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Hadi Abdullah, "Critical Conditions: My Diary of the Syrian Revolution" (Doppelhouse Press, 2025)
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- [00:00]
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Marshall Poe
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- [02:05]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Hello everyone and welcome back to the New Box Network. I'm your host Ibrahim Fauzi and today we're delving into one of the most urgent and moving works to emerge from the last decade critical conditions. My Diary of the Syrian Revolution written by activist and journalist Hadi Abdallwa and translated into English by my guest Alessandro Colombo. Welcome back to the show, Alessandro.
- [02:27]
Alessandro Colombo
Thank you Ibrahim, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me again. And it's an honor for me to be your guest again.
- [02:35]
Ibrahim Fauzi
We're so glad, Alessandro, to have you again on the New Box Network. And without further ado, my first question is, you open your translator's introduction with Gramsci's line, the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. Why did you choose to begin here? And how do you see this framing shaping the way readers enter Haidi Abdullah's memoir?
- [02:58]
Alessandro Colombo
Thank you. Thank you, Ibrahim. This is a great question I have. I mean, I don't know if I put that much thinking into it or enough thinking into it. When I decided to put it there, just because I thought it was so evocative and I really liked it, and maybe subconsciously I thought it fit, I suppose, because I'm also an admirer of Gramsci himself, and both Gramsci and I come from Sardinia, and that's also one of the reasons. But I suppose, I mean, now that I think about it, the reason why I decided to open my introduction with that line is that the memoir, the book in question, Critical Conditions by Hadi Abdullah, narrates. I mean, it covers a period in Syria's history from 2011 to 2024, where the desire for change and freedom of ordinary Syrians, because of the regime's response to that desire, to use a technical term, I would say because of the counterinsurgency strategy of the regime, that desire for change led to the most catastrophic and traumatizing period in the country's recent history since independence. We can't deny that. And again, it was the regime's response to a genuine demand for change that led to this catastrophic period. But I thought Gramsci's quote really captured the nature of this period. The new world that struggles to be born is the desire for something new, something people wouldn't even dare to think, let alone talk about, before 2011. Now, the old world in Gramsci's quote, in this case, the old world that's dying is the old regime whose days were numbered and that decided to fight tooth and nail for its survival. So this conflict has produced the monstrosities that we're still witnessing today. So that's why I thought that quote fit. I hope the readers like it. I hope that they find it fitting. Anyway. You do? Okay. That's great.
- [05:04]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. Oh, thank you. And, yeah. How did you first encounter Hadi's work? Because I usually ask, why my guests this question, especially translators. How did you first Encounter the work. And what drew you personally to take on this translation project, which is really hard because of the pain involved in the project and the text?
- [05:27]
Alessandro Colombo
I mean, yeah, it's a long story. I mean, you're right to mention the pain and you're right to mention the difficulties involved because of the content of the book. But I suppose having been a supporter of the Syrian revolution for so long, it only felt natural for me. And I can tell you a bit, kind of the timeline of events, because, I mean, I didn't know Hadi Abdullah until probably June 2013. I mean, he'd been reporting before that since basically March 2011, since the first demonstration started. But I didn't know him until at some point in June, probably 2013. And I distinctly remember when this Italian journalist, his name is Daniele Raineri, tweeted about the events in Homs and around Homs in 2013. I remember his tweet was something along the lines of, as long as Hadi Abdullah is still reporting, he's still, you know, sending tweets and sending messages. That means that the revolution is still alive, that they haven't managed to smother it completely. This made a huge impact on me because I then started asking my Syrian friends about him, and of course, they all knew him very well. Everyone knew Hadi Abdullah. They had followed his reports of the regimes, of the brutal, of the regime's response to demonstrations in the city of Hamas. And so I started following him on social media. And after that, I became really passionate about him because then, and I hope people do read the book, if you read the book, you'll see that everything that happened to him seemed fictional. I mean, it was unreal. I remember the heartbreaking videos he posted, for example, when his friends died. Sadly, the book is a lot about, like I said, the revolution and events, but it's also a lot about friendship, has a lot to do with the concept of friendship. And I remember these, you know, heartbreaking videos of. About his friends who were killed in the process, you know, while reporting with him, his cameraman and people like that. I remember watching videos of him reporting from the front line on a wheelchair. I remember this was probably 2017. He was. He was almost killed in Aleppo. There was a murder attempt on him, an attempt on his life in Aleppo in 2017. And after that, he wouldn't give up his reporting. So he was reporting from the wheelchair. He was conducting interviews with members of the Free Syrian army on a wheelchair. So even for me, as a non Syrian, he became an icon, like A symbol of this, you know, of this resistance of Syrians and of their perseverance. So when his book came out, of course I followed him for all these years, you know, and when he moved to Kafr Ambal, then I was following him as well. When his book came out in 2020, I mean, I didn't even hesitate. I immediately ordered several copies from. I'm sure you're familiar with Nil We Furat.
- [08:24]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yes.
