The Heinrich-Böll-Haus takes a writer who can’t write in your country. Currently, Rabab Haidar lives from Syria. They had to flee from their homeland, because they resisted against Assad.
Rabab Haidar is one of the countless people searching in Germany safety. They fled an author and journalist from Damascus, and in October 2018, according to Germany. The Syrian civil war that has been going on for eight years, expelled them from their home country.
In the long Broich in North Rhine-Westphalia, Rabab Haidar has found refuge. In the former home of German writer Heinrich Böll will be included for three decades, writers who cannot write in your home. Rabab Haidar has received a one-year scholarship and can live there since October alone, and your second novel to work.
Anger on the Syrian Regime
“I was so angry. It’s not supposed to be that way. I shouldn’t have to hide in my country and I should not have to live so long in fear. I should not have to as a son of a refugee to come here.” The word refugee can’t you suffer, too negative it is perceived. “We start as refugees, but we are immigrants. We try to understand the people around us and to open us, so that we are understood. We had to leave our country. I fought until the last Moment that I must not go.”
Happy to be able to in the Heinrich-Böll-house life, is still very. “Here the authors have lived and worked, which have shaped my identity. You are my idols, I’m so proud to be here.”
The writer lives rent free and gets a monthly salary. Currently, two other authors next to her in the house. They originate from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Rest in the province of
Germany is for Rabab Haidar until now, a place of relaxation and recreation. The first three months, you have neither read nor written. Often she had just sat there, I slept a lot and Worried. “To be honest, I’m also here to get a break. Here, in the middle of Nowhere, I can find back to me. In times of war, you don’t have time to stop for a moment and think, is always under adrenaline. This is exhausting.”
Her new book is act of war. The history in Syria of the games, but she was going to tell of things that can happen in any country. “These people are trying to survive, some will come to Germany, some living in Syria to survive.” A character in the book breaks the war, another is stronger and can solve getting the better of her grandparents, the abuse. Heroes but there is not. “They are just people who will do anything to survive. Some will kill, many are lies.”
“Mental torture” by the secret service
Your past in Syria was not much of a story, says Rabab Haidar, and then with a los. As a part of the resistance against the Regime of Bashar al-Assad, was followed, not only by the government itself, but also of supporters from the people.
It was set for critical publications in Newspapers under pressure, which she had published under several pseudonyms. In one of your articles that spoke out clearly against the Regime, had accidentally been her real Name printed. Two months you’ve lived in “paralysing fear”, I have a talk with the secret service. “This took place in terrible places, they have many kinds of mental torture for their opponents,” she says. “You call this ‘a discussion’.”
“He who believes in the Regime, can’t be my friend”
Rabab Haidar is Alawitin and, thus, part of the Shiite community of faith. That Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad is also means an enormous strain, was no advantage for the writer, she says. “He likes to believe that we are his people and he would also like the other Syrians believe that. That’s why he wants to avoid that Alawite speak out publicly against him and his Regime. We are less tortured, a little more intimidated.”
On several occasions she has had to her apartment to change. Long-standing friendships were broken. “Some people really believe in the Regime. They will also be enemies to your. The Regime is not only a ruler, it is a value system. Anyone who believes in these values, it can’t be my friend. It hurts me, but I can’t deal peacefully with them,” she says.
Hope for a better Syria
In Syria, she received a invitation to Canada to a reading, organised by the Goethe-Institut. On the Quick, you could apply for a visa. In an Internet-Café to be turned on, therefore, by Skype. It was three o’clock in the night, only a few teenagers were hanging around there. As she began to read, listening to all of you; the people in Canada and the Syrians in the small Internet Café. “You would have me betray, I would have been lost. But you don’t have it done. And that is the reason why I still believe in Syria.” Nevertheless, they could not return. At least, not in the Syria, she was leaving.