The Lemon Tree

by Helen Forrester

  Her mother had explained that the Muslim Turkish rulers of Lebanon did not like Christians very much; neither did another sect called Druze.

  Egged on by the Turks, the Druze set out to eradicate their ancient enemies, the Maronite Christians, some of whom were enviably richer than they should be. In Beirut, they struck on July 9th, 1860.

  ‘We had heard rumours of unrest amongst the Druze, for some time before,’ her mother told her, ‘but neither your father nor your grandfather – my father – believed that we should be disturbed.

  ‘Our family had always lived in or near Beirut; it was such a pleasant little place – and you’ll remember our visiting our kin nearby. Our courtyard wall was high and strongly built – quite enough, we believed, to protect the house. And we were well-to-do; we could always placate the tax collectors and the servants of the Sultan, Abdul Mejid – may he be eternally accursed!’ She sounded vicious, as she lashed out at the hated Turkish ruler. Then she said more calmly, ‘You know, it’s usually the less powerful, and the poor who can’t pay, who are attacked.’

  In the hope of obliterating her sickening memories, Helena had screwed up her eyes and covered them with her hands; yet there was a morbid desire to know more.

  ‘Well, why did we run away then?’

  ‘The rabble – Druze and Turks alike – swept right into our neighbourhood – you heard them and saw them. And your respected father knew then that this uprising was much more serious than usual; he had not believed an earlier warning which his brother had had whispered to him by a kindly Turkish official – he had felt the warning was part of a campaign by the Turks to get the Maronites to move out of their own accord.

  ‘So when the mob came in like a flight of angry bees – they were mad with hashish, I suspect – he knew in a flash that the warning had been a genuine act of kindness. He heard the screams and the gunshots, and he ran upstairs from his office to the roof, to confirm his fears.’ She paused, her voice harsh from unshed tears. ‘You and I’d been sitting under the lemon tree, by the well – so quiet and peaceful. But from the roof Papa could really see what was happening. Dear Grandpa’s house was already a great bonfire and the shrieking crowd was pouring into the square at the bottom of our street; he said the menace of the swords and guns flashing in the evening sun was terrifying.’

  Helena said hesitantly from behind her hands, ‘I remember Papa leaning over the parapet and yelling to us to come up immediately. I’d never seen Papa really frightened before.’

  It was the moment when my whole world fell apart, she thought wretchedly; I simply didn’t understand how it could be so.

  She watched her mother buttoning her shabby black blouse, getting ready to go to work as a menial in a foreign city, and apparently accepting with fortitude what the Turks had done to her.

  Leila continued her story. ‘We didn’t know it then,’ she said, ‘but Christians were suffering all over the Turkish Empire.

  ‘When our servants heard the noise, they rushed into the courtyard to ask what was happening. They heard your father shout, and they panicked. Instead of running up to the roof themselves, they followed Cook, who ran to the main gate and opened it! I suppose he thought they would be able to escape before the mob reached us. For a second, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – it was so stupid – our gate was very stout; it might have held.

  ‘As I whipped you indoors, I could hear their screams.’

  Helena shuddered. ‘I heard them.’

  Leila ignored the interjection, as she sat head bowed, her fingers on the top button of her blouse. ‘Well, after I’d bundled you into the house, I slammed the front door and turned the beam which locked it. That, and the barred windows, halted the crowd when they rushed into the courtyard, just long enough to allow us to escape.’

  Helena sighed deeply. ‘I remember the smoke – the yells – men pounding on the door – and the smell of gunpowder – and blood.’

  Her mother put her arm around her and held her close.

  ‘We were lucky, child, that we had an indoor staircase, not an outside one like many people have; if it had run straight up from the courtyard, the mob would have come up after us and killed us on the roof.’

  ‘Papa had a piece of rope on the roof, I remember. I was so scared we’d fall, when he lowered first you and then me down into the tiny alley at the back of the house.’

  Her mother nodded. ‘I think he’d stored the rope up there, in case we needed an escape from fire,’ she said absently. Then she added, ‘The alleyway saved our lives by giving us an exit to another street.’