- [08:25]
Alessandro Colombo
And so when it arrived, I just devoured. I think I finished it in like three days. I read it immediately because it was just so. There was so much I knew in the book. There was so much I knew already, you know, about the siege of Homs and the siege of Aleppo and the expulsion of civilians from Aleppo. But I couldn't believe how much detail he'd been able to add to the events that I already knew from his reporting and from having been, like I said, a supporter of the Syrian revolution. There was so much more. So years later, when I started translating the first few chapters, I was lucky enough to know someone who could vouch for me and put me in touch with him, or the other way around, who could put me in touch with him and also vouch for me with him. Because this person was. I don't know what strings he pulled. Okay. But somehow the next day he sent me, had his phone number, and I added him on WhatsApp. And this was probably April or May 2022. And so I just gave him, you know, I just gave him a call on WhatsApp and we spoke for hours. You know, this was. Which was like meeting a celebrity for me. You know, this guy I'd known for so many years. Yeah. And what I found is, you know, very laid back and down to earth person. He was excited at the idea that someone was keen to translate his book in English. And I was honored to earn his trust because, I mean, he was trusting me with his memoirs, with his book. And of course, you know, a lot of people have read it in Arabic, but I hope that a lot more people read it in English. And this is also, I mean, when I met him in 2022, this was also a period in his life, in his serious. In serious history, which he talks about a lot in his book. He calls it our dust, our darkest hour. You know, it was an incredibly tough period and I could feel it from the way he talked. So, I mean, again, had he was ready to give me his consent to translate the book, and he entrusted me with his life story, and I will always be Grateful to him. So 2022, when I first met with him and he first accepted to let me translate the book, then the story of how I came to publish this book is, as usual, you know, with the publishing industry. I hope no one take this personally, but it's kind of intricate. I approached several publishers in Britain and the United States, some of which didn't even bother to reply to my emails. Of course, we're all accustomed to that, but one morning, it's actually a bit of an anecdote. I mean, I was listening to Monte Carlo Dualia, which I always do in the morning. You know, I'm listening to Cafe show to the morning program and I was. They had Asma Al Ghul on the phone. I don't know if you know Asma, she's a famous reporter from Gaza. She lives in France now. She's originally from Gaza. And I've been in touch with Asma many, many years ago because I translated one of her articles from Arabic into Italian and I thought, oh, Asma, you know, long time, you'll see what's going on. So I thought I would send her a message on Facebook. So I went on Facebook, greeted her and said, asma Halek Barak, what's going on? And she told me about her memoir. She said, oh, my first book came out. Have you read? I said, where is it? Oh, it's called the Rebel from Gaza. Oh, okay. Who's your publisher? Doppelhaus Press. Oh. So Asma suggested that I send Doppelhaus Press an email since I was looking for a publisher. And that's what I did. And that's how Carrie, the main editor, you know, got back to me immediately and reacted enthusiastically. And the rest is history. This is how I came in contact with Doppelhaus Press, who's been, you know, I would say generous enough to publish and also I would say open minded enough to publish Hadi's memoirs. To go back to Hadi's book, if you don't mind. Ibrahim. I would say that, and this is something I was referring to earlier, what really made an impact on me was the sense of friendship that permeated the pages of this book. I mean, if you're expecting a book about the Syrian revolution, you probably going to be a bit disappointed because it isn't about Syria, it is not about Syria's national memory, it's not about being Syrian. Okay. It's about concepts and feelings that I hope a much broader audience can relate to. Friendship, loyalty, bravery, like I said, and I know we, and also the readers I suppose both you and I and the readers, people are curious about the so called juicy bits, you know, political developments about Islamists now being in government, sectarianism, the relationship with Israel and Hamas. And I personally find these things a bit tedious and unexciting. I'm sorry, because they're volatile. But instead this book, I mean, this book is not about all of those things. If people are hoping to find them juicy bits in this book, they won't find them. Because I've learned so much from this book as an individual, as a 40 year old living in this world today. I don't mean about Syria or the revolution, because I already knew kind of those details. I mean about friendship, like I said, about love, about purpose. And so this is also part of my broader vision about cultural production from Syria and other Arab countries. I believe that not everything is about politics, not everything is about social studies or understanding the region. I think the book is wonderful because it humanizes the Syrian experience and this is why I love it.
- [13:53]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah, yeah. What an answer. I really loved your answer, your detailed answer. And I, yeah, because we, we, you and I usually talk in Arabic. So how did your background as a student of Arabic literature during the Arab Spring inform your translation practice here? I mean, in this book, while translating this book, reading about it, you're doing the research.
- [14:20]
Alessandro Colombo
No, it definitely helped, like I said, because I mean, studying Arabic literature shaped this vision of mine. You know, what I said about the broader vision about cultural production from Syria and not everything being about politics, not everything being about current events. I think having translated the books by Zakaria Tamir in the past did help me a lot because I could, I could better appreciate certain nuances in the language that Hadi uses. And I was also, I mean, I was blown away by his capacity to write in a highly evocative language. This guy is incredible. I mean, he's a reporter, okay, he's not a writer. But certain choices were really amazing. Some, some people would probably approach his memoirs as a journalistic work, but again, they would probably be disappointed to find very few hard facts. Okay. In his memoir, no numbers, no maps. Well, there is a map in the English, in the English translation, but it's just to help readers kind of understand, understand the places he's talking about. No names of this, that opposition group, you know, nothing about, you know, the many contradictions of the Syrian opposition during the civil war. Of course, there's nothing about what they will find is something that's more like soft factors as opposed to hard factors. The way people make sense of loss, of violence, of displacement, and the way all of these things. They make sense of all of these things through storytelling. So this is important, I think, because literature has the capacity to tell a story that lasts beyond the immediate political relevance. It doesn't matter if the regime is gone now. The value of Hadi's story would be undiminished, I think, if the Assad regime was still in power. It's not about the regime being gone now, of course, it will acquire more relevance, but the content of the story will, I think, surprise a lot. I hate the idea that literature can, you know, explain or help us understand the Middle east in this kind of IR and political science kind of way. You know, I think literature is not a reportage. You can find plenty of reportage by Al Jazeera, other networks online, and I think they're a bit boring to me. Literature and this book too, they have so much more to teach and to inspire. And so having translated literature, kind of what we call literature, what's generally understood as literature before, such as Zakariat Amir and other things too, definitely helped me because what I was translating wasn't a journalistic memoir of what happens in this and that city was something else. So, yes, to answer your question, absolutely. I'm lucky, I suppose I'm lucky to have been exposed to literature such as Zakiriya Tamir. And I'm saying this as a translator, because it helped me immensely capture more of the nuances of the language, more of the semantic choices that he made. And. And again, I hope, I hope people like the translation.
