"Out of Place"

Twenty years ago, my parents had to decide whether to buy an elegant modern house in a crowded area in the capital of Jordan, Amman, or a moderate house away from the pollution and the noise of the city on top of a hill with front and back gardens. Because both my parents are nature lovers and grew up in houses that had gardens and clean air, they chose the latter. For many Jordanians, having a garden in a desert-like country is a privilege that many long for.

                  Wadi Rum: Experience The Desert Life in Jordan

Although rich with tourist attractions, Jordan lacks water resources and green areas. When spring comes, Jordanians invade parks looking for a green spot and the shadow of a tree to have their picnics. My parents wanted to stay in the comfort of their home, enjoying their parcel of nature.



From day one, Dad took care of the front garden. I grew up watching him bond with it. I touched its petunias and pansies, and smelled the roses, and enjoyed Dad’s company in that tiny space. It gives him great satisfaction to dig in its soil, and plant the seeds, waiting endlessly for them to blossom. He taught me how to prepare the soil to receive the flowers, how gently to overturn the soil, and how deep to dig the bed for the new seeds. Every flower in Dad’s garden has a story that we all know since he doesn’t spare us the details. He tells us how his pansies are special because they reseed themselves and come back the next year stronger than before. They prosper under partial sun and sometimes show their faces during the winter.

Because I have been in the US for a couple of years now, I can no longer see the garden; however, I can feel my dad’s excitement and enthusiasm whenever it’s time to redecorate it. When we talk on Skype, my dad fills me in on his garden's progress. He takes the laptop to his garden, narrates the story of each flower, and explains to me the importance of careful planning and commitment:

“It takes time for things to mature in nature. It takes patience.” 

“You see, dear, the long flowers are against the back wall and the little ones are at the front. Here, they will get the most sun because they will not be over shadowed."

The harmony of his voice with the music of his garden travels across continents, wireless, effortless, to my living room in Athens, Ohio. Our virtual places merge.

Dad’s garden is so dear to my heart because it reminds me of the wonderful memories we had. It’s the ultimate manifestation of home, happiness, and family. My sister and I planted seeds every winter. Season after season, we smelled the daffodils and danced with the butterflies in the garden. These tiny dwellers of the natural world with their rainbow wings captured our imagination forever. We sketched the shapes of the garden’s almost heart-shaped pansies and the overlapping petals in nature-like colors, then compared our drawings to the original flowers.

We were not the only ones to enjoy the garden. My mother put her favorite fountain in the middle of that tiny garden.                                              Click on the icon below to listen to the water fountain

T  h  e 

         m  o  v i n g 

                         w a t e r 

falling from

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      t o p 

            t o

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                    b o t t o m 

of the three tiers makes a musical sound that attracts bees, birds, and butterflies. The fountain is strategically placed at the back of the garden where it doesn’t interfere with the sun’s rays shining on the flowers. Because the garden is small you can hear the melodious tinkling of the water no matter where you stand. The fountain is so appealing that it invites visitors, including cats, that perch and drink from it. The birds are drawn to it as well and use it as a multi-function station to bathe, to observe, and to drink from.

Weeds also appear in the garden. Ironically, the person who cares deeply about his mint, trees, and daffodils, also loves the weeds. When we have visitors, my dad takes them to the garden and shows them around. They all ask about the weeds that Dad has allowed to grow.
 

“Why don’t you take those ugly weeds out?” my uncle says.

“Oh, I will. Tomorrow,” Dad says with uneasiness.

Tomorrow comes and my father doesn’t take them out. He doesn’t believe in killing these manifestations of persistence and tenacity. As he understands nature, every soul deserves a fair chance in this garden. These wind-blown plants have earned their places in his space.

In the garden in the backyard, there are trees of apples, peaches, pears, and lemons. When the fruits begin to ripen, my parents will call us all to share. My parents don’t wash the fruits they collect from the trees. It is their belief that when we wash the fruits before we take a bite, we are contaminating it with water. They take the sweet citrus directly from the tree and put it to their mouths. They taste the sweat, the dust. They trust the trees.

