The Book of Trees

by Leanne Lieberman

  When I arrived, the café was half empty and Andrew wasn’t there. I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed or relieved. The café was long and narrow, with a bar along one side and a few tables at the very front next to a microphone and chair on a small stage. I took a seat at the back of the bar and ordered a salad and a beer. The bartender wore a halter top with spaghetti straps and pants so sheer I could see the outline of her thong. She had nice shoulders. I remembered the feeling of rubbing my bare shoulder against my cheek on hot nights. I used to own a great pair of wide-leg pants. They rode low on the hips, showing just a hint of skin—sexy, but not slutty. I sighed and adjusted my skirt. I wasn’t dressed too badly: a long straight skirt, cute sandals, my plaid rockabilly blouse with the rosette buttons. At least I’d brought my funky sun hat, a 1930s cloche style with a big flower over one ear. Sheila had found it for me in a thrift store.

  The bar filled up, and I started to feel out of place. Everyone was so much older, and I felt shabby in my skirt and blouse compared to the girls in their strappy tank tops and tight jeans. I watched in amazement as this guy kissed a girl hello and gave her bare shoulder a squeeze. She ran her hands through the guy’s hair, laughing. I felt shocked. It had been so long since I’d seen people casually touching each other.

  I was about to leave when Andrew came in. He was wearing jeans, his sunglasses pushed up on top of his head, making his hair spike up. My stomach tightened when I saw him. He settled his guitar case by the bar and leaned in to kiss the bartender. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because a woman in a red dress and red highlights was singing a Hebrew pop song. Andrew stood at the bar near the stage drinking a beer. He didn’t see me. Then a couple in matching Mao military hats sang “No Woman, No Cry.” The audience joined in. Everyone in the bar seemed to know each other. They clapped one another on the back and exchanged kisses.

  I moved closer to the wall by the bar. After a few more songs Andrew got up and sang “Crazy.” I liked the way he tilted his hips forward to support his guitar. The bar made me think of playing with the Neon DayGlos, the excitement of Flip counting us in to play “Walking After Midnight.” I could feel the cowboy boots on my feet, see the spiderweb tattoo on Matt’s biceps. And a one and a two. The low twang of the banjo sang out under my fingers.

  Andrew caught my eye as he came off the stage and headed over to me. I twisted my skirt between my fingers.

  “You came.”

  “I shouldn’t have.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “I liked the songs you played.” I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, have him squeeze my shoulder.

  “So, guitar girl, if you were up there, what would you play?”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Maybe some Carter Family or an Alison Krauss song.”

  “I’d like to hear you. Any chance you’d get up tonight?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, c’mon. I bet you’re great. I heard you sing the other day.”

  “Well…”

  A guy with reddish hair wearing baggy shorts and a T-shirt clapped Andrew on the back. “Great set, dude.”

  Andrew turned toward the guy. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, I want you to meet some people.” Before Andrew could introduce me, the guy was herding him toward a table of his friends.

  “I’ll catch you later.”

  “Sure.”

  Andrew moved off to shake hands with a dyed blond in a cute sundress. His friend with the reddish hair had his arm around another girl.

  I checked my watch. It was already 8:30 and unless I was going to take a shared taxi back to Jerusalem, I’d have to leave now to make it before curfew. The doors of the yeshiva locked at 10:00 pm. I took a last look around the bar. It was just like the bar where I used to play: the casual hookups, the guys checking you out. I could almost taste the flat combination of beer and cigarettes flavoring Matt’s mouth. It was the taste of disappointment. Right. I was done with that.

  I finished my drink and slipped out of the bar into the warm Tel Aviv night and started walking to the bus stop.

  EIGHT

  There were no classes at the yeshiva Friday morning so Aviva and I slept in. We spent the morning cleaning our room and shopping at the grocery store in French Hill. In the afternoon I gave Aviva a guitar lesson. When she tired of practicing, she went to talk to some friends, leaving me with the guitar. I played some of the new Jewish songs I’d learned, and then I found my fingers playing the Abbey Road medley the guitarists had played on the rooftop of the hostel. I thought about Andrew playing “Crazy” in the bar in Tel Aviv. When Aviva asked what I’d done the night before, I told her I’d gone out with Michelle. She’d yawned and said she’d gone to Israeli dancing. I was relieved she didn’t ask for details.

