Eram Siddiqui

Research Scholar, Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India

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Prof. Javed S. Ahmed

Professor, Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India

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Keywords: Psychotrauma, Transgenerational trauma, Postmemory, Home, Migration, Memory Archives, Memorability

The experience of migration is different for different people and populations. The stories of migration are filled with longing, wanted or unwanted. The pain of leaving one's home is never forgotten. It is filled with hopes and memories. Hopes of adapting to the new place, carving a niche of one’s own. One needs to adapt simply because one cannot go on living with the dismantled past monuments.

Sandy Tolan’s ‘The Lemon Tree’ revolves around the memory of a home with a lemon tree in the backyard which the Khairis cannot forget, even after decades of migrating away from that house. It is also a story of the struggle of the Eshkenazis to find a home amidst war. There has been a great advancement in the psycho-traumatic theory and memory studies as the world has seen huge social and political upheavals predominantly in the 20th century, unforgettable amongst which were the World Wars and the colonization of lands, which continues even in the present time.

This paper aims at refugees’ personal and collective rendezvous with traumatic memory and how generational and individual memory works to recount what is remembered and forgotten. It also focuses on ways in which history intertwines and ways it can be told. It seeks to answer questions like -How archives of memory -diaries, interviews, TV shows, governmental repositories, private records, etc. help one fill the gaps amidst generations who feel their history is misshapen and hollowed out by traumatic social upheavals. How nonfiction is woven from what is left of history and memory, and how it becomes a medium of greater tolerance and understanding amongst people. It focuses on how memory settles and unsettles, making the entire process complex and worthy of a deeper understanding through lenses of memory studies, trauma studies, and postcolonial studies.

“...to remember, we need others.” - Sandy Tolan

This paper aims to study Sandy Tolan’s novel ‘The Lemon Tree’ with regard to the intersections of memory (Archives of Memory, Postmemory, Transgenerational memory, Spatial memory, Remembering and Forgetting,); modes of conveying history; Migration-Intentional and Forced; homelessness and the consequent trauma of a warzone; the role of literature in creating ‘memorability’, by expanding the boundaries of imagined ‘communities’ that we, as citizens of the world identify with.

The story revolves around the memory of a home that the Khairis built and the one in which Dalia Eshkenazi presently lives when we read the book. At the heart of the book is a lemon tree, evoking nostalgia for the homeland, constantly remembered, embedded in the minds and hearts of the Palestinian family. Both sides, Palestinians and Jews have an extraordinary legacy, a history fraught with struggles, suffering, longing, and patience, which they cannot forget.

Memory and Forgetting- We see that the nuances of memory like forgetting, are both natural and affected through deliberate attempts. For example, dictatorial regimes in history have tried deliberate methods of manipulating reality and erasing history as they desired. This was the fascist approach by the Nazis in erasing certain people from archival photographs of those times. Zionism also sought to erase history, as was seen post the Nakba or the Catastrophe, in 1948, when Israel sought to build a municipal committee that would prepare a list of Jewish historical figures and war heroes to replace the Arabic Street names. Characters like Moshe and Yitzahaki take up the ‘absorption work’ across the newly created state of Isreal for the Jewish Agency, settling immigrants from Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. This was an attempt to level up the old uprootings with new plantations. Moshe’s job of being the Custodian of Abandoned Properties is very ironic, since with the use of words like ‘abandoned’ instead of ‘stolen’ or ‘forced away’, the leaders of the state of Israel were trying to manipulate and erase reality, altering memory altogether. What the zionists call wastelands that needed tending, were fertile fields with lush green crops, ready for harvest. For the expelled Palestinian farmers, ‘the act of planting was an act of faith and patience.’ (38) With teary eyes, they saw their crops being harvested by others, receiving neither a share nor a name. Thus, we see how the emigration of Jews into Palestine was exactly upon the ways of a colonizer, that tries to wipe out the authenticity and history of the natives, newly termed as ‘infiltrators’.

