The Road from Damascus

"It describes a journey which is very familiar to many Muslims. Many British Muslims travel back to what they regard as their original home – to Bangladesh, or Pakistan, or Syria, or wherever their families came from – to rediscover their roots. The protagonist Sami travels from Britain to Syria to discover what Islam and his family are all about. He doesn’t take Islam very seriously although he is a Muslim, and, whilst he and his wife are in Damascus, he is upset to find that his wife, who is very liberal, starts to wear a hijab (the headscarf). At the same time, his brother is becoming the typical, unthinking fundamentalist. The interesting thing about his wife as a character is that, although she chooses to wear the hijab, she continues also to be a very liberal-minded person. In the Koran she finds a kind of spiritual tranquillity and peace, and the hijab for her is simply an expression of that peace. Sami just can’t understand this. What is so strong about the book is that it shows Muslims as a human community, struggling not just to make sense of their faith and coming to terms with Western values, but also with family problems, break-ups, unemployment and so on. The way that travel features in the book is very sophisticated; Robin Yassin-Kassab depicts the internal travel of the characters from one variety of Islam to another, the physical travel of literally going to Damascus, and also spiritual travel as certain characters find themselves spiritually enriched by their experiences. Yes, I hope to go back to Mecca where I used to live for a while during the 1970s. I am going back to do some research for a book; an exercise of opening up not just the intellect, but also the spiritual side of my private life – just what real travel ought to be!"