Our Hearts Burned for Home

A people without a country in a country at war

What drove a few thousand men and women from the deserts and cities of western China to the front lines of Syria’s civil war? Journalist Emily Feng unearths the untold story of Uyghur exiles who fled China’s expanding police state—only to become a pivotal force behind the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. At the heart of this narrative is a startling paradox: Beijing’s repression, meant to crush dissent, instead scattered and radicalized a generation.

Tracing their journey from the crushed protests of 1990s Xinjiang to the Islamist battlegrounds of Idlib, this book reveals how a campaign of surveillance and cultural erasure, as well as turmoil in the Middle East, gave rise to a Uyghur militant movement far from home. Through vivid reporting and rare access to fighters and families, Feng, along with Uyghur writer Abduweli Ayup, explores how these Uyghurs, controversially, embraced armed resistance—and how their stateless revolution now shapes Syria’s fragile future.