Zoulfa Katouh

Burning with the fires of hope and possibility, AS LONG AS THE LEMON TREES GROW will sweep you up and never let you go. Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She was even supposed to be meeting a boy to talk about marriage. Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors. She knows that she should be thinking about leaving, but who will help the people of her beloved country if she doesn't? With her heart so conflicted, her mind has conjured a vision to spur her to action. His name is Khawf, and he haunts her nights with hallucinations of everything she has lost. But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, when she crosses paths with Kenan, the boy she was supposed to meet on that fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all. Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are-not a war, but a revolution-and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria's freedom.

As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow

Julia Rutgers

'I want you to hold on to that. 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 cookie-cutter format, but we will take the fragments and we will rebuild it.'

'You know, my mom told me about you that night.' [...]

'Yeah, she came back home talking about this girl who's a bubble of life. Whose confidence and joy infected everyone around her.'

Every lemon will bring forth a child and the lemons will never die out. 

The lemons are still growing, flowering, nourishing the revolution.

fc ♡

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

It’s not a war, Salama. It’s a revolution

"There is light, Salama,” she continues. “Despite the agony, we are free for the first time in over fifty years.”

❤ another reason to love this book are mentions like this 

"And don’t forget to pray. Prayers are answered when rain falls,”

"Auntie—don’t cry—when I go to Heaven—I’ll tell God—everything,” he chokes out.

There’s life in his eyes. Something I’m not used to seeing outside of Layla’s

“This is my country. If I run away—if I don’t defend it, then who will?”

"this is my home. For my entire life—my whole nineteen years—I’ve known no other. I’d be cutting out my heart by leaving. This land is me and I am her. My history, my ancestors, my family. We’re all here.”

As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow quotes

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