“I Loved Them to Death” sheds light on Syrian tragedy at Qamishlo Book Fair

The fair, held in Qamishlo under the slogan “Books are the Key to Civilization” and organized by the cultural authorities in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Jazira Canton, hosts approximately 140,000 books.

Mesopotamia Publishing and Translation House, in collaboration with Shleir Publications, presented a range of new literary releases enriching the local cultural scene.

Among these works, the novel “I Loved Them to Death” by journalist and short story writer Dia Iskandar stood out. Born in Latakia in 1957, Iskandar holds a law degree from Damascus University. His literary portfolio includes ten manuscripts across short stories, novels, and prose poetry, along with hundreds of political articles and investigative reports.

He has published four short story collections with Shleir, including “Nahud in Hanano Street”, “Sighs on the Sidewalks of Fear”, “The Martyred Fingers”.

He also participated in the poetry competition at the Othman Sabri Literature Festival in Qamishli in 2023, winning third place for his prose poetry collection “Please Before I Die!”.

The novel is among the first literary works to tackle the massacres in the Syrian coastal region that occurred in the first third of March of this year. It tells the story through the perspective of a young man from rural Aleppo, driven by life’s hardships into joining a militant group, only to become a participant in those massacres.

A painful irony emerges as he discovers that the victims are not strangers but the childhood faces that once embraced him and his family when they were displaced, sharing bread and safety. The novel highlights struggles of identity and belonging, as he is torn between imposed ideology and the memory that preserves the faces who once saved him from hunger and fear.

Ultimately, in the moment of confrontation, he refuses orders, declining to shoot those who were once his family, leaving behind a painful question: Who is the real enemy — the one who fires or the one who refuses?

Literarily, the novel exposes blind loyalty and reveals how humanity is assassinated in the name of allegiance, becoming a mirror of Syrian memory and a voice for all who refuse to be part of the killing machine. The work carries a profound human message, calling for self-reflection and a return to the essence of humanity beyond ideology, positioning it as one of the most prominent works that merge Syrian pain with human truth in times torn apart by gunfire.

a.k

ANHA