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Author goes from Ashland to Syria Emily Robbins. Photo by Brian McConkey Photography Sunday Jan 15, 2017 at 12:44 PM Jan 15, 2017 at 5:01 PM By John Darling For the Tidings Emily Robbins had a string of inspiring teachers while growing up in Ashland, took an interest in writing and the Mideast at an early age, studied a couple of years in Syria and now has published her first novel with Penguin/Random House: “A Word for Love.” Set in Damascus, where Robbins studied and found her first love (with a Syrian man), the novel explores the nature of language, romance and how love is all around us in many forms. Robbins will do a reading and book signing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, at Bloomsbury Books, 290 E. Main St., Ashland. Her years in Syria, before Arab Spring and the current revolution, still were a time of governmental strictures, fear and repression — and that is reflected in her story, which is about an American exchange student becoming intimate with a host family, falling in love with a man and dealing with people’s edgy struggle for freedom there. It’s the story of youngish, inexperienced Bea, who is studying Arabic and hasn’t yet found love. Bea seeks out an “astonishing text,” Robbins notes, “which is said to have the power to make all of its readers weep, but finds herself caught instead in the lives of her host family and a Romeo and Juliet-like romance that ultimately teaches her about love, loyalty and herself. The book is a three-person love story, and also a foreigner’s story, about love on two levels: to love both a city, and a romance, neither of which is truly your own.” Bea "learns important lessons about love, also the way we show love with and without language … The important lessons about love have to do with loyalty and bravery,” Robbins says. She also has her own “romantic fling and realizes love happens on many levels. It’s also about how you love a city, the language … She doesn’t always find her love requited.” Robbins' writing is straightforward, light and simple, but readily gets at the moving complexities of love. Asked what she learned in her own years in pre-revolutionary Syria, Robbins says, “The people I met, it was a life-changing experience for me. The decision to go to Syria shaped a lot of my life. ... I learned about speaking up for what you believe when the stakes around speaking are high. The landscape was incredibly beautiful. There was a sense of danger. There was censorship. One had to be brave to speak one’s mind. You learned bravery in big and small acts. I put these lessons in the book.” In an essay published in the New York Times last November, Robbins notes how learning and living a new language can be exciting but also fraught with tension and misunderstandings that she only realized years later, after losing her lover, a doctor in a relief camp. They were deeply in love, but the deal-breaker was when his camp was bombed and he called her. Her reply was to ask him to call later, as she was busy. This came across as heartless and he told her so, though it would have been understandable if spoken in the same language by fluent speakers. Robbins still has many friends in Syria or in exile from it. Of the war there, she says, “It’s a huge tragedy. I’m devastated by what happened. Like everyone, I don’t have a solution. I want the U.S. to take in more refugees. I don’t know what the war is about. In talking to friends there, they were so excited in the early days of the revolution, asking for their rights and freedom, then it became something else.” Robbins cites her many inspiring Ashland teachers from grade school on. “It’s such an incredibly supportive environment. I gained a lot of courage from Ashland — and the courage to travel. There were so many wonderful models around me to become a writer, so many people following their art, doing unconventional things and creating happy communities around themselves. Looking back, I’m so thankful for it. It allowed me to do what I want to do.” Robbins was a Fulbright fellow in Syria and has a second such grant to live in Jordan, where she is roughing out a second book, one inspired by the clothing of Syria over 100 years ago. She is the daughter of Bonnie Broderson and dentist Eugene Robbins, both of Ashland. John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at [email protected].