Quite wonderful and he cannot be here today. And Oscar Martinez in san salvador is doing an investigative report right now. And as of yesterday could not make it out of the country to be here. We are fortunate though to have a very nuanced and experienced reporter Deborah Campbell, with her book. And we have lauren wolf. We hope that you will enjoy all the programming on cspan booktv live from brooklyn book festival today. Just keep reading. Here, a few more people. I just want to start off by saying first of all good afternoon. Thank you all for coming. I am lauren wolf. I will tell you about myself in a minute. Before we begin i want to let you know that books by deborah, you can purchase them from barnes and noble and of course all over the city. Also there is a booth that you can purchase it. Immediately after this festival deborah will be signing her book at the table h adjacent to this building. Before i introduce deborah, i am very excited to be here because refugees reporting is something i do regularly. I feel it is the least understood and well reported area in journalism whenever there is a lot of surface reporting which is why i am so excited to have deborah here. I am an economist of Foreign Policy magazine. I run a nonprofit Journalism Project about helping women under siege. In the red for the guardian in a number of other places. My refugee coverage has been in all, the countries surrounding syria because unlike deborah, i do not have the guts to go inside at this point. I have also covered refugees from landing sites in greece and italy. So you have iraqis, syrians, afghans, but now i would like to introduce deborah. Im going to read here, Deborah Campbell is an awardwinning journalist and author of a disappearance in damascus paid which won the 2016 Hillary Weston trust prize for nonfiction. Her work has appeared in harpers, the economist, the guardian, new scientist and Foreign Policy. She is the recipient of three National Magazine awards for her correspondence. She has got lectured at harvard, berkeley, in dubai and the National Press club in washington. She teaches at the university of british columbia. And one more thing i would like to tell you, my internet went down as usual in brooklyn this morning so i was not able to print but the last thing i wanted to say about deborah is that the New York Times has called her book, a disappearance in damascus, a extraordinary affecting account. When that reason equal parts as memoir, history and mystery story. It has already won three literary prizes. Im extremely pleased to have deborah here today. [applause] she is going to start out with a reading from her book. Can everybody hear me . Welcome and i am pleased to see all of you coming out when apparently is not the same time. As the demographic that is different clearly. Before i read, i will just tell you a little bit about the context for a disappearance in damascus. It was in 2007 that i first went to syria. And this area that i knew there is not the wartorn place that has become part of your media landscape. It was at time a rescue for more. About a million or million and have iraqis had recently come across the border. It was the last open border between iraq and any other country these people were largely professional class. They tended to be doctors, lawyers, novelists, filmmakers, engineers. They were people who were running from the chaos that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in the in the civil war that began. I was there because i felt as if the kind of reporting that i was reading tended to be battle reporting. If there was any kind of close detailed reporting, it was on the experiences of soldiers, military and that sort of thing. And while that is invaluable, there seems to be great missing piece. Those that tend to experiences of civilians done that we dont really have a front line in a warfare situation. The kind of work that i do is not daily news reporting. I do not tend to go in and out of places quickly. I like to immerse myself in situations. Sometimes this kind of work is called slow journalism. Like the slow food movement. And believe me, it takes a long time. I wanted to have weeks, months, to spend with the people i was writing about. In order to really figure out what was going on. What sent them running for their lives and also to gather the kind of stories threat which is more of a Literary Journalism side of things. In order to do that and be able to, i cannot do that in iraq which was transport you also are with the committee to protect journalists so you know that in 2007 and 2008 it was the height of iraqs civil war. It was the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Which i will add right now is syria, by a long shot. Exactly. And the great fear that syrians expressed to me was that they felt actually much the way we do syrians today. But they also would and that they would say that we do not want their war to come to us. Both countries, multicultural, many ethnicities and religions, sidebyside. And the situation among iraqis, almost one third of them had been intermarried up until 2003. So you can imagine when there was a split for example, the largest between the sunni and shia when you have this it was devastating. A lot of people were running into syria where people that were intermarried or allowed the intellectuals also. There was mass targeting of the intellectual class. Research scientists, professors, that sort of thing. In order to spend time with them, that was my