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The Syrian Sunset
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Mar 1, 2023
On today's show I dive deep with best selling author, Howard Kaplan. His newest book, The Syrian Sunset, is about the Syrian Civil War and his thoughts on how the failure of the West to save the Syrian people against the Russian incursion in Syria, emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. You will not want to miss this episode! #syriancivilwar #syriansunset #damascuscover Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/carenglasser Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/carenglasserlive Follow us on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/carenglasser
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light make sure to say hi in the comments and tell us where you are watching from we have a phenomenal show
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today we are diving deep with best-selling author Howard Kaplan he's a native of Los Angeles and he has lived
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in Israel traveled extensively through Lebanon Syria and Egypt he holds a ba in
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Middle East history and UC at from UC Berkeley and an M.A in philosophy of
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education from UCLA he's the author of five novels set in the Middle East including Damascus cover which is a
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major Motion Picture starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Sir John Hurt So without further Ado Howard we're going to bring
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in here we go good morning how are you Lord
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to the home office to do an interview that'll get on an airplane isn't it different these days I know
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it's totally different world that we live in I'm really excited about this conversation that we're going to have
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um specifically because of the topic but I want to talk about the journey first at the age of 21 you were sent on a
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mission into the Soviet Union to smuggle a dissidence manuscript on microfilm to London now that triple success tell us
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what happened after that well I went back the following year I thought
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I would go back every year because I wanted to do something to help the
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Jews in Russia my parents were Holocaust Survivors my mother had been in Auschwitz I felt people didn't do enough
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for her so I thought I would try to do what I can but I was actually in heart cave which
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in the Ukraine which then was under the Soviets so it was called harkov
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ukrainians took their names back and I was meeting with some dissidents and
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walking back to the truck they walked me back to the trolley at night and a wall of KGB officers jumped out from against
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a building and grabbed us they pushed me up against a wall but the
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Russian Jews I was with were treated more roughly one of them was hit in the stomach
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I was an Arab de taunt so it was a little less scary to be in
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the so Union than it might be today I'm not sure I would have done the trip today but I
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right time I was willing to do anything right so that sounds scary right off the bat
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that sounds really scary how how old can I ask how
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I was just turned 21. it was the summer of my 21st birthday wow against her
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they interrogated me for two days in the hotel manager's office then they took me to Al and with KGB
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agents on both sides of me on the commercial flight and what was
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sort of interesting and maybe frightening it was those days there were no what do
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you call Jet ways you walked off the plane onto the tarmac and waiting for me
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were too KGB in KGB agents who told me they were in tourist guides
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and one of them spoke perfect British English the other spoke perfect American English
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you would not have known they were not natives of those countries in my mind I
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had this fantasy that maybe they were the children of diplomats who were raised you know abroad but you would
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have thought this guy was from Los Angeles and then irrigated me for two days in a
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hotel outside of Moscow airport and the most interesting
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thing about that was there was no restaurant so every time we had to eat
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they went into the airport and since they were KGB they walked me through passport control through customs through
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security through everything to the departure Lounge I had a meal then they
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walked me all the way back and I thought the message was
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if you bathe and tell us what we want to know we'll let you stay in the departure Lounge one day and go
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and ultimately I was on a 14-day tour and maybe for political reasons they
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didn't want to create an incident they expelled me to London on the 14 on my
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actual flight that I was doing they took me on day 10 they held me four days
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and they expelled me on the 14th day as a 21 year old Howard what were you
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thinking I was a cocky I was thinking that I was okay
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that my American you know before I had a child people always tell you that I have a 29 year
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old now that you don't do different you do different things before you have a
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child then after and in fact if the departure Lounge the Americans
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said to me I don't I don't want to see anything written about this
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or we can meet you anywhere in the world and next time we will be so humanistic I
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remember the word exactly and I thought oh good I should write about this I actually wrote it's an um
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it's a novel that's not in print now but I did write a novel too about these experiences in Russia it was so long ago
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there's a there's no word file and you can't right you can't do modern books
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without a word file and they actually have to retype the whole book into word it was written
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wow wow so when did Damascus cover fall into all
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of this is that was that years later or no it actually was
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around the same time I was on my junior abroad at the human at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from Berkeley
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and I had a friend who wanted to leave your countries he said let's really see what's going on
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so we went to Cyprus the American Embassy was very cooperative and giving us new passport
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in exchange for our old without Israeli stamps we flew to Beirut
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there was a American studying by a parallel partner his Junior Lebanon
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we knew where to go for him and we went to his room
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this is a fabulous experience and my first experience in the Arab world it's really the day we arrived and I learned
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a lot about Arab hospitality and how it was a desert culture
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and people were welcomed into each other's tents in the desert so eritality
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is something that almost doesn't exist anywhere in the world to that extent so we've knocked on this guy's door it
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turned out the American was a Friday was a way for the weekend his Syrian roommate
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invited us with our sleeping bags to come stand in his room
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for the weekend until his friend came back and during this period the series laned
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there is a shared taxi from Beirut to Damascus it's only about 50 miles and
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they give you a Visa at the border pretty easily I'm not sure it exists today I'm sure
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but but at that time and that's what we did and we went to Damascus and I was
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with my friend who went to the great omayad mosque which is one of the great Wonders of the World then we went to
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where the Jewish in Damascus and my friend said we're
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being followed he said he saw someone I remember how he remembered him his pants were rolled up
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he was wearing shoes without socks and he said he was behind us at the mosque and now he's here
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and we didn't enter the Jewish Community for that reason and instead we went back to the main square and took share taxi
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back to Beirut because we were frightened wow but that began even
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though I was there today the square was where the Israelis fight Ellie Cullen was hung in 1966.
