As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (93)

“Yeah.” He traces the ridges lightly, his touch gentle. His eyes are wide with wonder. “Does it hurt?”

“No. I got it when that bomb killed Mama. When I started seeing Khawf.”

I frown. When Khawf warned me about the hospital getting bombed, it felt like a blindfold I didn’t know I was wearing dropped from my eyes. Now, I can see clearer than before, but I don’t know what it is I’m seeing.

“Are you okay?” Kenan asks and I blink. His fingers slip down, and he loops one through my wedding ring.

“Yeah.” I smile and it dispels the concern on his face.

“Are you okay with this?” He points at his busted lips. “It might scar. I know you fell for my pretty face.”

I laugh and delicately run my thumb along the stitches on the edge of his lower lip. His eyelashes flutter. “I guess I’ll make do.” His expression then turns serious and he sits up and reaches for my hands. “Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll be okay. Even if…” He takes in a deep breath and presses his forehead against mine. “Know that even in death, you’re my life.”

My heart skips a beat. Then another. I have no words to fashion into an everlasting promise that defies the world. So I press a quiet kiss to his lips.

He sighs and after a few seconds says, “Tell me something good, Sheeta.”

I blush. “Are you trying to distract me from today?”

He smiles. “And me.”

I sigh. “You’ll like this one. The day you were supposed to come over, I was going to prepare a whole knafeh.”

He jerks back, a different glimmer growing in his eyes, until I swear the candlelight is trapped in them. “You know how to make knafeh?”

“From the semolina dough to the cheese to the drizzled orange blossom water over the pistachios and almonds,” I murmur and tap my forehead. “It’s all saved here.”

There’s genuine happiness in his expression, all traces of pain gone. “You’re perfect,” he declares.

I laugh, lacing my fingers through his. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

And in those final hours of our time in Homs, my bruised heart quietly heals. Cell by cell.





USUALLY MY NEIGHBORHOOD EXISTS IN A REPETITIVE limbo. The wind carries the children’s tentative laughter and cries through the despondent ruins. Hope colors the conversations of the protestors passing by my door, their footsteps echoing over the gravel. A father consoles his daughter, passing his share of food to her. Jasmine flowers unfold their petals toward the sun. They bloom on soil soaked with martyrs’ blood. For a while, we live.

Then, when the planes roar through the clouds, the pebbles on the sidewalk tremble. And we stop living and start surviving.

Today is no different. But today I say goodbye to myself. My old self.

Kenan and his siblings are already by the front door, their faces grave. We’re meeting Am in thirty minutes. As I stand in my bedroom’s doorway, a rush of nostalgia runs through me. Miserable and empty as it looks, this was my home. For a while.

It won’t stay empty for long. A family who has lost their own home might take refuge in it or, if the military finally invades Old Homs, they’ll ransack the place. I try not to think of that.

I trail through to the living room and hover in the entrance, casting one last long look at Layla’s painting. Suspended in the shade, the waves look alive, licking the frame’s edges, and a story awakens in my mind.

“Let’s go,” I say, turning on my heel before my courage fails me.

We shuffle out, backpacks filled with all we own in the world, and I close the door behind me.

“Goodbye,” I whisper and press a kiss to the blue wood.

Kenan’s hand slides into mine. “We’ll come back.”

I nod.

Lama is between Yusuf and Kenan, and together we walk, the birds singing a sweet farewell melody.

Khalid Mosque is ten minutes away. We take the second fork in the road that leads away from the hospital, and while we walk, I try to memorize each flowering tree and abandoned building we pass. Every now and then I glimpse the revolution’s flag spray-painted over the metallic columns of a garage or wall. The quiet of these last fragile moments is only broken by the crowds standing outside the grocery and the Free Syrian Army soldiers walking about. Their presence calms me, and I send a quick prayer for their hands not to waver, for their love for this land and her people to haul them to victory.

Khalid Mosque is in the middle of a wide clearing of half-collapsed apartment buildings. We step carefully over cracked asphalt and loose, dead electrical wires. Up close, the mosque’s walls are scratched and the dusty windows splintered, as are the steps leading up to the front door. It’s slightly open, revealing debris coating the dark green rug upon which a few men are in various positions of prayer.

“What’s the time?” Kenan asks. Yusuf and Lama sit with their legs hanging over the steps. Yusuf whispers something to her and she leans closer to hear before nodding.

“Fifteen more minutes,” I reply, my nerves tingling, and I focus on Kenan’s face, counting the bruises decorating his skin. There are about seven in total, and his contused eye has taken on a plum shade. His shoulders are slumped but his gaze is flitting everywhere, committing the sky’s blue to his memory.