Why Syrian History Lives in My Stories, Even When It’s Unspoken

I don’t always write about Syria directly. But Syria is always in what I write. You can feel it in the silence between my characters. In their longing. In their constant return to memory. That’s what it means to carry a place with you, not as a backdrop, but as a lingering presence. And for me, the influence of Syrian history on novels is more about emotion than events.

Some people think writing about history means reimagining battles or retelling moments that have already made the news. But what about what didn’t make the news? What about the personal histories, the erased cities, the moments of cultural beauty that never got recorded because they didn’t fit a political headline? That’s what I try to write into my fiction. And that’s where Syrian history enters my novels, not as fact, but as weight. As grief. As beauty. As resistance.

Growing Up in Exile with a Homeland on Fire

I left Syria when I was nine. But Syria never left me. My earliest memories are still shaped by the scent of my grandmother’s house in Latakia, the sound of the call to prayer rising over the old neighborhoods, and the quiet dignity of people who had already survived more than I could understand as a child.

Even after moving between Switzerland, France, and the UK, I realized that the further I went geographically, the closer I became emotionally. Syria wasn’t a place I escaped; it was the center of my internal compass. And that’s why the influence of Syrian history on novels like mine isn’t always literal. It’s emotional. It’s in the themes of identity, dislocation, silence, and belonging.

History Doesn’t Always Scream, Sometimes It Whispers

In Palmyre pour toujours, I don’t write a traditional historical account of the ancient city. Instead, I write about what it feels like to lose a piece of civilization. To know that something sacred has been destroyed, not just in stone, but in memory. Palmyra’s ruins are physical, yes, but the deeper tragedy is the erasure of its meaning.

Syrian history is filled with this kind of quiet devastation. Families separated. Archives burned. Artists exiled. These aren’t just historical “facts.” They are the lived experience of an entire generation, and that filters into my writing whether I’m describing a modern romance, a UN diplomat, or a heartbroken art collector in 1920s New York.

That’s the influence of Syrian history on novels: it shapes the moral questions I ask. It informs the silence I leave on the page.

Writing Across Cultures, But Always From the Root

I often write stories that take place outside of Syria. Le temps d’une saison unfolds between Paris and New York. A Coeur Perdu moves through European cities and international institutions. And yet, my characters, whether French, American, or ambiguous, are always wrestling with something that feels familiar: exile. Loss. The search for meaning after history has shifted beneath their feet.

These are Syrian themes, even if the characters aren’t Syrian. Because Syria has taught me, through its history, that you don’t have to be in a war zone to feel the effects of war. You don’t have to be in Damascus to mourn what was lost in it.

The influence of Syrian history on novels is often about atmosphere. About creating spaces where absence becomes a character. Where longing becomes the antagonist. Where remembering is an act of survival.

Historical Fiction Isn’t Just About the Past

I believe that every novel is a historical novel, even if it’s set today, because every character carries the past. Their own. Their country’s. Their people’s. And when you’re Syrian, you carry a very particular kind of past, one that is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or completely ignored by the rest of the world.

That’s why I write fiction. Because sometimes, history books aren’t enough. They leave too much out. Fiction lets me fill in the gaps, not just with facts but with feeling.

The influence of Syrian history on novels like mine also shows up in how I structure relationships. Who gets to love freely? Who hides their grief? Who speaks, and who stays quiet? These are political questions, even when dressed up as emotional ones.

The Personal is Political, Even in Love Stories

When I wrote Guard Thy Heart, I was telling the story of a man grappling with love, memory, and internal fracture. But underneath that emotional arc was a deeper truth: how do we live in a world that asks us to forget where we come from? How do we hold on to humanity when the world keeps trying to strip it away?

Paul Ollenson may be a UN lawyer, but his heart, both literally and figuratively, is not just his own. It carries layers of memory, sacrifice, and disconnection that mirror what many Syrians have felt. Especially those of us living abroad, trying to make sense of identity in foreign spaces.

That’s the unspoken influence of Syrian history on novels like mine. Even when we don’t mention the war, the trauma, the politics, it’s there. In the silence. In the ache. In the quiet hope that somehow, writing it all down makes us feel less alone.

History Is What We Carry.

I don’t write textbooks. I write stories. But make no mistake; those stories are shaped by the same forces that have shaped Syria: beauty, complexity, loss, and resistance.

When people ask me why I don’t write more “directly” about Syria, I tell them I already do. I write about what Syria has done to my memory. To my heart. To the way I see the world.

Because the influence of Syrian history on novels doesn’t always look like a battlefield or a headline; sometimes, it looks like a man searching for meaning. A woman chasing a forgotten love. A city that no longer exists except in the imagination.

And maybe that’s where Syria lives most powerfully: in stories we’re still trying to tell.