The Solace of Trees

by Robert Madrygin

  “You hear my accent? It is strong, I suppose. Where do you think, then?”

  “I’m not sure,” Amir answered, though the more he heard her speak, the more the tingling of a certainty rose along the surface of his skin.

  “I’m from Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

  She watched for his reaction, accustomed to Americans fumbling about their memory for either geographic or political frame of reference. But in his eyes there had been instant recognition and then even more. At the sound of her country’s name, Amir’s head had given a slight backward thrust, almost as if having received a tiny jolt of electricity, before quickly recovering into a slow nod of understanding.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jadranka. And yours?”

  “Amir.”

  “A fine Muslim name,” the girl laughed good-naturedly.

  “Jadranka. That’s not very Islamic,” Amir parried with a gentle grin.

  “No. But to be Muslim it is not always necessary to have an Arabic name.”

  “So you are?”

  “No, not really. Only half of me is.”

  This time it was Amir who sat waiting further explanation, something Jadranka normally would have evaded.

  “My father was Croatian. My mother is Muslim. I made the mistake mentioning that one time to Zack. So finally I came to one of their meetings just so he would quit making the invitations, you know? And you?”

  “Sort of the same, I guess. I’m adopted. My parents were Muslim. But not practicing, so it was never a big thing in our house.”

  There was a pause and a shift in feeling, both Jadranka and Amir taking in each other’s words, the use of the past tense in mention of her father and his parents not having gone unnoticed. And then something clicked in Jadranka’s consciousness. Amir’s eyes, his skin coloring, the shape of his face. They were all familiar.

  “You are not from here, then?” Jadranka asked.

  “No. I am from Bosnia.”

  At the mention of his former home the boy’s facial muscles seemed to lose their strength. The brightness of his expression dulled and an aura of sadness, like gravity, pulled the weight of his flesh downward.

  “How long have you been here?”

  It was a simple question, though one that for a Bosnian could hold more weight than most people could imagine. The subject of dates, like that of family name, was not simply a matter of small talk. It was a topic that could be of important reference in a society where two young people meeting for the very first time could wonder, with strange incongruity to the attraction that drew them together, what the other person’s last name might be and just how close their families’ histories might touch. It was something that most people could never understand, never fear the worst from: what your father did to mine, or to my mother or sisters; what your brother did to my brother; or what we shared together that we both wanted to forget.

  “A long time now. Almost eight years.”

  Amir saw Jadranka do the math, quickly calculate the year of his arrival, understanding that he had not, by some stroke of luck, arrived in advance of the war, but almost certainly had come as its result. Their eyes held for a brief moment, talking a language neither could translate, the girl finally breaking the silence.

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “No,” Amir smiled. “Not anymore.”

  She had an impulse then to talk to him in their native tongue. To ask if he still spoke it. But she could feel, in herself as well as in him, that it was time to move the conversation away from Bosnia, even though for most Bosnians meeting for the first time the talk would be inexorably pulled in that direction.

  The two chatted for a while about things in general, about school, courses, and majors. She was a year ahead of him. She had been granted a four-year scholarship by a foundation active in the rebuilding of Bosnia. She was majoring in English. After a time, she said she had to go. Amir nodded, rising from his chair as the girl stood, saying to her that it had turned out to be a good night after all. Jadranka smiled in response, then turned and began to walk away.

  “Oh, by the way,” Amir spoke out, “my last name is Beganović-Morgan. Amir Beganović-Morgan. Just in case…I don’t know…you might want to talk again sometime.”

  “My name is Pušić,” the girl replied. “That would be nice.”

  Chapter 21

  Amir wondered how it was that he had never noticed her before. He now found himself running into Jadranka several times a week, and though their encounters were for the most part brief, he could feel a friendship building between them. With the school year’s end quickly closing in, they had the pressures of finals and term papers weighing on their minds. For Amir it was a simple matter of getting, if not honors, at least respectable grades. In Jadranka’s case there wasn’t that same luxury. As a scholarship recipient Jadranka needed to maintain a high grade-point average or risk losing the financial aid that enabled her study. Yet even if maintaining a high GPA had not required a considerable time commitment on her part, it was clear that Jadranka wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend.

