The Book of Trees

by Leanne Lieberman

  “We’re building again tomorrow.” Andrew’s voice ripped me out of my reverie.

  “What?”

  “We’re rebuilding a house, if you want to come. The bus leaves from Zion Square at ten o’clock.” He had that serious look again. It made me want to grab him.

  “Oh.” My pulse throbbed like sonar at my temple. “I don’t think so.”

  Andrew shrugged. “If you change your mind…”

  Sheila would go, and drag ten friends with her. I shook my head. I’d stick with writing bad lyrics instead.

  I found myself thinking about Andrew on the bus ride home. I liked how laid-back he was. I liked his slow wink, the casual way he held a guitar, his loping walk. Most of all, I was a sucker for a guy who listened like I was the only girl who existed. And Andrew actually cared about someone other than himself. I’d never met a guy willing to rebuild houses in the desert for other people.

  I was still enveloped in a golden glow when Aviva came home that evening.

  “How was your day?” Aviva put her backpack down on her chair and took a swig of water.

  “It was great.”

  “Oh yeah? What were you up to?” She dug in her desk drawer and pulled out a bag of pretzels. “Want one?”

  I shook my head and rolled over on my bed. “I can’t tell you.”

  Aviva’s eyes sparkled. “What?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  “C’mon. Now you have to tell.”

  I took a breath. “I know you said not to, but I went to the Dome of the Rock.”

  “Oh.” Aviva’s face fell.

  I instantly regretted telling her. “I know Jews shouldn’t go there, but I had to see it. And I’m glad I did. It’s so beautiful.”

  Aviva’s eyes darkened. “I hear they have a cloth stained with blood from the Hebron massacre right inside the mosque.”

  “I didn’t see that. I just saw this beautiful rock and the mosaics.”

  Aviva crossed her arms against her chest and pressed her lips into a tight line.

  “Just wait,” I said. “I know you’re mad, but listen…” I sat up and braced my hands on the table between our beds. “I thought, isn’t it amazing both religions have the same holy place? I mean, think about it. There must be something really special about that particular piece of land. It’s so full of Hashem. And I got to be there.”

  Aviva ripped her headband out of her hair. “Sometimes you are so naïve.”

  I ignored her. “I was thinking about Mohammed ascending to God from the rock, and how he was like one of the high priests talking to God. How cool is that? And I love the image of flying. It makes me think of the Chagall painting, you know the one where the lovers are flying. Do you think Chagall was thinking of Mohammed?”

  “Chagall was a Jew,” Aviva said tensely.

  I flopped back on the bed. “It was a really amazing experience and you should go check it out.”

  Aviva stared at me. “How come you have all this time to wander around? Don’t you go to class?”

  “I dropped my halacha class.”

  “What? How come?”

  “I was so sick of talking about what happens when the meat and cheese touch in the refrigerator.”

  “Actually it doesn’t matter—”

  “Who cares? Why aren’t we talking about why God wants us to keep them separate? What’s the context?”

  “Sometimes you need to learn the details first.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m more of a big-picture kind of a girl.”

  “I see.”

  Neither of us said anything. Our room felt very small, so I went to take a shower. When I came back, Aviva ignored me and kept reading. I lay on my bed, arms and legs tense, my mind racing. I wished I hadn’t told her. My day was tarnished now with her negativity.

  I took Andrew’s bandanna out from under my pillow and lay with it over my face, taking small breaths, as if I was burying my face in Andrew’s tanned neck, as if my hands were reaching around his chest. He understood how beautiful the Dome was. I rolled over onto my side and squinted at Aviva under the desk. How could she be so narrow-minded? I wanted her to read about the Nakba, to understand what was going on in the country she loved so much. But it wouldn’t have the same meaning for her as it did for me. She believed in God the way the other B’nos Sarah girls did. If you read the bible literally, you could justify killing other people for the sake of a homeland: Israel was worth it. And some Palestinians were willing to kill too. I felt a chill run down my spine. I was surrounded by God-driven violence. I glanced at the bible on my desk and shuddered. What a dangerous book.

