We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled

In 2011, millions of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom and dignity. The government’s ferocious response, and the demonstrators’ refusal to back down, sparked a brutal war that escalated into one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time. We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is an astonishing collection of intimate testimonies and poetic fragments that chronicle the conflict from its origins to its present horror, solely through the words of ordinary people transformed by its unfolding. Based on interviews with hundreds of Syrians conducted across five years and three continents, this breathtaking mosaic forms a testament not only to the power of storytelling but also to the resilience of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.

Wendy Pearlman is a professor and award-winning teacher at Northwestern University, specializing in Middle East politics. Educated at Harvard, Georgetown, and Brown, Pearlman speaks fluent Arabic and has spent more than twenty years studying and living in the Arab World. She is the author of numerous articles and two books, Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003) and Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She lives in Chicago, Illinois.