Yara Zgheib’s very moving story follows the fates of Sama and Hadi, a young couple who cling to the love they feel for each other, are desperate to be reunited and to continue to build the better life they’d dreamt of for themselves in the US. But, trapped in the bureaucratic nightmare of Trump’s inhumane edicts, their ‘American Dream’ seems to slip further and further away. The author’s portrayal of the daily struggles they face as they remain continents apart, feeling powerless to influence what is happening to them and with Sama also having to watch her young son struggle to cling on to his fragile hold on life, was so evocatively captured that there were many moments when I felt moved to tears … although these were matched by at least as many moments when I felt anger about how immigrants and refugees are all too often treated.
Through her two main characters the author explores the immigrant/refugee experiences from their different perspectives, illustrating that people’s reasons for leaving their homelands are not homogeneous. Knowing that her options had she remained in Damascus would have been severely limited, Sama emigrated for opportunity, arriving in Boston in 2010, at the age of seventeen, on a scholarship to study anthropology at Harvard. Seven years later she feels settled and is studying for her PhD, writing her dissertation on parallels between human and avian migratory patterns, focusing on red knots, tiny seabirds whose numbers are in steep decline in North America due to the dwindling of habitats along their annual 15,000-kilometre journey from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. Hadi’s motivation for leaving Syria was to seek safety. Having spent two years in an over-crowded prison because of his active opposition to Assad’s brutal regime, he knew his life was still in danger and, a year after his release, arrived in Boston as a refugee in November 2015. Just five days after his arrival he meets Sama at a ‘welcome to America’ reception at Harvard where, still feeling totally disoriented, he gives a speech thanking all those who had helped him find refuge.
As the story moves backwards and forwards in time, the reader discovers more about their different reasons for leaving Syria, the families they have left behind, their different reactions to living as an immigrant in a foreign country, their growing love for each other, their marriage, their hopes for the future as they prepare for the birth of their baby and then their increasing despair as all their efforts to be reunited seem doomed to failure and they recognise that there is nothing certain about their future. Interwoven through the story are excerpts from Sama’s dissertation about bird migration, exploring why, when most bird species don’t migrate, some face long, perilous journeys. In fact, approximately a third of the billions of birds which do migrate annually don’t survive the journey. Although the author’s metaphorical use of avian migration to echo some of the parallels with the human experience could have felt clichéd, I think she used it very effectively to reflect the huge risks people are prepared to take to seek a better life and to escape danger and oppression. But, like the birds, for many their journey is fraught with danger, some are fated to never reach their destination and often even those who do will still face an uncertain future. Just one of the questions these comparisons raises is why human beings are capable of feeling in awe of bird migration and are sympathetic to the fate of these creatures on their perilous journeys, yet fail to extend similar sentiments to human migrants.
Using beautifully lyrical language, Yara Zgheib has offered her readers profound insights into the psychological, physical and economic struggles faced by those who seek a better life away from their original homeland and I’m sure I won’t be alone in feeling deeply moved by this unforgettable story. She introduces it with this apposite quote from Michael Ondaatje, who has first-hand knowledge of what the migration journey feels like:
‘With no light to land on, they look back without nostalgia, and look forward with a frayed hope.’
I loved how, without making any attempt to protect her readers from the pain and fear being felt by Sama and Hadi, she managed to capture their hope that they did have a shared future to look forward to, as well as their belief that the love they felt for each other would survive their separation. I hope they found their light to land on.