"No land to light on" by Yara Zgheib

An audio book.

Sama (a Harvard PhD student - bird/human migration) is waiting at arrivals at Boston airport, pregnant. Her waters break. She has an emergency birth at 28 weeks. Her husband Hadi (a refugee) already lives there, but he's having trouble when returning at customs. He's been in Jordan dealing with his father's death. He's sent back to Jordan. Later he finds out that Trump has banned flights. It's 2017.

We go back to how they met, and Sama's departure from Damascus. The PoV switches between him and her. She wanted to go to the US. He fled there, missing home. The timelines jump around - not confusingly, but more than strictly necessary.

He's worried about being returned to Syria from Jordan - he's a wanted man there. His Jordan visa only lasts a month. His US visa has been revoked. He visits the US embassy in Jordan, but Trump's ban had started so suddenly that nobody knows what to do. But at least he can sometimes phone her.

He fears (puzzlingly) that his son won't speak Arabic. He suggests that she takes the baby from the incubator and fly to Jordan - or anywhere. The baby is very premature, quite likely to die. She spends nights in the hospital. He survives. She packs her husband's possessions into 2 cardboard boxes. He leaves his Jordan hotel room, throws away his passport.

Her prof tell her that he and his mother had to flee from Hungary, that his unhappy mother never properly learnt English. He never saw his father again. But he has faith in the American Dream.

Symbolic bird migration details are inserted. There aren't so many migrating birds nowadays - they're often hunted in the middle East and elsewhere. They grow anxious when it's time to leave, leaving altogether. Their flight-paths sometimes make little sense. They have an important role in spreading seeds, giving plants a chance to survive climatic changes.

I don't find admin/redtape problems interesting even if they're unfair. And the reasons for their attraction to each other aren't obvious.

Other reviews

• Zachary Houle (No Land to Light On, despite its crucial subject matter, is deeply flawed in places. There’s text interspersed throughout the novel about the migratory pattern of birds (Sama’s area of expertise) that doesn’t add much to the book — and, at times, I wasn’t sure what the point of these interjections was or what they had to do with the events between Hadi and Sama. ... Finally, there isn’t a lot of backstories to these characters aside from when they met and how their romance developed)
• Lorraine Berry