One of the protagonists, Bashir makes his way back to Al Ramla to see his old home. Bashir was preparing for this journey back home since he was six years old. How can home be a familiar feeling for a second-generation refugee who was exiled? The author writes, ‘The landscape and the dream of return were imbibed with mother’s milk, so that if there was no memory, there nevertheless seemed to be.” (230).This familiarity, longing and memory is what transgenerational memory is all about. Each and every Palestinian youth in exile inherited this generational longing for their native land along with the deep-rooted faith in return. ‘Studies in epigenetics have demonstrated that genes may be influenced by the environment and conditions of life such as nutrition, stress, experiences and emotions. Hence, even though social conditions would not change one’s DNA sequence, they would affect them, and hence the children and grandchildren of those affected would find such personality makeup in themselves even though they never faced traumatic situations themselves.’(Rigney) Hence, little children, as old as six, would understand the seemingly simple deprivations of their situation, which were actually humiliations at a culture-specific level. In the book, Bashir recalls a childhood memory in which his exiled father tells his mother that he doesn’t even have enough money to buy his friends a cup of traditional Arabic coffee. “For an Arab man, Bashir knew, inviting friends for coffee was an elementary gesture of hospitality- a fundamental expression of the meaning of being at home- and the inability to do so represented a profound humiliation. Bashir would remember this shame for the rest of his life.” (145)

For the refugees, war creates complexes and dichotomies. Spatial memory is woven into the traditional embroidery of Palestine. The native Khairi girls were witnesses to how each villager’s dress told a story with the traditional Palestinian embroidery known as ‘tatreez’. Some were embroidered with patterns of sesame branches. Others with sunflowers or field tulips, and yet others with olive groves. Memory woven into clothing in differently colored threads and patterns tells a story of the region which is highly symbolic and suggestive. This is one way in which memory is preserved and passed along generations through skill and art.

In dire circumstances of war and migration, people do all they can to save scraps of memory of their loved ones. Characters like ‘Mati’ collected family photo albums and kept them in safer places, wore small silk pouches around their necks with lockets of hair from their family members as souvenirs lest the family got separated. Crying, Mati said to her friend Vela that if she had the luck to be back, she would take her album, otherwise “...keep it as a memory for me…When you get bars of soap from Poland, please wash your face. Probably this will be a soap made from me. And I will touch your face again.” (66)

Telling of History: When we relate history, we try to remember, reminisce and recall. The author has relayed the history of the Palestinian and the Jewish struggle in minute detail. With this, he has woven fiction and facts delicately producing a text that is historical and contemporary at the same time. Towards the end, we find that 1/4th of the total 558 pages of the book are devoted to a detailed bibliography, source notes on each chapter, and the index of words and phrases. The bibliography, in turn, cites all the archives, and electronic sources, including online media, newspaper and magazine articles in print, journals and journal articles, published articles and pamphlets, government publications, media, books, and unpublished works. He also includes maps and notes on spelling and pronunciation. So much information weaved into a story makes critics laud his hard work- “Impeccably researched…this narrative illustrates the possibility of compassionate imagination.” (The Times Literary Supplement)

The author, in the process of telling it, has told us, ways in which history can be told. He describes cities, alleys, roads, houses and pathways accurately, as it would be in real; “The bus hit the bump-it was the railroad crossing. Simultaneously, the three cousins experienced a familiar sensation, grooved into memory by a repetition two decades distant.” (26). The text becomes too complex and spontaneous, like a warzone itself.

Sandy Tolan cites policy details of the deportation of Jews from Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thrace, listing it with details, citing letters, political statements, memorandums, and words of important men like Chaim Weizmann, Lord Peel’s letter, David Ben Gurion’s diary, Theodore Herzl’s political statements, Yitzhak Rabin, Albert Einstien, Martin Buber etc. who defined the course of history during their times. Also cites famous reporters like Gene Currivan from The New York Times, Ratnisi-the Bulgarian fascist organization, records of Arabs selling their lands to Jews, The White Paper, Peel’s Commission, Arab Rebellion, Nakba, and King Boris’s pro-fascist government records, all factually told.

We see that all war victims suffer from an ethical commitment to their pasts. Hirsch (2012) writes, “Children of survivors and their contemporaries inherit catastrophic histories not through direct recollection but through haunting postmemories.”. Bashir and his cousins had boarded the bus in prior agreement not to sit together, since this would eliminate the temptation to speak to one another, thus reducing any suspicion about their identity. Yasser, who is shooed away by the lady in his old house feels like a soulless body. He says, “I cannot accept such a feeling…It is something that I really cannot bear.” (29). Dalia Eshkenazi, who was contemporary to the Khairis, had grown up amidst the ‘silence of unspeakable atrocities’.

