Before Donald Trump, I was not worried. To be honest with you, when I came to the United States, I felt freedom right away. But after Trump, I became worried not only for immigrants, not only for Muslims, not only for the US. Now I'm worried for the whole world.

Life is not easy. Life is very harsh. We have to be strong. Otherwise, life will destroy us.

Despite everything - despite all this hatred, despite all this misunderstanding between nations and civilizations - I think love is the end. Love is the end.

To see your country being destroyed from afar - it's very hard to only watch and do nothing. My writing is the only way to address my feelings about this disaster and to at least try to find a solution as a writer. I know I have limits. But I have to do my best as a writer.

I'm homesick. But I cannot go back to Syria. I lost everything. And I'm against the Syrian regime, so there is no way to go back. I'm really homesick.

Some of my good friends who were writers disappeared. Others are still inside Syria and there are others who are refugees. I'm worried about those who disappeared. I don't know anything about them now. They just disappeared like that after the war started, while I was living in the United States.

I left most of my stuff there in my apartment in the suburbs of Damascus. My apartment was completely destroyed by a bomb in 2013. I lost everything there. I cried not only for losing my apartment and my belongings, I cried for our whole people. I feel really sorry for the people in Syria. My apartment or my property is a very, very small part of this big disaster. Syria looks like hell today. It's completely hell and chaos.