The Road from Raqqa
A Story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Crossing years and continents, the harrowing story of the road to reunion for two Syrian brothers who—despite a homeland at war and an ocean between them—hold fast to the bonds of family.
Runner-Up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • Riveting . . . a resplendent love letter to an obliterated city.”—The New York Times
“The Road from Raqqa had me gripped from the first page. I couldn’t put it down.”—Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo
The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the Syrian city that would later become the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity that the Hafez al-Assad regime commits upon its people. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the United States to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. They move to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, where they raise two sons and where Riyad opens a restaurant—Café Rakka—cooking the food his grandmother used to make. But he finds himself confronted with the darker side of American freedoms: the hardscrabble life of a newly arrived immigrant, enduring bigotry, poverty, and loneliness. Years pass, and at the height of Syria’s civil war, fearing for his family’s safety halfway across the world, he risks his own life by making a dangerous trip back to Raqqa.
Bashar, meanwhile, in Syria. After his older brother moves to America, Bashar embarks on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despises. Reluctant to abandon his comfortable (albeit conflicted) life, he fails to perceive the threat of ISIS until it’s nearly too late.
The Road from Raqqa brings us into the lives of two brothers bound by their love for each other and for the war-ravaged city they call home. It’s about a family caught in the middle of the most significant global events of the new millennium, America’s fraught but hopeful relationship to its own immigrants, and the toll of dictatorship and war on everyday families. It’s a book that captures all the desperation, tenacity, and hope that come with the revelation that we can find home in one another when the lands of our forefathers fail us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Conn makes a poignant debut with this story of two brothers reunited in the midst of Syria's civil war. Growing up in Raqqa in the 1970s and 1980s, Riyad and his younger brother, Bashar, led privileged lives as sons of the city's mukhtar. As Riyad got older, however, he became aware of the oppressive nature of Syria's Ba'ath regime and left in 1990 for California, where he worked minimum wage jobs despite his law degree and struggled to learn English. Meanwhile, Bashar remained in Raqqa, earning his own law degree and caring for his growing family and aging parents. The brothers barely saw each other in the ensuing years, as Riyad married and settled in Tennessee, where he opened a successful Middle Eastern restaurant. Meanwhile, Raqqa becomes a battleground in the fight between Syrian rebels and forces aligned with President Bashar al-Assad. When ISIS enters the conflict, Bashar and his wife and children realize they must flee. Smuggled past ISIS checkpoints and over the Turkish border, they take a small raft across the Aegean Sea to Greece before settling in Germany, where the brothers are reunited when Riyad comes to visit. Fluidly written and emotionally powerful, this page-turner reveals the human cost of war, terrorism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration rhetoric. Readers will find despair and hope in this moving account.
