The Hair of the Pigeon

إن عشقت اعشق قمر، وإن سرقت اسرق حمامه

Ghassan grows up a free spirit among the constrained lives of the displaced in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, Syria. His best friends are Badawi, who is all football, fists and fast-money schemes, and Sama, the girl whose eyes mirror the sky. The ghosts of time, life and death remain hidden, but when the Arab Spring ignites a wave of protest and hope across the region, the drums of war begin to thunder, and devastating secrets rise to the surface.

Sama is the first to disappear. The government’s brutal crackdown against dissent shatters their fragile world. Ghassan vanishes into one of Assad’s notorious prisons, where he is tortured mercilessly and barely survives. When he emerges from the underground, he finds Yarmouk camp under siege, his home in ruins, his mother changed, and his father dying. As fighters and civilians starve in a camp sealed off from the world, the truth of the past unravels.

Told with aching intimacy and poetic force, The Hair of the Pigeon is an epic tale of exile, survival, and indestructible love, tracing a path from the atrocities of the Syrian civil war, across the Mediterranean, to present-day Copenhagen.

"This novel takes us into the world of Syria in a time of crisis, a nation burned by despotism and violence. The people so desperately crave normality but are unavoidably dragged into a war they don’t want. With Morsi’s ear for dialogue and eye for the human touch, this work shows the power of the novel to transcend the often-transient nature of the media cycle." Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory.

 

"Set in the beleaguered heart of the Yarmouk refugee camp, this is a profound and unsparing novel about a love forged in fire, shattered by betrayal, and exiled across continents. The Hair of the Pigeon charts the abject valleys and the dizzying peaks of Ghassan, Sama, and Badawi’s lives, reminding us of the terrifying beauty of human existence, and that after all else burns away, hope endures like iron ingots in the ashes. This story is utterly necessary for these times." Arif Anwar, author of The Storm.

 

"Despite the tension, grit, and searing drama, the story is filled with love; the love for friends and family, of small moments of understanding and caring for others, or for our one true love. This is a narrative filled with emotional connections, highs and lows, and all from a perspective of one whom has not given up on our species, and still loves, deeply." B. P. Marshall, scriptwriter and author of The Last Circus on Earth.

 

"In his beautiful prose, Morsi weaves a story of love and loss, forcing us to look more deeply into ourselves and at what’s really important in our lives." Gillian Mosely, BAFTA-winning documentarian and director of The Tinderbox.

 

"With a journalist's eye and a poet's heart, Morsi gives us an insightful and sweeping story of love in a time of war." Katherine Johnson, author of Paris Savages.

 

"As we bear witness to the unfathomable horrors and atrocities currently plaguing the Middle East, this urgent new book provides a sensitive, subversive and humane portal into the true Arab experience. The Hair of the Pigeon is vivid, vibrant, passionate and full of heart. A must-read for every Australian!" Michael Mohammed Ahmad, founder of Sweatshop Literacy Movement and author of The Other Half of You.

 

"This is the poetry of the Arabic language, written through a war photographer’s keen lens. A deeply powerful read." Michelle Johnston, consultant emergency physician and author of The Revisionists.