Cinnamon, the novel by Syrian author Samar Yazbek just came out in Sweden (Ordfront) and Norway (Cappelen Damm).

The blazing sun gave the impression that the crowd fleeing death to Turkey was at the gates of hell: Children faces burned, human beings who lacked an arm or leg. And everywhere, the smell of rotting, festering wounds, poorly treated by lack of medicine.

We got in the camp after many difficulties. In the harsh light, children seemed to be crumbling clay statues. Tents were lined up, and all around, the foul water flowed in the gutters. The atmosphere was stifling. Almost all the refugees had looked absent, they all seemed to wait for something.

“Syria has no choice but hope.”

The novelist regrets that the opposition movement has evolved from its peaceful origin. She refuses to condone, let alone applaud, armed uprisings. “Isn’t political opposition the better alternative?” she meekly suggests.

The other woman laughs in her face and rejects her logic. “What are you waiting for, you futile scribbler, when more than 100,000 people lie dead and thousands are imprisoned or missing?”

“Superb!”

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.