  ‘I wonder why we were saved, Mama? Was our neighbour’s family at the back saved?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, dearest. I was told that by the time the Druze and the Turks had finished, the whole area was one big funeral pyre.’

  ‘Why does God allow such terrible things, Mama?’ the young girl asked piteously.

  Her mother looked shocked. ‘We’re not here to question God’s Will, child.’ Her pretty lower lip trembled. ‘I didn’t ask that even when your brothers died.’

  Helena laid her head on her mother’s shoulder. ‘Of course not, Mama,’ she said contritely. ‘It was a wrong question to ask.’

  Leila looked down at the child cuddled beside her, and she sighed. Her husband had always said that Helena was too clever to be a woman. She hoped he was wrong; women were supposed to accept, not ask questions.

  Helena fingered a small pendant embossed with the head of the Virgin Mary that hung on a fine gold chain from her mother’s neck. ‘Did you bring this from Beirut?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, dear. For months and months that year, Papa insisted that I wear all my jewellery all the time. He must’ve been more nervous about the situation than he allowed us to think.’

  ‘It’s important for a lady to have lots of jewellery, isn’t it, Mama?’

  ‘Yes, dear – and small gold coins, easily carried. You never know what life has in store for you – life is very precarious. Jewellery is easy to carry – you can trade it anywhere – though at a great loss, of course.’

  Helena nodded, and her mother hugged her again.

  Leila thought with apprehension of a clouded future; but the child digested the lesson that good jewellery can be an important financial reserve – and that a collection of small gold coins is probably even better.

  After a few minutes, Helena lifted her head and said heavily, ‘We must’ve run for ages; I was so puffed.’ Her young face was grim, and she swallowed. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget the ghastly cruelty – how can men do such dreadful things?’ She looked at her mother as if begging for some reasonable explanation of what she had seen.

  Leila Al-Khoury had resumed easing herself clumsily into black woollen stockings, while sitting on the end of her bed. Now she turned again to her troubled little daughter and put her arms round her. She wished she had an answer to the child’s question.

  ‘My darling, I don’t know. Sometimes men seem to go mad.’ She stroked Helena’s silky black hair. ‘In time the memories will go away, my love. And life is not all cruelty. All kinds of nice things will happen to you in your life, you’ll see.’ She felt Helena give a shuddering sigh, and she added, ‘I wish we had foreseen what would happen, so that you could have been spared what you saw. And we might have been able to clear the warehouse and transfer some money – so that we wouldn’t be in quite such dire straits. But we lived in a good district; we’d never been disturbed before.’

  Helena shut her eyes tightly and wanted to be sick, as she remembered a young boy lying sobbing in the dust, one arm severed, the rest of him terribly cut about as he had tried to protect himself from sword or bayonet. Her mother had paused instinctively, bent on helping him, but her husband caught her arm to propel her forward.

  ‘You can’t leave him! He’s alive!’ she had protested.

  He did not answer her. Terrified of what the rampaging rabble would do to his lovely wife and little daughter i
f they were caught, he dragged her onwards.

  The dying boy haunted Wallace Helena’s dreams all her life, returning like some eternal ghost to cry out to her in his agony, telling her that even loving fathers could have hearts of stone.

  She had clear memories of reaching her father’s silk warehouse, as yet untouched by vandals, though deserted by its panic-stricken nightwatchmen, and of meeting a youth of about fifteen when they entered the wicket gate. He was the bookkeeper’s son, set to unlock the gate for any members of the family who might not have a key.

  In answer to Charles Al-Khoury’s inquiry, the boy said that nobody had come, except his own parents and younger brothers and Mr James Al-Khoury.

  Charles Al-Khoury told him to continue to keep watch through the grating in the main door and to hurry to the boat if he heard or saw anything suspicious.

  The whey-faced boy had nodded assent, and Charles hurried Helena and her mother between bales wrapped in cotton cloth and through the silk carpet section, which smelled of hemp and dust.