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uh there was a TV movie about that recently uh with Sasha Baron Cohen who can play
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serious stuff appetite for Syria
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so very shortly thereafter when I graduated Berkeley
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I started to write this novel about Syrian Jews
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novel that it might reach a larger audience that uh
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certainly than a historical tomb there were 75 000 Jews in 1948 today there are
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none but I have two books of Syria I'm sure we'll get to the new one but the
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difference is into Damascus cover there were 5 000
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Jews left in Syria who are being held hostage in the Syrian Sunset the new book
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there are no Jews left in Syria they're all gone they got out various meets they were
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going to make sure they weren't executed or or whatever and there's a scene in
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the Syrian Sunset it's an actual historical event where Bashar al-assad entertained Nancy
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Pelosi and a Congressional Delegation in something called the Talisman hotel
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which is a beautiful Boutique Hotel in East Damascus in the Jewish quarter
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because it was Pride it was former formerly a big Jewish Home
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and they turned it into this hotel and I have to say is Bashar play his he has a wife named Alma
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who is sort of the Princess Diana of the Middle East she appears on the cover of
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Vogue magazine and they did it
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for the Congressional Delegation this was in 2008 so before the Syrian Civil
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War so I've had this sort of lifelong interest
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research and reading about Syria based on this one day in Damascus it was
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it's fantastic actually the old EST continuously inhabited City on the
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planet because it's on the trade route from China to the Mediterranean
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and it's an oasis people you think of Damascus is what
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actually it what it actually is is and I like these descriptions a lot in my book
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um there's an underground river in Lebanon that stays underground for 50 miles and
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it rises in Damascus in this Oasis branches into seven branches and the entire Oasis
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is full of fruit trees and in fact I used to
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one of their biggest reports are apricots and they make a kind of apricot paste
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that is exported throughout the Arab world because then it's mixed with hot water and it's drunk at Ramadan you know
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to break the fast so all of this comes from this Desert Oasis of Syria
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so Howard I want to jump in right here because you've now mentioned Syrian Sunset and that's really what I want to focus on today because because it's your
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new book but but more everything that happened prior is what led you ultimately to want to write this book so
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what is the actual um idea behind this to share with our
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audience as to why I was you know I said I've been sort of cause oriented I went
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to Russia as a young person because of things that
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were not done to help my parents I then went uh I gone to Syria a few months before I
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wrote it's a little too much for one podcast my wrote three novels of the Israeli Palestinian conflict that look
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even-handedly at both sides I'm not interested the way I often talk about it
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is my mother was treated as the other in Auschwitz and I don't want to treat anybody it's the other and that includes
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the Hispanics in La the Americans in my house in high school or Palestinians
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wherever they may be kudos to you what struck me then was
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this tremendous disaster of the Syrian Civil War
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and the attempts intervene and without getting political
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uh I think we did dinner being in Syria and probably a big mistake was making
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was made because they could have gone in cruise missiles to take out the helicopter
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gunships so part of the moral thrust of the novel is it asks the question
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what happened was historically um Obama said there's a red line
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if Syria crosses the red line with chemical weapons
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that's whatever the penalty is a year later Syria
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let loose chemical weapons in East Damascus on the rebels
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while you and inspection team was in the Sheraton Hotel goes away in the center of
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Damascus that audacity of this move and recently some people make a film
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series Sunset we'll see it took a long time
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they're talking to the U.N I actually had a zoom Convent of the United news
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because they will give their approval to the scenes with the U.N officers in
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the bowl and then ultimately a film if they find them accurate and they're highly accurate
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uh so what happened with the red line was
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there was no resolve in the West do anything with Syria even though Obama
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wanted to because nobody would follow him because of the
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disaster of Iraq so Britain actually voted to go in and
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13 members of the British Parliament um of David Cameron's party switched
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over to the other side to vote against it because they said essentially we
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followed Tony Blair followed Bush into um Iraq and it was a disaster and we're
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not going to follow Obama into Syria and the the crime was
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that this is kind of the moral thrust that I talked to the web guys about this last
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last week on the video hopefully there was an idea to rid
