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40 reviews for:
What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry
Stephanie Saldaña
4.33 AVERAGE
40 reviews for:
What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry
Stephanie Saldaña
4.33 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Incredibly moving
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
fast-paced
Early on Saldana speaks of the "things that last": Recipes. Seeds. Perfume. Gardens. Prayers. Languages and Music (p. 66). How could one not love a book with such depth to the seeming ephemeral which becomes that which lasts the longest.
This book should get another .5 for its uniqueness (4.5) and the duress the author went to write it. Her speaking Arabic and familiarity with some of the areas explored must have truly helped her, as it was such a foreign exploration for my very Western experience and exposures. When I read in the news of Iraq, Syria or the Yazidi peoples, I have little in the way of points of reference, but Saldana places a map in the book's front pages to help orient readers, likely from the West, who are also not as familiar with this area of the world, other than perhaps thru war stories.
In a way these are the unintended consequences of war stories as the Civil War in Syria has been going on for a dozen years and has displaced 13 million Syrians, and created 6.7 million refugees fleeing, with over half a million killed to-date.
And then so many people after the Iraqi invasion by America ,that left about another half a million dead Iraquis, and 9.2 million displaced over 8 years (2003-2011), and another 4.7 million who live from day-to-day without food security.
And then there was ISIS which controlled and destroyed cultural icons and thousands of people and tried to eliminate certain minorities over 40% of Iraq and 30% of Syria. But Saldana's book isn't about figures like these but only 5 personal family stories that tend more to build the reader's empathy and familiarity with the kinds of impact these far-reaching violence has had. She keeps it personal and thereby has the reader more identify with these tragedies we enter into with promises of quick victories and "shock and awe".
Also represented are the scapegoated minority of the Yazidi people who we recall from the news when there were some rescued from a mountaintop while under attack just for being a minority.
Although I was a bit more familiar with Jordan, Turkey and Greece. I was only familiar with the Greek island of Lesvos where I'd known many of the migrants in the rubber dingy were often sent, thinking how generous Greece was in taking them in to Lesvoce but this turns out not to quite be so true. There was a huge migrant camp on Lesvos, but I'd not known that the island was:
1. a hellhole of a place or
2. that it had burned to the ground in 2020
These stories describe the special ways migrants had of remembering their homes, that were so touching. Saldana has a gift for building real empathy from her readers, as you come to admire the many desperate folks escaping war, kidnapping, and unwanted displacements for fear from soldiers and ISIS throughout the many stories of harrowing escapes of migrants and their tenacious hanging on to dreams of one sort or another.
Saldana is so creative in the vehicle she uses to tell the five family stories--that is, through some valued item that each carries with them to their final destination, whether it's a "shal"/quilt with threads drawing a picture of Hana's obliterated home city in Iraq, or a beloved business of a pharmacy for which all had been sacrificed to little avail. The stories of such precious memories were gut wrenching.
I don't see how anyone could feel the same about migrants after reading Saldana's book. She brings such tenderness to the five families, and such honor to the varied ways they see themselves in the world, such understanding and respect for non-Western ways. The musician who would always name his 6 generations of grandfathers to his audience, and then ask who had one of these same grandfathers,--- making the point that we are all related.
Tradition, honor and legacy were held so tenaciously, and of course "family" was all. The musician worked so hard to learn and purchase his traditional guitar-like instrument with which he only hoped to bring traditional Kurdish music of his home country through the buzuq (#24 frets along its neck) that he dearly loved. And his younger friend who played another Syrian instrument as they wished to preserve their endangered unique music. Ferhad told the stories, while Hozan spoke thru his music; theirs was Kurdish music that had been passed over generations.
I will reference Munir's story and quote a passage, as it's impossible to capture the spirit of this author's ability to imprint permanent memories of these laudatory and tenacious life-giving migrants, who had been chased from place to place to place, one learning 5 languages while finally being resettled in Australia, having begun in Qaraqosh, Iraq to Amman, Jordan, to Sydney, Australia, over many years.
Munir held such kindness as his way of revolting against all the less-than-human treatment on Lesvos, where some 20K migrants were held in a camp on the Greek island, when few European nations would take them. They'd arrive densely packed in their dangerous dingy and rubber boats which often sank and the riders drowned en route, but that's how desperate they had become running from wars and ISIS and the deaths and chaos that ensued.