impetus for going to syria. And i decided to focus in specific on one neighborhood about 300,000 refugees lived there. It was sometimes referred to as little fact that because it had a similar demographic to baghdad before the wall we had all different sects living sidebyside. But when people are running for strangers that want to kill them, they do not always want to answer questions from strangers like me. And so i was looking for someone that i could trust. To make introductions, open doors and also translate for me. I studied classic arabic but by no means am i fluent. And i wanted someone who could do that for me. I should also say that i did write often do when i go into places where journalists are not welcome. I decided to go undercover. What that meant wasnt that i was trying to blend in with the local population, it meant that i went as an academic. I teach at a university itself the cover would hold essentially peered into something i often do because in my experience, journalists tend to be, if you go on a journalist visa to go somewhere, your length of time that you stay can be very restricted. You might find after a week that you need to go home or where you go is restricted and you can often be followed and have your sources followed. The problem here is that you eventually go home and your sources stay behind. So whatever you put into print is something that they will bear the consequences of. So all of these considerations were top of mind when i was doing this. I was assigned to do a story for harpers magazine and i knew it would take several months of immersive work to get the material that i needed. Now i was very fortunate to find a good transport for those of you who know of the world of journalism, you know that a fixer is the person who makes connections for you. Essentially solves all of the logistic problems. There the media producer if they were european or north american. And i happened to meet a woman named she was a refugee herself. She had worked as a fixer in baghdad for wall street journal. And for other publications. She was later kidnapped, kidnapping was probably the biggest Economic Growth industry in iraq. In the early years of the war. I have seen estimates of more than 1 billion a year. Those are just estimates, nobody knows. But i met so many people that had relatives kidnapped or had been kidnapped themselves. So she was kidnapped and for her work, working as a translator and a gobetween with an american Civil Military affairs office. Where she worked after she stopped being able to get work as a fixer. Then she came to syria. That is when i met her. She was basically the key fixer for foreign correspondents covering the refugees. Im going to read a short passage from our first meeting. It was easy to miss the gravel turnoff from the paved highways that had taken me from the chic shots and modern restaurants and Office Towers of downtown damascus. The taxi driver had to break in reverse against traffic. Marking the roundabout on the main street of little baghdad was a large mural of who had ruled syria for three decades. Painted in the style of a psychedelic rock poster. Every second shot window displayed this photo with aviator sunglasses and army fatigues. An obvious attempt to make him look last month it nearly ophthalmologist had been before taking the presidency in the year 2000 when his father died. Aside from the electrical wires and taxis and motorcycle carts, the neighborhood looks medieval. The air smells of roasted meat and baking bread. A mule passed by pulling a cart overloaded with watermelons. At the roadside, bearded man sold cigarettes. His upper half so robust that it took a moment to register that he had no legs. Further along where the gold shots where iraqi widows performed alchemy. Turning and jewelry into bread. Some did the same with their bodies and the gold was gone. Above it all, aloof from the spectacle was the magnificent dried to the granddaughter of the prophet mohammed. With his turquoise minarets and guilty dome, the shrine was the only good reason for visitors to come here. It was on suggestion to meet at the main street roundabout in the wearing of nameless alleyway that branched off from it. She figured i would be able to find her apartment. I waited under the red canvas initiated electronic shop willing myself to look inconspicuous. This wasnt easy. Westerners never came to this part of the city, except into groups to visit the shrine. As i stood alone beneath the awning a man walked past. He stopped short to rub her neck his navigate and took up a post beside me and watched me from the corner of his eye. When i saw him staring he glanced away nervously. If he was a spy, he needed to go back to spy school. [laughter] i was relieved to see her crossing towards me. She was tall for an iraqi woman. She were a mens black jeans, mens black shoes and a mans overcoat that defied the oppressive heat. It was a stylesheet adopted when the war began and there were bigger problems to worry about then conforming to fashion. Her broad and highborn face might have been beautiful if she paid the least attention to vanity. But her face was unusual here because it seemed cheerful, right at home. As if we were not working three refugees slum where ages look for journalists and any sign of sectarian with a phone in one hand she greeted me with the standard three kisses. Smiling as if our meeting here was the most natural thing in the world. Might have been friends about to go to lunch. No one seemed to