The Book of Trees

by Leanne Lieberman

  When we got back to the house, all the lights were out and the garden was dark except for faint shadows from the waning moon. We stood on the front walkway between the thick bushes. Andrew reached for the key.

  I grabbed his hand. “Let’s just stand here a moment.” I leaned into him and he leaned back. I had a sudden urge to push him hard, or smack my knuckles into the trunk of a tree. I gave him a shove with my palm, more forceful than playful.

  Andrew stumbled backward. “What are you doing?” He gave me a slow, concerned smile.

  “Push me back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Push me back.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I wanted him to shove me out of my funk. I came up close to him. “Just push me.”

  He nudged me with his shoulder, more a tickle. “Is this a game?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I let you win?”

  “No.”

  Andrew took a step toward me and pushed against my shoulders with both hands, not forcefully, but with enough effort to send me backward. He grabbed my hand before I landed in the bushes. “Don’t do that again,” he said as he pulled me to him.

  Andrew unlocked the door and held out his hand to stop me from entering the house. “Wait, I’ll find the switch.”

  I slipped around him, blocking the light switch. “Don’t bother.”

  “You’ll trip.”

  I slid my palms up his arms and left a rough wet kiss on his chin. He kissed me back, leaning me up against the wall. Then I slipped out of his arms.

  “Hey, where you going?”

  “I’m right over here.”

  “Where?”

  I hovered near the couch.

  My eyes adjusted to the light and I could see the outline of Andrew across the room. He moved toward me and stumbled on the carpet. “Shit.”

  “Are you okay?” I started to giggle.

  I heard him swear again under his breath. I darted into the kitchen.

  “Mia?”

  I waited silently in the dark, my pulse threatening to explode in my temples. I put my hand over my chest and took a few deep breaths. Finally I popped my head through the living-room door frame. “Hey, where are you?”

  Hands reached out and grabbed me. I screamed as Andrew pinned me onto the couch. “Game over,” he panted in my ear.

  I squirmed with delight.

  Two days later we got on the bus to Dahab. Except for a group of religious American girls, foreign backpackers filled most of the seats. I breathed a sigh of relief; no one on the bus was from B’nos Sarah. I gripped Andrew’s hand as we left Jerusalem. I felt like I was abandoning B’nos Sarah, and at the last minute someone from school would order me back to class. I stared out the window, exhausted from the week of being bombarded by emotions. If only I could be two people, I’d be complete. I concentrated on slowing my breath and relaxing my body, keeping my eyes on the landscape.

  I was almost asleep when I noticed the rolling Judean hills had changed to the flat pancake of the desert. I drew in my breath sharply and sat upright in my seat. The land extended endlessly to the horizon, the sky above huge and almost white in its brightness. I put my face up close to the window. If I could stand in all that space, I could…I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore.

  I grabbed Andrew’s arm. “I need to get off the bus.”

  Andrew turned to look at me. “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Just for a few minutes. This is the desert I’ve been looking for.” I knew it sounded weird, but I didn’t care.

  “Mia, you can’t just get off here.”

  “But this is what I need.” I stood up to get my backpack. The bus lurched, and I steadied myself with the seat.

  Andrew grabbed my hand. “What are you talking about?”

  “I—I have this thing for the desert.”

  “Please, sit down. I promise you, where we’re going there will be endless sand.”

  “Not just the sea?”

  Andrew nodded. I hesitated, still standing.

  “If you need to, you can take a taxi out to the desert and do whatever you need to do,” he said.

  I looked out at the vista passing by, swaying with the bus. I could always come here on my way back if the desert wasn’t the same in Sinai. I sat down.

  Four and a half hours later we were at the border, crossing from Eilat to Taba, Egypt. After the air-conditioned bus, the heat felt suffocating. I let Andrew guide me through customs, following his sweaty back through the lineups. The heat dulled me, making my blood feel slow and viscous. In Taba we caught another hotter, more rickety bus to Dahab. Hot dry air blew in through the open windows, combining with the loud Arabic pop music blaring through the speakers. I sat still, letting the heat and noise rush over me. The religious girls were gone, probably to visit Mount Sinai.

  In Dahab we got off the bus and trekked down a street of hostels and guest houses along the beach. I let Andrew choose a guest house with a view of the water and followed him up a steep set of tile stairs to our room. I lay on the bed and tried to let my limbs relax into the saggy mattress. Andrew opened the sliding patio doors, tried out the hammocks on the balcony and tested the water in the bathroom. Then he lay down on the bed next to me. He wrapped his arms around my waist. I kept tensing my leg muscles and shifting from side to side. I thought here I would be just Mia, whoever that was, a girl on vacation with a guy she was in love with. But my backpack was still full of long skirts and modest T-shirts, and I was in a foreign country with a guy I didn’t know very well. I wasn’t going to be eighteen for another three months, and I hadn’t even told my mother where I was.

  “I’m going to go out for a bit,” Andrew said. I nodded and watched him put on his sandals. I dozed, dreaming about the desert I’d seen from the bus, the desert where I imagined you could stand and be anyone or no one, as if you were hollow.