  In the afternoon, Aviva and I went to stay overnight for Shabbos with Aviva’s cousins, Dan and Leah. They lived on the outskirts of French Hill. When I walked into their apartment, I couldn’t stop staring at the fabulous view of the Judean Desert from their living-room window.

  Dan had already left for shul by the time we got there, so Aviva and I helped Leah in the kitchen. Leah had a pretty face with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, but she wore a head covering like an oversized sock over every single hair on her head, and a giant apron dress over her enormous pregnant belly. I noticed she wore white socks so not even her ankles or feet were exposed. I curled my toes in my sandals to hide my polished pink toenails.

  Aviva set the table and I made a fruit salad while Leah rattled off her list of baby worries. Would her mother arrive in time for the baby’s birth? What if Leah didn’t understand the doctors and nurses at the hospital? Dan and Leah had moved to Israel a year ago. On the counter by the phone was an open notebook with a list of questions written in Hebrew and their English translations. I am in pain. Please give me an epidural. Please call my mother!

  Leah couldn’t imagine how she’d manage the holidays with a newborn in the fall. I couldn’t imagine having a baby, period. Aviva seemed enthralled with Leah’s pregnant belly. She put her hands on Leah’s stomach and even whispered, “Hello, little baby.” She was already offering to babysit.

  When I finished making the salad, Leah and Aviva were still discussing bassinets and high chairs.

  Leah finished wiping down the counters and came to sit with Aviva and me at the table. We each had a glass of juice.

  “So”—Leah looked at me—“Aviva told me this is your first trip to Israel. Are you loving it?”

  “Yes. I can’t wait to explore. We’re supposed to go on some trips soon.”

  “We’re going to Massada in a couple of weeks, and then there’s a night hike at the end of the month,” Aviva said.

  Through the kitchen window I could see the desert, pink in the fading evening light. “I’d like to be out there right now.” I pointed to the sunset.

  “Too hot,” Aviva said.

  “And dry,” Leah added. “I feel parched just looking out there. Ugh.” She drank the rest of her juice and got up from the table.

  Leah went to pray in the bedroom, and Aviva headed for the spare bedroom with her prayer book, leaving me in the sparsely furnished living room. The couches had been pushed to the side of the room against a bookshelf filled with Talmudic volumes to make space for the dining table. Elaborate silver candlesticks stood next to mismatched silverware and cheap dishes.

  What was Andrew doing right now? Drinking with friends? Clubbing in Tel Aviv? I tried to imagine him all scrubbed up for Shabbos, wearing a kippah. I suppressed a giggle.

  I flopped onto the faded gray couch. I wanted to sing the psalms to welcome the Shabbos queen the way I had at Aviva’s parents’ house, praying together to create the divine presence of God, not speed-reading through the prayers the way Leah and Aviva were. When I sang alone, I was just one lonely voice, but at school when we all sang together, we created the feeling of God.

  I stood up and wandered out to the ba
lcony. The heat overwhelmed me after the air-conditioned apartment. I stood quietly observing the desert hills. Dan and Leah’s apartment was at the edge of the city. If you crossed the road, you’d really be in the desert. The sun had gone down and the sky at the horizon was a dreamy swath of pinks and blues.

  I imagined the desert like a giant empty plate, a place so big it would obliterate all thought. It wouldn’t matter what music you liked or how you dressed. I wouldn’t be thinking about Andrew or the trees. I’d just be a body moving in a space, motivated by physical sensations: thirst, hunger, heat, exhaustion. If you were surrounded by nothing but sand, were you still the same person or would the landscape change you?

  I shook my head and thought about standing in that huge wide-open space. I couldn’t even envision it; it felt too big to fit in my head. I’d be swallowed up in the vastness.