be watching us. Walking with her into the maze of yellow dirt alleyways, sweat pulling beneath my clothing, i felt a strange sensation. I felt relaxed. Almost happy. Like Army Commanders take hostages and wilderness explorers, the stubborn fearlessness made those around her feel fearless also. I will stop there. First i want to talk a little bit more about this idea of fixers. Having used them myself, they can really make or break your story. They can make or break your safety and they put their lives at tremendous risk working with western journalists. I would love to hear how you went about finding her. Why you were drawn to her. And if he felt that youre working with her was endangering her or perhaps even given her level of protection . This is a really good question and it is such a nuance issue because when you meet a fixer is generally in a murky situation. It is in a situation where you need someone to give you access to information and perhaps even really advise you on security issues. And yet, because of the situation is murky and you probably do not know that person well, generally when youre meeting them its because they have access to a society that they know very well. And fixers can sell you out. If often, they tend, if they are official figures they may have to register with the government that youre writing about and they have allegiance to a political group, a rebel group. Often when you hear about journalists being kidnapped, and can be related to having trusted the wrong person. These are relationships that are built entirely on trust. And theres not a lot of time to vet those relationships. Can i just add, so i was the Senior Editor and the one message i got my years there that i think is entirely not communicated to the public is that it is the local media workers for face death, imprisonment, beatings, all kinds of violence to a degree that is so far beyond what western journalists face. That we really forget that they are making our stories happen but they are putting their lives on the line and it is taking a toll. Thank you for putting it that way because that is absolutely true. And so we often, they tend to be invisible. Sometimes you will see at the bottom of report with assistance from andy name. But sometimes you will see with assistance from staff of because they do not want their names printed. That will endanger them as well. Journalists can put their fixers at risk by making bad decisions and fixers can put journalists at risks by making bad decisions or loyalties that they are not aware of. So these were the top of mind for me. Generally because i do immersive work and spend a lot of time i prefer to meet people over time, become friends, be part of a community. Not to use official fixers. Because of the trust issue. In this situation, the way that i met her was ideal but i often do which is when i landed new place, i go and meet local journalists. They have great connections. They can advise me on lots of things. So i read a great piece that was written about the iraqi refugees living in exactly this neighborhood that i wanted to immerse myself in. And i went to see him. It became very quickly clear that the reason he had written this fantastic story was because he had a fantastic source. That source was hurt. Introduced me to her and that was the beginning. What stood out to me about her was the, the relationship that she had in the community. She was a fixer, she was supporting two children and her husband through her work. She was also supporting her social projects through her work. So for example, she was kind of like a onewoman ngo. In this neighborhood. She was organizing donations for needy families, she was also starting a school for teenage girls out of her apartment. I want you to tell us all where is she from. She is from a small village outside of baghdad. And that actually was the interesting part of it also. So she was not, often we find is fixers tend to be elites. They tend to be from upperclass society. And for me, that that would seem to be a drawback. Because i wanted someone that didnt, was not affected by class stratification. You can really experience that. You have extremely suave, educated person who really doesnt want anything to do with the poor or the villagers or have the kind of negative attitude towards them. I was not interested in that. And usually they are the ones that begin with. Exactly. So her situation was different because she came from a small village about 500 people. This was northwest of baghdad, a sunni village. And she was the first girl in her village everett to go to high school. And she was the first male or female to graduate from the university. This had to do with the fact that she was a bookish kid growing up, had access to a lot of books. There was a great book Market Impact that when she was been her weekends. And her father was the village. Meaning a girl did not have Higher Educational need Higher Education to take care of the orange tree or the date palmss which is what was the young womens job in that village. He said no one knows what the future holds. Education is a weapon and im giving it to her. He supported her doing that. That set her apart really yet, she was still in the community but also outside of it. And she continued and studied english and back to later so she had an unusual perspective. And that she was aware of many different facets of society. That if she had simply grown up say, private school and privileged, it would have been a different kind of