New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love

New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Unseen Blossom reads almost like a fairy tale. Once Upon a Time, a princess meets a handsome commoner. They are given a task to go on a journey to retrieve a magical object. Along the way, they encounter other creatures that either help or hinder their progress giving them side quests that add to their journey. After much struggle, they reach their goal and fall in love.

Cut and dry, The Unseen Blossom would be no different from “Cinderella” or “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp,” but the authors, Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi made their fairytale much deeper than the usual clichés. Instead The Unseen Blossom is a beautiful allegorical tale about love and empathy that has plenty of romance and magic that the best fairy tales share. It is for all ages and people of all faiths.

Princess Zuli, an Afghan princess, visits her favorite fig tree in her garden but while caring for the tree she is pushed onto the path of Lamar, a shoemaker's son. The two encounter a rock creature that tells them that Afghanistan is a country torn apart by war, bloodshed, and inequality. What can help save it is a fig blossom. The two are destined to work together to find it and bring it to Kabul.

This will be an odd quest. (After all, who has ever seen a fig tree blossom?) But journey they do through a landscape of fairies, royal fish, flying horses, talking birds and many strange landscapes with such names as The Garden of Tulips, The Garden of Lily Ponds, and The Garden of Roses to reach their goal.

It's kind of strange to say this about a book that has no illustrations, but The Unseen Blossom is a visually beautiful book. Samad and Younossi's writing creates evocative word pictures that are vibrant almost hallucinatory. The secret is in the little details such as their description of a waterfall in which the “water pounded onto the rocks below, creating an enticing silvery pool. Under the moon's gaze, the waterfall looked like a wall of shimmering silver and gold coins.”

Some of the most beautiful sections are in the Garden of Tulips and the Garden of Roses. The former features the characters traveling through a garden of different colored flowers that are so delicately described that the fragrances leaps off the pages.

The flora in the Garden of Roses is a somewhat disappointing follow up consisting solely of white roses, but the bird life more than makes up for that. Not only are they different types, but they are so dense that there are moments where the bird's wings look like something else; crows resemble a night sky, doves take the form of wings, multicolored plumages resemble tiaras and gowns. These details and descriptions give off the impression that the Reader is walking into someone else's dream.

Besides the dream like setting, Samad and Younossi give us compelling characters to take this fairy tale journey. Zuli is hardly a damsel in distress. She is aware of the situations outside the palace walls because she often dressed as a commoner to sneak out. She is very adventurous and sometimes haughty. (She engages in a few quarrels with Lamar along the way.) However she is also skilled in diplomacy such as when she negotiates with a tyrannical fish queen who surprisingly acquiesces to her suggestion with little argument. Zuli has what it takes to be a good ruler especially in a male dominated society.

Lamar is also a developed character. While not a prince, he is extremely charming as he shows in a letter he composes to Zuli revealing his deep feeling for her. He is quite intelligent as he is able to recognize signs and portents. He is also very protective of Zuli as we learn that he used to follow her on her excursions out of the palace. Throughout the book, Zuli and Lamar show that they are more than their titles of princess and commoner and that is the point of their journey.

As Zuli and Lamar travel, they probe into their inner consciousness and become self-actualized. Some characters appear that had previous connections to them through dreams and stories, implying that they are spirit guides to help them on their path.

Part of this self-actualization is empathy. Every time they help other characters or each other, they understand their predicament and do all they can to change that. They know that to help heal a country that has been torn apart by war, people need to empathize with each other and see others as people and not enemies incapable of understanding.