The novel Khalifa took him 13 years of work. “I felt fear and terror… This probed me to turn that pain into a novel …” Khalifa is, however, a writer with no pretensions. “I write just for the pleasure of writing and cannot do anything else.”

There is an exaggerated fear of democracy, but democracy is in fact the ultimate and ideal solution for protecting all minorities. During the last three months the Syrians have proved that they are not going to embark on the path of sectarian violence despite attempts to incite it. This is a truth that everyone must understand, and Syrian history bears eloquent witness to this fact.

Sindbad editions (Actes Sud), specializing in the translation of modern Arabic literature, has just published a book that is very relevant in the challenging times through which Syria is going at this very moment.

“The regime is still the ’80s, the Cold War, and treats us like a herd of sheep who do not deserve to make demands of freedom. The president, whom all called ‘young’, has chosen to refer to that past, and lost credit. ”

A girl who feeds on resentment in the city of Aleppo littered with corpses: In praise of hatred, by the Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa, focuses on the path of a young fundamentalist in the Islamist uprising (1976-1982) against the Baathist regime and its bloody repression (25 000 dead). At the time where Khalifa’s novel is translated in Europe, the ongoing democratic revolt in Syria strangely echoes this traumatic episode. Khalifa described the process of fanaticism that takes over a lonely heart in a gloomy, conservative mansion deserted by its men

The diversity of our society is an asset, not a problem. Today, all its components aspire to live in friendliness. The brutality of the regime, contrary to what some official Sunnis claim, is exercised against all Syrians, not only against the Sunnis. The authorities wanted to scare the minorities by presenting themselves as their protector. We are living important times. We can feel that fundamentalism in its most radical form is losing ground. Getting to democracy is the hope of all Arabs. This will put an end to sectarian violence.