  Andrew came back a half hour later with a six-pack of beer and a bag of pot. I watched as he rolled us a joint. The first hit burned my nostrils as I exhaled, but the second sent a wave of calm through me. I leaned back on the pillows and watched the yellow fuzz of the dimming light coming through the slats on the balcony doors.

  The next morning I stood on the balcony in a light breeze. The slowly rising sun turned the mountains a deep purple and the water a shiny pink. I pulled on my skirt and sandals.

  Andrew looked up sleepily from his pillow. “Where you going?”

  “I have to go out to the desert. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  Andrew rubbed his eyes. “What? Now?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s so early.”

  “I have to go before it gets too hot.”

  “Mia, wait. Please, don’t go alone.” Andrew sat up and grabbed my hand. “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” I pulled away from him and filled my backpack with a box of crackers and several bottles of water.

  We finally agreed he’d drive out with me but go for coffee with the driver while I walked alone.

  I chose a taxi from the lineup on the street and arranged the price. The driver seemed a little confused. “But what do you want to see?”

  “I just want to walk out into the desert.”

  The driver shrugged, and we got in the back of the cab. Andrew sat across from me, hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by my need for a desert field trip or just concerned. The taxi seats had lost their spring and I hung on to the handle above the door. Every bump sent a jolt up my spine.

  The cab stopped a half hour later. “If you walk that way, you’ll see nothing.”

  Andrew gave me a compass he kept on his backpack. “You promise you’ll come back?”

  I nodded, and then he and the driver drove off, leaving me on the road.

  The morning quickly became scorching, but I was well hydrated. I looked at the compass, chose a direction and started walking in a straight line. Quickly I lost sight o
f the road. Just the horizon of light brown sand loomed ahead, with puffy clouds against the blue sky. I sat down in the sand and sifted it through my fingers. Once I’d wanted to come and feel connected to God, but that seemed unimportant now. I wasn’t sure who was seeking the connection. Yeshiva girl? Guitar-playing Mia? Andrew’s lover? “Stop it,” I said aloud. Stop stop stop. They were just layers, outfits I could take off. What was really at heart? I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. What could I say for sure? I was flesh and blood, lungs and a heart. I was a girl, maybe a woman.

  The sky stretched like a vast flat pancake. I felt very small, a speck on the desert, a microscopic bit in the atmosphere. The sun blazed down, the heat sucking away my jitteriness. I took another long drink from my water bottle. Then I lay in the sand and let the heat soak up into me, burning my skin through my clothes. I felt molten.

  What else could I say? I was Jewish. I loved music and trees. I loved Andrew. I believed in social justice. I had responsibilities. I repeated these out loud. “Andrew, trees, music.” I loved music. I was not whole without music. I got up from the sand and started to head back the way I’d come. I felt a little dizzy but also clearheaded. I repeated, “Andrew, trees, music,” as I walked back to the road.

  After the trip out to the desert, Andrew and I spent the mornings at the outdoor café of our hotel under a wooden sun umbrella. We sat at a low table, leaning back on colorful bolsters. I wore a bikini and sarong and a breeze blew my loose hair about my naked shoulders. A waiter brought us fresh coffee and rolls. I held Andrew’s hand and he told me about surfing, about his mother. She was a breast-cancer survivor. He’d lived with her when she was sick, when he was in college. He told me about his job at a research lab, the apartment he’d chosen to be near both his mother and a surf beach, so he could watch over her and the waves.

  When it got too hot we went up to our room and napped. In the late afternoons we swam, snorkeled and played guitar on the beach. Other travelers joined us, singing or pulling out little bongo drums or occasionally a guitar or harmonica.

  At night, after beers or a joint on the beach, Andrew would read or sleep, and I would lie under a sheet so the air-conditioning wouldn’t blow right on me. I tried to think about Aviva and Michelle in class, about the old women at the craft center. They felt so far away, like a novel I once read. I remembered the Hebrew songs I learned for choir. I whispered them aloud and felt them foreign on my tongue. My mind spun in loose circles, from the stolen trees to the house I helped rebuild to the bomb and back to the trees. Sometimes I seethed with energy and felt like pacing the room. Other times the information was like weights on my chest and I felt paralyzed.

  On our last night in Dahab, Andrew and I sat on the balcony watching the sunset. Andrew ran his fingers through my hair. “So, you made any decisions about your school?”

  I sighed. “I can’t go back. I’m too distracted.”

  “By me?” Andrew tugged on my hair.

  I pulled away from him. “Yes, by you, but also by Israel. There’s so much I don’t understand.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t understand what an ancient bible story is supposed to mean to me now. There are some parts that are really great and other parts that are, well, outdated, I guess.”

  “Can’t you just follow the parts you like and leave out the other stuff?”

  “Maybe in some other community…but not at my school.”

  “All or nothing, huh?”

  I nodded. We sat for a moment in silence.

  Andrew squeezed my hand. “How did you ever become religious in the first place?”

  “Oh.” I sighed. “I wanted a normal family—”

  Andrew burst out laughing.

  “Why’s that funny?”

