What is it like to be ripped from your home, from those you love, from the life you’d envisioned … and for it to happen with no warning and little hope of return? Set in 2017 just as Donald Trump issues an Executive Order banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, No Land to Light On is the story of a young Syrian couple, Hadi Deeb and Sama Zayat, who live in Boston and are awaiting the birth of their first child. The Executive Order is issued just as Hadi flies back from a fleeting visit to Syria to bury his father. He is detained at the airport and deported.
Within a few hours Sama and Hadi lose the life they had and the life they were dreaming of. The pain and fear of their uprooting and separation, the different ways in which they cope and the difficult choices they face are conveyed in poetic prose which evokes feeling and prompts reflection on arbitrary power, systemic racism, and the tension between despair and hope.
Moving backwards and forwards in time, we learn about what led both Sama and Hadi to leave Syria, and about the joy and possibilities of their romance and marriage and imagined life in the ‘land of the brave and free’.
Sama is studying at Harvard, writing about bird migration, and within the narrative are lyrical passages about the migration of red knots; an extended metaphor for human experience and the nature of freedom, hope and home. The novel is full of harsh realities and yet speaks of the desire, the hope, the pull towards something more: “It has been observed that birds feel a sort of pain before taking off, almost like fear, and that nothing alleviates that feeling except the rapid motion of wings.”
A beautiful, challenging, intimate and very relevant read.
Within a few hours Sama and Hadi lose the life they had and the life they were dreaming of. The pain and fear of their uprooting and separation, the different ways in which they cope and the difficult choices they face are conveyed in poetic prose which evokes feeling and prompts reflection on arbitrary power, systemic racism, and the tension between despair and hope.
Moving backwards and forwards in time, we learn about what led both Sama and Hadi to leave Syria, and about the joy and possibilities of their romance and marriage and imagined life in the ‘land of the brave and free’.
Sama is studying at Harvard, writing about bird migration, and within the narrative are lyrical passages about the migration of red knots; an extended metaphor for human experience and the nature of freedom, hope and home. The novel is full of harsh realities and yet speaks of the desire, the hope, the pull towards something more: “It has been observed that birds feel a sort of pain before taking off, almost like fear, and that nothing alleviates that feeling except the rapid motion of wings.”
A beautiful, challenging, intimate and very relevant read.