ALU Summer Book Club: An interview with Zeina Sleiman, author of Where the Jasmine Blooms

Zeina Sleiman’s Where the Jasmine Blooms is a rich, beautifully observed debut novel about the ties that stretch across borders and generations. In this political historical thriller and Muslim feminist love story, Sleiman paints a vivid portrait of displacement and endurance, where the scent of jasmine, or a tradition can bridge the distance between past and present. When its central character Yasmine goes to Lebanon seeking the family, culture, and connection that her Palestinian mother hid during their life in Toronto, she finds herself embarking on a mission, along with her cousin Reem, to uncover a long-held family secret. Where the Jasmine Blooms is a heartfelt exploration of identity, resilience, and the enduring presence of the past.

Buy your own copy here on All Lit Up for 15% off (or find a copy from your local indie using our Shop Local finder).

Read on for our interview with the author.

All Lit Up: Where the Jasmine Blooms follows the cousins Yasmine, a Canadian-Palestinian visiting her family’s homeland in Lebanon, and Reem, her maternal cousin who still lives in the Palestinian refugee camp in Trablous. both women speak to their intersected experiences of being Muslim and a woman, despite their very different contexts. How did you explore these intersecting identities in the novel?

Zeina Sleiman: For me, faith has always been a guiding post to how I navigate the world. For Reem and Yasmine, it’s sort of the same thing. They are both imperfect Muslims that are trying to navigate the circumstances of their lives as best as they can and faith provides them with a blueprint of how to manage that understanding internally. As for the aspects of their womanhood, I think I wrote this book as an ode to Arab women and all the sacrifices they make for their families and children, sacrifices that often go unnoticed by those around them. Yasmine has the privileges of education and a passport, but she’s also burdened by the patriarchy. Reem is a fighter and her personality is derived from a lot of women I know — my grandmother, for one, and many of my aunts. Yasmine is more of a quiet reflector who sort of “takes things” and copes silently. Through their relationship, I was hoping to give them both a means to find comfort and value in the other and my hope is that all the women who read this will find some comfort and validation through their relationship as well.

ALU: We also see that there is a tension between the cousins: between those living in diaspora and those still at home. We see the pros and cons of each, and what each cousin fears she missed out on. How did you approach writing refugee and diaspora experiences in Where the Jasmine Blooms?

Zeina Sleiman: This is a tension I personally lived with. When my parents immigrated to Canada in the late 80s, they were the only ones who came so I grew up separated from my extended family. We ended up moving back to Lebanon for a few years in the 90s and that gave me a little taste of what life could be like surrounded by those who spoke the same tongue as my parents, who understood me, and who could share stories of our history. I was still young at the time and didn’t understand how significant it was, but later as I got older and spent many of my summers in Lebanon, I’d hear snippets of stories from a previous life. From Yasmine’s perspective, I wanted to explore the things that get lost through migration and exile, our connection to our histories and ancestors and the pain that it generates.

As for Reem, I spend a lot of my academic and professional time working with refugees and migrants, and I tried to use my scholarly hat with Reem. But more significantly, she’s also drawn from the experiences of my family who, for the most part, grew up stateless. I once asked one of my cousins in Lebanon if she wanted to go back to Palestine. She looked at me like it was a ridiculous question and her answer was, “What do I care? I just want to get out of here.” And that I think speaks to the essence of Reem. She can’t afford to miss her history or her ties because for her, dispossession has been the source of tribulation and all she wants is peace. Yasmine has the privilege to stop and ask the questions that Reem doesn’t.

ALU: The novel also shows the richness and variety of Islamic cultures in the Middle East (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and the Emirates are all mentioned in the novel, and quite distinctly from one another) when in the west, the region is so often depicted as a singular entity. Where does this add to and improve on the literary canon?

Zeina Sleiman: I really hope that this book gives readers a taste of what life and society is like in Lebanon. I’ve always been taken aback when people speak of Lebanon (or other parts of the Middle East) through very narrow characteristics that typically include angry Arab men, women in burkas everywhere, and Aladdin music.

For many Arabs, Lebanon is the oasis of the region with its beautiful beaches and mountains. It’s also a very rich and diverse society, with a mixture of Islamic and Christian communities. It has a deep cultural life with music and art, a free press, one of the best post-secondary sectors in the region, and it’s also relatively free in comparison to its neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, it suffers from political corruption and poverty and ongoing attacks from its neighbour, but Lebanon has always been a place where different ideas and political perspectives flourish openly.

