The Cedar Tree
The cedar trees on Mount Lebanon do not speak anymore.
They haven’t for a long time.
They used to be cedars of gods!
Sought after by every empire,
Venerated by their people.
Now, they stand huddled together at the base of a valley,
Watching their mountain crumble stone by stone,
Watching the ocean eat the sand away wave after wave,
Watching the sky darken with each passing smoke cloud.
a
I will never know what it feels like to rest under those cedar trees,
A stranger to fear.
I will never know my country as it should be,
Clean and thriving and free.
No, I rest under a different tree now,
One that has syrup running in its veins,
Painted in the colours of autumn.
Immortalized, just as its brother the Cedar, on a flag,
But missing the knowledge of what it is like to fall in a forest littered with fallen.
Where your noise is silenced by the whistle of a missile as it sails towards its mark.
Where children hide, separated from their parents, waiting for the earth to stop shaking.
a
I am the descendent of these cedar trees,
Grown from a seed polluted and scarred.
The earth and water toxic and foul.
The air smelling of smoke on a good day.
I sit atop that mountain where my ancestors lay and watch my homeland crumble,
Sink into the ocean slowly, drowning alive,
Watch a thousand sunsets, waiting for the final one.
a
I trace the sprawling roots of my family here,
The millions of ways they were damaged and hurt.
I recite the bedtime stories of my childhood to the moon.
The ones of bombs near windows and miracle escapes.
Of three children sleeping on the beach alone because the Zionist army forced them from their home.
Of taking back alleys and walking for miles because the roads were closed from the number of bodies filling potholes.
And these were just the sensational things.
There is a chorus of a million small hardships lost in the tragic lullaby of my people,
But they’ve learned to sing along to the sirens and gunfire.
Keep the beat and change the melody,
And I am still trying to learn the harmony.
a
Here, on the land of a mass grave,
I dare not yell or disturb the dead.
I dare not pound my fists into the blood-soaked earth.
I dare not cry and water the trees with my tears.
a
No, instead I will listen.
Listen for the tree falling in the forest,
The rock tumbling to the ground,
The wave crashing against the shore,
The earth shuddering apart,
The fire crackling below,
The sky cracking open.
I will bear witness to the undoing of a people,
Because that is all I can do when I am rooted to one spot but planted in another.
a
I will extend my branches across the sea in hopes it’ll shade one like me.
A tree in a dying forest,
Abandoned by the loggers, axe embedded in its side.
Transplanted onto foreign ground,
Imbued with ancient enchantment,
Hoping for a sapling to one day rise from its ashes.