  The Bosnian girl made her feelings about becoming involved in a relationship apparent both in attitude and in dress. The clothing she wore was simple, and although she wore it with confidence, there was also the sense that she did so with complete disregard for how it might reflect her beauty. Though she sometimes wore bright-colored clothing, it was never of a style that accentuated the form of her body or the look of her face, which, when it came to men, she also clothed in a demeanor that said “no trespassing allowed.”

  She became annoyed when men ignored the clear signals indicating she didn’t want to be bothered by their come-ons, no matter how clever or artfully sincere. On several occasions Amir had seen Jadranka approached by men who soon made quick exit from the stare of her eye or, conversely, stood there feeling totally ignored, uncomfortably shifting their weight from foot to foot in her hard silence until they got the message.

  It was easy to understand why men would be attracted to her, even as she draped herself in loose, drab clothing, with her hair tied back, and kept her gaze to herself. She was imbued with a kind of Eastern European exoticism that emanated from her being like perfume floating in the air. It was in the look of her eyes, in the way she talked, in how she held herself, moved her head, and even walked.

  There was a sense of a deep, rich femininity about her, while at the same time the tenderness of her youthful appearance carried a certain beauty that was made all the more appealing by the mask of plainness under which she tried to hide it. She wore no makeup, not realizing that doing so only served to underscore the delicate, translucent quality of her skin, the unusual proportion of her eyes, her mouth and nose all set on a face that suggested a sculpture of some ancient mix of cultures. She reminded Amir of home, of girls he’d once known, and when he met with her he felt transported to some other dimension that existed somewhere between a dream state and reality. He felt as though one foot had stepped back through time to stand in the rural Bosnian village of his birth while the other remained anchored in the rational present, the rest of him trying to find bearing in a world in between.

  Amir saw Jadranka in front of the library, sitting on the lawn bathing in the warm late-spring sunlight. The rich, varied greens of the grass and trees were still a shock to his senses after so many months of colorless landscape. As he came close, her eyes rose to meet his. While the casual observer would have likely seen nothing more than a neutral look from the girl’s expression, Amir saw the careful welcome of her eyes and smiled.

  “So, you are celebrating?” Jadranka asked as Amir sat next to her.

  “Maybe tonight. I still have one more final this afternoon. I can’t believe the year is over already.”

  “And what about the prize? You aren’t going to celebrate that? My American boy wins the big honor and says nothing about this to his friends?”

  A large grin spread across Amir’s face…at Jadranka’s m
ock look of disapproval, at the teasing in her voice when she called him her American boy. He wondered how she’d known. Later he would learn the answer to that question: his picture in the college newspaper, the headline declaring him one of the winners of a faculty film award. He had been very surprised to receive it, though he hadn’t thought it a particularly big deal. He was one of four film students to have received the special recognition; his short film Trees had been voted the most original student work.

  “I thought you were talking about the end of the school year. Anyway, it’s not such a big deal. Just a piece of paper to gather dust. The best thing about it is that everyone who gets one of the awards is offered a chance to intern on a real film, so I won’t have to mow lawns and paint houses all summer. I’ll get to work with one of the professors on an independent film project.”

  “So, now you will stay here?”

  “I’ll live at home and commute. My house is only about thirty minutes away from here,” Amir answered, then changed the direction of the conversation away from himself. “And you? Will you be able to go home for a visit before you start your summer job?”

  “No, I cannot. It is the money, you know,” Jadranka indicated, rubbing her thumb back and forth against her fingers.

  Amir nodded his head in understanding, the conversation ebbing for a second before Jadranka revived it.