situation. So this also gave her a lot of compassion for all of the young people that were missing school and you know three or four years is really enough for a generation to lose their transit education forever. And then their kids dont get it either. I forget what the number is but i think 50 or 60 percent of syrian children are not attending school. They do not know what it is. I am sure it is similar. I was drawn to her role in the community and the trust that she had. So when she introduced me to people, they were happy to talk to me, to talk to me about their believing and slamming into their lives and give me that front row seats that i was looking for and over time, as we worked together, i came to really admire her role as a leader and i think, i dont think in any of the situation that a woman could have been rather like the mayor of the Largest Community of refugees really at that time in the world of iraqis. And but because they were so much chaos and shade, having grown up with a father that was a leader of their village, she had a lot of the natural skills in that context that she put to work. Of course, this also meant that she was on the radar. Im just wondering then, as youre moving about as a westerner and ive taken the opposite track where i, i guess i come in on a tourist visa but still register with local authorities in different countries. I think it depends may be culturally what the best move might be. But just Walking Around as a blonde westerner in the community, did you feel that it gave an advantage or did you feel again like you might have been hurting her somehow . She was working for a lot of western journalists. So i felt sort of similar to them. One thing that she did very very shrewdly early on was introduced me to everyone as the professor. And it was amazing because when i started living in her neighborhood, i arrived one evening and i was asked by a bread seller who i was introduced me as the professor. Two mornings later i was walking through the neighborhood at about 7 am. And someone yelled, hello professor so it had gone across the whole neighborhood. And so, you do not want to leave a void where people can speculative so instead of being an enigma i quickly had an identity. In terms of her safety, i knew she was being watched. It was something she told me early on. She had seen a man capping outside of her apartment taken photographs of her when she came or went. She got called into searing intelligence about a month after that. And the head of intelligence in her neighborhood said, who is this woman . Youre busy from 6 am until midnight. We sent primitive value and they cant keep up. And she said, they must be out of shape. [laughter] she was always a bit of a reckless person and i think that, as a part of her personality that made her magnetic and charismatic. It made her willing to take leadership in a situation where nobody else would have done so. But at the same time, certainly made her unusual case study. Curiosity drives a lot of these condos investigations. Im sure the fbi partly chooses to the investigator by who is the most interesting. Right . [laughter] i think my cover as a professor immediately made me a little more boring. Which is a good thing. What you want is to go for boring as much as possible. Or stereotypical. Because, as journalists we are also called spies in any country around the world. Even sitting in new york. But what i love about your book is that its basically a political discourse look at how the syrian war came about since she was there from 2007 getting a real early history for the war. But at the same time, you were working with a woman that became sort of a mystery. Like this is a historical book but it has a really really nailbiting elements. So what happened to her and has a duty involved in trying to save her . I spent about three months and finish this one year, when you finish a stereo stability get so close to people in that you will always stay in touch but it tends not to be true. You leave, change tracks, you are in another country, you are in a different story. But this one did not leave me alone. I felt, first of all, i was phoning and emailing her and she always had to phone. Host for media and one for her family. She was not answering and she was not responding and i started to feel something was wrong and there had been some signs towards the end of the fieldwork that she was under a particular stress. And she was not always tell me about it but i knew she was being called in for meetings and so i decided, being i decided i will go back. I will do another story. I will pick some more stories, which i did, and i will just check on her. And so i went back to damascus in 2008, in the spring of 2008. And i immediately moved into her neighborhood. And i will read you what happened. By the way, i was staying in, i call it a hotel because they call the hotel. [laughter] i do not know if the rest of you would call a hotel. It is sort of a pilgrims hospice but it was cheap and it was clean. Two things that you look for. The day began like any other. Awakened at dawn by the call to prayer. I fell back to sleep for another hour. When i woke again i felt along the walls for the light switch. Scanning for cockroaches before stepping barefoot to the stove where i struck a match to heat water for coffee. I took a quick shower since the one in this part of damascus was not only undrinkable but in short supply. Then pulled on a pair of jeans and a longsleeved shirt that covered my