Seferberlik

Dheeb is taken prisoner by Ottoman soldiers at the start of the great Arab uprising of 1916 and deported to Damascus, like other citizens of Medina, western Arabia, who suffered the tyranny of its Ottoman ruler. Previously, Dheeb had been kidnapped from Mecca and sold as a slave. Now he finds himself in Damascus working in an inn owned by a woman, waiting for the Ottomans to leave the city. The novel depicts an important period in the history of the Arabian Peninsula, known as “seferberlik”, or the mass deportation and forced conscription of Arabs into the Ottoman army during the First World War.