  I closed my eyes and started humming one of the Friday-night psalms. “Yedid Nefesh, Av harahaman.” Soulmate, loving God. I pretended I was singing with a bunch of other people, and I tried to conjure the feeling of Shabbos calm, of God’s presence.

  Leah came into the living room to light Shabbos candles. She offered Aviva and me little tea lights in glass holders so we could say the blessing. I wondered if I should sing along with them, but before I could decide, Leah whispered the blessing, without looking at us, and then went back to the kitchen. I sang the blessing alone.

  Then Dan came in calling, “Shabbat Shalom.” He was a young guy with a big barrel chest and a brown scruffy beard. We gathered at the table for the blessing of the wine and then we washed our hands. Dan said hamotzi, the prayer over the bread, and passed everyone a warm, ripped-off chunk of challah. Then Leah brought in the food, and Dan and Leah started discussing the week’s Torah portion.

  Leah passed me a platter of chicken. “I always think it’s crazy Moshe never got to enter the holy land.”

  “He made a mistake.” Dan helped himself to rice.

  “But everyone makes mistakes,” Leah said.

  Shit. I had been swimming in Tel Aviv and chasing Andrew instead of learning the week’s Torah portion. “So, what’s the story of the week?” I tried to keep my tone light.

  Conversation stopped. Aviva raised her eyebrows at me. My cheeks grew hot. “I missed class yesterday,” I mumbled.

  Dan took a sip of wine. “The Jews enter Israel after wandering in the desert for forty years, but Moshe isn’t allowed to enter because he doubted God.”

  I knew Moshe was Moses, but I didn’t know this story. “How did God know Moses doubted him?”

  Aviva explained. “God told Moses to strike this rock with his stick to get water. And Moses hesitated a moment, which shows he doubted God.”

  “Poor Moshe,” Leah said. “Such a good guy, and never rewarded for all his trouble. The plagues, the forty years in the desert.” She sighed.

  “No.” Dan smacked the table with his fist. “Moshe was a leader, a role model for the other Jews. He had to be made an example.”

  I wondered why we were reading this section now. Shouldn’t it be read just after Passover in the spring? “Is that the end of the chapter?” I asked. “They go to Israel, but Moses doesn’t?” Could I sound any more ignorant? I really needed to read the whole bible this summer, or at least Genesis and Exodus.

  Aviva helped herself to more salad. “They get to Israel and they make war on the Ammonites who live there, and they win and resettle the land.”

  Whoa. “They got there and there were other people, so they just killed them?”

  “It was a war,” Aviva said.

  “It wasn’t just a war.” Dan waved his fork. “It was our promised land. Of course we would win.”

  I frowned. You just kill the people who get in your way? I hadn’t thought about the trees in the last few days. I’d been too focused on Andrew. Now they came rushing back to my mind. No wonder the trees didn’t bother my religious friends. They were probably used to reading about violence in the Torah. I opened my mouth and closed it without speaking.

  “Were you going to say something?” Leah asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  “The Torah is full of bloodshed,” Dan continued. “Our people’s history has been difficult.”

  “The military is a reality here.” Leah patted her rounded tummy. “Our little one will serve.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” I felt vaguely nauseated.

  “It’s a privilege,” Dan said.

  “Better to fight than be frightened.” Leah folded her napkin.

  “Or have to hide,” Aviva added. I stared at Aviva. Did she really agree with them?

  Dan helped himself to a second helping of chicken. “Besides, he’ll be fighting for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.”

  “Amen!” Leah raised her wine and clinked her glass against Dan’s.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

  Dan looked at me and smiled. “Mia, I love all people, I really do.” He put his huge hand over his heart. “But it’s like your family. If your brother, God forbid, is hurt, you’re going to rescue him before any stranger. These”—he gestured with an outstretched arm, suggesting all of Jerusalem—“are my people. Moshe and the Jews had to think of themselves before the Ammonites.”

  I nodded and pretended to smile. I wanted to leave their apartment immediately. Who else did the Torah say to kill? I felt like I’d gone to see a movie billed as a romantic comedy and it turned out to be a bloody war epic. Why was everyone so accepting of, even excited by, all this violence? It was crazy. I stared at Leah. Was she really okay with her kids growing up to be soldiers? Who were these people?

