If only Palestine’s silent witnesses to war, occupation, resistance, love and birth—and existence—could talk.
Alia Yunis
The Trees spoke to each other through the strong wind rustling through their leaves, above the screams, the fires, the bombs, the droughts. They spoke across the seas, rivers, mountains, oasis, forests, and streams of my homeland, across the snow, the desert, the changing seasons.
I heard their conversation from where I hid underneath my favorite Olive Tree, away from the missiles flying over the treetops, the rooftop of my house and the darkened skies of my sun-drenched birthplace. This is what I heard them say, as I stayed planted underneath the olive tree, clinging to my zaatar and bread.
“Hey, your branches are creaking too much tonight,” the Olive Tree complained to the Cedar of Lebanon. “That kid sleeping underneath me has enough noise from humans to deal with.”
“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose,” said the Cedar of Lebanon said, defensive. “I can’t control the weather or the wars. Or even my own existence. There’s not even enough of my family left to fight off the insects, like we used to back in the old days.”
“I know,” said the Olive Tree as she looked at the holes chewed in so many of her leaves. “I’m trying to survive so many parasites now — and still protect these humans. And you can’t help me at all anymore.”
“Again, not my fault. If I could, I would build that kid a bed from these creaky branches you’re complaining about,” the Cedar of Lebanon answered, waving her branches east and west. “But nowadays I can’t spare any body parts.”
“I would never ask you to do that,” the Olive Tree said. “You must stay alive. You — all of us trees — are the proof that these humans have been here all along. Otherwise, who has pressed my olives all these millennia, if not them?
The Cedar of Lebanon agreed. “And they say you make the best oil.”
The Olive Tree was flattered, as the Cedar of Lebanon intended. “I owe the humans my good taste,” the Olive Tree admitted. “They take good care of me. And for 4,000 years, I’ve done my best to remain steadfast, no matter who comes to occupy this land. I’m these humans longest-living ancestor, their heritage. I am their agri-culture, get it?”
The Cedar of Lebanon chuckled, despite having heard this a few hundred times. There was just something comforting about the familiarity. “You’ve been telling this stupid old joke since I was a sapling,” the Cedar of Lebanon groaned.
Salah guards the oldest tree in Palestine, believed to be 4,500 years old (all photos in this carousel courtesy of the author, Alia Yunis).
A pomegranate tree thriving in late summer.
Im Hikmat, who manages her olive groves near Jenin on her own, takes an afternoon break.
Almond blossoms start attracting birds in the early spring.
Two friends chat under a mango tree near Stone Town, Zanzibar
A fig tree starting to produce fruit on a later summer afternoon.
Dates get some extra net protection during the early harvest season, in Liwa UAE.
A Cedar of Lebanon photographed by the author’s father in the 1960s.
The author tries to find some shade under an olive tree while filming "The Golden Harvest."
The Olive Tree tried to remember when she first chatted with this particular Cedar of Lebanon. “What are you now? Around 800 years old?”
“I’m only 789 years old,” the Cedar of Lebanon said, a little insulted. “I’m still young, like the generations of lovers that have come here for weddings, first kisses, and proposals under my awning, and who wrote their beloved’s initials in my trunk. I still carry the memory of their heartbeats.”
“I still remember my first couple,” the Olive Tree said, full of nostalgia. “Mariam and Yusuf were their names.”
From a desert breeze in Jericho, the Date Palm said, “I can hear the memory of those lovers’ heartbeats even up here.”
The Olive Tree and the Cedar of Lebanon didn’t reply, as they found the sweetness of the Date Palm pretentious. This always hurt the Date Palm and made her defensive. “You may be older than me, but I’m taller,” she replied to their silence. “And I’m more important, if you ask me. I define the oasis and give shade to the people traveling amongst the sand dunes and craggy cliffs of the desert.”
The Pomegranate Tree, standing not far from the Olive Tree, was awakened by this arrogance from the desert. “But you’re so dangerous to climb,” the Pomegranate Tree reminded the Date Palm. “So many have bled to death or had their skin slashed by your thorns as they climbed to reach your fruits. With me, they can just reach up and pluck what they want. And what says love more than my sweet red seeds? That is why I’m stitched into the embroidery of the women of Gaza.”
The Date Palm breathed back a flustered wind. “That danger was a long time ago. Now the humans have invented lifts that take people to my tops to get more than 100 kilos of fruit from me each September,” she boasted. “I’m sure you don’t yield that much. And no one has to do any of that calculated intercropping with me. Just me, myself, and I is enough.”
The lavender and oat sprouts intercropped around the Olive Tree bristled but did not say anything, nor did the green chickpeas in a nearby field surrounded by barbed wire.
But a rare bee buzzed around the Pomegranate Tree and looked up at the Date Palm. She could not fly that high. “Ha, you can’t self-pollinate, even with my help,” the bee shouted up. “You need humans to hook up your males to your females.”
“I might need human matchmaking, but why did that child of Mariam and Yusuf choose to be born under my great, great, great, great grandfather?” replied the Date Palm.
