The Other Side

While Omar was learning to survive France, his family was learning to survive without him.
The Other Side tells the story that happened in the spaces between Omar's letters - the nine months his mother Amira worked sixteen-hour shifts and hid a complicated pregnancy; the months his brother Ismail spent learning French one sentence at a time, saving the most important one for last; the slow, painful transformation of Awad, who once threw a punch and spent the rest of the year quietly trying to become someone who wouldn't.
And Hashim - soldier, father, Brigadier General - learning that the things you are and the things you want to be are not always the same country.
This book runs parallel to Book 2. The letters arrive. The lines go down for eleven days. A photo of an apartment appears in an envelope with no explanation. A UNHCR letter arrives on a morning when Amira is too tired to open it.
She opens it anyway.
A story about the people who wait. And what waiting costs. And what it means when the waiting is finally over.