Every year, The New York Public Library gives the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism to a journalist whose work brings clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies. This series focuses on each of the five 2019 finalists, announced March 5, 2019. Today, I am honored to share No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria by Rania Abouzeid.

"God is with us," she murmured, "and anyone who remains silent against an injustice is a mute devil."

Journalist Rania Abouzeid's debut book, No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria is a tremendously compelling read, at times devastating but impossible to put down. Banned from entering Syria not for being a journalist, but a presumed spy for foreign states, Abouzeid traversed opposition territories mostly, and government-held territories when possible, all in clandestine and perilous conditions, for more than five years.

Her reporting of the Syrian civil war is presented primarily through the lived experiences of four young Syrians, one a nine-year-old child when the uprisings began in 2011;

• Suleiman is a wealthy young insurance office manager drawn to activism in a country where protests were outlawed by the long-ruling Baath Party in 1963, under an emergency law still in place. He risks his privileged position by documenting the initially peaceful demonstrations and how they were met and usurped by violence.
   
• Abu Azzam is a university student and poet who goes from civilian to a position of leadership in the Free Syrian Army (FSA), guided in part by an abandoned copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War. 
   
• Mohammad is a graduate of Damascus University's Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Department; but he considers his time spent imprisoned in Damascus Palestine Branch with members of Islamist groups, including Al-Qaeda, to be his greatest schooling.
   
• Ruha is a child wise beyond her years, having spent her formative years buying dolls to the echoes of gunfire, and fearing for the safety of her father and uncle. Ruha's father, Maysaara, aids the FSA financially and smuggles medical supplies into Syria from Turkey. It is Ruha's aunt Mariam, upon seeing regime soldiers and shabiha ("paramilitary regime thugs") dragging men from their homes to a bus seemingly filled with pillows but actually filled with men whose undershirts had been pulled over their heads, that is inpsired by the same words that drove Abu Azzam to action: "the words of an ancient Sufi master: whoever stays silent about the truth is a mute devil."
  
  Following three years spent in Turkey, living as a refugee, Ruha's father Maysaara returns to Syria. "He scooped up a handful of earth, let it fall through his fingers. "This," he said, "is everything. I swear a person doesn't find himself or feel dignity except in his own land…" This passage is vital to understanding the complexities of the refugee experience. 

Abouzeid has positioned this book firmly in the experiences of those that informed it, that shared with her their stories punctuated by the love of country, questions of allegiance, and conflicts of ideologies. This is not her story, as she explains to the reader: "This book is not another reporter’s war journal. I went to Syria to see, to investigate, to listen."

No Turning Back is a masterful work, with Rania Abouzeid thoughtfully interweaving these personal narratives, mapping for the reader exactly how one Syria unraveled, becoming multiple Syrias.

Abouzeid witnessed one of the first demonstrations in Syria that marked the beginning of the uprising in February 2011. You can listen to Abouzeid's interview on NPR's Fresh Air, which coincided with the seventh anniversary of the Syrian uprising. Plus, learn about the other Bernstein Awards finalists for 2019.
 

More about the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism

The Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism was established by The New York Public Library in 1987 in honor of journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy. Each year, finalists are selected by a nine-member Library Review Committee. Winners are then chosen by a separate Bernstein Selection Committee. Eligible books are published in calendar year 2018 and the author must be currently working as a journalist, or someone who has worked in journalism for a significant portion of his or her career, whether as a reporter or commentator in newspapers, magazines, or broadcasting, i.e. print, broadcast, or online journalism. The book's subject matter must be journalistic in nature, with potential for influencing public opinion or policy, and draws public attention to important current issues or events of global/national significance.