- [17:30]
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Ibrahim Fauzi
See mintmobile.com yeah, speaking of readers and earlier of friendships and the personal losses. Hope Sumood what particular aspects of Hadith's work or Hadith, I mean Hadith's narrative, do you think will resonate most deeply with readers unfamiliar with the Syrian experience?
- [19:54]
Alessandro Colombo
This is a great question, I think. I mean what we have to keep in mind in this sense is that Hadith, I mean Hadith is not the only personal account of the Syrian revolution because there are many others. But I think it stands out in how he tells the story. A lot of books have come out, you know, since 2011. You think about Samaria's Bex, for example, she has two one is the Crossing and the other one is Takato an Iran. I think it's People in the A Woman in the Crossfire in English, which is, which is great. You know, it's a lyrical to feminist take on political upheaval. You also have Yasin Al Khar Saleh the Impossible Revolution, which is one of my favorite books about Syrian revolution. I learned so much from it, but it's more analytical. You know, it traces the different stages of the uprising, and it's written by someone who spent years in prison and exile. So we're talking about, like, huge political figure in cs. Huge. I mean, Yassin Al Khay Saleh is an intellectual, okay? Hadi, I'm sorry, but he's not an intellectual. Hadi is just an activist. Okay? Yes. So I think Hadi's, you know, critical conditions takes a different approach. Instead of political analysis, it gives you the ground level view of how activists and ordinary people lived through these changes, lived through everything that was happening to them. His focus is on, and I'm saying this for yet another time, friendship, grief, survival. It's not on abstract theories about what Syria or the future of the country should look like or why you have Islamist opposition groups and not liberal and things like that. Liberal opposition groups. The book is unusual. It was dictated. The way the book was written is also unusual because it was dictated while he was reporting on the front lines. So it came from WhatsApp voice notes sent first to his Arabic editor. Okay, who put down the book, and then to me for the third part. I'll explain this later. What I mean, but this is. I mean, this makes it feel urgent, you know, more immediate, more like testimony than polished memoir. But he managed, even in a testimony like that, to really write in a rich and evocative language. So if you compare it with other books, I don't know which ones I could mention. I could mention, for example, Wendy Perlman, We Crossed the Bridge and It Trembled. You know, there are great. Another great book about the Syrian revolution, which is an oral history built from, you know, multiple Syrian voices. And then you have voices of the Arab Spring, which is even not just Syria, you know, stories from across the region. I think in this sense, what makes Abdullah stand out, what makes Hadi Abdullah's book stand out, is it's not retrospective. You know, these books are retrospective. It's not shaped by years of distance or exile. It's written in the thick of it. You would say it's a chronicle of survival, of loss and solidarity also as it happened. Okay? So I think that he didn't even want to write the story to begin with. He didn't even want to write the book. He says it in the book, you know, he says he thought that other people had suffered more, that his voice wasn't the one that needed to be to be preserved. But then someone, namely a person called Jude, even though this is an issem paraki, you know, I don't know her real name. She really pushed him, saying that, you know, his account could stand out alongside others and not to overshadow those people who Hadi himself said they had suffered more than him, but to make sure that no memory, no voice gets lost. So that's really what the book embodies, how telling your own story, even if it feels uncomfortable, becomes an act of resistance against erasure. And because I suppose Syria has experienced erasure before, you know, erasure of massacres, like the Hama 19, 1982 massacre, it went almost completely undocumented. So there was an urge, almost like a fear among Syrian activists that it could happen again, that Hama could happen again. So, you know, just to answer your question, I think it ends up me being more than one man's story. It's part of a larger mosaic of revolutionary memory. It's personal. It's like I said, it's a way of saying, we were here, this happened, and it must not be forgotten.
- [24:23]
Ibrahim Fauzi
And yeah, mentioning Wendy Perlman, she also had a sequel to the book you mentioned, which is the home I work to make voices from the new Syrian diaspora. And it's really a wonderful book.
- [24:40]
Alessandro Colombo
Is it? I'll check it out.
- [24:41]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing. Did the full. Yeah, because I want to know, how did you receive the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024? And it also happened as you were finishing the translation. Did that alter your sense of responsibility to the text?
