office, press a button in front of screens, and blow up an entire building. He has seen neither blood nor what he is doing, yet he killed in cold blood. I hadn’t documented this before.

The question we all ask ourselves—how can we make sense of all this?

SY: Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all of this only makes sense in the context of our desire for justice, our desire to preserve the true essence of humanity. At other times, I say to myself: we will never understand all of this. Everything we do resembles the myth of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder uphill again and again. I have no grand answers to your question; I am only trying to respond. I try to see the world with different eyes and search for a little light despite everything.

You can pre-order Your Presence is a Danger to Your Life, which is set for a UK release in May and US release in August 2026. Tomorrow, we’ll have a review of the book.

Olivia Snaije (oliviasnaije.com) is a journalist and editor based in Paris. She translated Lamia Ziadé’s Bye Bye Babylon (Jonathan Cape), and has written several books on Paris published by Dorling Kindersley and Flammarion. Editions Textuel (Paris) and Saqi Books (London) published Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes, which she co-edited with Mitch Albert.