Silence is a Sense is a novel that cuts brutally and unflinchingly to the heart of trauma. The characters were raw and I loved the way that AlAmmar questioned the reliabilty of memory and how that can manifest to create a state of self denial.
This was very much a character driven story, and I loved seeing the peripheral characters through the eyes of the protagonist, capturing slice of life of those characters alongside her inner turmoil and tradgedies.
The writting in this was very lyrical and thought provoking, but at the same time compelled the reader forwards, a rare mix in my opinion.
A very current novel looking at immigration, regilion, PTSD and relationships. People who enjoyed The Beekeeper of Aleppo will love this book. Highly recommend.

“No one is truly voiceless, … either they silence you, or you silence yourself.”
This was a very interesting and thought-provoking book. Whether you – or your society – are pro or anti asylum seekers, very few of us have any idea what goes on in an asylum seeker’s head. We may have heard about the horrors they have left behind, the arduous and dangerous trek to ‘safety’ – but can we really – from our comfortable lives – ever truly understand what they have been through, what indelible marks life has branded into their souls. There is no ‘typical’ asylum seeker. All are individuals, with own personal experiences and devils. Through the encounters, writings and ideas of one such asylum seeker – Rana Halab from Syria, the Voiceless – the book tries to open our eyes to one such person’s life.
The book is narrated in the first person, and our narrator is difficult to appreciate at first – she is too different. She watches life and people go by through her window, a silent voyeur. Her world is peopled with cardboard characters, whom she names according to what she sees of them: No-lights-Man, the Juicer, the Dad, the Old Couple, Mr Big Man, the Old Man … She initially does not ascribe any humanity to them, and likewise, they seem to see her as only “The Arab”, “the Asylum Seeker”, the dumb woman. Slowly, as she is drawn into interactions with her neighbours, they gain names (Adam, Chloe, Ruth, Helen, Matt …) and personalities, and our narrator becomes more relatable.
The one character who immediately deserves a name, is Hassan, the local shopkeeper:
“He can’t be much more than forty, but he’s exceedingly prickly. Far too prickly for someone his age, but there’s no telling what a person has been through.”
To me, this quote sums up the narrator’s difficult personality too.
Most of the story takes place in the present, in and around the high rise building where the narrator now resides in Britain, but there are flashbacks to her former life in Aleppo.
Our narrator does not speak – a diagnosis of ‘hysterical mutism’ brought about by the traumas she has experienced. But, she is a highly intelligent and articulate lady, who writes for a London magazine under the pseudonym “The Voiceless”.
“It’s not so difficult to know what people want. At the root of it we all want the same things: freedom, happiness, safety. I want to write what I want to write without the fear of a knock at the door and an interrogation room. I want to love who I want to love without the fear of death or corrective rape. I want to wear what I want to wear without the worry that men will see my skirt or the buttons on my shirt as an invitation. That’s it. The freedom to live how we want to live.”
Her editor – and then later Adam – have firm ideas about what she (as a female, Arab, Muslim refugee) should believe in and campaign for. But they are not the narrator.
“They  want  me  to  speak  for the chaos of the world, to weave the abstracts of cultural convulsions and scapegoats and simple apathy into my story, so that by  seeing  ‘me’,  by  knowing  ‘me’,  you  might  know  them  all,  and  I  suppose  –  by  extension  –  might  feel  some  degree  of  empathy  for  them all.”

“There’s this idea that if only you bombard bigots with enough facts and data and statistics, you can cure them. This notion that their hatred comes from a place of ignorance is one people have a hard time shaking. It’s not a lack of education, … It’s fear; fear of the unknown, the Other, fear that things are changing in ways he can’t predict or control.”

“ Is it my job,  as  a  Muslim,  to  try  to  convince  you  not  to  be  afraid  of  me?  That  my people are not hardwired to hate you, to want to blow you up  on a tube or ram you with a van?”
The terror in her life never goes away. Safety is always relative, never absolute:
“And when I first arrived, I couldn’t assimilate … I couldn’t reconcile myself to the notion that I was free to go anywhere. So I set invisible borders that I abided by for a good, long while.”
Gradually, her borders expand – both physically and mentally. But the fear never leaves –
“I know I’m safe here, although the meaning of that has a habit of slipping through my hands like water. I can’t explain even to myself, my hesitation, my continued sense that I’m still living in some indefinite holding room”
and can come thundering back at any time:
“I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here. I was supposed to be safe here …”
As the reader you become more and more wrapped up in the narrator’s life, and in her community. Can she, will she, ever find the courage to speak, rather than just anonymously write? Will the violence ever truly recede? We don’t have a civil war in this country, but are we – as a society – less violent, less bigoted, less intolerant than the country the narrator came from?
“ any time an attack occurs, there comes this  blanket  condemnation  of  an  entire  faith  –  as  though  the  problem  were  one  of  religion  rather  than  interpretation.  The  majority  have  no time for such subtleties of thought. Muslim Refugee = Muslim  Terrorist is so much simpler.”

“What  does  it  mean  to  be  American?  A  red-blooded  one,  as  they’re so fond of saying, and I wonder what colour they imagine  the  rest  of  the  world  bleeds.  Every  year  they  celebrate  the  brutal  taking  of  a  land  that,  by  any  definition  of  blood  and  soil,  was  not  theirs, a systematic replacing of the native population. Is that why you fear refugees and immigrants so much? Because  you know that with determination, and no small amount of violence,  complete and total dominion can be achieved?”
While not all the ideas in this book are new to me, many of the comments have been eye openers, and have made me stop and think, and question my own assumptions about asylum seekers and refugees.
I highly recommend this book.

This book is intensely moving as we meet a girl known in print as 'The Voiceless'. She is living in the UK having escaped Aleppo, Syria. We hear her story in snippets through memories and through the articles that she writes, which meant that the time narrative hops about a bit - this reflects the manner in which her thoughts and memories come to the surface and play on her mind.
This novel shows us the human impact of war and shows how refuge is not always a sanctuary.
We also meet see the community that she somewhat unwillingly finds herself a part of, initially as an observer of the flats opposite and then, more so, as she ventures to the local shop and mosque and begins to meet these people in person.
It is clear that she has seen and faced the worst of humanity and we see and feel her trauma. I would have liked a little more explanation of how she found herself travelling alone and her families' situation but that does not stop this being an immensely powerful book that is utterly compelling to read and has an important story to tell.

Important, empowering, topical; "Silence is a sense" is a well-written and heart-breaking novel that delves into the themes of humanity, immigration, race and trauma.

Inspiring, informative, powerful. What a story.
This is a ne le following a young Syrian woman from happy student in her homeland, through the horrors of war and the further horrors as she escapes to seek refuge elsewhere. Elsewhere is a small city in the UK, where she begins her studies again whilst also writing about her experiences as “voiceless” for various publications.
For she is mute, due to the effects of PTSD and the trauma she carries. As part of her new solitary life, with no friends and family she closely observes her neighbours in the tower block complex in which she now lives. And in doing so sees more than she maybe should. But without a voice how can she get the stories out.

A compelling and heartbreaking story of what it rapturous means to be a refugee. Highly recommend

* spoiler alert ** 3.5 stars

Definitely a lot to think about after this read.
How someone views our world,having escaped the brutality of their own.... and she does view it,looking right into the windows of her neighbours flats.
Left mute after the trauma of escaping her own country,the best way to communicate,is through print.
But that in itself causes problems.
A very interesting look at life and its problems,be they big or small.