- [25:03]
Alessandro Colombo
Inevitably, yes. But I also have to say, unfortunately, in a way, I mean, don't get me wrong, that morning, December 8, 2024, I was over the moon. You know, I was extremely excited to see the images coming from Damascus. I couldn't believe it. I was crying. You know, I don't know, but I was just crying. And I like to think that, yes, my sense of responsibility to the text was increased, but it was huge. Even before that day, I always felt a huge sense of responsibility towards the book. I mean, I said unfortunately, because sometimes it seems like Syria. It seems to me that Syria had been forgotten as a country before December 2024. No longer making the headlines. Oh, it was replaced by other countries on the agenda. You know, it was Gaza and then Sudan and then Yemen and then Khashoggi and then Ukraine and then Gaza again, because, I mean, Israel has attacked it so many times, it's mind boggling. But I digress here. I mean, it altered my responsibility to the text because I realized that a lot more people would want to read it and So, I mean, Hadi himself realized that there was an increased sense of responsibility and attention towards Syria. And the publisher, also, Double House Press, realized this. And so we decided, all of us together, to expand the temporal remit of the original Arabic memoirs. If you read the Arabic memo, the Arabic original written by hadim, published in 2020, it covers the events between 2011 and 2019. Okay. Yeah. We've decided to do is to add another part consisting of approximately 150 more pages covering the events between 2019 and December 8, 2024. So this part, which appears in the English translation, doesn't appear. Doesn't appear in the. In the Arabic original.
- [27:04]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Awesome.
- [27:05]
Alessandro Colombo
So, and how did we compile this? Because Hadi and I made this decision in March approximately this year, and he started sending me WhatsApp memos in Arabic covering the period between 2019 and 2024. In December 2024, I was hoping it would be just a few messages, but it ended up being almost, you know, dozens of WhatsApp memos where he, you know, remembered everything that happened. And, you know, just when I thought my. My work was done, I found myself working long hours to be able to translate these memos accurately and convey Hadi's thoughts. Because it's one thing to translate from the page, it's another thing to translate from Voice Memos on WhatsApp, you know, and so, yeah, I really worked hard, and I hope I managed to translate these thoughts accurately and to convey his thoughts and feelings in English. I think in general, English sentences are a lot shorter. Why? Arabic sentences can be very long. And so I frequently reformulated the content of his voice notes into paragraphs made of short sentences, kind of trying to use a rhythm that keeps the readers engaged. I tried at least. Okay. To do that, and I hope the readers like it. So just to reiterate what people read in the English version is an expanded memoir. It's not the exact equivalent of the Arabic book, which I translated only for two thirds. And then the third part is based on voice memo memos he sent me recently. More recently, yeah.
- [28:42]
Ibrahim Fauzi
And the memoir blends reportage, diary, and poetic reflection. What was the biggest challenge in carrying across this hybrid voice in English? We'll talk more about translation in the coming questions.
- [28:54]
Alessandro Colombo
Yeah, no, I mean, there's always a challenge, and I love these questions. I love the way you. You kind of get me think. It's. It's almost like the other interview we had, Ibrahim. It's almost therapeutic because it makes me think about these things. I suppose the biggest challenge is that of finding a language. Yeah, finding a language that the English reader can relate to and at the same time preserving the spirit of the original text. This is difficult, but I find. I mean, I need to find images that would easily capture the attention of the reader and at the same time entice them. Because that's also the effect that the Arabic text, the Arabic text had on me when I read it the first time. I mean, if you look at certain passages, and I made a note of one that's in the early chapters of the book, which covers the events of the first demonstrations in Homs. Okay. Which. This is a passage by Hadi describing the early days of the Syrian uprising in 2011. You know, I'll read it in English and, you know, you as an Arabic speaker can imagine the kind of language he used in Arabic in the original. But he goes, like I said, he's talking about the first demonstrations. This is March 2011. Things were still going on in Egypt and Tunisia, you know, Libya and Yemen. And he says all it would take was a little flare for a bigger blaze to spread. The events that took place in Daraa kindled the revolution's fire and carried its flame from the furthest southern tip of the country, stirring people's moral virtues, galvanizing their spirits and filling them with resolve. I mean, what he's saying is basically that after decades of fear and repression under Assad's rule, Syria suddenly brought down that wall of fear and went into the streets, went out to the streets to protest. The spark was what happened in Daraa when school kids wrote anti regime graffiti, got arrested and tortured, etc. Which set off mass illustrations. So for Hadi, this was a transformative moment. People who'd been silent, afraid to even, you know, say anything, to whisper criticism, were now shouting openly. It felt like the old country was waking up together, united in a shared cause and conscious. You know, that passage leans, you know, it has fire metaphors in it. Fire, flare, blaze, flame. And I think it frames the revolution as something both natural and uncontrollable, spreading like wildfire from Daraa across Syria. So this is, you know, I hope I managed to preserve the metaphors that he used in the original because they're all fire metaphors in the original too. But also to convey this meaning of something that spread so quickly because, you know, it was impossible to stop. I wanted to convey this urgency and inevitability, but also to, you know, to preserve the wig. Hadi kind of romanticized it a little bit, romanticized the first few months as something like a purifying force. Okay. Rather than this messy political struggle which ended up being, at the same time, I think, you know, verbs like stirring and filling with resolve, you know, they're also highly effective. And he talks about the revolution as a collective awakening. Is what I had to, you know, this is what I had to preserve.
- [32:29]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. And another question related to translation. Slogans and chants. Yeah. In Arabic depend on rhyme, irony and context. Like Jacob Doria, doctor, you're the, your next doctor. Could you walk us through one or two translation choices where you had to balance lateral meaning with cultural resonance?
