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.

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.”

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.”

The Syrian writer and journalist Samar Yazbek will be receiving the Oxfam Novib / PEN Award on Thursday, January 17. Samar Yazbek was witness to brutal violence against demonstrating citizens in her country. She wrote about it, then received serious threats and finally had to flee the country with her daughter.
The Oxfam Novib / PEN Award is presented annually to writers and journalists who are being persecuted for their work, or have had to flee.

Timas, Turkey, has acquired Turkish rights to Yazbek’s In the crossfire.