Stories that begin, develop, become complicated, and are interrupted before they resume again. Their heroines: Siranah, Selti, Salma, Khansi, Aishana, women whose paths and destinies intersected in that charming region of northeastern Syria, with which the “Berlin-Baghdad Railway” tampered with and the destinies of its residents. .
From the plains of Mardin, the cities of Amuda and Ras al-Ain, and the villages of Shorik, Kondak, and Tal Halaf, these women whisper secrets in their low, intermittent voices filled with fear and illness. But their stories and songs go beyond their bodies’ struggle with tuberculosis, to immortalize the struggles of the Yazidis, Syriacs, and Armenians with oppression, massacres, and eternal alienation.
In Women of Tuberculosis, Reber Youssef, with his poetic language and his special sensitivity, explores the northeastern region of Syria, including its diversity: ethnic, religious, and racial, relying on in-depth historical, geographical, and anthropological research into what people live in that part of the earth, but he... Through his work, he creates a curiosity to explore history once again, after the northeast of the country now has the face of a woman.
The period of writing these stories extended for many years, extending from 1987 with the story “The Smell” to 2013 with the story “May God prolong his life.” They were all written under the weight of heavy tyranny, which made our thinking almost paralyzed and made us free executioners and observers of ourselves. It is “natural” for most of them to be apologized for publishing, as happened with the story “The Smell” which was either apologized for publishing or was ignored by all the newspapers to which it was sent at that time, as well as It happened with several other stories.
All the stories are united by a single concern and a similar atmosphere. Their events take place in the imperial atmosphere, with the meaning of the emperor’s word. The reader does not need effort or help from anyone in deciphering it. They speak of a general concern that everyone feels the burden of, without exception. Some were vocal about it at the times when the stories were written. Some people kept it quiet, but despite the fact that the majority were forced to remain silent, and those who opened their mouths paid a heavy price for not remaining silent, for everyone it was a heavy burden that a person could not get used to, or at the very least hope that it would go away.
These stories were among the forms of expression of that general pain. Some of them were destined to come out to the screen - in some short periods of relief - to reach the audience, even in different formulations from the stories in the book, and some of them remained imprisoned until circumstances allowed them to appear on the pages of this book in your hands.
The rise of the Third Reich, World War II, the fall of Nazism, the disintegration of Germany, the rise of East Germany, the fall of the communist states, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Terms that may pass over in history books, but they carry dozens of questions: What really happened? How did families who found themselves on opposite sides, divided between opposing ideas and warring countries, live? What does it mean to live in a country that suddenly disappears, and the enemy becomes part of the homeland?
The first thing Maxim Leo learned was to refrain from any questions, even about his family history. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he too decides to break the wall of silence in order to understand what really happened there, with his family, with his grandparents, with his parents, and with himself. To answer the most difficult question: What was so important that it made us strangers to each other even today?
