Suad Aldarra, the Syrian-Irish writer whose memoir I Don’t Want to Talk About Home has been widely acclaimed, has recently won the 2024 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. I sat down with Aldarra to discuss taking control of the Syrian narrative, gender dynamics in the Middle East, and balancing a job in tech and literature.
At the time of writing her memoir, Aldarra was unemployed but used her frustrations to craft her memoir into work that could resonate with readers worldwide. Aldarra, tired of how Western media would portray Syria in books or news articles, decided to take control of the narrative in her memoir. “I wrote this book out of anger”, Aldarra tells me, claiming she was both angry and frustrated with migration, the Syrian crisis, the way the media described it, being a female in a male dominant field, and her previous experience in a conservative world. The writing process was one part therapeutic, and one part a form of activism. While writing about the Syria she fell in love with, describing her grandmother’s home-cooked meals and the music she would listen to, Aldarra brought Syria back to life for many people who have been forced to leave the country.
While the memoir explains Aldarra’s migration struggles and the journey from Syria to Ireland, it is not a refugee story. Aldarra explains her frustration whenever her memoir is labelled under the umbrella of a refugee story in Ireland, as she is not even a refugee herself. While the words Syrian and refugee seem to be inseparable, Aldarra is a migrant, and her memoir covers many themes that are universal, and not specific to her migration experience.
Born in Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents, Aldarra declared that writing came as a hobby to her when she was younger, as it was one of the safest activities that girls could do from home, especially in the conservative environment she was living in, where women could rarely do things independently. In the odd times that a woman did something independently, it was seen as a failure of male guardianship. “Men in the Middle East took the blame for women’s ‘irrational’ behaviours. My father used to say, ‘There is no strong woman, but a weak man’”. The lack of autonomy that women had in such environments demonstrates how Aldarra’s taking to writing was not only a personal choice but a practical one as well. In the memoir, Aldarra further emphasises the gender divide stating, “The separation was, most of the time for men versus families, not men versus women, because women were not supposed to be wandering on their own without a male guardian, except for specified places such as mosques, schools or public toilets”.
While she began writing solely for herself, she was first published at around 18 years old, when her friend submitted one of her essays which was published in a local newspaper in Arabic. While Aldarra continued writing as a pastime, starting a blog once she moved to Galway, her career remained primarily in technology. Yet, it was through this blog that she started writing in English rather than in Arabic, stating, “After ten years in Ireland, Arabic became my second language and English became my first”. This would later lead her to write her memoir in English.
Currently, Aldarra is working as a quality engineer, looking after Arabic translations for the tech industry. This role allows her to combine her interests in languages and technology, a balance she plans on furthering in her future literature work, by writing a book that incorporates the world of technology. She states, “I learned that I will never belong to one place or one domain or one career. I’ll always have a mixed background, mixed citizenships, the mixed careers between tech and literature. I’ll never be able to choose one, so I’m trying to reflect that in my writing as well.” While Aldarra hopes that one day her memoir will be adapted into a movie, any future writing projects she undertakes are worth keeping on the radar.