- [32:51]
Alessandro Colombo
Yeah. This is another one of those. I mean, it's never easy. And I have to, I suppose, I mean, I have to admit, acknowledge my shortcomings here because I've never translated poetry and I'm ready to accept criticism in this sense because although the slogans, I mean, these slogans rhyme in Arabic, so can hear the rhyme in Arabic, but I wasn't able to make them rhyme in English. Same goes for other slogans that became popular in 2011. So, you know, there were so many catchy slogans those years became popular and mentioned. Hadi mentions some of them in the book and some of these slogans. I mean, the thing is, to be able to capture the, the, the relevance of these slogans is you need to know that some of these slogans, they mirrored slogans that had existed before, but were pro regime. So one of the most popular slogans in, in Syria, I mean, pro regime, pro Assad slogans, where was like Biruch, Biddam, Naftiki, Bashar, which means we sacrifice our blood and our souls for you, Bashar. Okay. Referring to Bashar al Assad, I'm so happy to say former Syrian president. But what the protesters did instead was change these slogans. And so instead of saying, they changed it to saying we sacrifice our blood and our souls for the martyrs, referring to people who died during demonstrations and, you know, were shot down by, by security forces and they became martyrs, which is a difficult term, I suppose, to understand for the English reader. But this is what, this is the terminology that Hadi uses. So, I mean, this wasn't easy at all. This is why in the introduction, I devote a couple of paragraphs to supply a bit of context to the English reader approaching this translation and explaining these things that I've, that I've just said to you and that, you know, and understanding certain slogans and I haven't even mentioned all of them requires a bit of a background in Syria's in serious Syrian culture, it's not even political culture. It's just Syrian culture. You know, slogans like NAFTIQ is just Syrian culture, popular culture. But I thought, you know, that introduction could help in this sense that if people have, you know, they're willing to read through the, you know, just a few pages of introduction, I thought it would help them understand what it means when you say, you know, with our blood, and we sacrifice our blood and our souls for you. I mean, probably a better translator than me would be able to translate them accurately. But like I said, I admit my shop coming here, and I don't want to have. I didn't want to have. Thank you. I didn't want to have footnotes. I didn't want to have footnotes saying, hey, stop here. This slogan means abc. I hate footnotes. Okay, so just read the book. You come across a slogan, you don't understand, it's fine. Okay. And sometimes I overthink it. Sometimes I think too much about the read. People eventually understand they can Google things. They can find them in the introduction.
- [36:06]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah, you're completely right. And I think this is about reading. We read to learn something new. So that's it. Yeah. Also, can you discuss the specific. Because, I mean, because sometimes I read literature from any part of the world translated into English or into Arabic, and I find. And I come across many sentences and places and events that I know nothing about. So I have to Google it and all these sentences just to see and to know, to learn. Sometimes we as readers need to learn and to teach ourselves.
- [36:46]
Alessandro Colombo
I agree.
- [36:47]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. So can you discuss the specific challenges and nuances? I mean, I feel like I repeated this question a lot, so if you want to skip it, that's fine.
- [36:57]
Alessandro Colombo
It's okay. It's all right. It's fine.
- [36:59]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Can you discuss the specific, specific challenges and nuances involved in translating deeply symbolic and culturally resonant terms or words like ayn, I, or like jasmine flower and others like them. I mean, because these words have full emotional, political, and cultural weight in Arabic.
- [37:24]
Alessandro Colombo
Yeah. I mean, the ones you've mentioned are definitely interesting. So the word which means I, I, I is ayn or yoon in Arabic has a certain metaphorical meaning. You call someone you love. My eyes. Okay. You know, the apple of your eye, I suppose, is a close equivalent in English. But Hadi uses it a lot, of course, to refer to his friends, you know, and people he lost. So he said. He basically said, after witnessing the death, the murder of two of his friends, that I had no eyes. My eyes were gone. So this is another one of those things that I felt I had to explain in the introduction. I thought, let me explain what he means. But like you said, people need to learn. Another term that I really found interesting is the term martyr, because, again, if you've followed Syria for as long as I have, the events in Syria, then you become accustomed to, you know, just hearing the word shaheed shuhada means martyr. And I just, you know, I don't know if someone else with no background in Syria or in Arabic was reading my draft. And they. They kept asking me, what's this word, Marty? What does that mean? And I realized I was like, wow. I take it for granted, but not everyone is accustomed to using this word. You know, I was accustomed to coming across it because before reading, had his memoir, but translating the book got me thinking about it. So, I mean, I realize I'm generalizing a little bit, but while in the west, let's say, or at least in my upbringing as a Catholic, you know, a martyr is someone. A personality from the past, from the time when, I don't know, Romans, Christians, were being persecuted by, you know, in the Roman Empire. This is what a martyr means to me. Right. And it has several equivalents in European languages, but they're all the same. You know, it's martyre or something like, similar to that. But in the Arab world, the word shaheed, which I translated as martyr, encompasses a much broader category, because the word shaheed, it does translate as martyr, but doesn't just mean someone who dies for God or in its religious sense. Again, I'm not an expert, and I welcome any kind of comment or criticism.
- [39:43]
Ibrahim Fauzi
I'm just. It seems something to learn.
