Critical Conditions

Abdullah became a trusted voice on social media, where he joined the ranks of cyber-dissenters and reported from the battlefields. After the brutal siege of Homs in 2013, Abdullah fled north to Idlib Province among the rebel factions, which posed their own dangers to young reporters. His memoir tracks his experience as a first responder during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, through the liberation of Syria on December 8, 2024, by which time he had lost many of his closest friends, two of whom were his cameramen. Astonishing for its rendering of friendships forged during war and its impacts, Critical Conditions explores not only the humanitarian concerns of the author and his closest friends who all risked capture, prison, torture, or death every day in the name of a free non-sectarian Syria, but gives centrality to their feelings using creative language and style. Critically injured in an assassination attempt in Aleppo in 2016, Abdullah spent months in recovery in Turkey, where he was interviewed for a multimedia feature on The New York Times and by Scott Pelley from 60 Minutesfor a documentary on the first responder organization The White Helmets. Later that year, Abdullah won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. New content in this English-language edition gives breathtaking detail to the liberation of Syria over the first week of December 2024 and the Syrian people’s response to the fall of a 40-year regime of terror under the Assad family. His epilogue remarks on the challenges for Syrians that lie ahead.