The Tree

The second Sunday of December brought "the Feast of the Tree" in Lebanon, in whose festivals the whole country took part, government and people alike.

The Woman's Voice magazine, which holds in high esteem the idea of Tree Week and its spread among the classes of Lebanese in the mountains and on the coast, is pleased to present Mrs. Zaheya Ayoub in this splendid word.

Symbol of immortality, heritage of our forefathers — that is what you are, O tree!!..

Your roots striking into the earth and your branches reaching into the sky pour blessing down upon us!!...

Your sheltering shade and your gentle rustling fill our mountains with bounty and life!

Your green color is the color of hope, and your delicious fruit is usefulness itself.

Is it too much, then, that we should keep a feast for you and hallow your beauty?..

Or is it any great thing for you that we should set you in the heart of our world, so that you may settle with it in the innermost chambers of our hearts?...

I beg you, O tree of bounty — by the spring when it smiles, by the fragrance when it grows sweet and spreads, by the pulse of life when it beats — do not forget us in your bounty and your blessing; for we are in need of that bounty, and we thirst for that blessing.

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I heard this prayer when I opened my eyes today and the white threads of daybreak greeted me from my high balcony. I listened with all the tenderness in my being, and repeated the words that follow amid the soft breathings of the breeze, with all the ardor and faith in my soul; and I gazed into the distance, hoping to discover the source of the voice, but saw only the heads of the cypresses, my beloved neighbors, facing me as on every morning with that loftiness which knows nothing but glory and pride, and that greenness to which pallor knows no path. I doubted no longer, then, that the prayer was nearer to me than I had supposed; it was not from afar, as I had imagined, but my own soul's communing with neighbors I love — and they know of this love — so I wished that they might whisper to me melodies that are to my heart like the life pulsing in their veins.

I love you, my neighbors, with a love that makes me wish I had lived in an age when you and your kind covered the breadth of my country — or that I had not come into life until some day to come, when the peaks of my country return with you to their former glory.

So your feast today is the sweetest feast my heart can keep, for it is a steadfast step toward what I love.

What service have you not rendered to man, O bountiful tree? Have you not been pillars for his dwelling, fuel for his fire, food for his body, and for his eyes and his heart a promenade, a rest, and a peace?

From your branches he drew a symbol of peace, and from your trunks he learned a meaning of steadfastness.

There was a day, O tree of my country, when the people of these holy shores clove with you the swell of the sea; in you they defied destiny, drew the distances near, and wrote for civilization lines that shall not be effaced so long as life rests upon civilization.

On that day you were the victim of their genius, and our poet went on singing of that genius:

"Their ships in the south rain down upon the Nile invention and thought and craft"

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"From the end of the wide white sea the ships come home from a voyage"

And there was another day, when the imitator-invaders had power over you and wanted you for mounts for themselves as well; they harvested you without mercy, leaving your homeland a barren page, its high peaks swept bare by the rains. Where, then, were your roots to guard the peaks, and where your branches to shield their snows from the heat of July?

Would that I had a magic power! I would use it to gain my dearest wish — to see the land of my country become once more a green paradise through your blessed leaves.

But pardon me — is not this celebration itself a token of the very power I ask? Are not these generous ones, the friends of the tree, laboring in your cause with a devotion that knows no weariness and an energy that no feebleness overtakes — are they not this [...]

The will of the people, reared upon love of you — that is the true magic power; and their knowledge of the golden precept, "Plant, and do not cut," and their keeping of it — that is magic indeed. For we live in an age in which the imaginary powers of the jinn have passed away, and in their place have come the mighty powers of man. Will and faith say to these mountains, "Robe yourselves in the garment of paradise" — and behold, they are silken and green.

The poets have defined the most perfect beauty — and who understands beauty as the poets do? It is "greenness, and water, and the comely form."

As for the greenness — how shall it be, if your spreading boughs do not compose it, your tender leaves shade it, and your refreshing shadows give it life?

As for the water — how shall it abound, if your blessed roots do not hold it back and contend for it with the sea, which has no need of it?

And as for the comely face — who enjoys it like those whose poet can say:
"And I am the son of the clouds and the slope and the spreading trees;
my country is where the hills are, and the roar of waters"?

You, then, O tree of bounty, are the source of beauty for my country and for the sons of my country; and those who labor for you, or in your cause — these are the true laborers for bounty, blessing, and beauty in my country. May God grant them health and reward their work generously, and grant health to everyone who has gripped a pickax and broken ground and planted in it a green seedling.

You departed, and with you the bounties departed. Will you not return, that our bounties may return to us? Will you not return to cover our peaks, so that our summer becomes winter, and not our winter summer, and the old poet's word comes true again:
"And the steeps of Lebanon — how shall one cross them,
when it is winter there, and its summer is winters?"

Lord, make my hopes come true, and inspire the people not to make light of a blessing You have bestowed upon them by way of the tree.