Yara’s Spring

Yara’s Spring is not a happy book. Oh, it does have a "happy" ending in that Yara and her diminished family make it out of Syria to a refugee camp in Jordan and, a year or so later, get the news that they have been sponsored by a couple of churches in Kingston to come to Ontario. Since the book begins at "The End", the title of the first chapter, this does not come as a great surprise though the sponsorship is not revealed right then. However, after “The End”, the book goes back, not to “The Beginning”, but to Yara's life five years earlier in Aleppo where, as a 10-year-old girl, she lived with her parents (who ran a successful bakery in the city) and with her grandmother (a rather sour old lady), had an adored uncle who occasionally visited from Damascus, and a couple of BFFs, especially Shireen, who shared secrets and went with her to school and dance class. Not perfect – whose life is perfect when one is growing up! – but Yara was loved, and she knew it.

Basically, things were good, and the civil unrest in the country did not impinge much on Yara’s life. But, in the next couple of years, everything changed. Shireen's father was arrested, for nothing apparently, except that he was a teacher and was attending a funeral of someone who might possibly have been an activist. Mama had a baby, but it didn't seem to be the joyful event it should have been. Schools closed; Nana is now teaching Yara and Shireen, and – another mystery – is remarkably knowledgeable about math, science, foreign languages. How did that come about? No answer. Then, with the suddenness that happens in war, catastrophe strikes. The bakery is bombed; Yara's parents are killed; her little brother, by some miracle, is not; Nana disappears and then is found again, hurt but alive, and somehow she has acquired a protector who is prepared to help them get out of Syria. With Shireen and her brother, Ali, almost everything that can go wrong, does, including Ali's being abducted by one or other of the warring groups in the country. In the end, however, Yara, Nana, and Saad (whose name, ironically means 'good fortune') make it out of the country to the dubious safety of a refugee camp in Jordan, though Shireen and Ali, reluctant from the beginning to leave their mother who refused to abandon their imprisoned father, end up staying in Syria where, we surmise, they join some part of the resistance to al-Bashad.

As I said, Yara’s Spring not a cheerful book. It has its high points which, if not exactly cheerful, are signs that people are still caring and good, times when the family is helped by others with no connection other than common humanity, times when religious barriers are breached and compassion reaches across ideologies. Yara and Ali fall in love, in spite of all the chaos around them, though they are then torn apart. Saad, who has not spoken since the bombing now nearly six years earlier, finally utters a word or two, a sign that he is beginning to feel some sense of security in the camp. The case worker in the camp, Mr Matthew With-An-Unpronounceable-Scottish-Surname, tells Yara that his grandmother was Syrian, and he gives her the hopeful suggestion that, even if she never returns to Syria, perhaps her grandchild might. This and the prospect of starting afresh and going to school again in a new country are the only things that are really hopeful in Yara's present existence – we do not blame her for not telling Mr Matthew that she may have shot a man on the night that Ali was abducted.

Yara’s Spring is a remarkable book which gives insights into just how difficult life can be for those little people caught in the crossfire of any political conflict, families who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace. The tactics used by the two – three? four? – sides of fighters to "recruit" soldiers and the effects on the characters of these boys who are given guns and indoctrinated into ways of cruelty and violence have been written about before, but they are given new impact here at every checkpoint and with every necessary bribe offered and accepted. The only betrayal that does not seem to occur is that of money taken and clearance not given! If there are still teenagers who think that war is great and glorious, Yara's Spring will convince them otherwise.

The illustrations by Nahid Kazemi are black-and-white (graphite, I think) drawings at the beginnings of the various sections of the books. They have soft edges that are beautifully suited to the first part of the book, speaking eloquently of the loving family household before all hell broke loose. They are less evocative of the desolation of the later parts of the book, but still, their lack of colour does give some inkling of the starkness and desperation of the family's escape. Co-author Jamal Saeed is a Syrian who, as a teenager, joined a group of protesters against al-Bashad which led to a life of persecution by the Syrian secret police, imprisonment for 10 years, escape to Dubai – he knows all about the sums of money required to pay off the soldiers at checkpoints on the way to the border! – and then finally, in 2021, to being sponsored with his wife and two sons to come to Canada by the Kingston Writers Refugee Committee. His short biography included in the book makes for harrowing reading, but it does authenticate Yara's story! Sharon McKay, of course, needs no introduction to Canadian audiences, but it is to her credit that she suggested that the book be written, helped with it, but let Jamal Saeed's voice speak clearly without imposing her own over it. They are both to be commended for a remarkable book.