  I sat up, my head spinning. I wanted to rewind my thoughts. I became religious to bring love and peace into the world. But it seemed Judaism, at least in Israel, wasn’t about the good of all humans, just the good of all Jews. Were all religions like that? It was like Dan said: you worried about your own people first. I’d wanted to be part of a community, but not at the expense of other people.

  I wanted to pace around the room or go for a walk or, better yet, slam dance in a noisy bar. I leaped out of bed and rearranged the books on my desk. Aviva sighed and rolled over noisily. I glared at her and lay down again. I tried to calm my breathing. I could still bring love and peace into the world. I’d start tomorrow by helping rebuild that house. I clenched my fists. I wouldn’t just stand aside. Andrew’s bandanna was still on my pillow. I sniffed it again and let his image fill my head. I’d rebuild that house, with Andrew.

  I dreamed about bulldozers all night. In the morning I drank too much coffee, and my hands shook when I tried to hold my book during morning prayers. Michelle was away writing her conversion exam and no one else would miss me all morning. I would be back in time to meet Aviva in the afternoon for choir practice.

  When I got on the bus to go to the rebuilding site, I saw Andrew sitting at the back. I nodded to him and chose a seat near the front with two women from Hebrew University. They were wearing shorts and tank tops. I tried to tuck my running shoes under the seat so I wouldn’t have to look at them next to my skirt. I was so sick of wearing ugly clothes.

  The bus drove out of Jerusalem and into the brown hills for almost half an hour, until it stopped beside a bulldozer lifting a pile of rubble. We piled out of the bus and grouped around a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and carrying a clipboard. He gave directions in Hebrew. I listened, not understanding. At the end he said in English, “If the police come, go back to the bus. That’s all you need to know.”

  We lined up and passed rocks to clear a path to mark out a garden. I joined a group of women lifting lighter stones. Some of them were religious women in long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, their hair covered by hats or scarves. I wanted to reach out and ask them if it was really okay to be here. A woman passed me a stone and I passed it down the line. Andrew was somewhere else, out of sight. Under the stones lay squashed shrubbery. The sun burned my back and shoulders. The heat felt oven-like, claustrophobic. Sweat trickled across my stomach. Exhaustion settled over me. We would never be finished. And wouldn’t the army just come again? It would all be dust in the end.

  When I straightened up, I expected to see Jerusalem over my shoulder, glinting. Instead a brown hill loomed, and then another. I kept working, moving. Stiffness built in my back and shoulders.

  On a break I walked away from the group, over a slight hillock, out of view of the house. The desert was not the vast flat pancake I’d envisioned, nor was it enough space to empty out my mind. People and their memories, their longings and desires choked the land. I had wanted an empty place to drain the thoughts out of my buzzing brain. Here was no safe road.

  I sat down in the sand and focused on the heat, my sweat, the yellow-brown of the dirt, trying to forget why we were there. I’d seen the Palestinian guy who owned the house. He looked like the Israelis, except maybe more weary. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have your house knocked down. Tears pooled in my eyes, but I blinked them back, mak
ing my head ache. I needed to save my strength for my forearms and shoulders.

  Rebuilding wasn’t protest enough. We should have stood in front of the bulldozers to stop the house from getting knocked down.

  The police did not come. The rocks became an orderly garden path. A woman planted some bushes in the new space and everyone clapped. Then we boarded the bus back to Jerusalem, to Zion Square. The city seemed loud and crowded after the quiet of the desert. Andrew approached while I was digging in my backpack for my wallet. “Hey,” he said.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Do you have time for a drink?” His face was hidden behind his sunglasses.

  I wanted to go home, take off my running shoes and clothes and get in the shower. The dust covering my skin made me feel itchy. “Neh, I don’t think so.” I avoided looking at him.

  “Oh, well. Which way are you going?”

  “Up to the bus stop.”

  “Me too.” He fell in step beside me. I walked quickly. I didn’t want anyone to see us together.

  The street performers were out: a girl on a purple mat doing creepy pretzel contortions, the Russian with his pathetic marionettes, a man singing love songs. Tourists flocked to the souvenir shops. Israelis smoked cigarettes in the cafés and talked on cell phones.

