The Hair of the Pigeon

In the Syrian Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, Ghassan grows up amidst the oppressive life of displaced people, yet possesses a free-spirited soul. His best friends are Badawi, a boy who loves football, fists, and get-rich-quick schemes; and Sama, a girl with eyes as clear as the sky. The specters of time, life, and death lurk in the shadows, but as the Arab Spring ignites waves of protest and hope across the region, the drums of war begin to beat, and shocking secrets surface.

Sama is the first to disappear. The government's brutal repression of dissidents shatters their fragile world. Ghassan is imprisoned in Assad's infamous prisons, where he endures relentless torture but miraculously survives. When he emerges from the underground prison, he finds the Yarmouk refugee camp besieged, his home reduced to ruins, his mother disfigured, and his father dying. In the isolated refugee camp, fighters and civilians alike suffer from hunger, and the truth of the past is gradually revealed.

"The Hair of the Dove" tells an epic story of exile, survival, and immortal love with heartbreaking intimacy and poetic power, tracing its journey from the atrocities of the Syrian civil war across the Mediterranean to present-day Copenhagen.