As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow: Chapters 4–10

I also know he’d never ask of her what he expects of me every day. To drench my hands in the blood of innocents and push it back into their bodies. Witness the horror and still come back the next day. And a small part of me, a very small one, begrudges him for it.

The late-afternoon sun filtering through the stained windows pools in the middle of the living room, turning the Arabian rug under us into something ethereal.

My gold is still under there, buried, but Layla’s is here. Gold that Hamza gave her as part of her dowry.

The clouds are congealed and huddled together, moments before a storm.

But I don’t say the rest of what I’m thinking. That I’m only humoring her. That I’m torn between my duty to my brother and to the hospital, the ropes holding me on each side both fraying at the edges.

“We don’t speak the language. We can barely speak English as it is, and we have no family there. We’ll be stranded in the middle of nowhere, and there are many who would try and take advantage of us. Refugees are being swindled out of everything they own, you know that. Not to mention kidnapped.”

“Don’t you think the Syrian dictatorship is more like a cancer that has been growing in Syria’s body for decades, and the surgery, despite the risks, is better than submitting to the cancer? With something so deeply entrenched in our roots, change doesn’t come easy. It has a heavy price.”

A plume of silver smoke obscures him from my view.

My first day at the hospital was akin to being dropped with no swimming lessons into the deep end.

Kenan opens the building’s front door slowly and gives me a tentative look.

His whole demeanor changes. Like he’s ashamed.

Carefully, I make sure there is no more debris sticking around before stitching her wound up. Every puncture through her skin sends a fresh wave of pain for her, Kenan, and me. The suture is ugly and will definitely leave a scar, but she’s alive and that’s all that matters.

Her fatigue is so palpable I feel it on my own skin.

I wait with bated breath, praying it’s not what I think it is.

Khawf materializes in front of me, and the uneasiness opens the blackest hole in my heart.

The afternoon’s hazy orange glow begins to dwindle, and it drags the harsh cold breeze inside Kenan’s half-destroyed apartment.

“One has to be smart in these times,” I say, trying to enforce a casual tone to my voice.

“I finished my second year last year. Bachelor’s in computer science. I had dreams of becoming an animator. Everything was going perfectly,” he muses, nodding his chin toward the laptop.

I shoot him a furious look. He doesn’t seem abashed in the slightest.

“Well, you’re not acting anxious,” she said indignantly. “So, I’m doing it for the both of us.”

By “Doctor” they meant the president, Bashar al-Assad, who was an ophthalmologist. The irony of a man who was drenched in innocent blood taking a vow to do no harm was not lost on me.

I stared at my devil's ivy, admiring the veins jutting through the leaves, the intricate details.

I become a renowned pharmacologist, and he becomes a famous animator.

Our future is bleak. A half-destroyed apartment, with his little sister fighting for her life. Our life is the stabs of hunger, frozen limbs, orphaned siblings, bloodied hands, old shrapnel, fear of tomorrow, silent tears, and fresh wounds.

His smile grows wider until his laugh joins mine. Every time we look at each other, we double up with mirth. The Arab proverb has never been truer: The worst of outcomes is what is most hilarious.

“It’s excellent. Lama, drink some more water, please.” She obliges.

Any form of protest, peaceful or not, is a threat to the dictatorship. So it doesn’t matter to them if I record or not. I live in a place the Free Syrian Army protects. We’re all in the same danger, because we’re all in Old Homs. I’m complicit just by existing here. If I’m guilty either way, I might as well protest.

I don’t believe he’s that indifferent to the threat of being arrested.

Is this how I sound to her? So stubborn I can’t see the way my actions are devastating those around me? Honorable as they may be, it doesn’t lessen their destruction.

“Yusuf can take care of things until I’m back. He’s not incompetent.”

I remember it all, the stench of oxidized blood, the faint screams echoing against my ears.

My voice took on a pleading tone, and I began to hate myself too. To grovel to our murderers and torturers.

But it’s clear from the flickering flames in his eyes and the suppressed agony in his words: He knows that a desolate future awaits him if he doesn’t leave.

No Syrian family has evaded the dictatorship’s cruelty.

“All right. I guess...this is goodbye.”
I chew on my tongue, feeling a bit crestfallen at that word.

The smile she gives me mirrors Kenan’s in its melancholy.

If I offend him, he might not get me a boat, even if I offer him all the gold in the world. Just to spite me.

My bones are made from steel and I’m busy trying to collect the pieces of my heart to sew them back together for tomorrow’s inevitable hell.

There’s an open wound on his forehead. His hazel eyes are narrowed with displeasure and there’s a mottle of bruises across his cheeks.

But deep down in my heart, I know it is him. Even if what is before me is an apparition, Hamza must be suffering right now.