The
Lemon Tree
In the Heart of
the Middle East,
an Unlikely Friendship
Plants Seeds of Hope
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be distilled into a brief
conversation between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Arab,
it might take the form of the following unscripted exchange
in an old 60 Minutes television report.
The Israeli being interviewed, a Jewish woman from the United States
who had immigrated to Israel, exclaimed, “I’ve solved my problem!” It was a
personal statement, but she was clearly speaking for millions of Israeli Jews
who viewed the estab-lishment of Israel as the answer to their centuries-old
problem of persecution and statelessness. Nearby was a young Palestinian
man serving as an Arabic interpreter. Spontaneously, he interjected, “But you
gave me yours!” Also a personal statement, he was just as clearly speaking for
millions of Palestinian Arabs who felt that the establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine left them persecuted and stateless.
What if an entire book could be crafted around the core dilemma
expressed in that exchange? What if the reader could be drawn fully into the
lives of two peoples who share so much linguistically, religiously, geographically,
ethnically, and historically — and who, most importantly, share the
experience of great suffering? What if the two stories could be told, not as
separate and irreconcilable, but as one tale, generating symmetry of understanding,
empathy, and hope?
I have been waiting for such a book ever since I started teaching the history
of the Middle East more than a quarter-century ago. The Middle East
will never disappear from the headlines, and my students’ lives will continue
to be influenced by events in this region even as their decisions will impact
the lives of people living in the Middle East. How can I as an instructor
prepare them for an increasingly interconnected world? I ask myself this
question each time that I prepare to teach “The Rise of Islamic Civilization,”
“Modern Middle East,” or the required sophomore-level Common Curriculum
course “The West and the World.”
Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle
East (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006) is the book I have long been waiting for.
It is a stunning achievement, a book entirely of nonfiction that grabs and holds
the reader like a great novel, a book that is both educational and inspirational. In the Israeli town of Ramla is a house with two tales to tell.
When Palestinian Arab Ahmad Khair built the modest stone
structure in 1936, he also planted a lemon tree to grow along
with his young family. Khair’s son Bashir was only 6 years old
when the entire family fled their home during the 1948 Arab-
Israeli war, becoming refugees on what we now refer to as the
West Bank. Shortly after al-Ramla (the town’s Palestinian name)
was incorporated into the newly established state of Israel, the
Eshkenazis — a family of Bulgarian Jews who had barely
escaped the Nazi Holocaust — came into possession of the
Khair house. Dalia Eshkenazi, 1 year old at the time, grew up in
the shade of the lemon tree and as a girl wondered about the
house’s former occupants.
The personal connection between the two central characters,
Dalia and Bashir, began on a hot July day in 1967. Ironically, the
dramatic expansion of Israeli-controlled areas during the 1967
Six-Day War offered Palestinians who had been dispossessed
in 1948 the chance to visit their former homes in Israel for the
first time in nearly two decades. Bashir and his two cousins
approached his childhood home in Ramla/al-Ramla with trepidation,
not knowing what kind of reception they would receive.
“I was wary,” remembers Bashir. “Should I knock forcefully
and risk intimidating the people inside? Or knock softly and risk
that the people would not hear me?”
Alone at home, Dalia, a 19-year-old student, answered the
door and had every reason to be suspicious of the three Palestinian strangers when they asked if they could
visit her house. “I felt, wow, it’s them. It was
as if I’d always been waiting for them.” If she
allowed them in, what would she be inviting? Dalia chose to ask
the strangers in, and in doing so, opened the door to a friendship
and an unforgettable story.
The Lemon Tree grew out of a radio documentary that Sandy
Tolan produced for National Public Radio’s Fresh Air in 1998 on
the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the state of Israel. The
radio documentary wove together the voices of Bashir and Dalia
speaking to each other. Tolan’s challenge as an author was, in his
own words, “to retain the simplicity and tone of the documentary
while simultaneously writing a history book in disguise —
and making it feel, all the while, like a novel.”
The result is a prose masterpiece based on exhaustive research
in primary and secondary historical accounts, newspaper clippings,
published and unpublished memoirs, nearly a dozen
archival collections around the world, and, above all, personal
interviews. Chapter 5 alone is based on interviews with more
than 50 people.
Tolan provides 65 pages of source notes meticulously documenting
every detail of the book. The extraordinary nature of
this accomplishment gradually grows on the reader. This is a
book that can be trusted, an important consideration when
dealing with subject matter complicated by so much emotion
and exaggeration on all sides.
The Arab-Israeli conflict touches everyone deeply; whether
you are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, it goes to the heart of your
identity. Having lectured to diverse audiences on the subject for
many years, I can attest to the minefield that the author ventured
into when he chose to write this book, a minefield in which the
careless choice of a word can blow up in one’s face at any moment.
After opening with the initial encounter between Bashir and
Dalia, the book then moves back to the year 1936 — the beginning
of the Palestinian Revolt against the British, which coincided
with the building of the Khair home — and traces the
evolving Middle Eastern context during the early 1940s. The
scene shifts to the nightmare of Nazi-occupied Europe, where
Bulgarian Jews, including the family of Dalia Eshkenazi, narrowly
escaped being deported to the death camps in the north
and then prepared to immigrate to British-controlled Palestine
following World War II. The author next moves us back to
al-Ramla during those same years, skillfully connecting the family
histories of the Khairs and the Eshkenazis to the historical
forces that were buffeting Europe and the Middle East during
and after World
War II.
Tolan tells the stories of both families during the all-important
year 1948, in which the “miracle” of the Zionist War of
Independence corresponds to the “nightmare” of the Palestinian
Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.” The chapters continue to work in
tandem, brilliantly illuminating the family stories and national
stories of Israelis and Palestinians during the decades leading up
to the first meeting between Dalia and Bashir.
Beginning with their meeting at the door of the house with
the lemon tree, the personal relationship between Dalia and
Bashir evolved over the course of four decades and is woven into the narrative. The twists and turns in this relationship are
full of surprises better left for the reader to discover. Suffice it to
say that Tolan masterfully escorts the reader through an epic
story of war and peace, despair and hope, that has captured the
world’s attention for more than half a century.
The book brings to life the complex relationship between
Bashir and Dalia in all its confusion, frustration, and pain. There
is no cheap sentimentality or shallow wishful thinking. The hard
realities are faced head-on, both by the main characters and by
the author, which makes reading this book a truly educational
experience. When all the suffering, despair, violence, and mutually
incompatible demands have been confronted, Dalia and Bashir
remain two human beings who treat each other with respect, who
refuse to give up on the future, and who cultivate the seeds of
hope in their own hearts while planting new ones in ours.
Read this book for yourself. More importantly, read it for your
children and your grandchildren — and then pass it on to a parent,
a sibling, a pastor, or anyone else you truly care about.
I have just begun to explore the possibilities for using the The Lemon Tree as a learning experience in the classroom.
Students feel understandably overwhelmed by the history of
the second half of the 20th century, especially when they have
only a week or two to touch on it in a course such as “The West
and the World.” This book will focus their attention on a region
and an issue that have been central to global history during the
20th century. I believe its powerful stories of human suffering
and human perseverance will engage them and inspire them.
And I hope it will place future headlines in a context that will
help students not only understand the history but also work
for reconciliation.
I plan to ask my students to compare the experiences of Dalia
and Bashir and then to branch out and look for similarities and
differences between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. The differences
are easy to detect, as Dalia and Bashir would be the first
to admit. Opening themselves to the similarities requires effort,
insight, humility, courage, and faith.
—By Don Holsinger,
spu Professor of History
— Photo by getty images
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