arms to the wrist. There was no need to stand out any more than necessary. Descending the antistairwell i am to the marvelous perfect late spring day. The Morning Light ignited the gold dome of the shrine. The taxes, motorcycle clubs, benders growing up metal shutters on the shop. Over the internet is refilling up with the boys who spent all days playing games pretended to be american soldiers on urban combat missions. In neighborhoods that must have reminded them of home. Outside of a storefront the swarm of happy little schoolgirls in uniform were lined up to buy sweets. Giggling and jostling. A boys work passed on an adult sized bicycle. Weaving precariously through the crowd. As i went to the alleyways towards the apartment, i thought i felt something. A pair of eyes, a man standing next a motorcycle staring intently. The sense of being followed occurred to me but abandoned it like a whim. After years spent working undercover in place where journalists were unwelcome, my radar can be oversensitive. As the only westerner in the neighborhood, shrugged off. Stairs. By none and we were drinking tea alone at her apartment. The teaspoons of sugar dissolving into a glass. My notebook as usual, on my lap. When a man knocked at the door. She went to answer it and stepped out into the stairwell. I can hear them speaking but not their words. Nevertheless, i felt an immediate shift in the atmospheric pressure of the room. The minutes stretched out, timed to the beating of my heart. When she returned, the man walked into the room ahead of her. He was short, unsmiling, a vain little mustache like a hyphen above his mouth. The kind of man who, whatever he was wearing, always appears to be in uniform. I knew, without a word from either of them that he was one of those responsible for keeping order among the newcomers. To ensure that the war did not come with them to syria. A man of limited powers and yet, for those under his authority, unlimited. She was to accompany him to their headquarters to answer some questions. Men were waiting downstairs to escort her in a car. This would be done for a couple of hours for this happen before. Once when she was sick in bed for a week they panicked and sentiment to check on her. Why was she staying at home changing her patterns . But never before had a group of men come for her. By now i was on my feet. It was a long and awkward moment as the three of us stood ill in the room. None of us moving or meeting the others eyes. Finally, he broke the silence. Get rid of her he said to her in arabic. She was standing beside him and now she walked over to me. Go, she said. Her face close to mine. Go now. Her voice was an urgency id never heard before. Though her face betrayed nothing. Her expression was flat as a calm lake. This vacancy, this blackness and someone always so animated was far more menacing than the presence of the stranger. I took my bag with my notebook and left. Retracing my steps of earlier that morning. I barely recall the walk back. Only the acid flesh that went up to my face like a rash. The sensation of being watched. And yet, when i looked around, no one was paying me the least attention. The locals were used to me now. A neighborhood fixture. A shopkeeper i knew shouted greetings from the interior of the shop. His voice was friendly, unaffected. That feeling that i had being watched earlier this morning, was it as fabricated as the way i felt now . At the door of the hotel i studied the face of the young Security Guard who slept on a mattress inside the front door at night. He smiled, greeted me as usual. Up the flight of stairs the Hotel Manager was playing solitaire on his computer with his little son on his lap. He waved to me, indicating that i should join them for tea. No one had been here to ask about me. My room was like a cave. Selfcontained and insular. Inside, everything was as i had left it. My audio recorder still lying in a tangle of cords. Books, have made single bed, through the window, high up on the wall i can hear the sounds of the day unfolding as it should. Horns honking, children laughing, the working life. How strange i can come to love it here. The air conditioning unit had a leak. The popular what was about to overflow so i emptied into the sink and lay down on this bed with the lights off. Before, the leak had not bothered me. But now each drop was a question that rippled outward. Drip, she is gone. Drip, where has she been taken . Drip, just a few hours he had said. This has happened before. It was nothing unusual. Was it my presence that drew them here this time . Did they take me for a spy . Perhaps i had set off the tripwire. I thought it wise not to sleep in my room that night. Instead, i stayed as an american friends apartment on a busy downtown street. A two bedroom above a damascus store. Awakened in the middle of the night in the dark, cannot remember where i was. The air was hot and sticky, claustrophobic. The ceiling fan barely nudging the air. The next morning, she asked me to leave. She was a freelance journalist and did not want trouble. For the first time, i understood something that had managed to evade me all of my life. Trouble is a contagious disease. First i want to say that the writing is incredibly beautiful. We dont have that much time left because i want to leave questions for all of you. My question is whether you actually want to reveal what happened to her or perhaps leave that for the readers to buy your book and find out . Thousand that the rest of the book and the