North Shore Writers Festival, Friday, April 7 and Saturday, April 8. Admission Cost: Free. No registration required. For complete schedule visit northshorewritersfestival.com.
When Vancouver journalist Deborah Campbell set off on an undercover assignment to Damascus, Syria, in 2007, little did she know she would befriend Ahlam, an Iraqi woman who would lead her to write the political thriller that would earn her a 2016 Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Nonfiction and numerous Book of the Year designations.
North Shore News spoke with Campbell, also a professor at UBC, ahead of the talk she will give at the North Shore Writers Festival, taking place at the North Vancouver City Library on April 8. Here, she discusses her courageous journalism career, her writing process, and why a situation like Syria’s is closer to home than we might imagine.
North Shore News: Could you provide a short synopsis of A Disappearance in Damascus for those not familiar with it?
Deborah Campbell: It’s the story of my friendship with my Iraqi fixer, the woman who was my guide and translator when I was immersing myself in the largest community of Iraqi refugees in Damascus. We became friends over the course of nine months working together until she was arrested by the Syrian secret police while I was with her, and disappeared. The book is about my search for her in a climate of suspicion and fear, not knowing if they wanted to come after me, if they’d taken her because of me, or where she was and why.
NSN: Did you go to Syria with the intention of writing a book?
Deborah Campbell: No, I was on assignment for Harper’s magazine. I was doing a story on the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who were pouring into Syria after the fall of Saddam Hussein. I wanted to look at how this catastrophe was affecting the region and what the long-term consequences of that war might be. It was already destabilizing the region. I also wanted to hear exactly what was happening to civilians; I felt like there was a lot of coverage of military matters, but the people who were actually living the war on the ground were barely covered at all.
NSN: How long after you arrived in Syria did you meet Ahlam?
Deborah Campbell: I met her about two weeks after I arrived. I was looking for someone who could act as a connector, one of those people who knew what was going on on the ground, knew the security problems, knew who I should talk to. And when people are running from strangers who want to kill them, it’s hard for a stranger like me to ask them questions. I needed someone the community trusted, and she was a leader in the community. When she made the introductions, people were suddenly willing to open up to me.
NSN: How long after you met her was she apprehended?
Deborah Campbell: About nine months later.
NSN: At what point did you decide to document the experience this way?
Deborah Campbell: I didn’t decide to write the book until Ahlam was freed. I was worried about her safety and the safety of her family. I was reporting heavily, but I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t know it was something she wanted, too. It’s very much our story written like a political thriller.
NSN: Did you take a collaborative approach with Ahlam when you were writing the book?
Deborah Campbell: No, she’s not a writer. But I interviewed her over the course of months to get background on events I wasn’t present for, to fill in the blanks. I interviewed her in Chicago where she lives now. We would do eight-hour days of interviews, week after week. It was gruelling.
NSN: Could you tell me about your writing process for A Disappearance in Damascus?
Deborah Campbell: I have thousands of pages of notes. I take notes on everything, just as a reflex. And because I was doing this big story for Harper’s, I had already interviewed hundreds of people. When I decided to write the book I sat down with Ahlam and took down her biography, essentially. And I also talked to journalists who knew her when she was working as a fixer in Baghdad, before she came to Syria, and spoke with U.S. military who knew her then. I pulled it all together and came up with a structure that could carry the story. It has many intricate threads so it required many drafts.
NSN: Do you have any other projects on the horizon; other books you’re planning to write, or overseas assignments?
Deborah Campbell: I’m working on another (non-fiction) book right now. But I don’t want to jinx it (laughs).
NSN: You’ve lived in Paris, Tel Aviv, Damascus and Tehran. Other than Ahlam’s traumatic imprisonment, how did this experience in Syria differ from the other places you’ve lived?
Deborah Campbell: Syria, when I was there, was very cosmopolitan, very multicultural, and Damascus was in the middle of an economic boom while the countryside was suffering a historic drought, the worst in known history. But in the cities, and in my neighbourhood, young people were partying till two o’clock in the morning every single night: going to bars, to clubs, drinking espresso, surfing their laptops. It was a warm and welcoming place but there were huge divisions between urban and rural. Much like the U.S. today.
NSN: Can you tell us what has happened to Ahlam since her arrest? How is her life now?
Deborah Campbell: She was imprisoned in Syria for five months. The UN flew her to Chicago when she was released and she works with refugees there now. Nobody understands their experience better than she does.
NSN: Are you still in touch with her?
Deborah Campbell: I talked to her last week. She came out to visit last summer with her lovely daughter, who just turned 18 and is making straight A’s in university. As is often the case, the children of refugees are very adaptable.
NSN: You’re a professor at UBC teaching creative non-fiction. What advice do you have for an aspiring non-fiction writer?
Deborah Campbell: Go somewhere that is talked about in the news but little understood. Spend some time there, live cheaply, get to know people, learn their language, the issues. And when the news is looking for somebody to write deeply about that place, you’ll be the expert.
NSN: Are you doing your dream job?
Deborah Campbell: I never had a plan. I always followed my instincts and went where there were things I wanted to know that nobody was telling me. I have always been interested in how political events affect ordinary people. So rather than report the kind of press conference-style stories that are easily available I like to go find out how people live, especially in difficult circumstances.
NSN: And that leads me to another question. After spending time in war-torn countries and places with political instability, how does it feel coming back to Vancouver? How do you reconcile life here with those experiences?
Deborah Campbell: I think we’re unaware sometimes of how vulnerable we are to the same conflicts that afflict other places. The war in Syria had a lot to do with rising inequality and the divide between urban and rural. There had been a sudden massive spike in real estate and housing costs. This meant that a lot of the poor farmers who were leaving their land because of the drought – a million of them, arriving in the cities at the same time as more than a million refugees – couldn’t find affordable housing or decent jobs. This was a key reason for the early protests.
The protests began in areas most affected by the drought and by domestic displacement. We have similar problems in Vancouver, of course. We see people being displaced every day by skyrocketing housing costs. Remember, Syria was a functional multicultural country before all this. But the government forgot to take care of the needy, and left it to the police and security services to keep order. That only works for so long.
NSN: How does it feel having lived in Syria for six months and then now living in Vancouver, a place that is home to a large number of Syrian refugees? How do you feel seeing the situation from this perspective?
Deborah Campbell: I’m glad we’re taking in some refugees – very few on the global scale, in fact. And the refugees who come here will adapt and contribute and we should help them do so, but we should also stop facilitating wars. Every time we sell arms to a country like Saudi Arabia, we’re involved in making more refugees. We should starve these conflicts of arms.
I’m also concerned about the growing divide between rich and poor in our own backyard. When people are driven out of Vancouver, when people are driven out of their homes because of spiking rent and real estate prices, what does that mean for our combined future? We should think about these things. In Syria, it’s too late.
NSN: Would you be able to share a short summary of what you are going to say at the talk on April 8?
Deborah Campbell: I’m going to tell the story of what it was like to be an undercover journalist in Syria, what happened to my fixer, and the story of my search for her, and also give some background on the war in Syria so people can understand how this conflict came about.
I want the audience to see the stories we know only from the news in a deeper and more intimate way.
The 18th Annual North Shore Writers Festival takes place April 7 and 8 at North Vancouver City Hall Library, northshorewritersfestival.com. Admission is free with no registration required, but do arrive early, as seating is offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more on Deborah Campbell’s work visit deborahcampbell.org.
