I miss the baobab tree. Mighty turrets that reach heights of thirty
meters, baobabs tower over the flat, monotonous savanna that stretches
from Nairobi to Mombasa. As a child, on our long, annual car journeys to
the Kenyan coast, I would scan the horizon, peering across infinite
waves of tawny grass to spot the first baobab. The tree's lifeless
branches, usually bare of all leaves and fruit, arched into the sky like
a tangled mass of clawing roots.
I often wondered if G-d had uprooted it and stuffed it back into the
ground upside-down. If it had been up to me, I'd have left it the right
way round. Surely a towering treetop of rustling leaves arising out of
the flat savanna would have been more majestic than this ream of roots.
But I didn't worry about its unusual structure for long, because its
sudden appearance always whispered that we were nearing the turquoise
sea, the sparkling sands. Sometimes I could pick up the hint of
something deeper hidden within its melody, but I ignored it all, so
focused was I on the sound of the waves.
| If it had been up to me, I'd have left it the right way round |
Years
later I moved to Israel, where olive trees and date palms dominate the
skyline, but I never lost my fascination with the baobab. Whenever I
came across a photo of the tree in one of the wildlife magazines and
books that my mother brought me, I would recall the bare beauty of the
tree, and wonder again why G-d had left the tree upside-down. What could
an inverted tree possibly contribute to the world?
One day, after seeing a painting of a baobab silhouetted in a vivid
orange-purple sunset at my friend's home, I gave in to my fascination
and researched the tree a little. That led to an article for children on
the wonders of the tree that I had assumed was a mistake of creation.
It is, instead, probably the most useful tree G-d created.
With a circumference of up to twenty-five meters, baobabs have been
used as prisons, dairies, bus stops, and more recently, pubs. The trees
can easily store 120,000 liters of water in their enormous, hollow
trunks, which makes them natural reservoirs in arid areas. The leaves of
the tree are made into soup; the bark into rope, cloth, and even
quinine-like medicine; and the seeds into a healthy snack rich in
calcium and vitamin C. Pretty amazing for a tree that looks like a
mistake.
Since writing the article, I keep the image of the baobab tree in the
glass front of my mind. When the going gets rough, it reminds me that
what appears to be a misplaced note, an out-of-tune chord, will always
be part of a perfect symphony.
Chana Tzuk drove this message home when I had the honor to interview
her. At the beginning of the Second World War, at the age of six, Chana
was separated from her parents. The next six years seemed to be a series
of misplaced notes. Yet she survived countless orphanages and
deportation to Siberia, and towards the end of the war she was reunited
with her siblings. In the interview, she describes the train journey
that brought a load of orphaned children from deep in Russia back to
Germany.
| What could an inverted tree possibly contribute to the world? |
"The
hand of G-d was always visible," she says. "The train journey took one
long month. Late one night, the trainload of children stopped near
Stuttgart. A completely distraught woman climbed into our crowded
carriage. She was crying uncontrollably. 'I missed the earlier train,'
she sobbed, 'I had to wait three hours for this train.' We listened to
her and then carried on playing as children do. Suddenly she asked to
see the back of one of the girls. We had to convince the girl, but
eventually she let the woman see her back. 'That's the birthmark!' the
woman exclaimed. 'What's your name?' she asked the girl, emotion choking
her voice, 'Are you Tamara?' The girl nodded, still unsure of what was
happening. But it was clear to the woman: she had found the daughter
that Russia had swallowed up. Of course, we all cried together." A
missed train, an apparent mistake, had led to the joyous reunion.
When I heard Chana's story, I thought of the baobab trees of my
childhood. Finally, the message that the baobab trees had always been
whispering to me resonated through the passage of time: upside-down
doesn't mean wrong.
