3
"I'm sorry, but I saw you so perplexed. I splashed it over
your scarf. But see, it is fertilizer."
"O!" I said, "slow-release fertilizers then. I imagined the
pebbles were used to cut the monotony of the dark shadows of
the soil, in the pots."
"They do both," he said, smiling. I smiled back.
I put a plastic cover over the seeds. In two weeks I
should have gingko roots… insha Allah-- if God Wills.
Somehow I was not so happy about it.
I felt a little discouraged as I walked slowly from one spot to
another. Going to the nursery had not helped in the way I had
expected. I was afraid I might lose the Junipers, and the
Hornbeam had leaves brown at the edges. I had probably
watered them too much. The gardener had advised to trim the
roots and watch for fungi, but I still hesitated because it might
affect the tree's health.
On the pot's earth, it was possible to see where the light hit and
where it did not.
When the sun rose at the limit of the neighbors' houses, the
shadows were in many ways similar to people's minds: full of
contradictions or full of surprises. Shadows reminded me of
the Zen gardens, and all these plows that were the decorations
of the mind. Well, huh... fertilizers… so much for
decoration…
I looked at the junipers. Next to them, I had grown a
Fuji Cherry with broad leaves that twisted like overgrown
finger nails. They were shiny and inspired me with the vision
of kites joggling before my window each time I reached for
them. Next to it, a Korean Hornbeam swayed its trunk in
spirals over the pot.
These trees, I thought, are like people to me: they have lives of
their own, unpredictable when you did not know how to handle
them. They were dying and this was due to ignorance, not to
good will. Each one was given the gift of life and it was
impossible to know if they would survive the year. That's what
made them so valuable.
4
Photo courtesy of: http://www.usda.gov
I reflected upon the abundance of this earth; Allah was
certainly generous in his wisdom since there were so much
spending of life for a single life. How many seeds did a tree
need to give away to squirrels, birds, the earth, to see only one
germinate?
And men who wanted to reverse this natural selection!
How many diseases were created playing with life! How
many?
Like humans, trees came from a tiny seed, and came in
many shapes. Some split at the base to become twins; other
grew straight and tall. I had seen trunks growing around wires
or panels, folding it like waist bands under love handles or like
pans overwhelmed by an overgrown soufflé; the flesh eating
over the metal. I even remembered a hollow tree, with a
completely empty trunk through and through, that still carried
beautiful branches continuously growing green leaves. These
trees, I remember, reminded me of so many people around,
healthy without a heart or looking good from outside, eaten up,
sickened, from inside.
Year after year the forestry department of the town planned to
cut down more and more trees. My plan was to grow my own
trees, indoors, away from pollution, away with small living
creatures that could destroy them. My plan was a bonsai tree…
a healthy tree.
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