The author speaks of years later not recovering from what she'd seen in Lesvos: human beings treated like animals, and Munir speaking his eloquent Arabic, walking her through the destroyed streets of his home in their imaginations from the front of his tent in the cold. "His kindness. His politeness. The way it felt so surreal among the cruelty of the camp. The way I learned from him that a kind word can be a deliberate act of resistance."(p. 143).
So, all of this to say, this is a book for anyone interested in immigration, migrants or refugees, as it gives them their due in respect, admiration and tenderness. You realize these are not just everyday immigrants seeking a better life, but war-torn and fearful persons escaping for their lives, true refugees.
I will end this review with a summary of the 4th story, the couple who had two children and a dream of a pharmacy, which had been destroyed, so they finally began another in their garage before migrating out of war-torn Syria.
Their goals for their small garage pharmacy give you insight into how "pain is the intercessor of empathy" (Catudal):
1. Be available
2. Be attentive (In a moment of displacement & separated from family, we want the pharmacy to feel like home)
3. Be dependable (If we don't have it, ask them to return in a few hours and not have them risk travel, but rather, we get it from another pharmacy and then re-sell without markup)
4. Be kind--- The foundation of the pharmacy (they wanted to salvage some memory of what Aleppo had been like before the war: relationships, small gestures, hospitality (p. 188)
The pharmacy became a home away from home, seemingly a place of counsel, healing and relationship. It was more than what we may typically think of as a "pharmacy". But then everything in this book was so much more than its seeming face value; it was a book full of new understandings and ways of existing in this world.
Amen to this fine book, with its special familiarity with unfamiliar places, at least to me. Thanks to a gifted author Stephanie Saldana.
This book should get another .5 for its uniqueness (4.5) and the duress the author went to write it. Her speaking Arabic and familiarity with some of the areas explored must have truly helped her, as it was such a foreign exploration for my very Western experience and exposures. When I read in the news of Iraq, Syria or the Yazidi peoples, I have little in the way of points of reference, but Saldana places a map in the book's front pages to help orient readers, likely from the West, who are also not as familiar with this area of the world, other than perhaps thru war stories.
In a way these are the unintended consequences of war stories as the Civil War in Syria has been going on for a dozen years and has displaced 13 million Syrians, and created 6.7 million refugees fleeing, with over half a million killed to-date.
And then so many people after the Iraqi invasion by America ,that left about another half a million dead Iraquis, and 9.2 million displaced over 8 years (2003-2011), and another 4.7 million who live from day-to-day without food security.
And then there was ISIS which controlled and destroyed cultural icons and thousands of people and tried to eliminate certain minorities over 40% of Iraq and 30% of Syria. But Saldana's book isn't about figures like these but only 5 personal family stories that tend more to build the reader's empathy and familiarity with the kinds of impact these far-reaching violence has had. She keeps it personal and thereby has the reader more identify with these tragedies we enter into with promises of quick victories and "shock and awe".
Also represented are the scapegoated minority of the Yazidi people who we recall from the news when there were some rescued from a mountaintop while under attack just for being a minority.
Although I was a bit more familiar with Jordan, Turkey and Greece. I was only familiar with the Greek island of Lesvos where I'd known many of the migrants in the rubber dingy were often sent, thinking how generous Greece was in taking them in to Lesvoce but this turns out not to quite be so true. There was a huge migrant camp on Lesvos, but I'd not known that the island was:
1. a hellhole of a place or
2. that it had burned to the ground in 2020
These stories describe the special ways migrants had of remembering their homes, that were so touching. Saldana has a gift for building real empathy from her readers, as you come to admire the many desperate folks escaping war, kidnapping, and unwanted displacements for fear from soldiers and ISIS throughout the many stories of harrowing escapes of migrants and their tenacious hanging on to dreams of one sort or another.
Saldana is so creative in the vehicle she uses to tell the five family stories--that is, through some valued item that each carries with them to their final destination, whether it's a "shal"/quilt with threads drawing a picture of Hana's obliterated home city in Iraq, or a beloved business of a pharmacy for which all had been sacrificed to little avail. The stories of such precious memories were gut wrenching.
I don't see how anyone could feel the same about migrants after reading Saldana's book. She brings such tenderness to the five families, and such honor to the varied ways they see themselves in the world, such understanding and respect for non-Western ways. The musician who would always name his 6 generations of grandfathers to his audience, and then ask who had one of these same grandfathers,--- making the point that we are all related.
