Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir
    Ebook344 pages5 hours

    The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir

    By Matthew Schrier

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “What is your name?” asked General Mohammad. 

    “Matthew,” I said. I had stopped saying Matt a while ago because it means ‘dead’ in Arabic. 

    On New Year’s Eve in 2012, Matthew Schrier was headed home from Syria, where he’d been photographing the intense combat of the country’s civil war. Just 45 minutes from the safety of the Turkish border, he was taken prisoner by the al Nusra Front—an organization the world would come to know as the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. 

    Over the next seven months he would endure torture and near starvation in six brutal terrorist prisons. He’d face a daily struggle just to survive. And, eventually, he’d escape. 

    In this gripping, raw, and surprisingly funny memoir, Schrier details the horrifying and frequently surreal experience of being a slight, wisecracking Jewish guy held captive by the world’s most violent Islamic extremists. Managing to keep his heritage a secret, Schrier used humor to develop relationships with his captors—and to keep himself sane during the long months of captivity.

    The Dawn Prayer (Or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison): A Memoir is a tale of patriotism and unimaginable bleakness shot through with light . . . of despair and friendship, sacrifice and betrayal, in a setting of bombed-out buildings and shifting alliances. It’s the story of the first Westerner to escape al Qaeda—not a battle-hardened soldier, but an ordinary New Yorker who figured out how to set his escape plan in motion from a scene in Jurassic Park. From the prisoners’ fiercely competitive hacky sack games and volleyball tournaments (played using a ball made of shredded orange peels and a shoelace) to his own truly nail-biting outbreak, Matthew Schrier’s story is unforgettable—and one you won’t want to miss.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBenBella Books
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9781946885210
    Unavailable
    The Dawn Prayer: A Memoir

    Related to The Dawn Prayer

    Related ebooks

    Military Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Salar Abdoh

      Dec 1, 2020

      The older I get the more I am drawn to books I know I haven’t the faintest tool to conceive of writing myself. The post A Year in Reading: Salar Abdoh appeared first on The Millions.

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Cleric and I

      Apr 10, 2018

      The Cleric and I
      8 min read

    • Article

      What We Loved This Week

      Aug 24, 2018

      What We Loved This Week
      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Story Had Been Stirring In Me For Most Of My Life’: How I Wrote A Booker-shortlisted Novel

      Oct 8, 2022

      On 14 November 2017, things fell apart for Robert G Mugabe, the long-serving president of Zimbabwe. The strongman, who’d once upon a glorious time gloated “Only God, who appointed me will remove me,” was deposed through a sanitised military coup and

      9 min read

    • Article

      What We Loved This Week

      Aug 17, 2018

      What We Loved This Week
      4 min read

    • Article

      What We Loved This Week

      Jun 15, 2018

      What We Loved This Week
      4 min read

    • Article

      Fleeing Occupied Raqqa

      May 17, 2018

      Fleeing Occupied Raqqa
      4 min read

    • Article

      Art of War: The Legacy of Michael Herr

      Sep 26, 2017

      Dispatches is Herr’s final draft—he never came back and said, “What I meant was…,” or judged his experience against another’s, or said “I told you so.” I am envious of that ability to take himself out of the game. The post Art of War: The Legacy of M

      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 1, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Emma Alpern

      Dec 6, 2022

      Emma Alpern reflects on 2022 through the books she read. The post A Year in Reading: Emma Alpern appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Year in Reading: Mohamed Asem

      Dec 9, 2020

      Days went by this way, with my brain growing comfortably numb. The post The Year in Reading: Mohamed Asem appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Belly Of The Beast

      Aug 9, 2022

      In The Belly Of The Beast
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Bridgett M. Davis

      Dec 16, 2019

      I now understood I’d been bereft without knowing it, had missed the intimacy I once had with those characters and that narrator. The post A Year in Reading: Bridgett M. Davis appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Alejandro Varela

      Dec 19, 2023

      I read to be a better writer and hopefully a better human. The post A Year in Reading: Alejandro Varela appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Derrida in Lahore

      Mar 19, 2024

      On the cold night of November 24, 1997, before Shahid disappeared forever, I thought I was his closest friend, his only confidant. We had known each other since we were children, attended primary and high school together, even gone to the same colleg

      26 min read

    Reviews for The Dawn Prayer

    5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words