Summer time comes and the fruits are all ripe and delicious. Passersby can’t resist the fruits of my father’s work. Some climb the fence to get that last apple at the top of the tree, others will enter our garden and snap up a peach. Once I noticed a man climbing the apple tree and I hurried to stop him. I was mad! My dad had worked so hard on this and when the time had come for him to enjoy the taste of his hard work, I caught someone stealing it. Dad quieted me with:

“It’s a gift from me to him. Share with the people who have no gardens. There will always be more."

In my grandparents' garden from my mother’s side grew Iraqi jasmine and Palestinian basil that now also have a special place in my father's garden. In the Middle East, the Japanese honeysuckle is called Iraqi Jasmine because historically it was planted in Baghdad, Iraq, and people from all neighboring courtiers travelled to Baghdad to get it and plant in their gardens. My grandfather brought these plants with him from their homeland in Ramallah in Palestine, where he “owns” a mountain. This mountain, as the residents there describe it, is covered with olive trees and basil fields.

                                Palestinians leaving their homes (1948)

In 1948, my grandfather had to abandon his land and seek refuge in Jordan, he took a basil plant and a jasmine with him. He crossed the borders with them, and planted them in his backyard. They suffered on the way to Jordan, but survived the hard conditions. In my grandparents’ house in Zarqa, Jordan, stories were told about the olive trees, the smell of fresh air, the unexplored caves of Ramallah, the sun set view from the hilltops of Jerusalem, and the dream that every Palestinian has–the dream of return. My grandparents would sit up late outside in their backyard, not talking but listening to the land, to the trees, to the basil talking to them. When my mom brought the Jasmine and the basil from my grandparents’ back yard, my father embraced the tradition and gave them a place of honor in his special garden.

                  The Palestinian basil                   The Iraqi jasmine

Mother waits for jasmine to blossom every season because, according to the myth, two lovers who lived apart could only see each other when the jasmine bloomed, which made it a symbol of love and fidelity. My mother and her jasmine are true manifestations of this love affair. Mom showed my sister and I how to remove a flower from the vine and pull the stem and suck the honey on the inside tubes. We tasted the sweet, honey-like juice of the Iraqi Jasmine flower. The infusion of the Palestinian soil, the Iraqi tradition, with our familial love made the juice sweeter than honey.

Also seeking to reconnect with his hometown, Scott Russell Sanders in “After The Flood” revisits his place, noticing a dam that was built in his native town and the river that was the source of life in that area is dead. Upon his arrival and the realization of the distortion that took place, Sanders reflects on his mild loss and reminisces the suffering of others, such as refugees around the world who are “set in motion by hunger or tyranny or war” (13). My mother may not have experienced this suffering firsthand, but the irretrievability of her father’s land and the injustice and the suffering of her people contributed to her bond with nature and shaped her understanding of the native land and its importance. It has been over forty years since she last visited Ramallah; however, her love has increased each and every day.

                   The symbol of Palestinian resistance: 
   the woman holds on to the tree to resist the coming of the Israeli soldier                              

Most Palestinian refugees in Jordan visit their homeland in Palestine at least once a year except for my mother. She refuses to go:

“It is too much to handle. I can’t witness the killing of my people and the destruction of their homes,” Mom explained.

     
                                                                                
                     Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian houses

When her friends come back from Palestine, my mother asks about her family and the land. Most of the time, it is bad news. Another member of her family has been killed and more of her land has been occupied. She leaves the room, goes to the garden, and waters her father’s transplanted jasmine and basil, and listens closely. Unlike most mothers who sing, my mother instead recites poetry in Arabic about the land, especially Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry, while making her early morning Turkish coffee:

Put it on record./ I am an Arab/ And the number of my card is fifty thousand/ I have eight children/ And the ninth is due after summer./ What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record./ I am an Arab./ I am a name without a title,/ Patient in a country where everything/ Lives in a whirlpool of anger./ My roots/ Took hold before the birth of time/ Before the burgeoning of the ages,/ Before cypress and olive trees,/ Before the proliferation of weeds./ My father is from the family of the plough/ Not from highborn nobles./ And my grandfather was a peasant/ Without line or genealogy./ My house is a watchman's hut/ Made of sticks and reeds./ Does my status satisfy you?/ I am a name without a surname.