book is also in unraveling, not only of her disappearance but of the political and Historical Context for how the war did come to syria. And the longterm effect of the recent wars on the region. I think we are getting very, very narrow and poor reporting. Confusing reporting i would say. But i spend the rest of the book also looking for her and yes, she is fine. I do want to ask, doing this work takes a tremendous amount out of you. And for deborah, immersing herself with this as many journalist do not, and do not have the backing of an entire help if she disappears, its really a problem taken from that journalist. But more than that, i wanted to talk about the fact that you were able to address what i think are known as pink stories. Woman stories, trauma. Things that are not like at all. And you talk a lot about trauma and covering it. But i wonder if for yourself since this is a panel on refugee reporting and i think we need to talk about the journalists who were doing work. Do you find that this reporting affects your life when you come home . When you leave . I think it absolutely does. I never because im reporting on people that have been through things that are much more, on a completely different scale than hearing the stories, lets just say that from the first that i did not have my family murdered in front of me. Hearing about it is at a distance. Its just an example but one of the things i write about in the book was the psychological effects, even in that section that i was reading how you start feeling watched. The way you want yourself when you start feeling watched. These self surveillance and selfcensorship that comes when you dont know if your phone, if your computer, if you yourself are being followed. That kind of heightened paranoia which internalizes a lot of the situation around you. So i read about experiencing that but for me i think writing is a way of creating meaning and it is something that writers have, the ability to create meaning from their experiences. Answer to me that has been very healthy response to that. I will ask one more question before we open this up. It is interesting that you ended with that because in refugee areas where he tried to explain to a translator, i am here to gather your stories so hopefully we can spread them out into the world and hopefully, you know help you in some way. And all they are doing is asking, do you have food . Do you have medicine . Give information . Do you know anything . And you kind of start to wonder, is what im doing enough . Ive asked myself that. That is one of the reasons i was drawn to her because the rest of the world maybe there was some reporting going on. Very little but there was some. I was obviously doing some. But the ngos, is just crisis management. It is not fixing anything. And could not in a scale of suffering that is far too large for that. One of the things that impressed me that she actually did practical things. To solve her own communities problems. And that for me was part of what drew me to her immediately. That she was doing things. And i was going to my own existential crisis. I was feeling as if, what does writing actually do . And his writing and journalism able to do anything more than comfort those like all of you, who know something is wrong by making you feel less alone . I wondered if i was really, other than documentation, which i think is very very important for history and showing the world but, would it give back to people what they had lost . Of course not and i remember, i was really struggling when i started this book it feeling like what is the point really when i cant turn back time . I cant i confess this to another writer and i said you know i feel like writing does not have the power to change the world. Not when the conversation now is so fragmented. We are all in our filter bubbles. He thought there is so much media hitting you, you can Pay Attention to something for seven seconds and then there is something else, right . And we can feel like your work is going into the abyss. I said this to him and he said, the point of writing is not to change the world. He said it is to keep the truth alive. Great. That was very helpful for me. Also just to add the value of what we do, i finally decided on, not just documentation but documentation that actually does lead to justice in many cases. Ive been part of stories are able to bring down a perpetrator or have a case referred to the International Criminal court. There are multiple roles that we play. And unfortunately, our industry is diminishing. So on that cheery note, i would like to open up questions to the audience. And i saw that someone already had his hand raised. In the frontier with the red shirt. Thank you so much for coming today. I am at a school of journalism and helping to report in some of the same region. Can you give some advice and people walking in your footsteps . Things to do and not to do . I could give you an hourlong answer. But in short, as wanted to do international reporting, the infrastructure is no longer there in terms of foreign bureaus. They might send a start in for two days. And i think you move somewhere that is on the periphery of whats going on. And you become an expert. You study the language, you live there, you can live very cheaply in many parts of the f. You can sell one story a month and live on it. And you can get to know the culture intimately. You can get to know the language. Andy will be there when the news comes around. So i would advise you to