As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow

Zoulfa Katouh has much in common with her narrator, Salama. They share a burning love for their native Syria, though Katouh has spent much of her life in the West (Canada, Germany and Switzerland, I think), while the country of Salama’s childhood is now almost lost beneath the devastation of civil war. Both are pharmacists, though Katouh is highly qualified after years of training, while Salama’s university course in Homs was cut short by the conflict after a single year. Both have ambitions to write for young readers. Both are keenly sensitive to the emotions of others and themselves. Both retain the hope that one day peace will return to Syria and, God willing, they will be there to relish it.

This debut novel swiftly immerses its reader in Salama’s daily routine at Zaytouna Hospital during the siege of Homs, which began in 2011. The Free Syrian Army has held President al-Hassad’s forces at bay for several months, but long-term prospects of survival for the surrounded city are bleak. Salama and her colleagues work long hours day after day; her account spares nothing in its detail. The hospital no longer has any trained surgeons, so she performs amputations, removes shrapnel and carries out whatever procedures need doing. Secretaries and porters work as nurses. All too often, she closes the eyes of adults and children whose lives could not be saved.

Salama’s domestic life offers no respite. Her Mama died in the conflict, which also took Baba and Hamza (her father and older brother) to their deaths – or to prison and torture. She shares an apartment with pregnant Layla, Hamza’s wife and Salama’s closest friend from childhood days; Salama had promised her brother she’d care for Layla and the unborn child. For Salama, the dilemma is whether she should stay to save lives at the hospital or should she find the money for risky passages for Layla and herself to cross the Mediterranean for a new life in the West?

Religious and cultural practices such as arranged marriages and the wearing of the hijab are unquestioned and observed in Salama’s daily life. So when she meets Kenan, a young man as passionate as herself in his opposition to the regime, and their relationship grows ever deeper, each treats the other with awareness and consideration born of their rooted beliefs. Their first kiss is long delayed. Their behaviour may contrast sharply with that familiar to many YA readers accustomed to the dominant culture of the West.

Kenan is a photographer, for whom filming the siege and broadcasting his reports online to an uninformed world is all-important; at Salama’s suggestion, he records the daily crises at the hospital. So, although he is the sole carer for two younger siblings he would love to send to safety in Europe, he cannot leave his task in Homs unfinished. He and Salama confront similar dilemmas.

Salama’s work and her caring for Layla leave little space for herself. Katouh’s treatment of the mounting pressures on Salama is impressively daring. Early in the book, we meet the mysterious Khawf, immaculately dressed, cigarette always in hand, who comes to Salama only when she’s alone. He is at once menacing and protective, aggressive in his advice: she must leave the hospital and secure those boat passages – she’d promised Hamza she’d care for Layla. Perceptive young readers may realise that Khawf is a hallucination, a consistent voice in the tumult raging in Salama’s mind, though his words often bring fear rather than comfort. Later, Salama will encounter an even more startling hallucination, another consequence of highly plausible PTSD.

The issues which drive this lengthy novel are written with unrelenting intensity, from the gentle love of Salama and Kenan to the graphic horror of the hospital. Both the subject matter and the poetic complexity of some of the prose may well make for a tough read; but the novel’s final sentence bravely completes its title: ‘as long as the lemon trees grow, hope will never die’.