When Joumana Maarouf first sat down at her computer on the outskirts of the Syrian capital – to send news to a friend who had been obliged to leave the country a few months earlier, and to describe how daily life had changed for herself as well as her family, her coworkers and her countrymen – the Syrian Revolution was not quite a year old. It had been a year in which Syrians had witnessed – to their dismay, but not to their surprise – the brutality of the regime that had been in place for 40 years. In that month of March 2012 when Joumana Maarouf began writing these letters, the Syrian Revolution underwent a profound change. In that month of March 2012, the Revolution became synonymous with a military siege, with civilian protests being violently suppressed. The civilian population began to suffer deeply from Syria’s growing militarization, and grew weary of seeing their fellow citizens, their neighbors and their own families being killed for having called for freedom and dignity. Joumana Maarouf’s letters describe the daily life of a country at war, and the war’s repercussions on the population’s mindset.

Syria has been sinking ever deeper into violence for the past 3 year. Robbery, rape, murder, arrests, denunciations, bombing, displaced populations and more have become the daily life of the people of this war-torn country. Joumana Maarouf tells individuals’ lives and stories with both realism and restraint.