- [39:46]
Alessandro Colombo
It seems to me that in Syria, but also in Palestine a lot, and I have read debates about this, this term has come to mean anyone who sacrifices their life for dignity, justice, or freedom. Okay, so even people have been slaughtered in Gaza right now, and we're not talking about Hamas member members or armed group members. They are called shaheed shuhada. So it's something. It's about refusing submission, even in the face of oppression, I think. Okay, so calling someone a martyr gives their death a sense of purpose. It honors these people as part of a larger struggle, making it clear that they died, but they didn't die for nothing. So in both Syria and Palestine, which I suppose are the two contexts I know better, the idea of martyrdom has become central to how people remember and resist to. So again, I added a brief explanation about this in the introduction, specifically because I didn't want. I mean, I didn't want the book to be didactic. Didactic. I didn't want footnotes saying, stop here. You know, the Martyr is abc. I had to find a compromise because, of course, the editor, you know, and the publisher, they had questions about these things. So the compromise I was able to. To make was to add this information in the introduction. And, yeah, I mean, it's like you said, you need to learn to. Because martyrdom isn't an abstract concept in this book. It's personal. You know, it's. It's tied to the loss of friends, neighbors, activists. For him, I mean, for Hadi, when he uses it, Marti can mean a fighter, can mean a journalist, can mean a reporter, can mean a protester, can mean children killed in bombings, you know, innocent children who were just killed because the regime bombed their house. It's a way of preserving their memory and also connecting their deaths to the broader fight for freedom. Okay, So I mean, to answer your question, when you asked me about, you know, specific challenges, I decided to stick to the word martyr and to avoid, like I said, explanations, because. And again, I'm repeating your words here, but it's an opportunity. A book like this is an opportunity to come across a term that people are not familiar with and to think about how its meaning can vary across cultures and contexts and religions. And it's. It. It's something that would love to explore more, even in terms of research, you know, how's this word? Because I've also read debates online, you know, people fighting about how, you know, Syrian lives, Palestinian lives matter. This is one of the sides of the debate. You know, if you call them martyrs, you almost glorifying death, right? And I don't know, it's sticky. It's a very sticky debate because other people, like I said, will say that calling them Martin gives them. Gives their death a sense of purpose. So this is what I would love to research, you know, because it's a. It's a fascinating term, which, like I said, again, if you're familiar with Syria or Palestine, you just take it for granted. Just, you know, shuhada. Even recently, there was a bombing in Syria in a church in Syria. And the reporter, I remember reading, you know, on Instagram, 22 martyrs in a church. And it was like, wow, martyrs. So, A, it's not tied to Islamic theology because, you know, these were Christian victims, and B, they were just, you know, congregants in a church and someone blew them up. And. But the reporter felt the need to Use the word Shaheed Shuhada. So it's fascinating. Yeah.
- [43:31]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yes, great. And I'll move a little bit to Hadi himself because Hadi positions himself not only as a witness, also as a nurse, activist and journalist. How do you see this multiple roles collocating or enriching the narrative of the Syrian revolution from your point of view?
- [43:53]
Alessandro Colombo
Yeah, yeah, I think it enriches the narrative, you know, rather than complicated. Like I said, the book humanizes the experience, the Syrian experience. The fact that a nurse, because this, what Hadi was before the Syrian revolution, the fact that a nurse turned reporter turned activist wrote the book, really adds more to the, not just quality, but I suppose, beauty of the content. It was the revolution of ordinary people taking it to the streets because they were fed up with authoritarianism, with fascism, with corruption, sectarianism, and they had no ideological agenda. They were indeed ordinary people, nurses, I mean, willing to risk their lives because they wanted to give their children a better future. This is, this is, you know, this is why his position as reporter, like you said, witness, nurse, adds more value to it. It's a long, it's a long road to freedom as a great man. Nelson Mandela said, you know, and I, I definitely think that looking at it from the point of view of ordinary people who, you know, happen to become an icon, like I said, and almost a hero, definitely makes it more, something that you can relate to more than reading the memoirs of someone who was already, I don't know, an army general or a political, A political figure.
- [45:27]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. And I think you talked a little bit, you talked earlier about this book belonging to, I don't know if you, if it belongs to journalism or testimony or does it resist those boundaries? So, yeah, to be, to be, to be clear, do you see it belonging to the genre? To a specific genre?
- [45:51]
Alessandro Colombo
I think, look, I don't like labels, okay? I don't think neither of us likes labels. But I suppose as someone who's passionate about the Syrian revolution, I won't lie, I did pick up the book thinking that I would find a journalistic testimony of war and conflict. And I mean, I've said this before, much as I'm interested in the political developments, I had no expectations about the form. I was more interested in the content. Of course, I had known Hadi and when his book came out, I said, oh, let me read his book, these first hand accounts of what happened. And bear in mind, this was back in 2020, things were very difficult for the Syrian opposition. But I have to say again, the book will disappoint anyone who's curious to answer questions such as, like, what's next for Syria? Will this government succeed? What will Syria's relationship with Israel be like? Will the regime impose Sharia? Will the regime impose. Make the hijab compulsory? All of these questions, you know, you will be disappointed because you find no answer to these questions in the book. Instead, I mean, the reason why, again, I couldn't put it down is because I consider it a manifesto on the concept of friendship and resolve and loyalty and smooth. All of these things run through the pages of this memoir, and there's very little about politics in the first few pages. You have a Hadi recalling the first few months and saying, oh, you know, it happened in Egypt, it happened in Libya, it happened in Tunisia. It can happen in Syria too. But then after that, it immediately changes into something so intimate that indeed, I think it resists those boundaries that you, to answer your question, I mean, it does resist those boundaries because it's all of those things. I mean, it's journalism, it's testimony, it's literature, and it's none of that. It's all of these things. Yes.