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instead of going in of ridding Syria uh all their chemical weapons
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so this them Rises and Obama Putin met each other or the
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scenes recreated the novel and I have a funny Yiddish speaking oligarch I'll tell you about that in a
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second um because he was modeled after Colin
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Powell who spoke Yiddish because he worked in a Jewish baby store for years
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when he was a teenager and yeah whenever I talk about it often people say they haven't heard it wow and uh so the
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question the moral question becomes do you care how you die
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at a character the novel says people care how they die up until the moment
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they're dead and they don't care about it so the question is if you remove Sarah
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the novel's funny that way in a lot of ways you know because it kind of balanced the you know the horror of the
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situation the oligarchs very funny oligarch and
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do you care if your family is killed by a barrel bomb or by Sarah
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I mean some people might care but that's the question the novel grapples with
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because in the end if they get rid of the sarin but they
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leave the capacity which they could have taken out with cruise missiles I did not
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to drop the barrel bombs are for example people will know their fertilizer bombs
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their fertilizer and Diesel so they're exactly what Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the the Eye building in
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Oklahoma I think was in the 90s so the syrians developed and they didn't
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need to get these weapons metal casings with filled with fertilizer and Diesel
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and they could drop them from helicopter gunships we could have taken out
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there's not that many military airports yeah if you go back to you know they took out the entire engine Force
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on the ground in 1967 which is why it became the Six-Day War they didn't last
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that long so a decision was made to move towards
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getting the sarin out but leaving the barrel bomb and the convention
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capability so Bashar just said you know I don't mind I'll just kill them the old-fashioned
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way and he did so the novel deals with those kinds of
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issues so Wonder historical yeah and but you've written this as a novel this is this is
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this is Dory right a thriller and I will tell you when I said before we actually got on
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um I'm reading it right now and you hooked me in the first several Pages um you have a heroine in there Lilia
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um who who's that's who I guess I must have felt very connected because it's a woman and and somebody who's out there
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doing her thing so what's the story what's the story arc
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around here in which you put this so I'm going to give you away a little bit that you didn't read yet
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the novel begins with the actual beginning of the Arab Spring in Syria
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it's very easy to research it's the spring begin in North Africa in Tunisia and it bred to Syria how did it spread
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uh a bunch of school boys this part you've gotten to decided at night to spray paint their
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High School Middle School they were young about
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anti-shar slogans and they thought they could get away with it but there are a lot of informers
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in Damascus who get paid and they didn't get away with it and they all got arrested and they were
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treated very poorly and this is where some places where research comes in something that was done I could not have
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had the creativity to amend which was the bukhabharat which is the equivalent
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of the KGB the Syrian secret police called in all the
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um parents of the no they called it the fathers because it's a patriarchal society and
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the Sheep and they they met with this Syrian sick police they said your kids
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are gone you now bring in your wives and we'll impregnate your wives for you and
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you'll have more Sons now you know this is a kind of brutality and as I say the novel is
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also remind me before we close to tell you about how I came up with the Yiddish speaking
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oligarch has those funny scenes that sort of balance it so Layla the woman
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that you're referring to is just now in the
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um beginning of the Arab Spring in Damascus slowly they start letting women
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have more a larger role in the revolution in the upbringing the way you know because they
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weren't and she's allowed to work in the um
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medical tent outside the mosque all this is exactly accurate everything about that opening pages of Dara are exactly
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as they happened so but still it's not absolute equality because the men are there 24 hours
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tending to the wounded or the other but the winner have to go home at Sunset but
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today progress in Syria for them out there so
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she is kidnapped on the way home one day now this we begin fiction this is all up
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till now it's all history now it's all fiction she doesn't exist she's not a real character she's not based on
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anybody and she's grabbed and she's made her offer the offer made her is
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you can leave Syria with us now you may never be able to come back you won't be
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able to tell your family what happened to you you'll be put up in the wall that disappeared because you're in a secret
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police van even though we're not the secret police and you can do something to help
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Syrian people more than a Thousand Nights spent in the
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courtyard mosque with whatever and she
