Yara's Spring is a heart-breaking fictional story of a young girls life in Syria during the Syria War and her journey to freedom.
Yara's story begins on March 11, 2011. Ten-year-old Yara lives in Bustan al-Qasr, in the middle of Aleppo with her mama and baba and her Nana. Baba's brothers and sisters had left Syria years ago and her mama has only one brother, Sami who lives in Damascus.
On this morning, Yara gets up and runs errands for her Baba who is a baker. Their bakery sits in front of their two story family home. Yara's best friend, Shireen lives across the street. After delivering bread to their neighbours in need, Yara returns home to find her Uncle Sami visiting. Sami works as a high school teacher in Damascus, and Yara loves him dearly. Uncle Sami tells his mother, Nana that a revolution is coming, that they need democracy, a chance to choose their own leaders. He tells her the Arab Spring is coming. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia and then to Egypt and now has come to Syria. Schoolboys wrote graffiti on the walls of the school in the city of Dara'a. The words were about President al-Assad, so the principal called the police. who then arrested the boys. Sami tells Nana, that it is like what happened before. Yara doesn't know what Sami is referring to and he refuses to elaborate.
A year later, Yara's mother gives birth to a baby boy, Saad, at home due to the war that is raging in Syria. Shireen's father continues to languish in prison.
Another year passes, it is now 2014. The war continues on as Yara celebrates her fourteenth birthday. Aleppo is now a divided city, with West Aleppo controlled by the government of President al-Assad and East Aleppo where Yara and her family live, under rebel control. As a result, East Aleppo is bombed frequently. Yara's mama had wanted to move, but Nana and Baba were against leaving behind the bakery they had built.
On her birthday, Yara is playing with two year old Saad, now a happy, active little boy. On the roof, as Yara is helping hang the laundry, Nana gives her a small paper bag of candies. On the opposite rooftop, Shireen and Ali wave their happy birthday greetings to her. Ali had wanted to join the rebels but Roha refused to allow it, scolding him about ending up in prison like his father.
Suddenly, Yara sees six helicopters coming and as they fly over her home, they drop their bombs. The rooftop collapses, sending Saad flying past her, while Yara tumbles through the air and is buried in the rubble of her home. After being rescues, Yara learns her baba and mama have been killed in the bombing, but Saad is safe, having landed in Roja's laundry basket. However, he is so traumatized, he hasn't spoken since. Nana is injured and Yara sees her being taken away in an ambulance to a hospital.
Yara and Saad are taken in by Roja. After several days, Ali goes to search the hospital but cannot locate Nana. Determined to find Nana, and believing her to be still alive, Yara insists on continuing the search. Meanwhile, Shireen shows her family's passports to Yara, but tells her that they will never leave Syria while her father is in prison.Shireen points out to Yara the difficulty in leaving the country: getting to Turkey means getting past ISIS, Iraq requires a visa and Hezbollah in Lebanon makes that that route unlikely as well. But Yara suggests they could travel to Jordan where he Uncle Sami lives in Damascus.
Remembering that her parents kept their papers in a tin box under the big table in the bakery, Yara and Shireen struggle their way into the ruins. With the help of Ali, Yara manages to pull out the red tin that contains their passports. And waiting outside the ruins of their house is Nana, thin and limping because of her wounded leg. Back in Roja's home, the tin box is opened revealing a horde of jewelry and American money as well as photographs from Nana's past. The box also contains Yara's family's passports, their Syrian National Identity Cards and their family registry document.
The next day, Nana tells Yara's the story of her past, a story identical to the one being played out again with Yara's generation. Nana also tells her that she spent time at the home of a man, Rifa'at, who helped her after the hospital she was at was bombed. Rifa'at also helps people escape Syria. And that is what Nana is determined to do, along with Yara and Saad. She plans to hire Rifa'at to take them to Damascus, where they will journey on to Jordan. It is a dangerous journey that will require every bit of courage and determination Yara has to survive.