  They had emerged onto a covered wharf on the seaward side of the building, where a small sailing boat with an Egyptian rig bobbed fretfully on the sunlit water.

  Charles’s brother, James, was already in the boat. He looked up at the new arrivals and exclaimed fervently, ‘Thank God you’ve come! Nobody came to work this morning – I tried to get back to the house to warn you that something was up; but the whole town seemed to be rioting – and drunk. So I returned here to alert the boatman to be ready. I guessed you’d hear the racket in the town and be warned.’ He gestured towards the bookkeeper, and added, ‘Then Bachiro, here, brought his family.’

  ‘We got out by a hair’s breadth,’ Charles responded sombrely, as he took the hand of the Nubian boatman and jumped into the little craft. He turned to help his wife into the boat, and went on, ‘I’m afraid Leila’s family is lost.’

  As James stared unbelievingly up at him, Leila balked and held back, as she cried out in horror, ‘Mama and Papa dead? Oh, no! And my sisters – and Auntie and my cousin?’

  James said gently, ‘We’ll wait a while; they may have got out.’ He hoped fervently that her women relations were burned in their house rather than thrown to the mob.

  Petrified and exhausted, Leila allowed her husband to lift her down into the boat. Uncle James turned to a benumbed Helena. ‘Come on, my little lemon blossom, you’re safe now.’

  Without a word, she sat down on the edge of the wharf and jumped into her uncle’s arms. He caught and held her to him for a moment, while the boat bounced unhappily on the water. Then he put her down beside her weeping mother, who snatched her to her. Bachiro’s wife began to wail and was hastily hushed by her husband.

  ‘When I went to see him this morning,’ Charles muttered to James, ‘Leila’s father said it wouldn’t be the first riot he’d seen, nor would it be the last. I reminded him that I’d had this felucca standing by for a week, in case of emergency, and he as good as told me I was a craven fool.’

  His back to Leila, James made a rueful face, while Charles berated himself that he had not transferred money abroad.

  ‘With the Turks watching every move, it would have been almost impossible,’ James comforted him.

  The wind showed signs of changing, and the boatman said it would be dangerous to linger any longer; the Turks would undoubtedly soon arrive to sack the warehouses along the waterfront. Better to leave while the wind held.

  ‘For Jesus’ sake, make him wait,’ Leila whispered urgently to her husband. ‘Mama – Papa – somebody – may come.’

  Charles agreed, and argued heatedly with the stolid black seaman until, encouraged by some silver coins, he agreed to wait until the sun had set.

  They waited anxiously through the afterglow, until shouts from the landward side of the warehouse and the sound of heavy thuds on wood brought Bachiro’s eldest son speeding to the wharf. ‘They’re coming,’ he shouted breathlessly, as he leapt into the little craft, his eyes starting out of his head with fright.

  The felucca slipped seaward, while Leila crouched on a coil of rope and wept unrestrainedly for parents and sisters she would never see again. Charles Al-Khoury stared dumbly landwards. He was numb with horror, unable, as yet, to accept his parents’ fiery death.

  Seated on the end of her bed in a small apartment in a Chicago slum, putting on her garters over her black stockings, Leila had pointed out in defence of her husband that he had done quite a lot to protect his family. Her deep, vibrant voice shook as she told Helena, ‘Papa arranged that a shipment of French silk he was expecting be redirected to our friend, Mr Ghanem, here in Chicago – and he began to wear his special moneybelt with gold coins in it, as did Uncle James. I wore my jewellery all the time.’

  Helena sighed, and then she asked wistfully, ‘When will we be able to go home, Mama?’

  Her mother stood up and shook down her long black skirt. ‘Some day, perhaps, dear.’ She did not tell her that there was nothing and nobody to go home to. Her courage faltered for a moment, as she said, ‘It was a terrible massacre – it’ll never be forgotten.’

  Helena rubbed her face wearily, and remembered again how they had sailed all night, seasick and then hungry.

