Seven Months with the Witch Who Had the Broom
A young protester in Syria hitches a ride with a witch and leaves the world behind.
Photograph by Shaun Fisher via Flickr In March 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring blazing through the Middle East, fifteen boys in Daraa, Syria, graffitied their defiance of their country’s corrupt government. The boys were consequently detained, and one was brutally tortured and killed. Their treatment sparked more protests and more killings — and the Syrian civil war had begun.
In his story “Seven Months with the Witch Who Had the Broom,” the Syrian writer-in-exile, Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa, fictionalizes the experience of one of countless protesters persecuted by the Syrian security forces. Collected by The Odd Magazine in its anthology A Song For Syria, the narrative steps away from conventional war tropes and embraces fantastical elements to subvert
