I came to writing Farewell, O Syria as an outsider—in time, obviously, but also in place, and even in confession. I am a low-church Protestant stumbling through the world of Late Antique Christianity, with all its liturgical and doctrinal variations, the earliest days of Islam, and the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. It is a land of wonder and dramatic change, and yet the people struggled with many of the same challenges that we do today.
It has long baffled me that, amid upheaval, famine, war, and illness, some people go on. They cope. They live their lives. Somehow. Not everyone. But whether the conscript in battle or a nameless sailor escaped from a sinking ship, they persevere and do what life requires, carrying the scars but forging through.
This courage to overcome cataclysmic events fills me with awe. I am compelled to examine this resilience; to understand these stories.
One evening in 1993, I’d just read Amin Maalouf’s book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes and wondered where the interaction between Christianity and Islam began. I envisioned a boy running through the streets of Damascus, announcing the arrival of the Muslim army. I knew there were tales to tell.
But I wasn’t going to be a writer. My mom was the writer. I was a painter and a dozen other things, but not a writer.
My life moved on. I left London for the US, got married, then left the US for Indonesia. From time to time, I remembered that kid who wouldn’t completely go away. But I still thought I’d never really write his story. I was, however, compiling reference materials as I could. I had to request an out-of-print Amazon search (yes; they did that back then) for The Early Islamic Conquests by Fred Donner. Two years later, I received a notice that they had found it. I paid $80.00 for that used copy in 2001.
I now knew who this imaginary lad was and what he was doing, but I was busy. While on a much-needed vacation in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia, a plot spun out before me over the course of three days.
When we returned to the US in 2002, I ran a mural business for eight years and designed scenery and lighting for several professional theatre companies (a second pass at that vocation). In 2010, we moved to Florida, where I started yet another career—this time in a cubical.
In 2012, my schedule became so intense that my only possible creative time was in the wee hours of the morning. I wasn’t going to make it to my downtown art studio at 5 am before work, so I decided, okay, time to write. The project was finally underway. But it was to be the only one. Just this one. Little did I know. Once on that path, I found must-tell stories on every page of research.
What strikes me so many years later is how difficult it would have been to write any of my planned novels back in the early 1990s. There was no World Wide Web. Certainly no Google. And few of my now dog-eared reference books had been published in 1993. Most were written much later. If I could have learned to read Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, I might have had a chance. So, although it took me a long time to get started, it was just as well.
Now, Alex races through the streets of Roman Damascus and it thrills me to finally introduce him to you.