The Syria Arab Army is the fortress of the homeland in the face of aggression . It has undermined systematic terrorism and its regional and international backers. Thanks to its sacrifices and heroism, the Syrian Arab Army soldiers have proven to the whole world that they are an integrated example to be followed in nationalism and sacrifice.

  Each  hero  of the Syrian Arab Army  has  his own memories  embedded  with rich human details about the brave and honorable battles he  fought during the nine-year brutal war on Syria. Some of the Syrian Army soldiers  were martyred, some of them lost part of their  bodies  to the homeland, some were considered missing while  some of them took their  freedom from the harshness of terrorism, so that they all turned into legends that history will preserve.

The achievements and sacrifices of Syrian  soldiers in the war have been transformed into a literary creativity and documentary  project  for generations by  “the Blog of War”  issued by the Ministry of Culture.

  The novel “When the Cactus Fights” by the fighter writer Eng.  Ali Esper  is the second issuance  by the Blog of War after the novel “The Day of the Martyrs Rise .. The Journey of Self to Self”  by Suhaila Al-Ajji, the mother of the martyr Bunyan, one of the martyrs of “Al-Kindi”  Hospital garrison in Aleppo.

 Esper's novel tells the stories of three heroes from the Syrian Arab Army, the first one  is the martyr captain Jaber Ali Esper, who was at the forefront of defending the village of Kafr Nobul  in Idlib  province and continued to confront the terrorist organizations until he ran out of ammunition and no news  was heard until  the announcement of  his kidnapping in August 2011. 

The martyr   was looking forward to the end of the war and returning to his village to get married after a long love story with his fiancee  Samia.

The second  hero of the novel  is the martyr, first lieutenant Eng.  Alaa Muhammad Abbas, who and his companions defended the central prison of Aleppo against the terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra. He was  martyred in February 2014, shortly before the prison was liberated, leaving his wife and a little baby girl.

 The  third martyr  in the novel  was First Lieutenant  Eng.  Yamen Ali Mahmoud, who was shot by a sniper bullet that hit his stomach in Aleppo and was  martyred , leaving his parents and brothers to grief for him .

The author of the novel said in a statement to SANA  that the novel  is a simple appreciation of the sacrifices of the righteous martyrs, specifically those he mentioned in his novel.

He  pointed  out that the martyrs’  stories are true and they are his real friends  and for literary necessity he worked to collect the stories of their sacrifices in one novel.

Esper stressed the importance of marking  the martyrs to express  pride in their achievements  in the memory of generations, underscoring that his novel  forms  the beginning of his project in documenting the stories of the martyrs and their families to reach the stage of being in direct contact with the families of the martyrs, the wounded and the missing  to raise their cases.

The novel “When the Cactus Fights” was saturated with human images and feelings of  sadness and sincerity  to enable  the reader to receive  an integrated literary product that simulates the environments of the heroes of our army.

The writer Esper also  seeks  to transform his novel into a documentary film to be added to the creative production which deals with the courageous achievements of the Syrian Arab Army.

“ When the cactus Fights”  novel confirms that the heroes of the army who gathered from all parts of Syria left their civilian life  and went out to fight in defense of their homeland and mankind and they managed to achieve impossible  dreaming of a beautiful tomorrow which they feel  with the smile of every child and the prayer of every mother so that Syria may remain steadfast.

Rawaa Ghanam