  “Do you know anyone whose family is normal? I mean really normal? Everyone’s got something: their parents are divorced or dead or they’re not talking to one of their siblings. Everyone’s got something.”

  “Okay, well, I wanted a family that was together.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Yeah, him. I thought if I was religious, I’d get married and have the kind of family that stuck together.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe for someone else.” I froze a little as I said that. I knew I wasn’t going to rejoin Aviva’s family in Toronto, but saying it out loud made my stomach churn. I thought I might cry, but I felt too old and too tired.

  The sun dipped over the horizon and I turned to face Andrew. “I’m going to do something else when we get back to Jerusalem.”

  Andrew raised one eyebrow at me.

  “Rebuilding was great, but I want to do more.”

  “You wrote an amazing song. We taught it to some Palestinian children. That’s something.”

  “I need to take more serious action.”

  “More rebuilding?”

  “No.”

  Andrew frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “Well…” I paused, trying to find the right words. “I’ve been thinking about that other group you told me about, the one that works with Palestinian families to help them keep their land.”

  Andrew let out a low whistle. “That could be really dangerous. I don’t think—”

  I put my hand up to stop him. “You don’t have to come.”

  Andrew stared at me. I thought, We still barely know each other. Then he said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded. Andrew leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. He pressed his lips together. We sat looking at each other. Then he smiled and squeezed my hand. “You always do what you want, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. He was right. I was the kind of person who jumped into things, who knew her mind. I nodded, and Andrew sighed and looked away from me, out at the waves.

  The light was fading around us and the air was warm and balmy. I went into the room and got Andrew’s guitar and started strumming “Crazy.” I felt both nervous and excited.

  Already my mind was humming with new lyrics about trees. Not decorative or planted, but trees that bore fruit, lost their leaves in the fall and made shade in the summer. I wanted to write music to evoke their holiness, or maybe the sound of wind in their branches. The words would make you think of God, of a creator of the most beautiful things. You could sing the song under a tree and look up and see the sky through the leaves and branches, and if other people sang with you, you could feel the same spiritual buzz as singing on Shabbos. I thought about sitting under the trees at Don’s cottage with Andrew, playing Don a song Andrew and I wrote together. And maybe the song would be on banjo, a kind of low twangy sound. It could be called “Catch Your Breath.”

  “Do you know how to play mandolin?” I asked Andrew. He shook his head. “I’ll have to teach you.”

  Andrew watched me, amused, as I did some old country picking.

  “Do you know this song?” I played and sang “In the Highways,” an old Maybelle Carter tune Don had taught me.

  Andrew shook his head.

  “You will soon. It goes like this.”

  GLOSSARY

  Please note: Alternative spellings exist for many of these terms.

  ba’al teshuva—literally “one who has returned,” a formerly nonobservant Jew who returns to the traditional ways of Judaism (also means reborn Jews)

  beit midrash—“house of learning” or study hall

  Birkot Hashahar—morning prayers

  B’nos Sarah—“Daughters of Sarah,” fictional name of the yeshiva or seminary Mia attends

  bracha—blessing

  b’shert—Yiddish for “destiny,” refers to one’s future spouse or soulmate

  bubbie—the Yiddish word for “grandmother”

  challah—braided bread eaten on the Sabbath (plural—challot)

  chassid—a member of the ultra-Orthodox branch of Judaism

  chevruta—a study partner for learning Jewish texts

&
nbsp; Eretz Yisrael—the land of Israel

  frum—Yiddish for “religious” or “observant”

  gemilut hasadim—“giving loving kindness,” refers to charitable acts

  hamotzi—blessing recited before eating bread

  haredi—ultra-Orthodox community

  Hashem—God

  havdalah—a ceremony using candles, wine and sweet spices that marks the end of the Sabbath

  horah—a type of circle dance

  Ir Hakodesh—“city of peace,” refers to the spot in Jerusalem where the first temple was built

  kadosh—holy

  kibbutznik—a member of a kibbutz, a collective farming community

  kippah—religious head covering traditionally worn only by men

  Kotel—part of the massive remaining stone walls of the Second Temple; the Kotel is also called the Wailing or Western Wall and is the most sacred site in Judaism

  kumzitz—from the Yiddish “kum, zitz,” meaning “come, sit”; refers to a sing-along

  mameleh—Yiddish for “mother dear,” a term of endearment

  mellah—Arabic for a walled Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco

  Mitzvot—“the commandments,” the 613 principles of law and ethics outlined in the Torah

  Moshe—Moses

  Moshiach—the Messiah

  Nakba—Arabic for “the catastrophe,” when 650,000 to 750,000 Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948

  Rashi—Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, foremost commentator on the Torah and Talmud

  Ribbono shel Olam—“Master of the Universe,” a way of referring to God

  Shabbos/Shabbat—the day of rest and worship; for Jews this is Saturday

  shidduch—a system of matchmaking where Jewish singles are introduced to each other for the purpose of marriage

  shtetl—a Jewish town in pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe

  shuk—market

  shul—Yiddish for “synagogue” or “temple”

  Shulchan Aruch—literally “The Set Table,” a book of Jewish law composed by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the sixteenth century

  tikkun olam— Hebrew for “repairing the world”