A Disappearance in Damascus Paperback by Deborah Campbell

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2017-06-06)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 352 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780345809308
• Item Weight: 312.98 grams
• Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 cm

Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-Fiction
Longlisted for The British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction

In the midst of an unfolding international crisis, the renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Her frank, personal account of a journey through fear, and the triumph of friendship and courage, is as riveting as it is illuminating.

     The story begins in 2007 when Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a "fixer"--providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam, who fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian centre, not only supports her husband and two children through her work with foreign journalists but is setting up a makeshift school for displaced girls. She has become a charismatic, unofficial leader of the refugee community in Damascus, and Campbell is inspired by her determination to create something good amid so much suffering. Ahlam soon becomes her friend as well as her guide. But one morning Ahlam is seized from her home in front of Campbell's eyes. Haunted by the prospect that their work together has led to her friend's arrest, Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find her--all the while fearing she could be next.

About the Author

DEBORAH CAMPBELL has spent more than a decade reporting from such places as Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, Cuba and Russia. Much of her work is "immersive journalism" that involves living among the societies she covers. Her writing has appeared in Harper's, The Economist, The Guardian, New Scientist, Foreign Policy and The Walrus, among others, and she is the recipient of three National Magazine Awards. She has guest lectured at Harvard, Berkeley, Zayed University in Dubai, the Munk School of Global Affairs, the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the National Press Club in Washington, and has commented on Middle East and media issues for CBC's The Current and The New York Times. She teaches at the University of British Columbia.