“A friend recommended it. I’ve been thinking about those trees we saw at the retreat, the ones that are planted where there used to be a village.”
“That really got to you, didn’t it?”
“Aviva, people lost their villages, their homes, their trees, their lives. I can’t imagine what that must be like.”
“It happened to the Jews time after time. Pogroms, the Holocaust…”
“And so you think that justifies taking over Palestinian land by force?”
“No, no. I’m not saying that at all.” Aviva sat up and gripped the edge of her mattress. “I’m saying you can’t please everyone. This is the Jewish homeland. The Palestinians should have gone to some other Arab country.”
“But they lived here. They still do, apparently.” I let my head drop into my hands and shook it from side to side.
“Why are you so upset?”
I took a deep breath. “I want Jews to be free and have a homeland, but not if it means killing other people to do it.”
Aviva stood up and gave me a hug. “Mia, you have such a big heart.”
I resisted the urge to wrestle out of her embrace.
Aviva turned back to her desk and started stacking her books into a pile. “It’s not like it’s any different at home. All of North America used to belong to the native people until the Europeans showed up.”
“But that’s different.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know.” I felt like shouting at her. I stood up and walked to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk. I need…I need some air.”
“I thought we were going to make dinner together.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m hungry. I’ll see you later.”
I shoved the book into my desk drawer and ran out of the room. I resisted slamming the door behind me. The sun was setting and I shouldn’t have been walking alone at night. I didn’t care.
The next morning Michelle and I sat with our books open at our desk. I tried to follow along with her reading, but my eyes kept drifting to the view of the street from the window. How old was the road? Did Palestinian people build it or was it a new Israeli street?
“Mia?” Michelle tapped the table between our open books.
I looked up. “Huh?”
“I asked if you wanted to read.”
“Oh, sure.”
“You’re not on the right page.”
“Sorry, it flipped over.” I smoothed the page open.
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Okay, so it says to build a table of acacia wood two cubits in length, a cubit in width and a cubit and a half in height.”
I scanned the page with my index finger. “Right.”
“You’re still on the wrong section. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m just…distracted.”
Michelle frowned. “I’ve noticed.”
“Can you go on without me?”
Relief showed across Michelle’s face. “Sure.”
“I’ll catch up with you later.” I bolted from the table and took the stairs two at a time out of the building to the bus stop. I’d started to read the second part of the Nakba book during break and my mind was reeling. When I got to Andrew’s hostel, I raced up the stairs and banged on his door.
“C’mon in.”
I burst in, breathing hard, sweat streaking my face and forming circles under the arms of my shirt. Andrew sat bare-chested in his bed with his guitar. “Oh.” I stopped, backing out of the room. I couldn’t help gazing at his naked chest. His body was as I imagined—hairless and muscular without being brawny. Oh God, what was I doing here? “Can you get dressed?” I blurted out.
“You burst in and expect clothing?”
I stepped back. “I…” Shit, I thought, I shouldn’t be here. But who the hell else could I talk to?
Andrew smiled. “Just give me a second.” I closed the door and a moment later he called out, “Okay, come in.”
I stepped back into the room, waving the book in my hand. Andrew had put on a T-shirt. “So, here’s what I don’t get. Why don’t I know about this?”
“Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“I couldn’t concentrate. How can I not know any of this?”
“Because you’ve been brainwashed by Zionists. Why would you know?”
I shoved some clothes off his chair and sat down. “We have to go to Liberty Bell Park.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
“Why?”
“Because you know the beautiful olive trees, those gorgeous olives in the garden for Martin Luther King Junior?”
“Yeah?”
“C’mon, I’ll tell you there.”
Outside I hailed a cab. I didn’t have the patience for more buses.
The cab let us out at the edge of the sprawling green lawns of the park. I strode across the grass, past the bell, toward a grove of gnarled old olive trees where I had walked a few weeks before. “Here, you see these gorgeous trees? You see them? This book”—I brandished it—“it’s like this huge secret. Do people not know about it or do they know and not care? They only hear about the terrorist attacks.”
“So why are we here?”
“Oh, well apparently these all didn’t just grow here. Some were taken from Palestinian lands and dedicated to Martin Luther King Junior How fucked up is that? Can you imagine if King had known trees were stolen in his honor? It wasn’t enough for the Israelis to plant their own trees on Palestinian land. They had to steal Palestinian trees too. It’s like they didn’t really have an identity, so they had to plant it, and when that wasn’t good enough, they had to steal someone else’s.” I was breathing hard, yelling, my face puffed up and red. “I feel…rocked. I feel so stupid.”
Andrew held out a hand to stop me. “It’s not so black and white. Terrorists still kill people.”
I took his hand without thinking and squeezed it hard. “And can you blame them? I can’t imagine anything but more violence.”
“You are really strong.”
I stopped squeezing his hand and realized we were touching. I felt my cheeks flame. My pulse was racing. “There are so many things I just don’t know.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know where to start learning, or how to think. The more I think, the more confused I am.” I got up and started walking. “I can’t sit still. I need to get out of here. Let’s get something to drink.”