Trauma, says Caruth (1995), brings about silencing since there is a ‘crisis of witnessing’ the traumatic event. This is what happens to the characters like Dalia’s silent school friends. The silence of her Polish classmate, which was ‘punctuated occasionally by sudden outbursts of screaming, crying and kicking’ (180), with vacant eyes intrigued her. Dalia slowly began to understand the horrors of historical legacy and the challenges of these realities to her faith which had been instilled in her since childhood. Such populations were highly vulnerable to PTSD stemming from traumatic experiences during early childhood. Bessel Van Der Kolk in his book ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ says, “...motivation, play and curiosity (which) are indispensable for maturing into a well-functioning and contributing member of society.”  Refugee childhood games are affected as children play of avenging the loss of their homeland, if they play at all! Trauma seeps even into games that are oftentimes sadistic and violent, replicating guns and bullets. Refugee children suffer manifold trauma of losing the comfort and warmth of their homes, the love and attention of their parents, and the lack of proper schooling, but above all this they see death very closely, of family, friends, mentors and teachers, which imprints upon their consciousness, difficult to forget. While little Bashir stared at the empty chair of his classmate few days after the daytime attack at his school in 1954, Dalia wondered at the silence of her Polish classmate and stories of her teachers about Arabs leaving their beautiful homes by their own will.

During the Holocaust, Jews were required to wear the yellow star. “These badges were to mark them as religious or ethnic outsiders and were badges of shame.” Similarly, the Arabs had to suffer humiliations that would imprint upon their minds and hearts. To have to die with such humility would be easier than to live with it. It incurs trauma, an inferiority complex, and hurtful collective memories so deep that it imprints upon generations to come. The sights of horror of the Jews could not be forgotten; “In the freight wagons, there were old and young, sick and well, mothers with their nursing babies, pregnant women, packed like sardines and weak from standing; they cried out desperately for help, for pity, for water, for air, for a scrap of humanity.” (65). The shell shock, injuries, and darkness of the trenches, led to devastating deaths in which bodies could not be recognized except by personal objects like rings. During the exodus of al-Ramla, women had to birth babies on the ground. Such happenings evoke devastating nostalgia, as well as they pose the threat of a lack of closure for the death of a loved one. Such doubts seep into the memory as the aftereffects of trauma. All of this ‘stunned and humiliated’ tens of thousands of refugees and continues to do so.

Subsequent to all the suffering comes the anger emerging out of helplessness and the treachery meted out to the homeless. Despite living the trauma, refugees want to rebel, and return. Because they are cheated of the truth. They are not only deported at gunpoint but also lied about it ever taking place. Hence, Tolan writes, “Two months later,… Israeli officials would not acknowledge that forced expulsions had taken place. … On the contrary, in most of the places the Arab inhabitants were given to understand that there is no reason whatsoever for their flight… ‘For the refugees…the central trauma was not in selling off gold or finding enough to eat. Rather it lay in the longing for home, and conversely, in the indignity of dispossession.’(16). Such treachery and falsehood are bound to arouse hatred, resentment, and rebellion in the victims. Manipulation of history leads to a redoubling of the trauma.

Memory/Remembrance works as coping strategy, a defence mechanism in times of war. Memory is more precious than gold and diamonds, when people are faced with the terror of being wiped out. We come across, vulnerable populations seeking ways of remembering or being remembered. Characters like ‘Mati’ collected family photo albums and kept them in safer places, wore small silk pouches around her neck with lockets of hair from her family  in case the family got separated. Crying, Mati says to her friend Vela -‘When you get bars of soap from Poland, please wash your face. Probably this will be a soap made from me. And I will touch your face again.’ (66) What people want in the end is to be remembered. It is also important to remember because humans are made up of memories-bitter and sweet. If one may get the opportunity to go back home, one has to recall and remember the familiar pathways to home. It is important to remember because it is one's past that defines one's present, and one needs to reflect on the past, in order to progress in the future.

It is indeed fascinating to know that just like different personalities, we have different ways of remembering and making associations and it is attributed to the different kinds of trauma one was faced with in life. Thus, Dalia and Bashir would see the picture of an Israeli soldier differently - for one it symbolized liberation, survival, and victory, for another exile, homelessness and defeat. While one would want to remember the feeling and the memory attached to it, another would want to undo it, forget it. Something as small as a lemon could be one’s window to history, to their homeland.

