S. K. Ali

On the trip of a lifetime, Adam and Zayneb must find their way back to each other in this surprising and romantic sequel to the “bighearted, wildly charming” (Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author) Love from A to Z. Adam and Zayneb. Perfectly matched. Painfully apart. Adam is in Doha, Qatar, making a map of the Hijra, a historic migration from Mecca to Medina, and worried about where his next paycheck will come from. Zayneb is in Chicago, where school and extracurricular stresses are piling on top of a terrible frenemy situation, making her miserable. Then a marvel occurs: Adam and Zayneb get the chance to spend Thanksgiving week on the Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, in Saudi Arabia. Adam is thrilled; it’s the reboot he needs and an opportunity to pray for a hijra in real life: to migrate to Zayneb in Chicago. Zayneb balks at the trip at first, having envisioned another kind of vacation, but then decides a spiritual reset is calling her name too. And they can’t wait to see each other—surely, this is just what they both need. But the trip is nothing like what they expect, from the appearance of Adam’s former love interest in their traveling group to the anxiety gripping Zayneb when she’s supposed to be “spiritual.” As one wedge after another drives them apart while they make their way through rites in the holy city, Adam and Zayneb start to wonder: was their meeting just an oddity after all? Or can their love transcend everything else like the greatest marvels of the world?

Love from Mecca to Medina

fc ♡

I wonder if people even know where the word “mecca” actually, originally came from. It came from Mecca with a capital M, the place in the Middle East where people have been gathering for thousands of years to visit the first site of worship in the world still standing (according to Muslim people).

Adam sat up and leaned to the side and caught Zayneb’s eyes from over Hanna’s shoulder. 

They smiled at each other, a secret dancing in their eyes. 

There was no significant news coverage. She wasn’t even named. And I just know she would have been if she’d been a white woman who’d been bombed from the sky. That sounds horrible. But why does it seem to sound less horrible when it’s brown or Black people who get killed like that?

 As one of my favorite writers, Teju Cole, put it, Daadi was an “unmournable” body. 

As I put it, I don’t think anyone should be okay thinking some lives are not worth fighting for, that brown and Black people dying don’t count as much

For flowers, I said I was a Venus flytrap, always ready to bite anyone who needed to be put into place. 

Adam said he was a succulent, if those were allowed to be called flowers, because he didn’t need that much attention and liked being in the background.

Almost every day I had to tell myself that I was worthy. Of being loved, respected, and living a beautiful life.

 Because deep down in that mushy space inside me, maybe because of years of being seen as unwanted by the world outside my home, I didn’t believe it.

 Which is ironic for someone who wanted to fight for the worth of others

with hardship comes ease, as promised in the deen. 

AND SEEK HELP THROUGH PATIENCE AND PRAYER 

 CALL UPON ME AND I WILL ANSWER and WHOEVER DOES AN ATOM’S WEIGHT OF GOOD WILL SEE IT

 IF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT ERUPTS WHILE YOU ARE PLANTING A SAPLING, CARRY ON AND PLANT IT

Adam let me be silent. For a long time. He didn’t say  Zayneb? Zay-by?  his nickname for me, which was a play on “baby.” 

There is only a story that begins anew each day.

And the earth—We have spread it out wide, and placed on it mountains firm, and caused [life] of every kind to grow on it in a balanced manner, and provided thereon means of livelihood for you as well as for all [living beings] whose sustenance does not depend on you. 

Love from Mecca to Medina quotes

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