I hope this piques readers’ interest in the region and they gain some understanding of how Arab countries are diverse in the way they govern themselves and the social norms that dominate their areas.

ALU: In the novel, the chapters largely swap perspectives between the cousins Yasmine and Reem. How did you get into the headspace of each? How are they the same, and how are they different?

Zeina Sleiman: I flesh out characters intimately in my mind before I write them on paper, and I think this helped create the two distinct voices. I think about all their life details, their interests, their passions, their fears, and their lives since birth. They are very much real to me in my mind. As for the process, I wrote each character separately. In my writing sessions, it was either “time with Reem” or “time with Yasmine.” Reem was a bit harder to write — I cried a few times in my revisions for her sections. So, if I had the emotional capacity to sit with Reem, I did that, but if I didn’t and needed a little more love and exploration, then I sat with Yasmine. 

ALU: On that note, there’s a moment in the book which I won’t spoil, but something devastating happens in Reem’s life, after which she “drops out” of the narrative – the next few chapters are all from Yasmine’s perspective. I found it really resonant with how humans process loss, that they cease to tell their own stories for a while. How did you approach grief and loss in this book?

Zeina Sleiman: For many Palestinians, our lives are marred by death and loss. There’s also this sort of shadow of oppression and injustice that follows us wherever we go. I think for me, one of the greater injustices lies in the grief and loss that is never resolved. I know that there are maybe some readers that will have wanted all the questions in the book answered, but I left some things out because I think that’s the reality of our life. A lot of Palestinians have had to accept that we will never get things back — there are questions that die with its people. My maternal grandparents died almost six years ago, and I was stricken with the grief caused by knowing that I will never hear their stories or be able to ask questions about our heritage and traditions. With each generation, those things get lost. Reem is a character who has to deal with this from both angles: feeling that justice will never be served on this earth while still having to figure out a way to move forward and build a better future. That forces one to leave things behind. 

ALU: There is a lot of political intrigue in the novel: Yasmine’s paternal uncle is a Lebanese government official who appears to be connected to corruption, if not partaking in it himself; her father – who may or may not be still alive – spoke for Palestinian liberation through his journalism. How did you research this book, which has currents of the political movements and conflicts from the end of the 20th century, 2006, when the events of the novel take place, and in some cases persist today?

Zeina Sleiman: I’m a political scientist and for a chunk of my undergraduate degree and Masters, I was heavily interested in the politics and history of the Middle East, so I drew on a lot of that. Books are referenced at the end, and The Modern History of Lebanon by Fawaz Traboulsi remains one of the best resources in the English language on Lebanon. Aside from that, I also relied on a lot of stories from my parents, uncles, and aunts who lived the realities of Yasmine’s father. My dad’s side of the family is also relatively politically involved in Lebanon, and their personal narratives and history were inspiration for some parts of the book.

ALU: Can you tell us what you are writing now? Is there another novel in the works?

Zeina Sleiman: Yes! I have two, one that is currently in edits with Roseway / Fernwood. This novel is more of a romance set against the backdrop of heightened anti-terrorism legislation. It’s set between Toronto and Dubai in the mid 2010s and follows two characters as they navigate difficult socio-political circumstances while falling in love.

I’m also working on a third novel that just received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. This one is going to be a little different, but it follows a journalist who investigates the case of a missing princess from a fictional Gulf country and then gets entangled in conspiracies. I’ve been characterizing this book as sort of a “Dubai Bling meets Crazy Rich Asians” but with political conspiracies and feminist resistance at its core. It’s still in its earlier stages of development so we’ll see how it turns out in the end.

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Zeina Sleiman is a Palestinian Canadian writer and educator based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (also known as Edmonton). She was born in Abu Dhabi and grew up between Montreal, Ottawa, and Lebanon. She is the recipient of grants from the Silk Road Institute and the Canada Council for the Arts. Where the Jasmine Blooms is her debut fiction.

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Major thanks to Zeina for answering our questions! Get Where the Jasmine Blooms here on All Lit Up for 15% off (discount code INTHECLUB2025), all summer long. And join us next Tuesday when the team meets for our book club discussion.

Keep on top of all summer book club happenings here.