Under the Aleppo Sun

As the Syrian war has raged over the past several years, the world has watched in horror. And that horror is particularly concentrated on the city of Aleppo, which has been subject to almost incomparable devastation and deprivation. Aleppo is Alice Attie’s home city, where her grandparents were born, and with the poems in Under the Aleppo Sun, she takes us there to the months before Assad unleashed his attack in 211. Through her eyes we see a city that is largely no more: she weaves through the old souk, climbs the steep stones of the ancient citadel, stands in the center of the Umayyad mosque, runs her hand along the walls of the forbidden synagogue. She visits a small shop run by a young man. Over the course of days, perhaps weeks, she returns to see him; as we read the poems, we know what lies ahead for him and his shop, and we can’t turn away from what will be lost.