Zoulfa Katouh

A love letter to Syria and its people, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is a speculative novel set amid the Syrian Revolution, burning with the fires of hope, love, and possibility. Perfect for fans of The Book Thief and Salt to the Sea.

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 had a normal teenager’s life. 
 
Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe. 
 
But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one 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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