just buy a ticket and go. You know, what i love so much about what you wrote about this court said in an interview as it poses not just to go and doodle around and to have a story. But to actually immerse yourself. Live there for a while. Spend time, dont try to publish her first story and the first week or the first month. You know in three months or six months he will know so much more than any superstar from cnn who comes in. You will be able to give the world the context and understanding that it needs and you are young. You can afford to go. Thought that i want to admit journalistic safety perspective. Take a hostile environment course. Now that you will not have an outlet behind you. Youre going to have to learn some real critical safety lessons that you can learn from some organizations. Still go into conflict zones. That is another thing i love about what you have done. We call this bang bang reporting. People go where the bombs are falling and guns are blazing and you never know what is going on in those situations. West it is extra ordinarily dangerous but i do not think it is the story of what is happening anymore. Like you said, civilians are the number one casualty. And up to 90 percent of casualties are civilians in presentday war. So tell no stories, not having to go into that bang bang moment is incredibly valuable. Just keep that in mind before you throw yourself in with a helmet. Somewhat related to that question, i am curious about your experience of writing a book and them being the person who is sort of the advocate for the story and now that the reporting is done that transport your sort of putting yourself in that situation it is over. Can you talk a little bit about that process . You are a person is caring of the people stories carrying their stories forward how does that role change when youre actually doing the story . Your thought about writing in the first person instead of thirdparty reporting. In my experience, your books choose you. You dont really choose them. This book, i did not go looking for it. I went to write a completely different story. Within the same context. But this became i think a way of bridging my story with my sisters story kind of bridging the gap between the strange and the familiar and the sense or the artist that im ready for is not iraqi. They know this. They lived it. And it is not syrian either. Because they saw this firsthand. I would hope that one day, the people who live this will write their own books. But when people are running for their lives, they dont write books. They also dont stop and ask questions of people because no one is talking to each other. Only an outsider can really go beyond all of the conflict without being chained to their own identity. So i felt certainly an obligation to balance the first person with the, but to weave it. And a lot of the difficulty of writing this was to carefully weave in the history, politics and personal stories within the context of the driving narrative which was my friendship with her. So there was definitely, and there was a time where i was saying, master of putting up myself . How much do i hold back . And there were lots of decisions to make on those levels. One more question. Hi, thank you so much. On a similar note i was hoping to talk a little bit more about weaving moments of trauma into that larger narrative. And the way that it is integrated into a larger story. I wrote about not only the difference in these experiences, i wrote them in scenes. So it would have a kind of vividness. I let the feelings the reader is there with me but the reader s experience it. The reader is also experiencing my doubt, my ambiguity in a situation like this. And the sense of questioning and surprised. But the reader gets to experience it firsthand. And i did not want to sensationalize everything. I did not want to do great advice to writers that i think would he said we are dealing with very emotional dramatic moments, dont get dramatic and emotional about it. He said serve it cold. Rather than you crying, let your readers cry by serving it cold. So that is what i tried to do. I do not mean cold as in bloodless but i mean it like straightforward. Yes, without melodramatic, violin music. [laughter] thank you so much. Good we are just Getting Started but that is the nature of this. [applause] thank you to deborah. I cannot tell you how much i love this book. I encourage you to purchase this and that way you can do that and actually get this signed it deborah will be signing at table h which i cannot point to but i believe it is just outside downstairs. Thank you everyone for coming. [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv and cspan2. This is live coverage of this years brooklyn book festival. In just a few minutes the next author panel would begin. It is a look at free speech on college campuses. [inaudible conversations] here is a look at some authors recently featured on booktvs after words. Our weekly Author Interview program. Harvard university professor, Danielle Ellen discussed how mass incarceration has impacted her family. Radio host, mark live in warned against federal government expansion. And wall street journal writer and former Editorial Page EditorGeorge Malone offered his thoughts on the publications influence. In the coming weeks on after words, journalist susie henson will reflect on her travels abroad and weigh in on americas global standing. And investigative journalist, art levine will report on the Mental Health industry and