Ammon News - By Hend Fayez Abuenein


The Time I Was a Fig Tree

I had a piece of land all to myself,
About two arms length in every direction.
The land was moist in the spring,
It was the color of cinnamon sticks all year long.

There I grew up, on the hill top.
The sun would rise to children rushing to school,
And set to peasants gathered around small fires and pots of tea.

A green-eyed boy used to take care of me.
He’d water me every day at dawn, just after prayers.
He’d sit under my branches with a book in the day time,
And at night, he’d tell long stories to the moon;
Stories about a nearby land that’s been raped.
His tears would glisten in the dark. Life had meaning.

Sometimes my friend would come to me with his shirt whipped open,
He would curl to a heap and weep himself to sleep.
He never noticed, but I would curl and weep too.
I was two-meters tall, when he brought a doe-eyed girl to my land.
He was celebrating his youth, or mine.
It was dusk, and her milky skin glowed against the cinnamon soil.
They made my figs seep with passionate honey. Life was beautiful.

He’d still water me, when three green-eyed children played house in my shade.
But then at night, when the children went away, he’d come with friends.
He would stand, they would sit. And they would whisper all night through.
And the moon would sneak closer to eaveson them,
Pretending she’s shedding her light so they could see.
But all I could see was the anger on my friend’s face.
They once came without my friend and dug a deep, deep hole in my land.
They buried rifles and guns. And I never saw my green-eyed friend again.

Sixty springs have come and gone. They are no longer moist.
My land is the color of cumin now.
I still shed my leaves at the memory of my green-eyed friend.
The green-eyeds have been moving away, day by day.
No more stories, and no more whispers at night.

My roots have entwined with the treasure.
And all those to remember are I and the moon.

Why are we crippled?



24th April, 2008
Hend Fayez Abuenein

Hendfayez@gmail.com