  “You are finishing with good grades? How did you do? You were so worried about doing well….”

  “Pretty good, actually,” Amir sighed happily. “I think I’m going to get the first A of my college career.”

  “That is your film course?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what about Zack’s class? Have you been the good boy and gone to prayers?”

  “No, but I am doing work for some kind of charity that he runs. I’m going to edit a bunch of footage he’s giving me to make into a short promotional documentary.”

  “Ah, so maybe now you get two A’s”

  “Maybe,” Amir smiled, hesitated, and then continued. “When do you go down to the Cape?”

  “Sunday,” she answered without further detail.

  “My family goes down there every summer on vacation,” Amir said, attempting a casual tone.

  “Yes, you have told me,” Jadranka nodded, allowing herself a small smile.

  “I could come visit you,” he said, more in question than statement.

  “You would have to leave the big tip,” she answered with a look of mock seriousness.

  Amir smiled, unable to hide the relief he felt at the veiled assent. “What’s the name of the place where you’re working?”

  “The Blue Whale Restaurant.”

  “In Harwich Port, right?”

  “Yes, in Harwich Port.”

  “OK.”

  “OK,” Jadranka concurred, laughing at the sound of nervous resolution, the brave look with which the boy held his timidity at bay.

  With his internship scheduled to begin the week after school let out, there was little time for Amir to think about Jadranka. The film was an independent production directed by Harold Irving, the most well-known of the school’s film professors, whose myriad credits ran from Hollywood to television to art house film. While Amir’s job as personal assistant to the director was, in essence, to serve as the director’s errand boy, it allowed him to take a close glimpse at all aspects of a film’s production. He felt that he learned more in the six-week internship than he could have in a year’s worth of courses. His days began at dawn and continued into the night, running nonstop through the entire length of the shoot. Although he was living at home, Margaret saw little of him beyond an early breakfast and a late dinner.

  During the postproduction work, Amir’s schedule relaxed considerably. On a number of days he was left with time on his hands and he was reminded, by persistent phone calls, of his promise to help complete a documentary video promoting Dr. Ashrawi’s foundation. The professor of Islamic studies had given him a rough outline of what he was looking for, a couple hours’ worth of random, previously recorded footage, and little else. When Amir expressed doubts as to his ability to put together a cohesive promotional documentary, Zack, as he insisted that Amir address him, responded by saying he had complete faith in Amir’s abilities. After all, he had just won a prestigious award, hadn’t he?

  Seeking help, Amir asked Harold Irving’s guidance on how he might best approach Dr. Ashrawi’s video project but was surprised to find the film professor hesitant to offer counsel. As a colleague, the film professor felt the need to be politic in his opinion of the man, letting the ambivalence with which he spoke express his feelings about his fellow faculty member. Dr. Ashrawi had been teaching at the college for ten years. In the beginning he had fit in well; he had seemed to be content to teach his courses, publish the occasional article, and not rock the boat. By the time Harold, a refugee from the southern California rat race, came on board, Zack had become a tenured professor and felt freer to express his opinions in a less than politically correct manner. Harold Irving, whose political leanings were opposite to those of Zack’s, felt that his colleague’s politics were dangerous.

  Without directly addressing his real objections to Zack, Harold advised Amir that trying to put something together from bits and pieces supplied to him by others could never serve a filmmaker well. Amir had to be careful, Harold said, what he put his name to. It could come back to haunt him.

  Amir felt confused by Harold Irving’s evasive response. He understood, to some extent, that the director was trying to get him to read between the lines…that there was something he wasn’t saying, something he didn’t want to come right out and declare. Amir was aware that Dr. Ashrawi had his detractors. But the professor’s foundation served a good cause. It raised money for innocent victims caught in the crossfire between two warring factions. Amir didn’t care about the politics, felt no pull to take sides in the debate.

