Once We Were Strangers by Shawn Smucker

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Once We Were Strangers: What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught Me about Loving My Neighbor

What Friendship with a Syrian Refugee Taught me about Loving My Neighbor

"The book I thought I might write embarrasses me now.
"Instead, I wrote a book in which, at first glance, nothing happens. At least not on the outside. I feel like I should have a disclaimer on the cover: 'No one was harmed in the creation of this book.' But something was harmed. Something happened."

These two paragraphs describe it quite well for me. When I started reading the book I was like, wait what? I thought this was going to be about Mohammad's journey from fleeing his home to landing in the US, but instead, Shawn is writing a fair amount about himself and his life? Huh? But the writing was so good and it pulled me in and I kept on reading. And then I went and reread the title and was like, oh yeah, this is supposed to be about friendship and not bombs and close calls.

The story starts with Shawn's initial decision to write a book about a Syrian refugee and it follows their friendship for the next one to two years. It's a friendship memoir, if there is such a thing. Shawn is thrust into the world of Middle Eastern hospitality, strong, strong coffee, and a family where the dad is called Abba. In turn, Mohammad learns to navigate the world of dental insurance, income requirements for renting and closed off neighbors.

I read this book in about a day and that was with just little bouts of 15 to 20 minute reading times throughout the day. While, as Shawn says, nothing happened, the story just pulls you in with the excellent writing style and interesting format. And Shawn has a few things to say that are worth pondering.

"We sit quietly for a bit. This is something he is teaching me--a willingness to sit quietly with my friends, a willingness to let time pass without feeling an urgency to fill it with noise."

"I sit back down on the porch and watch him drive away. Again I consider the nature of friendship. Again I reflect on how busy I have become, how rare it is that I see the people I call friends. I think about where we've gone wrong, how we've ended up in this place where we make such little time for the people who mean the most to us, where we have almost no time for the people in our communities who need a place to sit and talk. A place to reflect on what it is they're missing.

"Is friendship vanishing? Will we ever find the time for it again?"

I received this book from Revell and was not required to write a positive review.

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