We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria Hardcover – June 6, 2017 by Wendy Pearlman (Custom House)

This is a brilliant book that is must reading for all who want to understand the tragedy that is the Syrian civil war. It is full authentic voices speaking from the heart about the excitement of a revolution, the terrible civil war that resulted, the horrors of war, as well as the challenges and opportunities of refugees. The book does an outstanding job of organizing those voices into a broad narrative and letting them speak for themselves. One challenge of the book is that is only telling one side of the civil war and you really do not hear the voices of those who support the Assad regimne not those that have turned to violent extremism. That said, this is a book that is easily the best I have read on the Syrian civil war and is brilliant cautionary tale that I strongly recommend for all those interested in the middle east.

In 2011, against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, millions of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom and dignity. The government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal war that escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, incalculable destruction, and the flight of millions of Syrians from their homeland.

Yet despite the vivid reporting and powerful images that have emerged from the disaster, no book has truly allowed us to understand the conflict as Syrians have experienced it. We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, it chronicles the war from its origins to its present horror, solely through the words of ordinary people transformed by its unfolding. Parents, children, students, teachers, web designers, artists, playwrights, bloggers, poets, doctors, engineers, lawyers, activists, government employees, rebels, refugees, military defectors, prisoners, hipsters, Christians, Muslims, shopkeepers, grandparents—these are just some of the voices that cohere into a breathtaking mosaic. Some of the gathered testimonies are eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few commanding sentences. Together, they form a testament not only to the power of storytelling but also to the resilience of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction. 

“It was the revolution that allowed me to see people for who they really are,” one woman from Aleppo tells us. “It showed me that every Syrian has a hundred stories in his heart. Every Syrian is himself a story.” Here are some of those stories.