Tradition, honor and legacy were held so tenaciously, and of course "family" was all. The musician worked so hard to learn and purchase his traditional guitar-like instrument with which he only hoped to bring traditional Kurdish music of his home country through the buzuq (#24 frets along its neck) that he dearly loved. And his younger friend who played another Syrian instrument as they wished to preserve their endangered unique music. Ferhad told the stories, while Hozan spoke thru his music; theirs was Kurdish music that had been passed over generations.
I will reference Munir's story and quote a passage, as it's impossible to capture the spirit of this author's ability to imprint permanent memories of these laudatory and tenacious life-giving migrants, who had been chased from place to place to place, one learning 5 languages while finally being resettled in Australia, having begun in Qaraqosh, Iraq to Amman, Jordan, to Sydney, Australia, over many years.
Munir held such kindness as his way of revolting against all the less-than-human treatment on Lesvos, where some 20K migrants were held in a camp on the Greek island, when few European nations would take them. They'd arrive densely packed in their dangerous dingy and rubber boats which often sank and the riders drowned en route, but that's how desperate they had become running from wars and ISIS and the deaths and chaos that ensued.
The author speaks of years later not recovering from what she'd seen in Lesvos: human beings treated like animals, and Munir speaking his eloquent Arabic, walking her through the destroyed streets of his home in their imaginations from the front of his tent in the cold. "His kindness. His politeness. The way it felt so surreal among the cruelty of the camp. The way I learned from him that a kind word can be a deliberate act of resistance."(p. 143).
So, all of this to say, this is a book for anyone interested in immigration, migrants or refugees, as it gives them their due in respect, admiration and tenderness. You realize these are not just everyday immigrants seeking a better life, but war-torn and fearful persons escaping for their lives, true refugees.
I will end this review with a summary of the 4th story, the couple who had two children and a dream of a pharmacy, which had been destroyed, so they finally began another in their garage before migrating out of war-torn Syria.
Their goals for their small garage pharmacy give you insight into how "pain is the intercessor of empathy" (Catudal):
1. Be available
2. Be attentive (In a moment of displacement & separated from family, we want the pharmacy to feel like home)
3. Be dependable (If we don't have it, ask them to return in a few hours and not have them risk travel, but rather, we get it from another pharmacy and then re-sell without markup)
4. Be kind--- The foundation of the pharmacy (they wanted to salvage some memory of what Aleppo had been like before the war: relationships, small gestures, hospitality (p. 188)
The pharmacy became a home away from home, seemingly a place of counsel, healing and relationship. It was more than what we may typically think of as a "pharmacy". But then everything in this book was so much more than its seeming face value; it was a book full of new understandings and ways of existing in this world.
Amen to this fine book, with its special familiarity with unfamiliar places, at least to me. Thanks to a gifted author Stephanie Saldana.
I cried. Amazing book that is spectacularly written and contains life changing stories. Stephanie Saldaña continues to be my favorite author :))
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
A beautiful, humanizing record of personal stories by refugees.
There have been many books and media stories about the effects of the War on Terror on American soldiers (and if past wars are indicative there are better ones still to come). But not nearly enough written about the lives that were displaced, those killed or forced to begin again - carrying what they could in their arms or in their stories, songs and crafts. Saldaña through these five stories unfolding through nine countries does something that history and news often fail to do - tell what happened through the voices of people who had the most at stake. History found on a shawl, or in a song, photos, or in the story of a community remembering it together miles away from where it happened will turn out to be truer than an official account designed to preserve the ego of the official who wrote it. What I most hope comes from Saldaña's stories is a more accurate knowledge of the people who wind up becoming refugees - teachers, pharmacists, engineers, doctors, musicians, families - people not much different from the readers except for the good fortune of geography.
Just, sighs. People can be heartbreakingly beautiful and horrible and we all have to live together and it sucks. This book is lovely but people who need to read it probably won’t. And the cycle of destruction by corruption will continue on and on while people sadly remember the beautiful things that used to be.
Um, I need someone to recommend something that will lighten my mood. Holy shit. Excellent book, but maybe not when you’re bummed about all of the things.
Um, I need someone to recommend something that will lighten my mood. Holy shit. Excellent book, but maybe not when you’re bummed about all of the things.