Syrian Women Refugees

What is it like to be a refugee? This small but significant book brings, to the uninitiated, insight into the lives and characters of nine Syrian refugee women scattered around the world from Canada to Greece. The material is drawn from sensitively-conducted interviews with the author, herself Turkish. She calls the women ‘co-participants’ in the project. All of the stories are told in the first person singular as autobiographical accounts, but the author sometimes ends with a short comment, ‘The Author’s Touch’ (after the first two chapters), or even an unannounced longer account, as in Muzna’s story (pp. 64–65), where the narrator and author, somewhat confusingly, both appear in the first person. Using their chosen pseudonyms (two chose to use their own names), they are allocated a chapter each to talk about their lives as children, mostly in large families, with varying backgrounds and religions (Yazidi is one of them with eclectic traditions), relationships with parents and other members of...