Core Events are open to the entire community and are themed around different elements of the College’s Mission
The Hidden Historians of War and the Places They Carry: Refugee Stories from Iraq and Syria
What happens when the history of a war and its survivors is told not only through books, but through the objects and memories people carry with them? Join journalist and scholar Stephanie Saldaña, who lived in Syria before the war, as she shares from her new book What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry. She will describe her journey across nine countries to meet refugees and learn what they salvaged from the ruins when they escaped. Here, in the narratives of six extraordinary women and men, from Mt. Sinjar to Aleppo to Lesvos, we discover that little things matter a great deal. Saldaña introduces us to a woman who saved her city in a dress, a musician who saved his stories in songs, and a couple who rebuilt their destroyed pharmacy even as the city around them fell apart. Together, they remind us of the timeless power of storytelling—whether a story is spoken or sung or sewn—and of what it means to be a listener today.
Stephanie Saldaña is a journalist and religion scholar from San Antonio, Texas, who has spent most of the last twenty years living in the Middle East. Saldaña studied religion at Harvard Divinity School and is the author of A Country Between and The Bread of Angels, hailed by Geraldine Brooks as "a remarkable, wise, and lovely book." Her work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, America Magazine, and Plough, and she has been featured on National Public Radio. Saldaña and her family split their time between Bethlehem and France.
