Arjovi Publishing

Hand on heart, it is very rare in such books. "With death as shadow" can only be described as a fantastic achievement. This is not just a nonsense novel that just makes you become emotional, but it teaches you so much. Before I had read it I knew almost nothing about the genocide of our people. Now I feel I have a clear picture of how it possibly was. In this way the novel is enlightening and very important.
I must admit that I had always believed me know how cruel it was during Seyfo but this book contained much that I never could have imagined.
The strange thing was that there were killers in the book that was most vivid for me, maybe because they had no limits to his cruelty.
Now it sounds as though I cherish this novel without reservation, but I stand by.
I can actually admit that I never finished reading a book of 300 pages in four days.
It is easy to keep up with the story and it is in all ways very easy to read.
It does not really matter if you are from Turabdin or not, this story is for everyone.
Besim Aydin has proven that he's mastered the art of telling a story.

With death as shadow

The author Besim Aydin captures the reader in the book "With the death as Shadow", which few writers do.
He illustrates all the atrocities against the Christians (the Assyrians/Syriac) in Ottoman Turkey during the years 1914-1918, the genocide is known as Seyfo.
The Little Benjamin is struggling to survive and want to find his parents, he was separated from them when their village Zaz was attacked by Turks and Kurds.
Benjamin endure many evils, and many times his survival hangs by a thread.
It took me less than a week to read this book, because I could not drop it from me.
From having read the memoirs, memos and other documents about the genocide Seyfo, so it was time to read a work of fiction about the genocide.
Besim Aydin captures everything I've read about Seyfo in a vivid and accessible way.
I recommend this book highly to all, regardless of origin. If you Want to learn about Assyrians / syriac modern history without being too advanced, read "With the death as shadow".

The story begins in the village Zaz in Turabdin, today's southeastern Turkey, a few years before Seyfo - the genocide of Assyrians during WWI. The mysterious red snow that fell years before Seyfo was perceived by many as an evil omen, a fear that would prove to be justified a few years later, when Seyfo - The genocide started in 1915th. The novel's main character is the young Benjamin.

When Turkish soldiers and Kurdish clan militias attacking his home village Zaz will he in the turmoil away from their parents and begin an eternal quest for them. The reader may by Benjamin eye witness all the horrors that were committed against the Assyrian inhabitants of Turabdin. The young Benjamin may be the role of the wizard to hell on earth. He takes the reader from village to village in Turabdin and becomes the reader's eyes and ears.

The story is incredibly strong, the author weaves into real events in the story of the boy Benjamin's fate.
Everything to depict what really happened during the years when the genocide took place.
The reader will experience the full horror events; Turkish soldiers and Kurdish neighbors barbaric acts against the defenseless Christians. The author has used an unmasked language when he has depicted the brutal reality that the boy Benjamin witnessed.
Below is the two sections, describing the events on a river, as Benjamin witness from his hiding in a bush on the other side of the river:

- When the Kurdish leader had been humiliated and then in a bestial way murdered bishop was there as a signal to the other Kurds who come as spectators to the very active participation, by beating, killing and raping. The Christians were attacked old people and babies were thrown into the river, mothers forced to watch them drown.

- After assaulting the woman he sexually assaulted on her lealösa body. When the woman came to their senses, she screamed desperately. Shortly later cut Kurd woman to pieces. Several other women were treated equally by the Kurdish men, while the Ottoman (Turkish) soldiers sat and looked completely indifferent to what was happening around them.

As shown in the quote, it is unimaginable crime against humanity that the novel reproduces.
In the story, there are glimpses of light, when the reader a rare glimpse of a few kindhearted Kurds who saved many Christians.
The language of the book is not difficult.

It is easy to read and it is easy to keep up with events.
Besim Aydin, who was born in the village Arkah in Turabdin, has a small fan of the oriental language culture in their language, which makes some idiomatic (typical) expression may seem unfamiliar and not completely understandable for the Swedish or Western reader.
The book, a novel about Seyfo - Genocide, is a pioneering work in its genre.
It has also been published as an audio book. The great interest in the book got Besim Aydin to write a sequel which is completed.

