Seeds of Kirkuk

Fourteen-year-old Soraya Tabari knows every root of the pomegranate tree her grandmother planted in their Kirkuk courtyard — until a clerk with a clipboard gives her family forty-eight hours to leave it forever. Her father vanishes into a prison van; her mother hides their history inside a loom; her best friend flees across a border with a notebook of poems. Across sixteen years of camps, mountains and war, Soraya carries a pouch of seeds and a promise she may never be allowed to keep.