Synopsis
The Long Tale of Tears and Smiles chronicles an oncologist's journey as an immigrant: from Damascus to Aleppo to St Louis to New Orleans to NJ, and then NY; from a medical student to a trainee to a practitioner caring for cancer patients and their families and watching the field of oncology evolves throughout the years. The tale interweaves the author's life stories with the stories of the patients she cared for. It reflects on how bearing witness to their survival or death inspired her life and changed it and how their anguish touched so closely on her own as she grieved the death of loved ones and watched the devastation of destruction and loss caused by the civil war in Syria.