- [47:49]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah, yeah, I love that. It's all of these, but at the same time, it's none of them. That's great. So in your introduction, back to your introduction, you highlight the role of grassroots media in amplifying Hadi's voice. What do you think this memoir adds to the broader historical record that traditional journalism often misses?
- [48:11]
Alessandro Colombo
Well, it humanizes the experience of someone who devoted their entire life to a political cause. He humanizes it. I mean, he humanizes it in a way that traditional journalism often cannot do. You know, journalists may capture events and timelines and outcomes and know certain details from the background and from their informers, but Hadi's memoir brings reader into the intimate texture of life as a revolutionary activist. You know, the friendships formed under siege, for example, Bear in mind that when I talk about these friends who died and became Shuhada, who became martyrs, these are people he met after 2011. He's not talking about friends he knew from. He'd known since childhood. For example, he's not talking about his neighbors. He's talking about people he met at demonstrations. For example, one of them, Parab, for example, one of his best friends talks about him in the first, say, 50 pages of the book, Tara. He met him at the demonstration. He was 10 years older than him. And, you know, same goes for the other friends like Ray Del Fares, who was an activist from Kafran Bella of Course, he had no idea who Raid Al Fares was before the revolution. So these friendships, like I said, formed under siege sometimes or during demonstrations or during reporting. The dilemmas, even moral dilemmas that you face in moments of crisis, the constant negotiations between survival and activism, these are all things that you find in this memoir, that I suppose these, I suppose, are things you can't find in a journalistic account. Okay. So I suppose that sometimes figures like Hadi are a bit idealized. And definitely many in Syria and beyond do, do look at him as a bit of a hero, a heroic symbol, you know, an icon. But the memoir complicates this image, really. You know, it shows the vulnerability, the grief, the uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainty all the time. You know, what to do, what to do next. I had not. I didn't know what to do. I was crying. I couldn't sleep. You will find a lot of this. And uncertainty, this uncertainty accompanies, you know, goes alongside this relentless commitment to a cause. This is what I mean when I say humanized. It reveals, you know, what if. How it felt to live through it, through everything. You know, there's this embodied perspective that bridges, let's say. Let's say it bridges the political, the personal and the political. And it's. It's an in. It's an insider point of view. You do have accounts of foreign reporters. I remember reading was like Homs notebooks, you know, written by, I think Jonathan Little is his name, Foreign reporter, or Sam Darre or Rania Abuzai. These are other titles, you know, people who covered the Syrian revolution. But these were foreign reporters. Okay. It's not the same when it's, you know, it's the story of. Story of someone who grew up in near Homs for all their life and then became what they became. It adds. I think the book adds to the historical record that of Syria and the world, you know, the emotional reality of resistance, which is, again, something that I'm afraid, journalism tends to leave in the background.
- [51:31]
Ibrahim Fauzi
So I want to talk a little bit about your relationship, the collaborative process of translating this book between you, the editors and Hadi. And Hadi, because you mentioned that you exchanged it. WhatsApp voice notes. So how did. Also, how did this oral process shape the rhythm of the English text? Yeah, I mean, please elaborate on this relationship between the. Yes. The tripartite relationship between you, Hadi and the editors.
- [52:11]
Alessandro Colombo
I think it was. Yes, yes, it was a fruitful collaboration, I think. I mean, when it comes to the. Like you said, it's translating for example, the third part from WhatsApp voice messages that I exchanged with Hadi, of course, you will notice a difference. Readers will notice a difference in the style between the parts I translated from Arabic from the text, which again, can be accessed in their original form, which was published in 2020. And this third part, this extended third part, which I wrote based on his dozens of WhatsApp messages that he sent me between March and April this year. I mean, translating from Arabic involves preserving, as I have explained, the lexical choices of the original and adapting the Arabic syntax in the target language when it comes. Well, I mean, I'm referring here to translating from text, but when I was transcribing the voice memos, I felt I had more freedom. But I also suppose that Hadi's spoken messages were more matter of fact, you know, he obviously recorded them in, of course, spoken in colloquial Syrian Arabic. And this inevitably affected the register and the depth also of the language. So, I mean, this is why I say that readers will notice the difference, that there's less, probably there's less evocative language when it comes to the third part. I remember Hadi would record these messages, and I could hear that he was driving, for example. I was in his car. He was recording these messages, remembering these things because he had such little time. And so inevitably, the register and again, depth of the language are affected by this. I, I. What I did, however, and again, to answer your question, I work with the editors, you know, Michael Beard and as the Middle east series editor, and Carrie Patterson, which is the main person at Double House Press, I worked with them to make sure we delivered the best possible content in English. And I personally went back and forth between the voice memos and the English text for hours and for days, you know, and I was drafting, I was drafting multiple times, multiple. I was putting together multiple drafts to capture the exact meaning and to be able to transpose it in English employing the appropriate register, too, because I had to preserve the voice, had his voice as close as possible to the first part. But ultimately, I don't know if I was able to do that, you know, and I mean, I have bear in mind also that since Hadi last dictated the first part in Arabic to Jude, you know, to this editor, more than five years had passed, and then December 8 had already taken place. And so some of the messages were indeed, you know, where it was in a dialogue coming out, and his relationship with his wife and his children, because now he has a family, which he didn't have in a Family of three, you know, two children, a wife and two children, which he didn't have when he put together the first. The first book. And he's also talking about in this third part, I mean, difficult choices that he had to make as, let's say, the breadwinner in the family. And, you know, there's also an entire part about how the revolution came to actually defeat the regime between November and December 2024. So the. The content is also very different. Different. This is why the third part is different, because of, you know, practical reasons. So me actually translating these parts from WhatsApp voice, WhatsApp messages, but also because he talks about very different things. He talks about the earthquake, for example, which hit Syria and Turkey in 2023. Was it? Yeah. So in many cases, he also sent me. Sometimes he sent me links to the relevant T note. He sent me to. To the links to the Instagram videos, for example, that he posted during the. That week. So he asked me, you know, when he wasn't able to remember everything. He said, just look at this WhatsApp, this Instagram video that I posted on that day in Idlib, for example, when Hassan Nasrallah died. And, you know, you'll be able to understand what I'm trying to say, what it felt like, what it was like for us to. To know that Hassan Nasrallah was dead because people were celebrating in Syria when the leader of Hezbollah was killed. So it's all of these things. Working with the editors meant also sometimes just sitting down with them. And I don't want to use the wrong kind of lecturing them on Syria, because if you talk about Hezbollah, you need to explain to someone from the United States, why is Hezbollah relevant in the Syrian context? What role it played? Why are the Syrian opposition never going to. I mean, are people like Hadi himself going to forget what Hezbollah did in Syria in 2013 and beyond? I think it was, like I said, you know, a formative period for all of us, both for me as a translator, but also for them, because we had to work together to make sure that, you know, we came up with the best possible, possible outcome.
