Love Across Borders

January 1, 2023

U.S. journalist Lekas Miller fell in love with Syrian Salem Rizk in Istanbul, where they were both reporting on the Syrian civil war. When Turkey began clamping down on refugees, leaving Salem with nowhere to go (he could not return to Syria), she worked her way through his asylum claims and the U.S. ban on Muslim immigrants to bring him to the United States as her husband. Here she recounts their story and those of similar couples while plumbing the history of discriminatory laws worldwide that have restricted travel.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2023
A freelance international correspondent examines the unique relationship challenges faced by couples with unequal passport and travel privileges. When Lekas Miller fell in love with a Syrian photojournalist in Turkey, she never dreamed their relationship would force her to rethink the nature of citizenship. As an American, she could "breeze through passport control gates of airports around the world with barely a glance at my documents." Her partner, Salem, could only visit 29 countries without a visa, and later, he was forced to confront the Trump administration's infamous Muslim ban. Lekas Miller interweaves an account of overcoming border politics to marry with stories of how other couples fought the government policies that tore them apart. Just as sudden changes in Turkish policies toward Syrians forced Salem to be deported into Kurdish-controlled Iraq, unfair policies toward south-of-the-border immigrant workers forced an American named Cecilia to follow her husband back to Mexico after he was deported for not wearing a seat belt. In remembering the way the Muslim ban forbade Salem from following the author to the U.S., she tells of the trials faced by another couple from the Middle East. Amal, a woman still living in Yemen, and Mohammed, who had begun a life in New York, struggled to be together in the wake of Trump's racist law. In order for them to be together, Mohammed had to go back to Yemen during wartime, marry Amal in secret, return to the U.S. to apply for her visa, and then wait for more than a year. Lekas Miller followed Salem to Iraq, where the two concocted a plan to live together and build documents needed to help them apply for an American spouse visa. Anyone interested in moving beyond the headlines to see the human face of immigration will find this book about the structural inequalities of cross-border relationships timely, thoughtful, and provocative. Eye-opening reading that ably blends the personal and the universal.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
This eye-opening account brings personal stories to the forefront of the international refugee crisis. The book is framed around the experiences of investigative journalist Miller, who holds a U.S. passport, and her beloved, Salem, a displaced Syrian national with a passport limited to a steadily decreasing number of countries. The two met in Turkey in 2015 and fell in love while chasing down news stories. After Salem was banned from Turkey, their world shrank, beginning their years-long quest just to be together. The lovers' story is actually just one part of this engaging narrative. Numerous accounts of other couples from various countries (Ukraine, Mexico, Honduras, Lebanon, Trinidad, Nigeria) are presented within histories of refugees and displaced individuals, passports and visas, boundaries and quotas, and the devastating effects these often-arbitrary decisions have on couples and families. Not all the personal stories have happy endings, and Miller reminds us that the cases for which outcomes are still pending are just representative microcosms of the devastating scenarios happening all over the world and being largely ignored by Western media. Sometimes heartwarming, sometimes excruciating, these engrossing accounts are now documented by a woman who speaks for thousands of star-crossed lovers.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2023

Amid roiling Middle East conflicts in 2015, Lebanese American journalist Miller met and fell in love with Syrian-born war correspondent Salem Rizk. Miller and Rizk's love story is the backdrop to sagas of myriad families and loved ones displaced and separated by war, chaos, and corruption. The book showcases migrants and refugees uprooted from homes who had to flee for their lives, but many found themselves without the right passport or documents. Blocked at borders, trapped in seemingly endless bureaucratic queues, or seeking smugglers to somewhere safer, their journeys show what escaping the violence of one's homeland looks like today. As the author details negotiating Rizk's U.S. asylum claims with Trump's Muslim ban and labyrinthine regulations in the UK and Europe, she exposes the pain and suffering of being divided by papers in a world rife with xenophobia, neofascism, and nationalistic domestic policies and politics. Miller calls for international border controls and immigration policies to yield to the fundamental human right to travel and to live together with loved ones. VERDICT This is an impassioned nonfiction narrative that interweaves the author's personal and professional lives to relate the hostile environment of a global migration crisis.--Thomas J. Davis

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.