Osama Shaker is a Syrian novelist and graduate of the Department of Sociology at the University of Damascus. In addition to writing for television drama, he has published numerous articles and is the author of the novel The Cell of Al-Daqqaqin Neighborhood. He currently lives in Sweden with his family after fleeing the war in Syria, where he experienced all the complexities of exile firsthand.

Mervat Shehadeh: Every writer has personal motivations that lead them to write. What, in particular, compelled you Osama Shaker to embark upon this path?

Omar Shaker: I believe every generation imagines that it has witnessed the great transformations of its society, and consequently feels entrusted with the secret task of rearranging reality.

During the 1980s, we filled notebooks with poetry because it was the only possible means of expression. We reflected our society with fear, caution, and disappointment. Society was defeated and disheartened in every sense. We were asked to do nothing except obey and avoid anything that might provoke the security apparatus or the religious authorities; even if it amounted to nothing more than angry words written on paper.

One of our greatest adventures was acquiring a banned book, hiding it inside a schoolbag, and walking past security officers and informants with it. It is difficult to realize that you have become a character in the regime's own novel without even feeling humiliation.

If there is one defining motive behind writing, it is rebellion; a refusal to submit to the vice of obedience demanded by family, society, and political authority, and religious institutions. Writing becomes an act of self-defense, a way of defending both yourself and others, preserving your individuality before it is spilled away like stagnant water. You write so that the community, with all its crushing weight, does not flatten you for it possesses both the power and the perceived legitimacy to erase your choices and efface the details that make you who you are.

MS: As a writer, what matters more to you: ensuring that readers understand your message exactly as you intended, or writing about your own experiences and emotions while leaving readers free to interpret them?

OS: I do not believe that a genuine writer sits down to compose a literary work while already convinced that they are delivering a message whose validity is beyond question. Such an attitude reflects an arrogance that has no place in literature. It belongs instead to political speeches and religious sermons, where audiences are given little room to disagree or question what they read.

Once, I lent a book to a friend. A week later, I discovered that he had put it in the freezer. We never discussed the book. I simply took it back and left.

Naturally, every reader discovers something different in a text according to their own intellectual and emotional background. The real tragedy lies with the ideological reader; the one who believes that an individual's inner struggle is insignificant, and that literature should concern itself only with grand political or social causes.

If a writer cannot free themselves from the imagined judgment of others, their work becomes little more than a manifesto recited by a soldier or a preacher, stripped of imagination, emotion, and even scent.

Imagination, feeling, and lived experience lie at the heart of writing. No one writes outside the boundaries of their understanding or emotional experience. That is entirely legitimate, regardless of the subject or whether the work reaches many readers or only a few.

MS: What circumstances motivate you to write? And do you have specific rituals you like to create to entice the words to flow onto your pages?

OS: Regret over the loss of childhood moments. This deception that we endure as we slowly succumb to growing up, forcibly leaving childhood behind without ever realizing it. This regret is a primary motivator for writing. I delve into my memory to rearrange events and possibilities anew. I discover that childhood is far more densely packed with thoughts, images, and colors than we once believed; even the physical size of things felt larger, let alone the emotions. I turn to this inner child to write alongside me; not merely as a memory, but as a secret partner. He possesses an innocence and a foundational sensitivity to all things.

I also rely on the photographs I carried with me throughout my journey of seeking asylum. Whenever I need them, I spread them out on the kitchen table, the place where I write once the house falls silent, and contemplate them. Each photograph clearly tells its own story, revealing new details each time.

Furthermore, I listen to people patiently until they strip away their lies and hypocrisy, until they reach a profound depth where their true humanity lies; a place of kindness, sweetness, disappointment, and brokenness.

MS: The characters in your novel “The Cell of Al-Daqqaqin Neighborhood” seem incredibly realistic. How were you able to portray such a diversity of emotions and thoughts?

OS: I believe the credit goes to the emergence of the "child's eye" during the writing process; an eye that receives everything that crosses its line of sight with pure innocence.

A novel is a sacred and noble lie. Its characters can slip into the reader's conscience and take shape anew in their mind as highly personal images. It is realistic to the utmost degree, yet simultaneously entirely imagined.

Take the character of "Sheila," for example. As a child, she rode on the back of the neighbor's son's bicycle, feeling a sense of tenderness toward him and catching the scent of manhood from his soiled clothes. When she grew up, she was not powerless to change her reality, and he eventually became her husband.

Conversely, there are characters who were defeated, incapable of changing their reality, and who made no difference in their confrontation with it. Such is the nature of life and its struggles.

This is why a reader will sometimes ask me about specific details as though they were reading my personal memoirs, only to be disappointed when I reply, "This is a noble lie; I only wish I had experienced in reality half of what the characters lived." However, I completely understand this conflation. The city itself and the particular period are the true protagonists of the text, and for a reader with a connection to Damascus during that era, the memories come flooding back.

MS: How did the journey into asylum and exile affect your writing? And what difficulties did you face in publishing from Sweden?

OS: The journey into asylum had a brutally harsh impact. Taking your family and leaving your home at the age of forty-five to venture into the unknown is an act of sheer madness, yet it is a madness that pales in comparison to the madness of tyranny and its vengeance.

My family and I suffered just to survive, though it resulted in a good ending for my daughters in Sweden, as they were able to overcome their fear and start a new life.

As for myself, I cannot say that I survived. I am one of those whose dignity has become cancerous, and I quietly coexist with its bleeding and its pain, without making a sound.

Freedom is the very essence of change. For us, it was an elusive right; the true paradise of creativity is to write without fear and without a censor. When I was writing television dramas in Syria, one of the television series I co-wrote nearly landed me in prison. No one is more profoundly grateful for freedom than a writer.

Regarding publishing, I was fortunate when the "Sameh" publishing house took on my novel. It is a highly professional house that publishes Arabic books in Sweden, and their managing editor did an excellent job with the manuscript, though I did have reservations about the cover art, as it did not suit my taste.

MS: What are your upcoming projects? And what dreams do you aspire to achieve?

OS: I currently have a novel under consideration by several publishing houses, and I am currently working on another novel.

As for dreams, I have neither grand nor simple dreams. There is no time for dreams.

I only have small wishes: to stay alive for as long as possible, to have as much time to write as possible, to have a reliable laptop for writing for as long as possible, and to have plenty of Swedish coffee.