- [57:31]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah, great. And what did you personally carry away from this project as a translator and as someone who has been following the Syrian revolution, who was indulged in this revolution in a way or another since its earliest days?
- [57:48]
Alessandro Colombo
I feel like I said, I mean, it represents this further confirmation of the fact that these experiences of, you can call it the Arab Spring upheaval, you can call it revolutions. We need to humanize them and we need to give more value, I think, to. I mean, more of an effort is required to approach this content, you know, and to go beyond politics and to go beyond current affairs and conflict, because it's a confession, it's an archive. It's a personal account of what it's like for young men today, in today's world to transition to adulthood and to preserve a strong sense of integrity. And I suppose because I myself am almost same age as Hadi, you know, Hadi was born in 1988. I was born 1986. It's, you know, it really was a bit of a lesson for me and what it means. What's the value of friendship and loyalty? What are the challenges of fatherhood and precarity? You know, what's it like to raise your children when you're in Idlib in 2023 and the earthquake hits? And, yeah, this is what I kind of carry away from this, from this project. As a translator, I think I'm happy to say that I am a lot more confident when it comes to translating. Having translated three books now, as was the first time 10 years ago when I translated Zakaria Tamiya for the first time, I wasn't as confident. But this time I'm a lot more confident. And for that, I suppose I'm grateful to the people I've mentioned, you know, Michael Beard as the editor and Carrie Patterson as the publisher. As someone who's been following the Syrian revolution, I think it's kind of a bit of a closure, if you want, you know, but at the same time a beginning, because I. I don't know, I felt like I had to give something back, and I felt like I had to offer my contribution. And it's something I'm so, so proud of. I remember telling Hadi at one point, you know, when we were discussing this third extended part. I mean, this is one of the things. This is probably the thing I'm the proudest of in my life, you know, having translated this book and having conveyed this, I think, wonderful story of. Of this man to the rest of the world or to as many people as possible, because, you know, inevitably English is. Is, you know, the lingua franca of today's world, and. And it's been an absolute pleasure. I've never felt I was working too hard or I was wasting my time, even when, you know. And you know this very well. But brahim that translating can be a thankless task sometimes, and you have to go back and forth. But this was such a rewarding experience because you had purpose, you know, purpose of showing a different side of things, different image, different way of even not just looking, but even thinking about other parts of the world. And Syria specifically, because it's the country. I, I, you know, I have studied and I, and I. And I love. And I think it's a perfect example, even, you know, even more than Zakaria Time is short stories, which are more, you know, literature in the traditional sense of the term, but kind of it's. It's an even better contribution, that sense of, I don't know, just. Just showing a different. A different point of view, not just on Syria. This is why I keep saying it's not just. It's not a book about Syria. I've said this before. It's a book about really concepts and values that across cultures and religions or languages that I would say anyone can relate to, regardless of their culture or that background of their upbringing.
- [61:53]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah. Great, Alessandro, thank you so much. We have taken up a lot of your time. Thank you.
- [62:00]
Alessandro Colombo
Thank you. No, the pleasure is all mine.
- [62:03]
Ibrahim Fauzi
Yeah, I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed everything. Yeah. That was my conversation with Alessandro Colombo, translator of Critical Conditions. My Diary of the Syrian Revolution by Hadi Abdullah. As we heard today, this book is not only a personal diary, but also a collective archive, one that bears witness to the lives, voices and struggles of countless Syrians whose stories too often vanish in the noise of politics of war. Translation here becomes an act of witness, an act of solidarity, ensuring that these words travel and ignite new readers across languages and borders. Dear listeners, if you'd like to read the book, get a copy from Doppelhaus Press. And if you found today's episode meaningful, please share it with others. And don't miss future conversations on literature, translation, and the politics of storytelling. Until next time, thank you for listening. Goodbye.
- [63:13]
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Ibrahim Fauzi
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
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Alessandro Colombo
Cut the camera. They see us.
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Alessandro Colombo
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