Posted 1003 days ago
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
Book review by Don Holsinger, Professor of History at Seattle Pacific University
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 establishment 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?
Sandy Tolan’s The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
Every house has its own history. 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 six 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, one 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. 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 fiftieth 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 fifty 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.
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 Eshkanazis 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 carries the reader effortlessly through the epic events of war and peace, despair and hope, that have 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
Middle East Resources
- Middle East Window
- An expanded bibliography on the Middle East
- Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding Bulletin
- Peacebuilder Magazine from Eastern Mennonite University
- Mennonite Central Committee
- Peaceful Ends Through Peaceful Means
- Churches for Middle East Peace
Reader Comments