The Gharkad Tree: A special type of tree, with protective thorns, described in Islamic eschatology, as the one tree that will protect the Jews, when the Muslims wage al-Malhamat al-Kubra - a great apocalyptic battle, prophesied to occur close to the Day of Judgement.
My home has two pomegranate trees framing the entry staircase with bright, bell shaped, orange blossoms in Spring. My garden has three bay trees, a towering eucalyptus, a leaning like-it-may-fall cedar, and a young olive tree. Last year, I planted a myrtle tree, and I want to add a lemon and clementine tree. But, what I never realized was how a Gharkad tree is what I should have planted for every child born to me.
When the Jew will Hide Behind Stones and Trees
They say it is from the osage family, or it’s the spiny acacia, the honey thorn, desert thorn, the nitre bush whose fruit tastes like salty grapes…but in truth they do not know, which is the tree of the Jew?
No one knows exactly which tree a Gharkad is. Which tree is brave enough to hide my family?
I want it to be all of these and others.
I want to believe, it would also be the pomegranate trees and the broad eucalyptus, the gnarled olive trees that line my street, the pine tree of ancient cones and needled shelter, the cedar of sacred Temple wood, the cypress tall and heaven speaking, three on guard in front of my house.
But we do not know and neither do they.
Who will give us away?
Do not tell me it is time to throw away the stones and cut down all the trees.
*
The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.
It’s hard to read.
*
And this is also hard to read
‘A knife costs five shekels…cut off the heads of Jews…’,
Fathi Hammad, Hamas Leader, May, 2021
Did his mother not tell him, or his grandmother, like mine told me, that no matter how cheap,
knives are for cutting parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, the smaller the better
for digestion, sprinkled with lemon and olive oil, with a dash of salt and pepper.
*
What we choose to share
with our blades
we must eat.
I don’t have a gun. What do we do if they come to our front door? Would a handgun be enough?
I don’t want to think about it. But, can I afford to ignore these words?
Will our Belgian Melanois’ manic barks every time anyone steps close to the door, be enough?
Each time he barks we jump out of our skin. My husband gets angry, but I calm him with the words,
We cannot afford to silence forewarning.
*
My mind grows dark when I am with him. I think of the women, the girls. I think of them and my body shivers at his touch. Is there a Jewish woman who does not feel violated?
I mentally place two cyanide pills in my pocket.
One for me.
One for my best friend.
*
We live on a winding, one way street with a nursery school, a Yemenite synagogue, a tree heavy with ripe yellow lemons in winter.
We live on a street with a woman who has the same name as me, and walks her small dog up and down, surveying that we are not trimming our eucalyptus tree too much, surveying cars are not blocking paths to apartment buildings, surveying the shrieking children who visit my garden for art activities.
We live on a street where the neighbors don’t jump anymore at my dog’s manic barks, where old Israeli songs drift into my bedroom like calming chamomile blossoms from the balcony of youngsters singing, accompanied by a guitar.
I listen and I remember the song sung on the Day of Remembrance that made me cry because of the words Yehoram Gaon croons like a lullaby - father to daughter - over and over again —
I promise you, my little girl, that this will be the last war.
It was composed in 1973.
*
To be a Jew is to remember.
I remember but
I don’t have a gun.
I remember and
I lock the front door.
*
What is the heart of a Jew?
I don’t want to talk about knives, or guns, or blood. Sometimes I think there is already a dagger pushing straight through my chest into my left shoulder, so my acupuncturist kneads it announcing,
it is frozen. It’s the meridian of the heart, or the pericardium, the fibrous sac that protects the heart.
My Jewish heart is frozen
with fear.
And it’s not just because my son is a soldier.
It’s because a gun feels so loaded.
It’s because he hands me the letter he wrote
just in case.
*
Is it the word Jew that offends in this poem?
*
Everyone hates us, my Italian friend’s son who has been released from the North Hezbollah front, for medical reasons, says.
I am looking for the truth.
It is Friday night and, despite my family’s unanimous cringing, I have asked all my Shabbat visitors to tell their truths. The truth they have learnt since Oct 7th. The truth war reveals.
My husband’s middle aged friend from South Africa says, We have to have hope, and our youth are unbelievable, strong. See how they’ve stepped up.
I think of the high school students in our neighborhood who volunteered to dig the Oct 7th victims’ graves.
My son, just returned from the Gaza front, says: Life is fragile.
He has returned on a giddy high, because he is alive.
He has returned and does not want to go back.
He has returned and that’s all that matters, for now.
*
Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.’
I want you to know what it means to be a Jew
with a 2600-year-old Babylonian Jewish Diaspora memory.
I only have to go back to 1941. It is the Farhud in Iraq.The women and girls were violated.
The babies flung from their mother’s arms. Pregnant women mutilated, unborn fetuses ripped.
I don’t care so much about the hundreds of shops ransacked, the houses looted. It’s the 179 names
I say in their memory every June 1st, every festival of Shavuot, I sit shaking on my bed, reading their names, chanting what happened to them, and what makes me really sad are the names I don’t know. Hundreds buried together like a secret in a mass Baghdad grave. A time when shoes waded in Jewish blood.
I step cautiously between the eucalyptus trees at the Nova Party site. The clearing is too big.
The trees are too thin. The wrong type. I am walking on blood seeped earth. It cries to me. It screams for a brother or sister, anyone. Especially a Gharkad tree.
*
A Jew always has to go back in history to understand why they hate us.
I refuse to understand.
Sometimes, I think it’s because we are hard to spot. You never know who is a Jew. Take me for example. Olive skinned, brown eyed, unkempt hair, tied back in a bun. I would tie my whole self back if I could.
Levantine - 64%
Anatolia & the Caucasus - 18%
Iran/Persia - 14%
Arabian Peninsula - 4%
Does the 4% mean finally I can say I am genetically an Arab Jew?
My son has my curls. He hates them like I used to, cuts them short. I once cut my hair short too, when I was 20 and newly married. I covered my hair for religious reasons and it was easier to cut such a wild mess of curls short. I reveled in my married boyishness.
My son is 20 years old.
I want to swear in Arabic the way my father swore at me. More, I want to say the words of endearment to my son. They roll off my tongue Galbi, Ayouni, B’dalak — my heart, my eyes, let me be there instead of you. With each word I roll into the narrow alleys of Baghdad. I roll and I know I need to somersault further backwards, before the Arab conquest in the 7th Century, way before, into Talmudic times of the ancient cities of gall nut ink and scrolls, Sura and Pumpeditha. Head first, down further, before Jesus was born, before the Greek empire, before the Persians, to a time where everyone knew how to recognize a Gharkad tree.
There I dunk my head in the Chebar River where Ezekiel prophesied. I do not know more words but I know to let exile tears and tows intermingle.
I know — no one remembers.
But remember this — 7 is a number that holds too many transitions — from peace to war.
What is the number for war to peace? I am counting down the days. I am counting down the words,
but the words, catch in my Jewish throat.
Their words are decreasing my days, meaning now is the time to offer
an empty cupboard
a basement
an attic
a barn
a bale of straw
a boat
a forest of Gharkad trees
under the bed doesn’t work anymore
dreams only refuge us
until we wake up
***
Because….the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.’ (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
(Article 7, Hamas Charter, 1988)
Sarah is an Australian born, Iraqi Jewish writer, poet, and educator. She is the author of the children’s picture books Shoham’s Bangle, This is Not a Cholent, and a micro-chapbook, This is Why We Don’t Look Back. She is an editorial advisor for Distinctions: a Sephardi and Mizrahi Journal.