As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

by Zoulfa Katouh

Layla’s home has lost its spark, the colors completely faded, leaving a sunken gray shade in their wake. It’s a husk of a home.

“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.”

With time, memories distort, and I know I’ll forget his exact features. I’ll forget Baba’s brown hair, streaked with gray, and the gentle twinkle in his eyes. I’ll forget how Hamza is at least two heads taller and that he and I share the same shade of brown hair. I’ll forget the dimples in Mama’s cheeks and her smile, which lights up the world.

“I promise,” I manage to whisper. Two words were never heavier.

I’m not a surgeon. I wasn’t made to cut into bodies, stitch wounds, and amputate limbs, but I made myself become that person.

Working here has hardened and softened my heart in ways I never guessed it would.

Death is a far more merciful end than living every day in agony.

“Auntie—don’t cry—when I go to Heaven—I’ll tell God—everything,”

“I’m pretty sure my parents’ souls are glaring at me from Heaven right now for accepting. But I was outwitted.”

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.

Our souls fit together perfectly from our first conversation.

We live a long life together, partners in crime, until our souls meet their Creator.

The Arab proverb has never been truer: The worst of outcomes is what is most hilarious.

“I don’t know. You were looking behind me as if the devil himself were standing there, and I’m too scared to turn around and check myself.”

When I leave, it won’t be easy. It’s going to shred my heart to ribbons and all the pieces will be scattered along Syria’s shore, with the cries of my people haunting me till the day I die.

“You honestly think I’d let you walk alone? When there could be snipers?” “Do you have a secret invisible airplane I can take?” “Ha. I’m coming with you,” he says, putting on his jacket. “No you’re not. Your sister needs you.” “I’m sorry, are you my mother?” he argues. “I make my own decisions, thank you very much. Let’s go.”

“Revolution, Salama,” Kenan says. His smile is sad. “It’s a revolution.”

“If that boy changes your mind, Salama,” Khawf continues, “I’ll make it so that you don’t even remember what flowers are.”

“Salama.” My heart skips a beat when he pronounces my name. All soft and warm. “I want to do this.”

His eyes soften and I see gold circling his irises. For another moment, we stare at each other, and I finally realize that this boy with the old sweater and the disheveled brown hair who wears his heart on his sleeve is beautiful. Standing in the middle of this ravaged, torn city, he is beautiful and real.

No matter what happens, you remember that this world is more than the agony it contains. 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.”

His gaze only on her, his eyes shining like the stars in the sky.

Those were the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.

Two words are enough to shatter whatever flimsy illusion we’d built between us.

The toll of yesterday’s massacre has clearly done more damage to his resolve than the whole year combined.

“It all comes down to one truth, Salama. This land is my home. I don’t have another one. Leaving is a death in itself.”

Will my heart even care that I’ll be parted from him within a month?

He analyzes my expression, and some emotion sears through his eyes. I catch it before it disappears and fold it into my heart to replay later when I’m alone.

We’d be sitting right here, huddled in thick scarves and coats. He’d lace his fingers through mine and I’d marvel at how much bigger his hand is. He’d kiss my knuckles and I’d feel like I was floating on a cloud.

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 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.”

“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.”

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.

I relish his name. It leaves a sweet aftertaste on my tongue.

Is he too ashamed to tell me he wants to leave? I see the similarities between us so clearly. But as Layla is my weakness, his siblings are his.

Syria is just a word to them. But to us, she’s our life. I can’t leave her.”

Those beautiful, hurting eyes of his.

“Yeah, she came back home talking about this girl who’s a bubble of life. Whose confidence and joy infected everyone around her.” Heat envelops me whole. I miss that girl.

“The eldest child, all the responsibility on your shoulders. And instead of taking the safe route of studying medicine, which you could have, you followed your heart and studied what you love. Even after everything you’ve been through, there’s light in your eyes. You still laugh. So I can only imagine how you were before. I’d have felt self-conscious about how free-spirited you are. How you see the world in all its colors and shades of beauty. I’d have worried I couldn’t keep up.” I stop talking because the way he’s staring at me is making butterflies flap their wings in my stomach.

I wish you’d come with me. I wish we could fall in love.

Khawf’s voice is as deadly as nightshade. “If you’re not careful, Salama, you might become the instrument of your destruction.”

I need to breathe in something that isn’t blood and bile and guts.

“With all the destruction happening down there, it’s easy to forget the beauty that’s up here. The sky is so beautiful after rainfall.”

The sunset is gorgeous, but it pales in comparison to him.

He’s saturated in gold, and I feel my breath catch.

“There are enough people hurting you,” he whispers. “Don’t be one of them.”