Solidarity is An Act of Love

On writing love stories, solidarity and navigating the apocalypse together

For me, 2023 will always be the year of the love stories—but perhaps, not in the way that you might expect.

It started logically enough, with my book: Love Across Borders. After spending years mulling over the idea of what it might be like to write a book of love stories that have been shaped by borders—sharing it with friends, finding a publisher, and of course, meeting the incredible people whose stories are its beating heart, it was time to share it with the world.

Sure, I still had a few things to do—I had to record the audiobook, for one (which you can listen to here), and I had to do a few promotional pieces ahead of the release (my favorites are this one, this one and this one), but then, the book would be out in the world, having her own life, at the mercy of critics, social media and a world that loves to pick apart women who put themselves out there, who are as woefully imperfect as their first, second and third drafts.

Naturally, I was terrified. It was one thing to write the book, a beautiful process that I now look back on with rose-colored glasses (even though it often felt like torture), where it was just me and the stories, figuring out how they wanted to be braided together. But of course, I had included my own story as well. What had I been thinking to put my story out there, to reveal my inner world to strangers for their never-ending judgement? Of course, I was accustomed to writing, but being a journalist and an occasional opinion writer is different—we have facts, figures, interviews and arguments to hide behind. A political opinion might be slightly personal, but it is hardly an exposé of your innermost secrets, your naked thought processes and the things that make you human.

But then, the day finally came—and while I was relieved that critics had (mostly) incredibly kind things to say, the people I fell in love with the most, were the readers.

Launch Day <3

“Your book and your story have helped me regain sanity and feel less alone as I navigate a relationship torn up by borders,” a woman, who I don’t think will mind if I identify her as Madi Williamson wrote to me. Later, she started a book club, where all we do is talk about border liberation and love—(the best part is, that it isn’t too late for you to join!)

“I just wanted to let you know that I used a picture of me and my partner reading Love Across Borders in the personal photos that we sent for our I-130 application,” another woman wrote to me. “I think it should be required reading for all immigration officers and imagine them looking it up, reading it, and being more sympathetic towards our cases.”

Every time I received a message like this, I thought about the numerous ways that so many of us have been told that our stories do not matter. Our governments demand numerous papers in order to decide whether or not we deserve to be in the same countries as our partners, and plenty of people had not understood why I wanted to write a book about this, dismissing the idea of heartwarming refugee romcoms as something that didn’t matter. But now I know better—over the past six months, people have reached out to me from around the world, from other US citizens who have fallen in love with people from the Middle East and Mexican-Americans grappling with the same questions of passports and privilege and love to numerous others who have experienced the injustice of being undocumented and falling in love.

I also found myself thinking about how many of the injustices that I wrote about in the book—preventable deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, the Muslim ban and bureaucracies that bind people. After I’d filed the last edit, an earthquake rattled southern Turkey—and many of the refugees living there were once again displaced. Around the time that the book launched in June, a submarine with five some-odd billionaires on board went missing in the Atlantic Ocean, around the same time that a boat carrying 750 refugees capsized in the Mediterranean. One search party was far more extensive than the other. Can you guess which one?

Now, we are once again faced with a moment of unimaginable global injustice—as Israel razes Gaza to the ground, and the world turns the other cheek as Palestinians are massacred and those who show solidarity with them are shunned. It was strange for me to be here, in London, no longer in my beloved Middle East, no longer processing stories by furiously filing articles, and instead sitting with these emotions—the grief, sadness and anger that this was happening in a part of the world that is so close to my heart. Salem and I started making videos—hoping that we could transform our rage into something useful and informative, so that we could show that solidarity is not support for terrorism, or hatred of Jews. Solidarity is an act of love.

But what about love—the love that unites us, the love that saves us? As tempting as it was to keep chronicling every border injustice, every act of cruelty committed in a world divided by passports and papers, I wanted to hold onto love as the one thing that might be able to cause borders to come crashing down, that might allow ideologues to open their minds to other ways of seeing the world. Obsessing over love felt like a daring act of resistance, a last resort to resilience—and besides, I wanted to be known for love rather than disaster.

So, I kept writing love stories—a Canadian journalist even called me a love story journalist, and for a few months I had a column at Hyphen Magazine where I interviewed different Muslim couples across Europe (this one is my favorite), but it wasn’t the kind of love that fascinated me anymore—or perhaps, it was no longer the only kind of love that fascinated me. While I was writing Love Across Borders, I had the privilege of reading “All About Love” by bell hooks—and it opened my hopelessly romantic eyes towards the numerous kinds of love that have nothing to do with romantic—often severely edited—love stories. As much as I loved sitting with couples, and pestering them with questions about everything from how they met, to the most difficult challenges that they faced and their advice for lasting love before mapping out their stories as if they’re characters in some kind of epic novel, I started to wonder about the other love stories that existed outside of this traditional, romantic formula.

I became frustrated with the way that the world prioritizes romantic love. Why should people be made to feel less-than? It felt like I had so many friends who felt a pressure—that didn’t even seem like their own—to find “the one” so that they wouldn’t be alone, that they were content to settle with mediocrity rather than find that love within themselves, or the loving community around them. What if your great love story is not the romantic kind? Our world is so broken, so utterly fucked up—we need all of the love that we can get.

Of course, romantic love still fascinated me, but less so the formula and more everything that happens in between. What does it mean to love someone over the years, to learn and grow and adapt to your partner’s growth and change, the challenges that present themselves? What about what happens next, after the last chapter of the love story—when life is back to the chaos that exists outside of the narrative arch, and you’re creating your happily ever after in a world on fire? I became curious about the ways that we are embracing tradition, and the ways that we are rejecting it—where will it save us, and where does it no longer serve us? How will loving each other—as lovers, as friends, as fellow stewards of the earth—save us from the hellscape we are living in?

So, these are the thoughts that I am carrying into the new year—and the ideas that I hope to write around more. Thank you to everyone who has supported my work over the years, who read and loved Love Across Borders the way she deserve to be loved, and shared her with your friends and communities. Getting to share her with the world was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done, and the greatest blessing of all time. If you would like to help her continue her journey in the world, and reach more people, please consider leaving a review on either Amazon (if you bought her there) or Goodreads (if you didn’t). Buying or gifting a subscription to this newsletter is abundantly appreciated—and I promise that you’ll get the first glimpses into whatever comes next, (may it be filled with more love, and less hell scape).

Until then…

Anna