We walked over to Emek Refaim, Andrew struggling to keep up with my frenzied pace. By the time we got there, some of my anger had fizzled. My T-shirt stuck to my back and my hair felt stiff with dried sweat under my sun hat. I gulped down two ice teas. We sat in silence, just looking out at the cars and people going by. When I finished my second drink, I turned to Andrew. “You know why I became religious?”
“Why?”
“I wanted the world spelled out clearly for me. I wanted clear lines of right and wrong.”
Andrew nodded. “It’s never—”
“Don’t say a thing,” I said fiercely.
I rubbed my eyes to stop tears from forming. Andrew talked a little about an Israeli guy he met at the museum who played bass. They were thinking about getting together for a jam session. I nodded, pretending to be interested. I gazed out the window and absently started counting cars.
“Mia?” Andrew tapped his fingers on my wrist.
I looked down at his hand, touching me, and then at my watch. “I’m supposed to be back at school for prayers.”
“Are you going to go?”
I looked out at the darkening sky. “No, I don’t think so.” Evening prayers were optional.
I went to the bathroom and washed my face, trying to get the tight sweaty feeling off my skin. I felt exhausted, as if my anger had depleted my energy.
When I got back to the table, Andrew stood up. “Come. Let’s go for a walk.”
Outside, the side streets were quiet. I tried not to think abo
ut the trees or the Nakba or what it meant to be a Jew in a country that was your own and not your own. How lucky, how plagued. Our shoulders brushed as we walked down the street, and I briefly felt the heat of Andrew’s skin through my T-shirt. Goose bumps ran down my arms. I wanted to lay my head against his shoulder and have him take all my pain away.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” I said.
“Yeah?” He raised one eyebrow over his sunglasses. I felt myself quake a little.
“Why don’t you play on Ben Yehuda anymore?”
Andrew sighed and his shoulders shrank into his T-shirt. “It’s just not what I’m supposed to do.”
I nodded, as if I understood. “I mean,” I tried again, “why did you play in the first place?”
“It was what I was supposed to do.”
I faced him. “You mean your quest?”
Andrew stopped and looked at me over his sunglasses. His sharp eyes pierced into me and I felt my heart beat a little faster. “No, my responsibility.” He suddenly looked older and sadder. I could see lines around his eyes.
We had wandered back into the park. Children jumped on a giant trampoline and rode a mini Ferris wheel in a small fairground beyond the trees. When had the rides appeared? Had they been in the park earlier? I noticed a cotton-candy vendor. A huge reddish half-disk of a moon descended rapidly toward the horizon.
“You know, I’ve never seen the moon set before. I never knew it did, until I got here. Why were you supposed to sing on Ben Yehuda?”
“I just had this feeling I had to sing where people could hear. I didn’t think I was a prophet or anything. I mean, what’s the difference between that and being crazy?” Andrew’s voice was quieter than before.
We sat down in the grass next to each other. I fought the urge to let my elbow bump against his.
Andrew sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, his sunglasses shoved into his hair. “I had to play certain songs, not for their words, more for their emotion. A certain longing, you know? I had to just play the sadness I felt around here.”
“Sadness?”
Andrew was silent a moment. He stared down at his sandals. “My first night here I was in the Russian Compound and terrorists shot up the street outside the bar. Kyle and I hid under a table. It was freaking scary shit. I didn’t know what to do about it. So I played what I thought was right.”
“You played Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’ a lot. I liked that.”
“Yeah, I played that and ‘Dust in the Wind’ and ‘Daniel,’ and then one day I woke up and I thought, What the hell am I doing? I mean, you thought I was a beggar. So I thought I better do something else.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“How did you make that leap?”
“What leap?”
“I mean, how did you decide you had to help?”
The moon swelled as it approached the horizon. Children ran around us, alternating between the Ferris wheel and the giant trampoline. Only Arab children, I realized. I could tell by the parents’ clothes. Was it a holiday I hadn’t heard of? Had these people lost their homes? What was I doing in a dark park in a strange city listening to Andrew’s smooth voice? What lie would I tell Aviva tonight?
“I couldn’t be a bystander,” he said. “I was reading some articles Sonia lent me, about the way the Israeli army kills innocent bystanders or imprisons innocent people as precautions, or surrounds a community and cuts people off from the supplies they need to survive.” Andrew’s face had fallen into a tight mask I’d never seen before. His clasped hands were white with tension.
“But why this problem?”
Andrew cracked his knuckles. “Maybe because I had nothing else to do—I didn’t have to be anywhere. My mind wasn’t clouded with other things, like work or surfing or my mom. Or maybe it was because I wasn’t on either side. I could just be neutral.”
“And so what did you do?”