Put it on record./ I am an Arab./ You stole my forefathers' vineyards/ And land I used to till,/ I and all my children,/ And you left us and all my grandchildren/ Nothing but these rocks./ Will your government be taking them too/ As is being said?

So!/ Put it on record at the top of page one:/ I don't hate people,/ I trespass on no one's property./ And yet, if I were to become hungry/ I shall eat the flesh of my usurper./ Beware, beware of my hunger/ And of my anger! (translated version)

When she finishes reciting Darwish’s “Identity Card,” she joins Suheir Hammad with a powerful voice:



I hear the words of Suheir Hammad and Darwish interwoven with my mother’s voice in our living room. My mother, like poets, resists the occupation in her thoughts, in her mind, with words and with her plants. But they need more than her words.

My dad, like many Jordanians, think of the rain as a true blessing since it rarely rains in Jordan. He loves the rain when it’s gentle and nourishing to his garden, but there is a kind of rain that my dad dreads. When the wind drives the rain with such force, it can cause his flowers to suffer. He frets. He stands in front of the window watching protectively, silently praying for the damage to stop and for his flowers to stay strong. Although my Dad knows that his tiny pansies and petunias are generally hardy plants that survive freezing and rough conditions, he worries about them. When their petals fight back, he smiles. When the stem bends, and rises again victoriously, that reassures him. When the rain reaches the roots of the Palestinian basil and Iraqi Jasmine it respects the old hearty nature of these two plants. My father’s face glows with admiration when his garden conquers the rain. When the ordeal is over, he takes me outside to look over his flowers, to delicately remove any debris, and to return order to his place. Tending to the flowers, he encourages me to close my eyes and smell the aroma left behind by the rain. At that point, I’m afraid to answer that I can’t smell anything but the wet soil, but I agree with him anyway. There is a secret language between my Dad and his garden. He recognizes the scent of the hills of Ramallah and the voices of the ancestors narrating the untold stories. I shouldn’t disrupt this harmony.

                                                    
When my parents visited me last summer in Athens, they fell in love with two sites: the bike path and the farmers' market. Every morning they woke up at six am and walked on the bike path, breathing in the fresh air, and enjoying the ducks bathing in the river. For most Jordanians, scenes of watery sites, like falls, rivers, creeks, and green areas are a true pleasure since Jordan consists mostly of desert plateau, especially in the east, and the weather is exclusively dry and sunny from mid April to October. My parents described the bike path and Athens’ surreal landscape as “heaven on earth.”

                     My parents resting from their bike path adventure

In the farmers’ market, my parents talked to the farmers, asked them about their plants and flowers. They wanted to buy me everything, urging me to start my own garden on my balcony.

                                              The Farmers' market in Athens

“Restore your bond with the Earth. You don’t know what you are missing,” Mom said.

I resisted. I knew how much time and effort taking care of a garden requires and I didn’t have that time nor the energy to do it. Regardless of my objection, they bought me some cucumber and tomato seeds, soil, and planting pots. I left them for months on my balcony unattended.

                                                    Spring in Athens

As the Spring rains come to Athens, I find myself gazing out the window of my balcony. In my mind, I flashback to our garden and wonder if the same rain will touch the flowers. Will it be tender on the flowers or will it be hard on them? What are my parents doing now? Is Dad staring from his window and Mom making her Turkish coffee? How does the soil smell?

Sanders resorts to his memory to construct the old images of the town and return to his childhood. Like Sanders, I envision my familiar sanctuary. I close my eyes and listen to my father’s breath mixed with the sound of his garden that he nurtures closely. My soul escapes to his garden. I long to watch over his flowers with him, to view the rain and anticipate the damage it could cause. I long for the smell of the scented mountain of Ramallah, the music of my mother’s fountain and poetry, the old stories, the smell of Turkish coffee in the morning, and the slice of tomato I share with my family.

  “The pain comes not from returning home but from longing to return” 

          

                                                                          --Scott Russell Sanders

The crack of the thunder in Athens brings me back and the smell fades away. I open my eyes and look for the familiar. A packet of tomato seeds covered with dust catches my eyes. I pause. They cry out to me through my parents’ voice. I surrender to the voices. Now, I think, I’m ready for a garden of my own.