As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow

Description

Eighteen-year-old pharmacy student Salama Kassab has become a hospital volunteer in Homs, treating civilians as the Syrian uprising brings bombardment, shortages, and mounting loss to her city. She is responsible for her pregnant sister-in-law, but every effort to arrange their escape conflicts with Salama's conviction that abandoning Syria means abandoning people who still need her. Trauma takes the form of Khawf, an embodiment of fear who presses her to leave, while her growing connection with Kenan offers both hope and another reason to hesitate. As violence narrows the future, Salama must decide what survival, duty, and home mean when no choice is free of grief. The novel combines wartime realism, romance, and psychological intensity in a portrait of young people preserving tenderness under siege.

Themes