  But for Zakariyya Ashrawi it was just the opposite. The politics of the Middle East had become his life. As with Amir, his arrival in the US had come by way of war. He had immigrated to the United States with his parents during the 1948 Palestine War. The family’s exodus took them first to Jordan, then to Egypt, and from there to Canada and, finally, the United States. They eventually settled in a small city west of Boston, where his father opened a convenience store, to which he added several others over the years. The small chain of mini-stores provided the family a good enough income to send their children to private colleges, where their parents believed they would have better opportunity to seek the American Dream.

  Zack did seek that dream, but the memories of moving from country to country and his father’s sad tale of having lost everything, of being forced to leave friends and family far behind, had created a rift in his mind and heart. Zack tried to bridge the gap in college by starting a student organization for support of Palestinian refugees. He hadn’t started it with the idea that it would become an Arab student organization; he had imagined it having a more universal membership united to help impoverished refugees displaced by the wars that had forced them from their homeland.

  The young student, though, quickly realized his naïveté when he found that the only other students interested in the cause had Arabic surnames, and some students affiliated with the other side of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict complained that his newly formed student club was really a covert anti-Semitic organization.

  Zakariyya Ashrawi’s years in academia didn’t lead him deeper into the realm of peaceful settlement, but rather, further from it. While he became ever more involved in the plight of the Palestinian refugees who were stuck in limbo—welcome neither in their homeland nor in the countries hosting the barren settlements they had been relegated to live in—he found himself spending less and less time trying to bring conciliation to the conflict’s supporters in his adopted country. By the time Amir and Dr. Ashrawi met, the professor of Islamic studies had come to be nationally known, and by some reviled, fo
r his advocacy of Muslim-American civil rights, as well as the role he played as the US representative for several Palestinian political and charitable organizations. It was in pursuit of advocating for one those groups that he had asked his student to put together a short documentary film to help forward its cause.

  The video footage Dr. Ashrawi had provided him to help make what his professor had called “a documentary of conscience” included some images difficult for Amir to watch…scenes of a displaced populace crammed into shanty homes, of orphaned children, and of dwellings reduced to rubble. For the purposes of Dr. Ashrawi’s video, they would serve as emotional triggers to gain viewers’ sympathy, but for Amir they were more than secondhand scenes of vicarious horror. As he began editing the video footage, his mind was flooded with another set of parallel images, ones that now felt strangely distant, memories of those terrible days in a place whose name still resonated somewhere deep within his identity. He repeated the word in his mind several times, looking to see what might come from it. Bosnia. Bosnia. He was not sure what meaning it still held for him, but he felt that for the first time he might be ready to begin talking about it. The subject had remained largely a place of silent exile within him. He had never spoken of it to anyone other than Margaret and Dr. Caron. And even they could understand only to a certain point—could but offer their compassion and sympathy from the distance of those whose blood and tears had never been spilled by war.

  As August and the impending time of his family’s vacation loomed near, Amir found his mind distracted from its focus on Dr. Ashrawi’s video, images of Jadranka winding their way into his mind at odd and random intervals. He began to redouble his efforts to finish Dr. Ashrawi’s documentary, finally completing it the same week he was to leave for the Cape with his mother.

  Dr. Ashrawi was delighted with the outcome of Amir’s work. There was an emotional pull to the simple and honest documentary that drew the viewer’s empathy. It wasn’t at all the way Zack had outlined it, and he quickly saw that his own ideas had been clumsy and strident in approach. The film student’s scripting of it had been better, much better indeed. As he sat with Amir watching the finished product for the first time, Dr. Ashrawi became emotional, wiping a tear from his eye, praising his student, and giving him a hug and a grateful thank-you. Amir was glad to be done with the project, though he was pleased that his work was well received. But the pride he felt at hearing his professor’s accolades was mixed with other emotions stirred at seeing the footage of the suffering people included in the documentary, emotions that were strange and confusing. His feelings seesawed between compassion and anger, and from there to yet other feelings, ones he found difficulty putting name to.