“I’m getting to that. So, Sonia sent me on this crazy tour of the West Bank. It’s run through a hostel by this Palestinian guy. You go through the checkpoints and it’s like going to a third-world country. It’s totally different. There’s no infrastructure, the economy is practically destroyed because every time they shut the checkpoints, no one works. It’s a breeding ground for hate, because how could it be otherwise? At the end we passed by a school and I thought, This is what I have to do next. So that’s where I’ve been the past few weeks, volunteering at this school. I’m teaching music and tutoring in English. I’m also helping rebuild a house next week. The military destroyed this guy’s house because it’s in the wrong place, and this organization gets volunteers to help rebuild it. You could come too, if you like.”
“It sounds dangerous.”
“Yeah, maybe. Not as much as other protests.”
“Like what?”
“There’s a group that supports Palestinians when their homes are threatened. It’s a nonviolent protest, but I think it can be dangerous. You know—bulldozers.”
“Whoa.”
We sat silently in the park. I felt dazed with possibilities. The moon dipped below the horizon and the park got darker. I stood up and stretched my arms above my head. “I should get going.”
Andrew stood up and we started walking out of the park. “What about rebuilding that house?”
“What about it?”
“You could come.”
“Maybe.” I tried to imagine explaining that one to Aviva.
“How can I give you the details without your phone number?”
“I’ll find you.”
“You’re not allowed to have guy friends?”
I sighed. “I’m not even supposed to know any guys.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure.” I stopped and faced him. For a second I thought he was going to tell me he wanted to kiss me. And I wanted him to so badly. Forget waiting for the perfect husband. I wanted to feel Andrew’s lips on mine, his strong arms around my back.
He said, “Mia, maybe you should stay in your world and enjoy the summer and your studies. Don’t let Israel ruin your Israel.”
I stopped and stared at him, letting his words sink in. “Don’t let Israel ruin your Israel,” I repeated. We were at the street now, by the bus stop.
“Yes.”
“You don’t really think that.”
“Do you?”
I hesitated for a moment. “I want everything. I want Israel to be the homecoming I thought it would be, and I want to know the truth. And I’m not hearing it at school.”
“No one talks about the occupation at your school?”
“Oh, maybe some do, but girls are here to learn Torah. They’re more interested in old books than politics.”
“And you?”
“I don’t want to wear blinders. Something is being covered up—why the terrorists are attacking—and I want to know the truth.”
“And when you find it, what will you do then?”
“I’m not sure.”
Andrew nodded.
“Well, see you around.”
“Sure, see ya.”
I walked away from Andrew through the cool night, the streetlights casting pools of light across the sidewalks. I wasn’t ready for the sway of the bus. Tears started to come, slowly at first, then faster, until they were coursing down my face. I wanted to pretend I didn’t know about the trees. I wanted Israel to be the perfect Jewish homeland I’d imagined. Now I knew better. I let out a sob.
TEN
I couldn’t imagine my Israel experience getting any crazier, but the next day at B’nos Sarah a horde of screaming, hugging, dancing girls mobbed the lounge. In the middle I spotted Chani, her hand outstretched, a sparkling diamond ring on her finger.
Aglow and gushing over her ring, Chani breathlessly described how Yosef had proposed: the flowers, the view of Jerusalem. She alternately cried and laughed, and shrieked that she needed to call home. The other girls whirled around dancing a hor
ah, hair flying, shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Kol sason v’ kol simcha, kol chatan v’ kol kallah! The voice of joy and happiness, the voice of the groom and bride. It had been the same for a girl named Rebecca last week, and Sarah the week before. They were all barely twenty-one, if that. I watched the twirling girls. They all seemed so outrageously content with their lives. Maybe if I was more like them, ready to settle down with a nice boy, I’d be happier. I quietly climbed the stairs to my Torah class.
Upstairs, Michelle was waiting for me by the window. Most of the other girls weren’t even in the room yet, but Michelle had already begun reading. If she wanted to talk about Chani’s engagement, she didn’t let on, which was fine by me. We had a routine now. First we skimmed the story in English, and then we painstakingly went through the Hebrew, matching clause for clause, stopping to read the commentaries as we went along. We were up to the story of Noah.
I was confused by the story. Why would God let everyone but Noah drown? Michelle had moved on to the opening Hebrew line. “What do you think ‘Noah was perfect in his generation’ means? Maybe Rashi has something to say about it.” Michelle scanned her Rashi commentary for the corresponding line.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“Why do you think God was so angry?”
“The Jews weren’t following the laws.”
“But killing everyone? What about innocent babies? I mean, surely there must have been other righteous people besides Noah and his family.”
“No. According to the story they were all evil.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“What?”
I paused. “Doesn’t it sound like something people made up after it all happened, to try to understand the flood?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, c’mon. Can’t you see it? There’s a really bad flood, almost everyone dies, and then they need to make sense of it, so they write this story.”
Michelle pressed her lips tightly together. “This is the word of God.”
I stared at her. “Yeah, but…”
“It’s the word of God, as written by Moshe.”
“By Moses? But what about the stuff that came after him?”
“Oh, he knew that too.”
The Book of Trees Page 11