As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (45)

“Salama,” he says, and my gaze settles on him. His camera is in his hands and he’s fiddling with the buttons and flaps before catching my eye, looking as if he can read my mind. But I know my emotions are displayed on my face for all to see. “Tell me something good.”

“Why?”

He gives me a half smile. “Why not?”

He wants to busy my mind with something other than the hospital. This won’t end well for my heart, but at this moment, I don’t care. He’s here beside me and for a while I want to pretend.

I want to believe in Layla’s words.

I throw the end of my hijab over my shoulder and look up at the sky, watching the way last night’s thick clouds refused to scatter. They look like a healing scab. There are dark gray ridges between the clusters, and slivers of the late-afternoon sun’s rays lighten the mass in between.

“I—” I clear my throat. The wind blows against us, and a stray piece of wrinkled paper dances along the road. No one’s walking on the pavement. There’s an abandoned car at the end of the street that’s been burned down to the frame, the flames having scorched the path beside it black.

Kenan is staring at me, but I can’t bring myself to look at his gravitational gaze, so I reach down and pick up a twig. It’s slightly wet from the touch of winter. I run my fingers over the protrusions and rough edges.

“I used to dream about the color blue,” I say, and I feel his surprise. He leans in a bit closer, and I don’t think he realizes it. The twig’s scars mirror the ones on my hands. No longer able to sustain new life. “Layla had painted a shade so unique, I thought it would bleed into my hands. It was a painting of a quiet sea and gray clouds. I’ve never seen a color like that before in my life. And the more I looked at it, the more I wanted to see the real thing.”

I chew my tongue, focusing on the twig. “Back then, Syria felt too small for me. Homs felt too small. And I wanted to see the world and write about the blue in each country because I’m sure they’re special and different in their own way. That not one shade looks like another. I wanted to see Layla’s painting in real life.”

I shudder in a breath, reopening coffins of dreams I long sealed shut. I give a small laugh, realizing. “The ‘something good’ doesn’t come for free, Kenan. Now it’s tainted with sadness. There’s no blue here, not one that inspires anyway. Just the one that decays the victims’ skin from frostbite and hypothermia. All the colors are muted and dull and there’s no life in them.”

I grip the twig tightly and turn to him. He’s smiling. It’s gentle and it makes my heart ache.

“That’s still a beautiful dream, Salama,” he says. “One that can happen.”

I don’t mean to, but I snort. “Where? In Germany? I’m not sure I’ll see colors there like I used to.” And even then, people like me don’t deserve to see them. No matter how much I want to.

Kenan stretches each finger, flexes his wrists. “It might be difficult at first. The world might be too loud or too silent. It might be neon bright or pitch black, but slowly, it’ll put itself back together. It will resemble something normal. Then you’ll see the colors, Salama.”

My lips part and a desire awakens in my heart. “Do we even deserve to see them, Kenan?” I whisper after a minute, and from his expression, I know he understands I’m not talking about colors. Survivor’s remorse is a second skin we are cursed to wear forever.

He looks away, his lips drawn tight, because this isn’t an easy question to answer. Time is the best medicine to turn our bleeding wounds to scars, and our bodies might forget the trauma, our eyes might learn to see colors as they should be seen, but that cure doesn’t extend to our souls.

It doesn’t. Time doesn’t forgive our sins, and it doesn’t bring back the dead.

I fidget with the twig. “You don’t have to answer that.”

He looks at me guiltily. “Salama—”

I shake my head. “Let’s sit here for a while, okay? Before the next storm hits.”

He cracks his knuckles and nods, stray strands of his hair catching in his eyelashes.

We sit side by side, resting our hands on the pavement, fingers inches away from one another. And I can’t remember the last time my mind was so quiet, comfortable in the unspoken words filling the silence.

And it’s in this silence I replay the fleeting look in his eyes when he held me.

Longing.





“WE’LL DEFINITELY NEED A CHANGE OF CLOTHES,” Layla exclaims, rushing through the corridor from the kitchen to the living room to my room and back again.

I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch, counting our money.

Two thousand and thirty dollars.

Five hundred will go to Am at the end of this month along with the gold necklace.

My mind whirs with plan after plan for how we’ll survive on foreign soil with so little. Will the man driving us to Munich also demand some sort of payment? Am said it was all inclusive, but you can never know what will happen beyond the sea. Greed is an illness and it won’t take pity on the weak and desperate.

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we get there.

I look up to see Layla standing breathless in front of me, her eyes shining with newfound excitement. Now there’s a clear goal in front of her. Something solid to hang on to and invest all her energy in.