Three Days in Damascus

A Memoir

De: Kim Schultz

Narrado por: Kim Schultz

Three Days in Damascus is a memoir about a three-year fight for a chance at love with an Iraqi refugee the author met in Syria.

While travelling to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria to interview Iraqi refugees and hear some of their stories, Kim never expected to fall in love with one of them. But that is exactly what happened. This is the story of one American woman and one Iraqi man set against the backdrop of the Iraqi refugee crisis. Through actual Iraqi refugee interviews, a whirlwind Middle Eastern love story, and the consequently doomed, intercontinental relationship told through texts and emails with civil war, revolution, and an arranged marriage as the backdrop, we learn of culture and devastation, desperation and redemption, while still never losing hope.

While there are roughly 65 million refugees worldwide, approximately five million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes since the US led invasion of their country, most of them fleeing to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Since Syria is currently in the midst of a violent civil war, the Iraqis there are left in an extremely dangerous position - stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go. This timely memoir examines the lives of dozens of these Iraqi refugees trying desperately to survive in a world blind to their plight and one Iraqi in particular: Omar.

Through a strong narrative and a surprisingly comedic lens, the listener travels with the author through this unknown, sandy terrain, breaking assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations - in a journey that ultimately ends in the most traditional assumption one could imagine: a Middle Eastern man agreeing to an arranged marriage. And after three years of trying to "save" Omar and salvage a life for/with him, she discovers maybe he wasn’t the one who needed saving.

©2016 Kim Schultz (P)2017 Kim Schultz