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she's kind of cocky you know she has that young and
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as much as it's painful for her she goes willingly and voluntarily she doesn't
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know where she's going she doesn't really know who has taken her and in reality she is not the main
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female character she is taken because the Israelis in conjunction with Syrian
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General who was working with both the American intelligence
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to try and better serious
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uh they want to infiltrate somebody
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in her place
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Howard did you fashion this character after somebody that you know or no the main character the main Israeli
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character he wouldn't mind is I wouldn't write me
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reason she said she's in love with him you know she said he's in his 50s and married her in the 60s by now
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uh I have a friend Abraham Enfield in Jerusalem who is uh
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chairman American artist of Hillel he's uh the creator of Birthright and I've
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known him for decades and he's a kind of Larger than Life gregarious loud and
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funny guy and I've known him for so long he just kind of comes out to the
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character but maybe I'll go back um to the Yiddish I had the same problems
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I had to create an oligarch and I said how am I going to do this am I going to create someone they're going to
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Blackmail and I thought oh defense of blackmail this guy it's just gonna be so cliche-ish and when are you gonna come
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up with the blackmail you know it's you've seen that a thousand times when I was in Russia at 21 the tour took
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me to Tashkent and it was Pakistan and on my free time I was walking around
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and I ran into a room of Jewish tailors
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and they said American and they pointed to their machines and they said Zinger Zinger Zinger they're all working on
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Singer sewing machines which had the global market in the 1920s this is now later than that
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and I read later that they were yitter speaking that
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Stalin moved a lot of people from Ukraine into Central Asia in case Ukraine was
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overrun in World War II by the Americans and the Germans so here they were and I
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put this together with Colin Powell being a Yiddish and I have
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a friend in Moscow who I've been on a dating app who I've never met because I
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won't go to Moscow but she gave me a little help and she said
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what they're doing here is turning the old movie theaters into into
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huge entertainment centers entertainment center means there's a beauty parlor there's a skating rink video arcades so
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that's what this old art does and he's able both to be a friend of Putin's and
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to work for the betterment of Syria and he's in love with Tom Hanks movies
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and he thinks that he's troubled because he if you remember Castaway which was
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that great films which you might not remember because
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it's really a small detail the movie opens with Tom Hanks
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working for FedEx in Moscow that's how the plane crashes
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he's not a FedEx plane right
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the whole day right so this oligarch says
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I do not believe the great Tom Hanks would work at mechanics I'll leave him in Saving privately but I
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don't believe him in FedEx and then throughout the adventures the
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oligarchs when we do the movie of my Adventures I want Tom Hanks
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to play me so now is this the obligard that speaks Yiddish
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is this the same one the movie version of this story he said
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so and when he does the daring rescue because the rescue goes a little more easily until we do the movie
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you have to do one of these close Escape endings the way they always do it
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it's just boring I'm gonna find it more interesting way
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s yesterday with movie people about whether they can
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go to Tom Hanks
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action they are redoing open theaters as entertainment centers
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wow it became a theme through the Syrian Sunset the whole time
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so uh you know it's a long shot but the Damascus
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you know things kind of things you just I drove to college springs for three
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hours yesterday to have a meeting with them you did not come and visit me
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I was a little confused the whole day he was uh
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I someone deeply affected by his 11 missions got it
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I'm not sure if he's hitting him or anything but I think I was there again
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so if you're just tuning in right now we are talking to Howard Kaplan about his most recent
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um novel called Syrian Sunset um I encourage you to take your phone out right now and take a scan just open
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your camera and take a scan it will take you over well not don't do it right this second but take you over to look at the
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book also you can check out the Damascus cover which we already said was actually made into a a like a huge movie with um
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as you said John Hurt and and uh Jonathan riss um as well
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um you did you think that this is what was going to happen when you were 21 that
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you were going to become this big time writer um and that you were going to continue to have novels you're going to have a
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movie made maybe even a second movie is this something that was even in your thought at as you were as you've been
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taking this journey this is huge the one I wrote foreign
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I was a little bit fortunate I was in graduate school in education and at that time classes didn't start
