As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (104)
“Every lemon will bring forth a child, and the lemons will never die out.”
We place the mugs in the sink, discussing the various elements of storytelling used in Princess Mononoke. I open a cupboard to take out a breakfast bar. Each cupboard is stocked to the brim with bags of rice, freekeh, canned hummus, and kashk. I finish up the whole bar, not even leaving a crumb, before throwing the wrapper in the trash.
Kenan takes a chicken out of the freezer to let it defrost and I find myself marveling at the fact we have a whole chicken.
While Hamza doesn’t.
Daily, I scour Facebook and Twitter pages that post regular updates on the prisoners in the Syrian detention facilities that have been released, as well as those that have information on prisoners still inside. I look for Hamza’s name until my eyes cross, but he never shows up. And in my heart, I pray he’s become a martyr. I pray he’s with Layla in Heaven, far away from this cruel world.
I glance away and feel Kenan’s hand on my cheek.
“Hey,” he whispers, knowing what’s on my mind. “It’s okay.”
I shudder in a breath, nodding before walking into the living room. To distract myself, I contemplate whether to read a pharmaceutical book or work on a new video. After arriving in Berlin, Kenan picked up where he left off with his activism and, after a few more videos, he began to garner the world’s attention. I practiced my English by joining him, writing articles and making videos about what we faced in Homs. I threaded our stories together, and at first it was difficult. I’d burst into tears five seconds into a monologue, remembering the feel of a corpse’s cold body.
Kenan catches my arm, spinning me around, and I fall against his chest, surprised.
“Whoa! What are you doing?”
He smiles, holding up his phone. An English song I don’t know croons out. “Dancing with my wife.”
My eyes burn. We weave distractions between the bouts of agony. Reminding the other we’re still here.
He drops the phone on the couch beside his laptop, swaying me with the music.
“I’m in my pajamas,” I mumble, pressing my forehead to his collarbone.
He shrugs. “So am I.” He twirls a finger through a lock of my hair, now cut short to my chin. “You’re beautiful in your pajamas.”
“So are you.”
He laughs. In the distance, we hear the low rumble of a plane and I don’t miss the way Kenan’s hand tightens in mine for a fraction of a second.
“What do you think of our new family addition?” I draw him back to me.
He glances at the balcony. “We’ve had her for two months now and we’ve barely seen more than a green blade.”
I laugh. “Lemons take time, Kenan. We’re growing a tree. They need patience, just like change does.”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “I love it when you talk about change.”
I giggle and he rests his forehead on my shoulder, humming to the music.
My eyes wander over his shoulder to the blue ceramic pot perched directly under the sun’s rays. Seedlings have emerged through the dirt, fighting against gravity, and it reminds me of Syria. Of her strength and beauty. Of Layla’s words and her spirit. Of Mama, Baba, and Hamza.
It reminds me that as long as the lemon trees grow, hope will never die.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS STORY IS ABOUT THE ONES WHO HAVE NO choice but to leave their home.
The idea came to me when I was living in Switzerland, where, when someone found out I’m Syrian, I would be met with “Oh, Syria! What’s up with that?” and I realized that people don’t really know what’s happening there. Syrians have rarely been able to tell their stories. What the world knows are the cold, hard facts reported by the media and relayed in books. The focus is on the political parties at play, reducing Syrians—the casualties, the victims, the orphans, the displaced—to numbers.
This novel delves into the human emotion behind the conflict, because we are not numbers. For years Syrians have been tortured, murdered, and banished from their country at the hands of a tyrannical regime, and we owe it to them to know their stories.
I wanted this story to exist free from the confinements of stereotypes. You see that intent in Salama and Layla—hijabi girls who are free-spirited and live life with every cell in their body. You see it in Kenan, who turns his back on toxic masculinity and carries his family in his eyes. In how all of my characters love who they are and where they come from and are willing to risk everything for freedom. You see it in the halal love story that I wanted to be reminiscent of Jane Austen’s classics. Simply put, you see representation that has rarely been shown before.
To shine as bright a light as I could on the reality of Syria’s story, I had to take some literary liberties with the passage of time in Salama’s. The revolution started in March 2011 and though it was met with horrific violence from the military, they didn’t start bombing civilians until June 2012. But I have condensed the timeline between these two incidents so that they are contained within the span of Layla’s pregnancy. Ghiath Matar was arrested on September 6, 2011, in his hometown, Daraya, and his mutilated body was returned to his family four days later. His son, whom he never met as his wife was pregnant at the time, is named after him. Ghiath Matar was twenty-four years old. And while I allude to the Karam el-Zeitoun Massacre in chapter twenty-one, in reality it didn’t take place until March 11, 2012. And it is one of countless massacres the regime has committed on the innocent.