Migration (intentional or forced)- Conflicts in history have led to large-scale exodus of populations. Forced migrations come with a lot of decisions to be made despite the lack of choices. Tolan’s recounting of the history of Palestine tells that while the Jews had a promise in their migrations to the newly created land of Israel, the Arabs had to leave their age-old homes behind. ‘The decision to stay or leave remained a difficult one.’ On the one side was the ancient promise of The Holy Land and on the other was the ‘prospect of rebuilding their lives with friends and family in Bulgaria.’(127) Hence, the collective experience of migration was totally different for the two communities. While the Jews were provided transport, homes, amenities, and security, the Arabs walked miles, only to reach refugee camps. Therefore, one could say that the collective trauma of the Arabs replicated their individual traumas, while there was hardly any trauma for the Jewish community due to their wilful migrations. Only certain families, who were attached to their real homes and the life that they had built were divided in their opinions, of where to build a home. To stay or to leave? Tolan writes regarding the Jewish emigration to the new state of Israel-‘Some recall it as a chain reaction, others as a deliberate, joyous step toward an ancient homeland, others as a fever.’ (131). It felt to many Jews that after all their struggles, they had finally come to their eternal home, Israel. On the other hand, the Arab migrants were like ‘uprooted trees that couldn’t take to new soil.’ (190). Hence, the dichotomy, of where home actually is, prevails!

Dalia visited Bashir’s family in Ramallah to learn the Arab story, and both could understand the other’s pain from their own experiences of  ‘collective fear of annihilation’. Although Bashir refrained from telling her the collective Palestinian narrative, Dalia had this humility, this feeling of Akhrayut, to understand the other’s point of view and hear the unspoken. It is a means of greater tolerance, a ‘listening to departure’ from all the trauma that the world is faced with. (Caruth, 10)

This intensive research of history and the rekindling of factful memory by hard work by the author has made it possible to dust the past monuments and destabilize grand master narratives. It has allowed the readers to gain a closer perspective on every little event instead of the bird’s eye view which generalizes notions of history and makes people believe what historians chose to write. We need to work towards means of countering grand narratives of past memories. Memory and it’s retelling are essential. But it is also necessary to back it up with facts and events that really happened. That can be made possible only through a rigorous study of the archives of memory in various forms. Otherwise, just a ‘telling’ cannot be trusted entirely, since memory is prone to doubt, decay, and forgetting. Ultimately we need to invest ourselves in art, in literature. As Ann Rigney puts it, ‘...the creative arts can be seen as catalysts in creating new memories, supplementing what has been documented with imaginative power.’ Thus, literature helps to dissolve the imagined boundaries, of ‘us’ and ‘them’, generating a ‘prosthetic experience’. Literary art not only ‘defamiliarizes and enchants’ (as Landsberg puts it), but it also creates memorability. With the creation and study of more and more occupation literature, paths towards tolerance and humility can be both discovered and invented. Stories instil in us a better understanding of reality , than reality itself. Hence, literature can teach through communication, experiences and stories of survival. In order to write literature and create history, the memorability of memory is put to effect. When we read history, we are generally reading the views and retellings of the powerful. But when we read literature, we read about everyone, the powerful and the weak; what they thought, what they did, what paths they chose at crucial moments in history.

Postmemory is especially important in colonization struggles and their clear understanding since colonization plagues generations who grow up in certain frames of social structures, which they aim to break in order to be free and create their own versions of history. Literature not simply has the potential to respresent the past in the present, but it also has the potential to harness the pasts and presents into a more inclusive and tolerant future for all. What humanity needs today are ‘Small acts of repair.’

References:

Tolan, Sandy. The Lemon Tree : An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. 2020

Caruth C (ed.) (1995) Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Crossref., Introduction pp.10

Caruth C (1996) Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Crossref.

Rigney, A. (2021). Remaking memory and the agency of the aesthetic. Memory Studies, 14(1), 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020976456

Halbwachs M (1994 [1925]) Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.

Hirsch M (2012) The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press.

 Landsberg A (2004) Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "The body keeps the score : brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma." New York, New York : Viking, 2014.

 Hirsch M, Spitzer L (2015) Small acts of repair: The unclaimed legacy of the Romanian Holocaust. Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 4(1–2): 13–42. Crossref.