(Zaman Al Wasl)- In his book “Raqqa and The Revolution: A Personal Testimony”, Syrian writer Maabad al-Hassoun addresses events and incidents that he experienced during the years the city was under the control of ISIS. He reveals aspects of its ambiguous relationship with the intelligence of the regime, and the recruitment and training of Assad’s fighters in their camps in the countryside, led by Maj. General Adib Nimr Salama.
Al-Hassoun supports his stories with names and facts in a historical and documentary style.
Al-Hassoun said that he did not have any direct motives or a plan for his book. After he participated in the revolution until early 2014, he became a refugee in Turkey for two years and seven months. He, then, submitted a request for asylum in France, where he moved in July 2016. Al-Hassoun had a fear of losing the memories, notes and thoughts on his experience of the revolution in Raqqa, for them to be forgotten by the passage of time.
“I have found a strong incentive to write down all of these ideas and to pass on my personal experience in the form of a memoir that combines between historical recordings and personal narratives and impressions of what I have witnessed directly."
Al-Hassoun was intent on writing the smallest details regarding his experience with the revolution in Raqqa, without following any strategy or pre-designed plan in writing the book. According to him, they are memories, ideas, evidence, events, and whatever he retained from his personal experience, adding that he was rather focused on how to reformulate all of it to draft a serious record that combines historical documentation with the style of a memoir.
“Raqqa and The Revolution” contains many handwritten documents, which were scattered in the possession of various people in different locations after the rebels and the Free Syrian Army seized all of the regime’s headquarters and institutions. He attentively kept them all the time, and over time he accumulated this significant archive, which provided him with the documents that he needed in writing the book. He had, unfortunately, lost about half of what he had gathered due to his frequent displacement.
Zaman Al Wasl
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