Born at the Gates of Hell

An OB-GYN at the center of the Syrian refugee crisis recounts 9 months at the al-Hol camp—a place of violence, murder, and survival

Imagine what it’s like to be pregnant and give birth—or to try to care for and protect a family in the middle of hopelessness?

This book is not about politics. It is about individual human beings in a dry, barren landscape. Up to 74,000 people at a time—mostly women, babies, and children—live for years in tents and have no prospect of leaving because no country will have them.

Maria Milland takes readers on a powerful, documentary journey to meet the pregnant and laboring women facing the difficult, harsh, and violent living conditions of al-Hol camp in northeast Syria. Her firsthand account provides vivid, unique, and honest insight into life inside the camp, which has never before been described to the outside world.

Amidst the brutal everyday realities of the camp, the maternity ward is a safe space, where health problems, as well as existential challenges, are displayed and embraced—and children are born. Behind towering fences, sprawling in the desert’s nothingness, they spend their childhood deprived of fundamental human rights, and with the looming risk of growing into a new generation of Islamic fundamentalists.

Beautifully written and carefully observed, this is not only a story of resilience and hope in the face of hopelessness, but also serves as a powerful reminder of our shared humanity.