I chose to read the book "With the death as shadow".
The book is written by a relatively unknown author, Besim Aydin.
One of the reasons that made me start reading this book was out of the simple reason that it actually was about my people, the Syriac and the tragic events that occurred during the years 1914-1916.
Another factor was that a close friend had recommended the book and last but not least, I must also point out that people who book more or less revolves around coming from the same village as my parents were born in, Zaz, which had more than two thousand inhabitants in the days when the book takes place.

The book begins with an introduction of the village Zaz and then it starts the day like any other with people.
I can admit that in the beginning I felt the book rather slow and boring, yes, why?
Simply because the content was fairly commonplace, it happened nothing drastic.
To my great surprise, the book took a positive turn and I was enchanted, I could read hours at a stretch and quickly forgotten that I had read so long.
Given that even before I started reading the book did reasonably about what would happen, at least the main story on the whole big, I was actually quite interested from the beginning, but obviously you got more interested in later in the book because this was a novel.

The book is about the whole Syriac population who lived in Turkey during that time you could probably say, but the protagonist Benjamin and his family is what it revolves around.
A few other characters in the book include the rich Kurdish leader, Haco, the narcissistic murderer Hussein and the humble Count Chelebi.

Haco is a man who has devoted his life to helping the Christians in the war with Kurds and Turks are trying to wipe them out.
Haco who is himself a Muslim, but still help the Christians in war is to say the least unusual, but really a big deal in itself because there were many like him.
Haco was a man who was not afraid of conflict and he was also stubborn but also helpful and humble.

Chelebi was more like Haco, the two helped the Christians on their way and both were not afraid to resort to violence to protect their interests. Chelebi, however, was imprisoned for a while because out of that he helped the Christians but he was later released

Hussein was an evil man, he seemed to feel the pleasure of killing and torturing Christians.
The physical and psychological torture he inflicted Benjamin could easily have killed most, but Benjamin stayed alive.
Hussein had a number of Christian wives that he had kidnapped and forced into marriage, most of them several years younger than himself.
Hussein is probably the definition of evil in my eyes and he seemed not to have any goodness as he always claimed that the bad things he did was in God's name.

The author fits often to depict the environment in the book with very beautiful depictions of landscapes and people, however, there are also some nasty descriptions in the book about how some are killed and brutally tortured.

Since the book does not talk so much about how Benjamin grew up, I do not know how the relationship to his family and close has been, this is for the simple reason that the book actually is about his escape from the Muslims, and about his desire to find his parents.
In Benjamin's proximity, we find many different people, the people that he had a longstanding relationship with during his escape was Haco, Hussein and Chelebi.
Haco is one of the few people in the book that you get some sort of information about his background.
There you find out when is the reason why Haco help the Christians in the war, and the reason is that his father had many Christian friends and Haco had promised his father to help as many Christians as possible.
What he also does by supplying them with weapons and food.

In my eyes, I think Haco and Chelebi both had key features in the book.
Haco, who helped Benjamin to find his parents by taking him to the various mansions where Syriac people hid from Muslims.
Chelebi who took care of Benjamin for a certain time when Benjamin was seriously ill and then helped him and the other villagers from Zaz to rebuild the village again, and gradually move back.

I think that the author wrote this book in both an entertaining and instructive purposes, then this is actually based on facts, but the characters are fictional, but not all.
If you read the book so you might think that the author is black paint all Muslims as a lot of them are involved in carrying out the genocide of the Christians, without any reasonable grounds, however, he shows that there were Muslims who were against the war, including otherwise Haco and Chelebi that I wrote a bit about.
So to call the author of an anti-Muslim would probably not be perfectly legitimate in my eyes.

I really think that the book was worth reading and the time I spent on reading it was really well spent and I would highly recommend it to most people.
In order to understand the book, I think you really need to be mature in mind so I would say that people in the older teens to retirees would be well suited to reading the book.
I would also like to say that I have learned a lot from this book since it is now got a small glance of what it actually was at that time.
If I would rate the book on a scale of 1 to 10 so it would probably get a strong eighth