The latest nightmare in the Syrian civil war is a crude explosive known as the barrel bomb. These are large metal cylinders — typically an oil drum or old water heater — that are packed with explosives and rolled out the door of a helicopter. They are imprecise, indiscriminate and devastating.

The Syrian government has been bombarding Aleppo with barrel bombs for months. It claims that it is targeting terrorist groups, but it is impossible to control where an irregularly weighted object dropped high above ground will land. Citizens listen day and night for the whirr of helicopters and watch the sky to guess where the barrels spinning through the air will explode.

“If these indiscriminate, dumb weapons managed to hit a military target, it would be sheer luck,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a BBC.com post, Aleppo gripped by barrel bomb fears.

Precision and discrimination hardly seem the point of these weapons. The point is fear. The Syrian government’s use of barrel bombs — one component in a conflict that Human Rights Watch refers to as “an indiscriminate and unlawful air war against civilians by the Syrian government” — is not to hit terrorist leaders or rebel targets but to terrorize citizens in the ongoing battle for control. With diminishing hope for a rebel military victory or significant outside intervention, the battle for Syria will be determined by suppression of a citizenry until it loses the strength and will to resist.

In February the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for an immediate end to “all attacks against civilians, as well as the indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas, including shelling and aerial bombardment, such as the use of barrel bombs." The use of the bombs hasn't ebbed, and Aleppo's civilian areas continue to be the main target.

I love John McPhee’s periodic series “The Writing Life,” in the New Yorker. His most recent, “Elicitation” (April 7, 2014) is about all about the art of interviewing: tips, confessions, anecdotes and ethics. Jewels of the trade, like: To tape-record or not? (“Yes, but maybe not as a first choice—more like a relief pitcher.”) How much to prepare in advance? (“At a minimum, enough to be polite.”) How to get the most succinct reply from your interviewee? (Keep asking your question. “Who is going to care if you seem dumber than a cardboard box?")

I wish I’d had an article like this when I started out as a shy young reporter for the Montgomery County Sentinel, where I worked for a few years between high school and college. I could write decently but had little experience, so I was assigned lightweight human-interest stories: the father and daughter who were members of the volunteer fire department; the man celebrating his hundredth birthday who credited his long life to “wine, women and oysters.”

One of my first assignments was to interview a young priest who volunteered at a big public high school as an ad hoc counselor, informally making himself available to anyone who wanted to talk. He was personable and kind, barely older than the students—or me. He was also a dream interviewee. He practically dictated the article, slowly down when he knew he was delivering a good quote. This interviewing business is cake, I thought.

If only.

More often than not I’d stare nervously at my telephone, which in our crowded newsroom was only a few feet from the telephone of a reporter with decades more experience than I, before making a call.

Not being an investigative journalist (which The Sentinel still proudly employed) I didn’t often find myself in hostile situations, though tension sometimes arose unexpectedly. I remember an octogenarian woman who had lived on the same street in Rockville her whole life. My editor wanted a charming account of the changes this woman had seen in her hometown. I found a cranky, bigoted woman who didn’t want to talk and had nothing positive to say about the development in her neighborhood, where now “You have to go 'round Robin Hood’s barn to get anywhere.” But then, I’d never heard that expression before, which made the interview worth it.

Interviewing a close family member, as I did for “Farewell, Aleppo,” poses whole other challenges. English is my father’s fourth or fifth language, and until hearing him on a tape recorder I’d never noticed the slight irregularities of his syntax, which I tried to smooth out without losing a sense of him and his background. His tendency was to downplay his experiences, which in his mind were just about doing what needed to be done, while I had to determine how to play them up without making Dad feel he appeared boastful.

Years of conducting interviews have given me lessons in efficiency and confidence, yet each interview is unique. An interviewee is not just raw material that we have the liberty to shape to our needs but a unique collection of stories, memories, lessons learned, regrets, wishes and second chances. Our challenge is to evoke them as faithfully, as respectfully, as possible, whether we love them or endure them, whether we have known them our whole life or just for the length of a phone call.

“[T]he writer has the responsibility to be fair to the subject, who trustingly and perhaps unwittingly delivers words and story into the writer’s control,” McPhee says. “Some people are so balanced, self-possessed, and confident that they couldn’t care less what some ragmaker says about them, but they are in a minority among people who put their lives in your hands.”

Twenty-five years ago, when I was expecting my first (and as it turned out only) child, my midwife gave me sage advice. “Enjoy this time,” said this woman who had witnessed literally thousands of births. “There’s nothing quite like a first pregnancy.” 

Up until then I had been thinking of pregnancy not so much as a thing in itself but as preparation for the thing.  Eating five servings of dairy a day, taking prenatal vitamins, going to birth class and prenatal visits with my hubby, reading baby books, choosing a name, making the birth plan—all this was build-up to the main event: birth. My eyes were focused on the outcome, not the process. 

But as her words pointed out, a first-time experience is always unique. With a second baby, there’s (usually) another child in the home, commanding much of Mom’s time and attention. Second time around, we have some precedent for the sweeping physical and emotional changes that are utterly new with the first child.

I’ve been thinking about my midwife’s advice a lot lately, as I prepare to birth my first book. The process is not wholly unlike pregnancy: I have trouble sleeping, I eat weird foods, and I go around town with a dopey grin, wanting to tell everyone my due date and my baby’s name (“’Farewell, Aleppo.’  He takes after his grandfather.”) 

The brand-spanking-newness of this experience to me makes me scared, excited, sometimes exhausted. I’ve been stunned by how much there has been to do since we completed the final edit: locating photos, picking a name (agh! more on that in another post), finalizing the cover, setting up social media, planning the marketing and publicity, lining up readings, making a contact list for announcements….  

There are—as people like to taunt me—upwards of a million books published in this country every year. But this is my baby. Yes, I’m anxious to see the finished product (gestating so much longer than a human!). I can’t wait to hold my bouncing baby book, swaddled in the beautiful cover that Scott Gerber designed and show it off to the world. Most of all, I want to put my creation at last in the hands of my father, who has been waiting far more patiently than I’d ever have asked. 

And I want to savor this period of expectancy. There’s nothing like a first book.