As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

by Zoulfa Katouh

We held our heads high and planted lemon trees in acts of defiance, praying that when they came for us, it’d be a bullet to the head. Because that was far more merciful than what awaited in the bowels of their prison system. She took

I won’t let them own my fears.

“Feelings give you hope, Salama.” She smiles. “Don’t you think we could use a bit of that now?”

We can have happiness, Salama. Maybe it doesn’t come in a cookie-cutter format, but we will take the fragments and we will rebuild it.”

“There’s life in the smallest, simplest of things. I see why this is happening. Freedom was never an easy price; it’s paid with—” “Blood. More than we ever thought possible,”

it’s like loving the ocean. It’s unpredictable, the blue sparkling water turning from heavenly to horrifying in a second.

There are no innocents in the eyes of evil.

“It might sound cheesy, but I’m sure our souls met way before they found their way into our bodies. I think that’s where we know each other from.”

Fate. A complex word that holds many doors leading to countless pathways in life, all controlled by our actions.

It reminds me that as long as the lemon trees grow, hope will never die.

even if we’d been born on opposing poles of the world, the strings of fate would still have drawn us together, intertwining, evermore intertwining.