Before they could reply, a sweet but authoritative Apple Tree from a chilly mountain in the Golan Heights jumped in. “Excuse me, but Yusuf was not the father. How could he be when Mary was a virgin? Mary is innocence. That is why she’s so often depicted carrying the purest of fruits, my apples.”
A few meters away from the Olive Tree, the Fig Tree, weighed down by too much fruit on is branches, took exception to this. “Woah, now,” the Fig Tree said. “Adam and Eve bit into an apple and that left them standing naked — if not for my leaves to cover their shame.”
“That is not clear,” the Apple Tree replied. “It could have been you as much as me that tempted them to sin, if you look all the Adam and Eve paintings in Europe. They can’t tell the difference between us.”
Suddenly, piercing sobs left them all silent. The sobs came from the other side of the Pine Trees that surrounded them like a wall. They blocked the Jaffa Orange Tree, the source of the sobbing. The Jaffa Orange Tree’s fruits still retained their tough skin despite being cut off from the other trees of this land. Thus, the Jaffa Oranges Tree’s sobs took them by surprise.
“Stop fighting about what Europeans think of you,” the Jaffa Orange Tree said, as her grief turned to anger. “Don’t you see they want you to fight amongst yourselves while they profit from the famed oranges that the people of this land first grew on my trees?”
The Trees’ leaves rustled, ashamed by their comparable pettiness. They wanted to reach out to the Jaffa Orange Tree, but none could see past the Pine Trees.
“We are sorry,” the Oldest Pine Tree shrugged from a dry hilltop. “We fueled this discord amongst you when the invaders brought us here to make it look like Europe.” The Trees all remembered when the invaders planted the first pines by the thousands to cover the villages they destroyed, to make them invisible, to separate them.
“We have ruined the soil,” said the Youngest Pine Tree, who had just been planted a few months ago, along with several hundred other baby pines. “And we’ve caused fires because we need more water than the rest of you. We come from a land with more rain.”
“Then go back home,” the Olive Tree said.
“I wish,” said the Oldest Pine Tree. “It doesn’t snow enough here for our taste. But we need the humans who brought us here to move us back home. We can’t fly.”
“Neither can I,” said the Date Palm, acknowledging a flaw. “The invaders have used me to build even bigger fences. On this land, the only place I belong is the Jericho desert. But now we date palms surround settlers in their fancy enclaves so they don’t have to look at the refugee camps below, where soldiers imprison boys and girls the age of the child now sleeping under the Olive Tree.”
“Well at least you got to stay,” said the lone Almond Tree with its glorious crown of white and pink blossoms. “Before they bulldozed most of my family to build the settlements, these hills were dotted with almond trees. Now, 80 percent of my descendants grow in a place called California.”
The Olive Tree hesitated before speaking. “Some of the Almond Tree’s family disappeared to make way for more olive trees,” the Olive Tree quietly said, as she wanted to stay honest. “The occupied humans stopped intercropping when they started to see me as the only cash crop.”
“I’m pretty pissed about that,” the Almond Tree huffed. “But I can’t blame you for human short-sightedness. Besides, you got your stuff to deal with. The money your oil brings is one of the reasons the invaders flooded you with sewage in an attempt to kill you last year.”
“I wish my leaves were even bigger,” said the Fig Tree. “So, I could hide the humans of this land from the invaders. I would protect you, too, Olive Tree. Almond Tree. All of you. I really would.”
The Apple Tree didn’t want the Fig Tree to get all the attention. “So would I,” the Apple Tree piped in. “Alas, there are over 7,500 types of apples — sour, sweet, crisp, crunchy, mushy, red, yellow, green, pink — but none of us can help here.”
The Mango Tree, who they always forgot because she was such a new arrival, said, “I miss the tropics, but the occupiers have brought me here for profit. I wish I could give that profit to you and go home.”
“Oh, Mango Tree, if you could have only known my ancestors and the Olive Trees ancestors, many of whom are now wedding chests, jewelry boxes, and wood carvings of Mary and her baby,” said the Cedar Tree of Lebanon. “My essential oils can still ward off evil, but the smells it must fight off now are strange to me”
“It’s the odors of blood, capitalism, and colonialism,” said the Mango Tree. “I know them from my land, too.”
The Pomegranate Tree shook as she became more worked up. “On this land, there were problems, like everywhere. Diseases, fights over property, including us trees, men lording power over women, but nothing we and the humans couldn’t handle together.”
“We are old now,” the Fig Tree added. “I’ve been here since before 1948, and we have survived much violence. It’s the young ones I’m afraid for.”
That is when I got up from under the Olive Tree, the international symbol of peace, along with the doves that once perched on my uncle’s terrace.
I spoke to all the trees, even the ones I could not see.
“Dear Trees, don’t worry about me. I exist. Whatever label they have chosen to validate or invalidate me by. I am a small blossom on a tree of generations I have never seen and a tiny branch of those who will blossom anew for generations I will never meet. They have used you to obliterate the past, present, and future, for millions who they imagine without faces that smile or without eyes that water with tragedies and hope, like the tears of our beloved trees. One day they will bury me under this Olive Tree in a coffin made of a Cedar of Lebanon, and my spirit and yours will forever haunt and nourish this land until we can all be reunited with our Jaffa Orange Tree.”
