As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (3)

I move to pull my sleeves over them, but Layla’s hand covers one of mine gently and I look up at her. “I know why you’re not asking him, and it’s not the money.”

My hand twitches under hers.

Hamza’s voice whispers in my mind, tinged with worry. Salama, promise me. Promise.

I shake my head, trying to dissolve his voice, and take a deep breath. “Layla, I’m the only pharmacist left in three neighborhoods. If I leave, who will help them? The crying children. The sniper victims. The wounded men.”

She clutches her dress tightly. “I know. But I’m not sacrificing you.”

I open my mouth to say something but stop when she winces, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Is the baby kicking?” I immediately ask, inching closer. Even though I try not to let the worry escape, it does. With the siege, prenatal vitamins are scarce and checkups are limited.

“A bit,” she admits.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. Just uncomfortable.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, I can hear you lying a mile away. Turn around,” I say, and she laughs before doing so.

I work through the stress knots in her shoulders until I feel the tension draining away from her. She’s barely got any fat under her skin, and every time my fingers connect with her acromion and scapula, I shudder. This… this is wrong. She shouldn’t be here.

“You can stop now,” Layla says after a few minutes. She flashes me a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

I try to return it. “It’s the pharmacist in me, you know. The need to take care of you is in my bones.”

“I know.”

I bend down and put my hands on her stomach, feeling the baby push back a bit.

“I love you, baby, but you have to stop hurting your mama. She needs to sleep,” I coo.

Layla’s smile deepens and she pats my cheek. “You’re too adorable for your own good, Salama. One of these days someone will snatch you up and take you far away from me.”

“Marriage? In this economy?” I say and snort, thinking of the last time Mama told me we were having an auntie and her son over for coffee. Funny enough, they never made it. The uprising happened that same day. But I remember being giddy about that visit. At the prospect of falling in love. Looking back now, it feels as if I’m watching a different girl, one who wears my face and speaks with my voice.

Layla’s brows furrow. “It could happen. Don’t be so pessimistic.”

I laugh at her affronted expression. “Whatever you want.”

That part of Layla hasn’t changed. Back then, when I called her to tell her about the visit, she was at my doorstep within fifteen minutes, sporting a huge bag filled with clothes and makeup and squealing her head off.

“You’re wearing this!” she had announced after pulling me to my room, rolling out her azure-blue kaftan. It was a rich fabric that glided smoothly over my arms. The hemline was stitched in gold, as was the belt at the waist, where it flowed from the sides like a waterfall. The color reminded me of the sea made from rain in Spirited Away. Magical, that is.

“Pair that up with a blue eyeliner, and you’ll have him begging you to see him again.” She winked and I chuckled. “You look absolutely gorgeous in blue eyeliner!”

“Oh, I know that.” I waggled my eyebrows. “Perks of being brown.”

“Whereas I look like a bruised corpse!” She wiped imaginary tears from her eyes, her wedding ring sparkling.

“Stop being dramatic, Layla,” I laughed.

Her smile turned devilish; her blue eyes glowed. “You’re right. Hamza likes it. A lot.”

I immediately clamped my hands over my ears. “Ew, no! I don’t need to know anything about that.”

Guffawing, she pulled at my arms, trying to make me more uncomfortable, but she couldn’t string two words together coherently. Not with my mortified expression making her fall into a fit of giggles.

The sound of Layla sighing snaps me out of my daydream.

“Life is more than just survival, Salama,” she says.

“I know that,” I reply. Our teasing mood has vanished.

She gives me a pointed look. “Do you really? Because I see the way you act. You’re just focusing on the hospital, on working, on me. But you’re not actually living. You’re not thinking about why this revolution is happening. It’s as if you don’t want to think about it at all.” She pauses, holding my stare, and my mouth dries. “It’s as if you don’t care, Salama. But I know you do. You know this revolution is about getting our lives back. It’s not about survival. It’s about us fighting. If you can’t fight here, you won’t anywhere else. Not even if you changed your mind and we made it to Germany.”

I stand and gesture at the forlorn, peeling paint on the walls. At nothing. “Fight what? We’ll be lucky if the worst that happens to us here is death, and you know that. Either we’ll get arrested by the military or a bomb will kill us. There’s nothing to fight for because we can’t fight. No one’s helping us! I volunteer at the hospital because I can’t stand seeing people die. But that’s it.”

Layla looks at me but there’s no annoyance in her eyes. Only compassion. “We fight while we’re still here, Salama, because this is our country. This is the land of your father, and his father before him. Your history is embedded in this soil. No country in the world will love you as yours does.”