Discussion
For young readers wanting to understand the impact of war, Yara's Spring offers a realistic portrayal through the eyes of a young girl caught up in the Syrian conflict. Jamal Saeed, himself a political prisoner in Syria for over ten years, has experienced the tragedy of war in his home country of Syria and his first-hand experience is evident throughout his writing.
To help orient his young readers, Saeed offers two maps at the front of the novel, one showing Syria's placement in the Middle East and a second map showing the major cities in Syria and Yara's journey from Aleppo, south to the Azraq Refugee Camp where her story begins. This is where the reader first meets Yara, an exhausted, emotionally traumatized refugee, struggling to come to terms with everything she has experienced on her flight out of Syria. She is haunted by what has happened, her conscience troubled in a way no young person should have to experience. As she sits down to rest, in a part of the refugee camp that's private, she tells her story in a flashback.
Saeed is able to capture the war and refugee experience from many different perspectives. There is Yara's Uncle Sami, who was filled with hopeful expectation at the coming Arab Spring, only to have it turn to fear. In Nana, there is the fear that what happened before is now happening again and she is determined to save what's left of her family. There are the rebels who patrol the streets in East Aleppo, seeking "men and boys of fighting age" to come out and join their cause. "...Tell them that only by fighting will their lives have meaning. Tell them that they will go to paradise if they are killed fighting for our faith." There are Shireen and Ali who desperately want to fight for a better future for the country. There is Umm Fadi, the woman who lives upstairs in the safe house in Damascus who is blindly devoted to President al-Assad and who believes he is protecting Syria and that the bombing of Aleppo is justified, "The people in those areas are not only hiding terrorists, they are allowing their children to be used a human shields! It is not the President's fault..."
Yara's Spring highlights the resiliency, courage and determination of those in Syria who decide to leave. Yara embodies all of these qualities but Saeed also portrays the toll the war has had on her. After the death of her parents, sights and smells in her ruined home trigger panic. While staying at Hafa's compound in Ar Rastan, the smell of the food and spices, suddenly triggers a flashback. "Suddenly overwhelmed, she closed her eyes and once again heard the chu-chu-chu of helicopter blades. The sound of the explosion, the sensation of flying through the air, of her limbs trying to detach themselves from her body, of a scream caught in her throat, of being buried alive. No, no, no!"
It's no surprise Yara has anxiety and likely post traumatic stress. Yara must also come to terms with the fact that she killed a man when Ali was kidnapped and she experiences deep conflict over leaving Syria. She believes she is a coward, not a warrior like Ali and Shireen who have remained in Syria to fight on for their country. However, Mr. Matthew, Matthew McGonagall, Yara's case counselor points out to her that she has protected Nana and Saad and that this required great courage. He also reminds her that the fate of Syria does not depend on her choice to emigrate to Canada.
Yara's Spring is also a portrait in compassion and charity amidst the ruins and violence of war. When Yara and Saad are left alone, Roja, herself in dire circumstances, doesn't hesitate to take the two children into her house. When Yara's group is traveling south through checkpoints, they encounter unimaginable brutality. At one checkpoint, while Yara's group has their documents checked they witness a young boy being handcuffed and forced from his father who begs for his sons life. In an act of courageous kindness, Nana intervenes, pretending to be the father's neighbour and to bribe the terrorists with American money and save the boy's life. These acts of kindness are not just restricted to Yara's group either. After almost dying in the mountains, Yara and her group are rescued by a monk who takes them to a Catholic monastery. There Father Ricardo and the nuns care for Yara, Nana and Saad. He tells her that the they help all regardless of religion and offer her safety.
Jamal Saeed and his co-author Sharon E. McKay have crafted a book that feels realistic in its portrayal of the Syrian conflict, of the plight of Syrian refugees, while also ending on a hopeful note. Yara, in her heart hopes to return some day to her beloved Syria. Yara's Spring is well written and a must-read for young Canadians, to help them understand the backstory of Canada's Syrian refugees.
Book Details:
Yara's Spring by Jamal Saeed and Sharon E. McKay
Toronto: Annick Press 2020
298 pp.
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