  Maybe for a moment we could sit and have a beer at the back of a café under a fan, even smoke a cigarette, and talk about music. I could lean close enough to smell him and he’d still make me feel like falling or flying, even with the layer of dust coating the light brown hairs on his arms.

  I imagined bringing Andrew home to Sheila’s tiny living room with the crazy Mexican masks decorating the walls, instruments crowding the shelves, our saggy sofa. We’d sit on the floor and I’d ask, What’s your favorite recording? What was the first album you ever bought? What song did your mother sing you to sleep with? If your life was a song, what would it be now— tomorrow—last year?

  And I’d tell him my mother sang me, “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight.” I’d say I bought a Cindy Lauper album with my birthday money when I was eight, that I have a memory of my parents harmonizing “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore.”

  At my funeral I want someone to sing “Summertime,” and if I could sing like anyone, I’d be Joni Mitchell. Most of the time I want to stand up and wail out a gospel tune: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

  Surely I’d know more about him than the songs he could play: “Crazy” or a Beatles’ medley.

  We walked up the street. Andrew loped, leading with his head. It was an odd walk; I wanted to watch.

  “So, how long are you staying?” he asked.

  “I leave the end of August.”

  “And then?”

  “Oh, back to Toronto. I start university in the fall. You?”

  “Not sure yet.” We went by the place he used to sing. “So, was rebuilding what you thought it would be?”

  “Dirtier.”

  He laughed. “I’m trying to get a band together to go to this Palestinian school, do some more music workshops. You should come.”

  “I’m not sure I can lie that much.”

  Andrew gave me a quizzical look. “It has to be a secret?”

  “Definitely.”

  My bus started to come down the street, the number 18. Traffic stuttered around the buses, stopping and starting, taxis honking. Young girls slipped by holding hands, their legs smooth. The sidewalk felt like a baking tray. I eyed the crowd thronging the bus shelter. I hesitated, not wanting to enter the swarm of hot bodies.

  “Take the next one. Maybe it’ll be less crowded.” He gave me one of his sexy smiles, the kind that made me smile back. I sighed. The number 18 slowed to let a slew of passengers onto another bus.

  “It’ll be a while till the next one.”

  “So we’ll go for a drink. I’ll tell you about the band and the kids.”

  An old woman with a heaped-up shopping cart elbowed past me. At the back of the bus I noticed a man who looked like my Zeydi Abe, Sheila’s dad. He had the same white bushy mustache and square glasses. I took a few steps back toward the bakery and watched my bus fill up.

  Andrew leaned one hand against the dirty wall. “So why did you come build today?”

  “I decided it was the right thing to do. Gemilut hasadim, an act of loving kindness.”

  Andrew laughed. “I like that—rebuilding Palestinian homes is a good deed.”

  “Every little bit helps bring the Messiah.”

  Andrew smirked.

  “What?”

  “You don’t really—”

  A deafening boom, like cannon fire, drowned out the rest of his sentence. A wave of heat burst over us, ripping through the air. I slammed my hands over my ears. A second explosion detonated, even louder, like planes roaring too close overhead. Andrew leaped over me, pulling me down behind the Plexiglas bus shelter. I heard a small thud; then my knees scraped across the pavement. The number 18 bus blasted into flames, pieces of metal ricocheting toward us, flames screeching, metal twisting upon itself into a red and gold prison. Andrew’s body came down over me, like a human blanket.

  The air filled with thick smoke. Ambulance sirens wailed. I saw metal barriers yanked over the falafel stand across the street. There was a taste in my mouth like burning meat.

  “Get up!” Andrew wrenched my arm. I stood watching. Burn, baby, burn. My lungs filled with thick choking smoke, like a tarry barbecue. I let Andrew yank me down the street, stumbling on stones, scraping my knee on the pavement again. My retching throat made my feet move faster. Andrew’s long legs sprinted down Ben Yehuda past the man with the marionettes to Zion Square. He kept my arm clenched tight in his fist.

  I stopped to catch my breath.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Andrew yelled. Around us sirens wailed.