this weekend on after words, Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow David Osborne examines the Charter School movement and offers his outlook for the future of public education. If you have them system with a strong authorizer who is weeding out the worst schools and replacing them with schools operated by the best operators, and is bringing in new blood to create new schools, and is watching these numbers, that kid will have a much better chance of being in a decent school. Correct. In new orleans, 60 percent of the kids at the time of katrina went to schools in the bottom 10 percent statewide. On performance. Mostly test scores. Yes. Now 10 percent do. Just like the rest of the state. The point is, there are not too many bad schools left in new orleans because they have a system. Now, there are some that they need to keep weeding them out. It is not perfect. But far better for the kids to have that. In a constantly improving system. A sort of static neighborhood based School System in which most of the schools are bad. After words airs on booktv on saturdays and sundays. You can also go to our website booktv. Org. We are moving a little bit further in washington i think a complete sort of model that i think develops and how commanders achieve deal with congress. Following the battle, things keep going badly for the revolutionaries. The british even capture an American General. And the Continental Congress now with the demoralized operations decide they want to make hay of this, somehow rally the american populace behind the war efforts. And one means of doing that is to complain about the treatment of this American General and the way the british are treating them. What they know is that washington has in his control, a highranking british officer that he captured in boston. Now the way highranking officers retreat at the time was better than you might expect. There was a highranking british officer with 20 servants assigned to him. It was lots of rome within a six mile radius of the homestead that he was being kept in massachusetts. So the Continental Congress see this and says they are treating our general sabella, you have to treat this guy badly. And the order washington to retaliate against the highranking officer he is holding. And to treat him as badly as the American General is being treated by the british. This is among other things putting him in custody and taking away all of the a highranking officer is upset with this and so is washington. Nonetheless, he has complied. He gets a letter from the captured british officer, writing to washington as commanderinchief. The letter says, and this is a direct word that the letter uses. You are a dictator, you do not have to put up with this from your congress. If you do not think i should be treated this way, dont treat me this way. Go back to the way i used to be treated. They might think that the commanderinchief would throw that letter in the wastebasket. But instead he writes back to the captured officer. And he tells him, i do not have the power you suppose. I do not have the authority near the inclination to disregard my congress. Which is a very powerful statement. But remember, washington thinks its a terrible idea what congress is doing. And so even as he is writing not to captive prisoner, he is also writing to john hancock and the congress and among the things that he says to them is, your order says im supposed to retaliate for the bad treatment but what if i can show you they are not treating the American General badly . Then i should not have to treat this general badly. So it is a process of interpreting the orders in his favor which is a familiar tactic. You will see that develop over time. This is a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. Next weekend, we will be at the baltimore folk festival taking place at the citys inner harbor. Featuring sociology professor michael eric dyson, photographer devon allen, historian Robert Spencer and others. In october we are going to nashville for the southern festival of books. With former Vice President al gore. Later in the month, there are two book festivals happening on the same weekend. In the northeast, it is the ninth annual boston book festival and in the south, the louisiana book festival will take place in baton rouge. For more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals, and george previous possible coverage, click the book fairs tab on our website, booktv. Org. Beginning now live from the broken book festival, it is contributed to the times of literary supplement talking about free speech on college campuses. [inaudible conversations] okay, guys, if youd come in as quick as you can, we might actually get started now. So do sit down, find a space as we go along. Thank you so much, to everyone, for coming to this event. A weekly journal of literature, culture based in london with a keen interest in the united states. This event is sponsored by the tls and panamerica, and its a total delight to discuss the issue of free speech which never seems to go away. As i edit a literary magazine, i thought id begin things with a literary angle. In britain he wrote the polemic against [inaudible] and in it he said this which has continued to resound, give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. But before we get mistyeyed though, he also said this those which otherwise come forth, if they be found mischievous and libelous, the executionist will become the remedy to follow. He was the godfather of i