The face of the refugee

My Country is an essential, though disturbing read for a diverse readership today, since we live in a time when the blurring of international boundaries online is only matched by the building of walls

My Country

A Syrian Memoir

Kassam Eid

Bloomsbury

195 pages

Rs 499

At a time when the world attention is focused on refugees and war zones, a powerful autobiography, My Country: A Syrian Memoir by Kassem Eid, tells us what it is really like to live in a war zone in the 21st century. Mr Eid, under the pseudonym Qusai Zakarya, had brought his home town Moadamiya to the world’s attention when the Syrian government under the regime of President Bashar Assad blockaded the town in late 2012. The elderly, women, children and a scattering of rebel forces there found themselves on the slow road