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till four o'clock because they wanted teachers to be able to attending
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I sat home in my apartment in Westwood apartment in L.A and I thought that nobody will never published this
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my father thought nobody will ever publish you and he would call me up and say
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let's go to lunch at 11 30. because I want to take you out of there he thought I was suffering in the
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apartment I was rather enjoying myself I never quite communicated to that and he lived
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till 103. would be you could have been a lawyer
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until he was 96. 96 it came up although he was supportive in a young
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way when the movie came out in the theaters he bought like 20 tickets for all the relatives and of
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course with some you didn't you know he was a holocaust ever what if you didn't show up he wanted to get the money back
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for those tickets I said just leave it give it to the theater you know it was a small independent theater
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you know we don't need to go back for 27 dollars do you have another book in you are you
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going to be doing another book um I want to these characters especially Karma the
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the Soviet oligarch came out so well and he's got a
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he's married a lot of my characters have flaws but like some of the reviews said I don't like them initially
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but you win me over all the time for example Karen Bob is married and he has
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a mistress we never see his wife but we see his young mistress all the time but
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she too is a little bit different they're in Monaco but she doesn't want to go shopping she wants to go on a helicopter rides or
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he goes fast enough jewelry I was about laughing
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love it uh and over time you he wins you over in the same way with the Syrian
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General who in order to win the head of military intelligence in Syria he does some
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implants and things but you don't see that there's a great Humanity in him
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so I guess those are the kind of characters I like who are flawed and who
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kind of rise up above their their limitations so those are the kind of people I write
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about well I I want to thank you for spending time with us I want to make sure that
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our viewers know how to even ask you questions we talked earlier they can go over to Facebook and go to your Facebook
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page Howard Kaplan author and you if you have questions Howard's going to answer them go over there and ask questions
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we'd love to communicate with you and connect with you um also if you are using Instagram go
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and and check out Howard over there at kaplanhow and finally check out Howard's
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website at Howard kaplanbooks.com any last minute thoughts you'd like to
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share with our audience we've come to the end I can't even believe where the time has gone um any last minute in terms of the
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historical nature of what we're talking and about for our viewers
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so I'll tell you a brief story when I sold the Damascus cover to Dutton
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I was by then 27. the editor
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had me come to New York I came to New York he handed me a book called Harry's game Harry's game was a novel about
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Ireland Belfast and said would you read this book
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you smell Ireland smell Belfast you feel that you're there
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he said read this book this with Damascus and that's what I've done with the two
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books he taught me to go from just writing a story to delving into Locale
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the streets five maps of Damascus I could walk around there better than Washington DC I
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know my way around uh and I learned from books about Northern Ireland how did it just
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imitation so he was a lifesaver and I rewrote that draft of the Damascus cover
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and the publisher was extremely happy with it when it came in well you mentioned to me earlier that
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when you wrote um Syrian Sunset there's actually pieces in there where you describe in great detail the location
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and everything so that we feel that we're in there and I think that probably then comes from what you learned right
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when you were first doing the first book yeah because really in terms of describing Damascus I was only there for
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a day when I was 21. there's there's certainly I remember geography for
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example is a mountain uh behind the city where now the wealthier Damascus people
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getting apartments and there were restaurants with panoramic views and that's where Syria their chemical
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weapons secret labs so I remember seeing the mountain but now I know you know
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about the caves that are there and they worship in the caves and what happens
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so as we as readers and and those you know as you go out and I encourage my
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viewers to go out pick up the book as you read it you're gonna feel like you are there and that's that's kind of your
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secret sauce I think it's your superpower Howard that when you read it it really is something that greatly and
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even the scenes that are in are the same you know they're very detailed about uh
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Jerusalem I know better than Damascus but I still do research
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it's a historical novel exactly exactly well Howard I want to I
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want to say thank you first of all for spending time with me today um and also our audience we know that
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you have many choices as to how you spend your time but you chose to spend it with Howard and I today and we want
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to thank you for that um Howard I want you to have a great rest of the day I want our audience to
36:31
have a great rest of the day and we will see all of you on the next author's Spotlight goodbye everyone
#War & Conflict
#World News