“When the tension receded there was a calm, the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.”

I like the premise of the book and I personally thought the touch of magic realism was interesting. As the daughter of immigrants from the Middle East, fleeing a revolution similar to the one Saeed and Nadia witness in their city, this was a necessary read. Admittedly, the writing was meh at times and reading paragraph-long sentences with or without proper punctuation was tiresome. I think the best part about this book is that it’s so relevant to our modern day, and the last third of the novel really develops that. The ending was refreshingly realistic and overall, migration is becoming increasingly more important to read about given current circumstances.