Keine Messer in den Küchen dieser Stadt

Khaled Khalifa tells a moving family story from Aleppo in a poetic language filled with surprising imagery. It is a poignant book about a lost city and culture. A lesson on how populism and fanaticism completely destroyed a once open society. In Syria, from the 1980s to the present: When the father of a family of five disappears with a younger woman to America, the mother moves with her three children from the countryside to Aleppo, where she grew up. The once-thriving liberal city has changed under the Assad regime. Neighbors now sing his songs, and the colleagues at the school where the mother works as a teacher join the party. Reports are written about outsiders. Distrust and fear spread. At home, the mother tries to keep alive the memory of old Aleppo with its music, literature, and vibrant bazaar. Yet reality increasingly intrudes into their domestic world.