Desensitized: When Tragedy Feels Normal

by M.N.

Ever since senior year of high school I haven’t quite had the opportunity to sit down and read as I used to before and during grade 10. I used to be quite an avid reader and I have a bookshelf full of books that keeps growing as the days go by. Now in grade 12 those opportunities to sit down with a book are ever diminishing so when the grade 12 English summative came around I was finally able to not only read a new book but also get graded for it.

The summative was to find a book that every high school student should read before graduating. I had quite a list in my mind, but I chose to venture out to discover other genres for once and picked As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh. A story of a 18 year old Syrian girl in the midst of a civil war, or as some might call it, a revolution. I rarely ever pick up books revolving around Middle Eastern, South Asian, or Muslim dominated countries because as a Pakistani Muslim I can smell the storyline from a mile away. If that wasn’t enough, I also used to go to a Muslim school in Regina for around 8 years which strongly believed that the best way to relate to us students was to make us read literature about the poor oppressed Muslims. That was probably a major player on why I did not read books of such genres. They usually portrayed Islam and the Middle East as some weird, backwards place where all sadness comes from.

The main character Salama is 18 years old and she is a hijabi living in Syria, Homs. The story starts with her losing her mom to a bomb blast and her father and brother are taken as prisoners. If you don’t know about Syria, it was under the rule of Bashar Al-Assad until about a year ago. Long story short, Syria did not thrive under his rule. Salama is a pharmacy student who is quickly promoted to an ER doctor as more and more doctors are targeted. Salama lives with her 8 month pregnant sister-in-law Layla and she has this hallucination called Khawf that constantly shows her her past and what the future might be like if she chooses to stay in Syria. Later on she meets Kenan and the two grow together and end up married before they both leave Syria in the last few pages of the book to live a better life. Most of the story takes place in Syria though and it follows Salama’s daily struggles. We later find out, near the end of the novel, that Salama hallucinated her sister-in-law for approximately 5 months, completely believing that she was still alive and well. This is just a brief summary of the novel to give context to my rant.

This book has changed my entire perspective on this genre. When I was nearing the end of the novel tears were flowing down my face and my heart was breaking. It really reminded me of how there are people out there with unfathomable strength and they are barely ever acknowledged for it. Nowadays with social media so easily available and the news channel constantly reciting the same thing for hours, it's easy to become desensitized to content. When you’re scrolling on your phone and you’re hit with tragic news but it is followed immediately with a video of a funny cat, and then again you see devastation and the cycle repeats a grand total of 4 times when it becomes old news. News channels follow the same cycle, they will repeat the exact same headlines over and over until it sounds normal. When did we as a society decide that mass destruction was normal?

This relates to the novel because it is genuine stories that make you realize how heavy the weight of a certain situation is. I am not here to talk about specific countries because this applies to so many. There are around 2 billion people in war torn countries around the world. I read one book about one story that took me around one week. I cannot imagine how long it would take to read 2 billion stories of people living in circumstances we cannot fathom. Stories like Salama’s are so very crucial to our society as we reach a time where empathy is needed more than ever. To read about something with such emotional weight makes you pause for a second. When I was reading about Salama and how she found love and hope and her bravery in rough times, it helped me pick apart headlines from stories. There are people behind those statistics that we see on a screen and I fear we are forgetting that

*I realize this isn’t much of a book review and that it is more about why this book is important, but I feel like these are all topics that must be considered and, honestly, I didn’t have enough time to wrap things up properly :(*

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