  As they worked their way from Beirut to Cyprus, there to be sheltered by business friends of her father’s, all the certainties of her life had vanished. She had been an ordinary middle-class young girl, happy in a gentle routine of lessons from her mother and social occasions shared with her uncle and grandparents. There had been books to read, festivals to keep, music to listen to and to learn to play, forays into the mountains and walks beside the sea; and, in her father’s warehouse, fabulous fabrics and carpets to be admired and carefully caressed, until one could unerringly recognize quality and fine workmanship. And tentatively, beginning to be mentioned in her mother’s conversation, was the excitement of deciding who she should marry in a couple of years’ time.

  Instead, she was being shifted nightly from one alien house to another, in an effort to stay hidden from the ruling Turks. Then, when she began to think she would go out of her mind, they sailed one night in a stinking fishing boat to Nice, where they were, at last, safely outside the Turkish Empire. From there, they had travelled by train across France to Hamburg, where a Jewish friend of her father obtained a passage to Liverpool for them.

  They had waited several anxious weeks in Liverpool in a boarding house packed with other immigrants, while a passage for America was arranged. Charles and James Al-Khoury, with Helena pattering along behind them, had filled in the time by exploring the city. In the course of their walks, Uncle James had been most enthusiastic about the modern, gaslit city, and despite his elder brother’s advice against it, he decided to remain in it. Partly because of the valuable consignment of silk awaiting him in Chicago, which would help him to start a new business there, and the fact that there were already Lebanese refugees in that city, Charles Al-Khoury stuck to his original plan of settling in the United States.

  Leila had nearly died during the passage to America in the steerage section of the cramped immigrant ship. Their small funds had dwindled during their journeying and Charles dared not spend any more than he did. Tended by other Christians who had fled the Turkish Empire, Greeks, Cypriots and Armenians, as well as Lebanese, her mother had lain weeping helplessly and muttering with fever. Huddled together in an unventilated hold, on a straw palliasse spread on a shelflike fixture above another family, Helena was very seasick. She wanted despairingly to die herself, as she watched her father grow more haggard each day, and listened to the horrifying stories of other refugees, of wholesale murder all over the Middle East.

  When her nausea eased, her father took her up on deck and they walked together, too exhausted to say much.

  After that, there was the incredible noise and smell in the great immigration shed, while the United States Immigration authorities worked their way through the anxious, pressing crowd washed up on their shores. Leila kept a firm
hold on Helena’s hand, in case, by some awful misfortune, they should become separated, so Helena sat by the listless bundle in black which was her mother and listened to the jabber of a dozen languages round her, amid the maelstrom of noisy, smelly humanity.

  The three of them had made an effort to learn a few words of English while in Liverpool. The immigration officials, though harried, were not unkind, and eventually a bewildered Helena was hustled onto the Chicago train by a father who, for the first time, seemed more relaxed. The bookkeeper had decided to stay in New York with another Lebanese family from the same immigrant ship. They said an impassioned farewell and vanished into the turbulence of the great port.

  It was only towards the end of her time in Chicago, when her life was again about to change completely, that Helena realized that, to her parents, Chicago had been yet another nightmare. Being young, she had herself begun to adapt to her new life. As she went to the shops for her mother, and helped her father as he tried to establish a little business in wholesale dress materials, she began to pick up some English.

  In contrast, her gently nurtured mother, though educated, was used to being much at home, secure in the knowledge that her parents had married her to a comfortably placed, kindly man. She had rarely been stared at by strangers, never been hungry, never done much except to order her servants and adapt herself to her husband. In Chicago, she was, at first, shattered, unable to make much effort.

  Another refugee, arriving after them, confirmed the death of Leila’s parents and sisters and, indeed, it seemed of everyone they had known. As she mourned her loss, the fever she had suffered aboard ship returned to her, and Charles Al-Khoury’s face grew thinner and grimmer. Helena tried to comfort her mother and not to cry herself. She closed her mind off from any thought of Beirut, feeling that if she allowed herself to contemplate what had happened, she would go mad. In those early weeks in America, the child grew into a stony-faced young woman, physically hardly formed, but mentally aged beyond her years.