  After dinner Aviva cornered me in the kitchen. “How come you weren’t at your Torah class?”

  “Oh, that. Right, well. I stayed late at volunteering.”

  Aviva hesitated a moment and then nodded.

  Shabbos morning we went to Dan and Leah’s shul. In the afternoon Dan and Leah lay down for a nap. Aviva sat next to me on the balcony, reading a novel. I found a bible in Dan and Leah’s living room and flipped through to the section about the Ammonites.

  I read for a while, and then I closed the book and looked out over the desert. No wonder the army could plant trees over Arab villages or knock down Arab houses. It was in the Torah; modern Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy. I felt sick to my stomach.

  I shuddered and leaned my head back. I couldn’t stay with these people any longer. Aviva and I were supposed to hang out until Shabbos ended—five more hours. I tapped my feet on the concrete patio and twisted in the hard plastic lawn chair. I stood up abruptly. “I think I’m going to get going.”

  Aviva looked up sleepily. “Huh?”

  “I feel kinda anxious to go home. I think I’ll just head back to the dorm.”

  Aviva sat up. “You’re going to walk in this heat?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “What should I tell Dan and Leah?”

  “Oh, just tell them I felt sick or something.”

  I quickly retreated from the balcony, leaving Aviva staring after me.

  Down on the street, the sun scorched the pavement, but I felt relieved. I walked down the hill toward the Hyatt Hotel. Four o’clock Saturday afternoon and no one knew where I was. I wondered what Andrew was doing. Playing guitar? Drinking a beer? A slightly exhilarated feeling took over me. Too bad it was Shabbos and I could only get places on foot. I stopped in the shade of a bus stop to look at the view. Below me stretched East Jerusalem and then the Old City. The Dome of the Rock gleamed in the midday sun. What if you were Palestinian and you fled in 1948 and you never got to come back and see this view again? My heart felt pinched, imagining it.

  Why hadn’t I ever jogged through East Jerusalem? Even the bus from downtown took a circuitous route through West Jerusalem. Was East Jerusalem really that dangerous? It didn’t look that way from here. I fished in my backpack for my map. I studied the streets and then stuck the map in my pocket. I hesitated a moment. Aviva would
have a fit if she knew I walked there, yet I wanted to see what it was like. I’d head straight down to the Old City, just to check things out. I took a swig from my water bottle and headed downhill.

  East Jerusalem’s quiet streets of apartment blocks and high-fenced buildings had an unkempt, shabby appearance. A thin dog missing patches of fur followed me for a block before disappearing into an abandoned lot. Pink and yellow plastic bags snagged the fences and clung to the corridor of the road like icing on a dry cake. I stopped at a rough-looking gas station, unsure which way to go. Around me buses spewed exhaust. I stood looking down the road, trying to get my bearings. I fumbled in my pocket for my map, but I was reluctant to take it out. Two small boys stared at me and a group of young men looked me up and down suspiciously. There were no women around. Did these guys’ families lose their villages? I wanted to say, Sorry, it wasn’t me who did it. I looked nervously around again, crossed my fingers and decided to turn the corner. I hurried along a road without a sidewalk, praying it was the right way. Once this city had belonged to those young men’s fathers, and now it didn’t. I couldn’t imagine how that felt. I walked quickly, without looking back, until I arrived at a more familiar part of the city, not far from Damascus Gate.

  Sweat meandered between my breasts and dampened the waistband of my underwear. The sun bore down, fiery on my forearms. Now what? I could walk by Andrew’s hostel and see if he was there. What I really wanted was a pool. Last week I’d walked over to the King David Hotel and had ice tea in the lobby. I’d stared at the swimmers enjoying the water. Surely there was a women’s swim club somewhere. Or maybe I could pretend to be someone else, just for an hour, and strip off my modest sundress and plunge into the water. I used to own the cutest aqua bikini with little bows at the hips. I sat down at a bus stop and flipped through the pages of my guidebook to look for a hotel, the fancier the better.