  “Wait. Wait. Wait.” I wanted to stay and understand what had happened. I was supposed to be on that bus. Now it was burning.

  “Are you crazy? Are you crazy?” He tugged my hand. “What if there’s another?”

  I let Andrew yank me down Jaffa Road. He pulled me into a cab. In the taxi we sat panting. I still felt the heat on my skin. Burning, a bus burning.

  “Yes,” Andrew said.

  Did I say that out loud? “Yes,” I repeated. My voice sounded far away, across an ocean. There were noises in the distance. No, not in the distance.

  “Am I yelling, am I yelling?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Yes,” the taxi driver said, “you are both yelling.”

  We stopped talking.

  The taxi driver said, “Fucking terrorists,” and spat on the curb. “Where to?”

  I didn’t remember the hostel stairs, but then I was in the kitchen, with a very large bottle of juice and an endless stack of saltines. People crammed the narrow room, all talking. Dirt lined the cracks of my hands, making them look like country road maps. Inside my shoes, sand gritted between my toes. I could wash my feet but I’d have to put my dirty socks back on. I wanted different shoes. Sandals with a heel, my red leather ones. I wiped a tear that kept forming in my left eye, and the lines on my hands became a trickling creek.

  Andrew kept talking. “I told Mia to get on the next bus so we could get a drink because we were so thirsty. We were standing there and then this bus exploded, like a wall of flames. We ran.”

  Would he ever shut up? My head was still ringing. The scrape on my knee burned. My blood was smeared on Jerusalem stone. The juice bottle was not empty, but I could feel the liquid sloshing around inside me, like a swimming pool in my gut. Still, my teeth tasted like burning hair, like I had scorched the inside of my mouth.

  “I want a shower,” I announced. Andrew stopped talking and looked at me. My voice still sounded far away. I stood up and then sat down again. There was no shower there for me. I didn’t have clean clothes or a towel. I rubbed my dirty hands against my temples and let my head fall down on my arms on the sticky plastic tablecloth. Marmalade or jam, a black
smear, glued my forearm to the table.

  Andrew started talking again. “I was looking at this girl, just this young girl, long stringy hair, backpack and headphones, and she’s not there anymore. She’s not.” After a while I only saw his mouth moving.

  Andrew’s arms were caked with dust like my own. He had a smear of ash on his forehead. A cut was bleeding at his temple. Was that the small thud I had heard—his head hitting the bus shelter?

  The guy, my zeydi man. He was gone too. His family was calling each other saying, Are you all right, are you all right? And no one could get ahold of him. In a few hours they’d start calling the hospitals. His body would be unrecognizable. All over the city, people were frantically calling each other. Who were the unlucky ones, who were the ones not getting through?

  I hadn’t gone up in flames, but the zeydi had. He was dead and I was still here, walking, talking, thinking. I clasped my hands together to stop them shaking, but it didn’t help.

  I checked my watch. It was four. When had the bomb exploded? Aviva would wonder where I was. Shit, I was supposed to play guitar for choir. I stood up abruptly, knocking over my chair. “I have to go.”

  “Wait.”

  “I have to go.”

  “You look pale. You shouldn’t just leave.”

  “I need to go.”

  Andrew grabbed my arms. We were alone in the kitchen now. I took a deep breath.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Andrew’s eyes looked wild. The cut on his head had started to bruise.

  I was still shaking. Andrew kept holding me, his grip too tight. I could feel him trembling, could hear the sound of his labored breath. I paused, looking straight ahead at his chest. It was almost an embrace.

  “My friends will think I died on that bus. I usually go home from volunteering then.”

  He let go of me. I teetered a moment.

  I used the payphone in the lobby. The line was busy. My pulse quickened.

  Andrew walked me to the gate for a taxi. “Do you have enough money?” A taxi would be expensive. I nodded. The cars rushing by seemed too fast, the sun too bright. I wanted to go back to the dingy hostel kitchen, to the safe four walls, to Andrew’s repetitive voice. I wanted to sit very still. If only I could wash my feet there. I swayed a little as I got in the taxi.