All of a sudden, I found myself beneath the guillotine wherever I turned.

Having for so many years thought myself capable of claiming my freedom as a woman – despite facing various forms of oppression – I was being stripped of my sense of self, falling repeatedly from the sky down into the devil’s abyss.

The extent of the barbarity that exists in this world is beyond anyone’s imagination.

“Syrian women were among the first to participate in the public resistance of Assad and they are still participating in the revolution.  I think women are the ones who will pay the price of what’s happened first – they have already been abused by Assad’s followers in civilian areas and in refugee camps.  Hence why I say that, up to the day Assad falls, we should strive to make sure women are not deprived of their rights and are allowed to participate in political, social and economic life. This is because I am worried of the emergence of a radical Islamic movement, not a moderate one, which will have a negative influence on the Syrian woman. Our mission is to make Assad go and then to crush religious fanaticism and radicalism and this will take a very long time. Our road is very long.”

Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa continues in his new novel No Knives in this City’s Kitchens what he begun in his previous masterpiece, In Praise of Hatred (2006) — excavating contemporary Syrian society’s memory.

He starts from what one family has gone through in Aleppo, which he describes as the punished city, while In Praise of Hatred focused on the distortions made by death squads or the “Party Action Squads” in the psyches of its members during the events in Hama in the 1980s. The novel explores the price paid by Syrians for living parallel to the life of the ruling party for near half a century.

“U.S. Warns Egypt’s Generals Against Jeopardizing ‘Second Chance’ at Democracy.

“The armed forces remained committed to what it considered the legitimacy of the ballot box until this presumed legitimacy moved against its own purpose,” General el-Sisi said. “The Egyptian people were concerned that the tools of the state could be used against them. The armed forces had to make a choice, seeing the danger of deepened polarization.”

The general said that the military had offered Mr. Morsi the option of a referendum on whether he should stay in power, but that the deeply unpopular president had refused.

Painful as it was to see the democratic process interrupted so soon after the revolution that overthrew the longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the military’s action was necessary.”

Samar Yazbek, at Dartington’s Ways With Words: “We are going to need multiple revolutions. We have had dictators and now we have extremists. But we have the backbone to our society that means there could be a great democracy. We just have to keep fighting.”

http://www.hayfestival.com/p-5748-samar-yazbek-talks-to-jo-glanville.aspx