The Tree

 The three Land-Rovers slid to a stop at the base of the crescent-shaped dune. From the first Rover scrambled Professors Hassan and al-Risala, members of the Faculty of Science at the Libyan University, their red fezzes emerging from the cloud of brown dust kicked up by the tires. They waded excitedly through the deep sand to the tree that stood alone on the barren plain that surrounded the dune. World-renowned Egyptian nature photographer Ali Abdu Hakim, who always wore a varicolored skullcap, hurriedly collected his equipment from the back of the second Rover. The three cameras and two camera bags strung across both shoulders and carrying his gangly tripod, he struggled to catch up with the two professors. Like the other men, he had been hoping all day that this moment would come.

Inside the third Rover, United Nations Car No. 47, Doctor Colin Smythe, a forestry expert with the FAO in Tripoli, Libya, on sabbatical from Durham University, had grabbed his notebook from the cluttered seat and scribbled down the odometer distance from the Sabha Oasis. The sun beat down on his khaki sun helmet, as he joined the photographer and the two professors, who had gathered in a circle around the tree, the first living thing they had encountered since they began their desert journey that morning. The journey was a scientific expedition funded by the United Nations to record and document any flora in the desolate area between the Sabha and Khofra oases.

Ali Abdu Hakim checked his meters, adjusted one of the cameras to the proper settings and started snapping pictures. Doctor Smythe and the two professors began their examination.

“Acacia horrida,” Doctor Smythe announced. Professors Hassan and al-Risala leafed through their official Ministry of Soil Reclamation plant-identification guides, found the proper reference, and nodded in agreement.

Professor Hassan withdrew his ruler from his shirt pocket and measured the length of one of the thorns that covered the tree. He relayed the measurement to Doctor Smythe, who wrote it down in his notebook. Next, the height was measured with the professor’s tape and transit. “Two meters, six centimeters,” the professor told the doctor.

The doctor did the math in his head. “A little over eight and one-half feet,” he said. “Not very tall for its apparent age.”

“How old do you estimate it to be?” asked Professor al-Risala.

“I can’t say with certainty,” Doctor Smythe replied, “but I can say with assurance that it is not young.”

Professor al-Risala ran his hand along the wind-bent trunk. “It has the texture of an old lady’s skin,” he remarked. “And, like an old lady, it is gnarled and of a sickly color.”

“It has seen much pain and suffering,” said Professor Hassan. “Its life has been one of a day-to-day struggle.”

“Sharing our discovery will bring much pleasure to the authorities,” Professor Hassan said. 

“Yes, yes, as well as help our positions at the university,” said Professor al-Risala. “We must provide them with its exact location, for soon the ghibli [sandstorm] will cover our tracks.”

The two professors, overcome with emotion, hugged and kissed each other, while Doctor Smythe checked the direction from the Sabha Oasis with his compass and recorded it. Next he read the thermometer he had placed in the sand at the tree’s base. “One hundred thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. It is truly amazing that it lives in such heat.”

“But still it lives!” exclaimed Professor al-Risala.

Doctor Smythe cut with his pocket knife a small square of bark from the tree. Pealing the rough skin, he tasted it. “It has been deprived of water for quite some time,” he told his colleagues.

“Where do you suppose it gets any water here in the middle of the Rabianah Sand Sea?” asked Professor al-Risala.

“As you know,” Doctor Smythe said, “geologists believe that water abounds under the Libyan Desert. The source for the tree is an underground river, I would venture to guess.”

“That is worth noting,” said Professor Hassan. “This tree could be the precursor of a great oasis if the water is properly tapped. A village could be built here with dwellings in all directions. If the proper attention and money are allocated to the project, it could rival Benghazi or even Tripoli herself.”

Professor al-Risala’s eyes lit up at the prospect. “We must tell the Minister of Engineering of our discovery when we reach the Khofra Oasis, where he is visiting.”

Professor Hassan turned his attention back to the tree. “We now know its source of nourishment,” he said. “The final question of which we still do not know the answer is how did the tree first appear here?”

“Seeds have been known to travel great distances on the wind,” Doctor Smythe said.

Professor Hassan retrieved a shovel and bucket from his Rover.

“I will take a soil sample back to the minister,” Professor Hassan said when he returned, “so that his department may test for the presence of moisture.” He began digging near the tree.

Ali Abdu Hakim had quit taking pictures. “I can hear my stomach complaining,” he said to the three men. “It is way past time to eat.”

“In our excitement, we have been ignoring our stomachs,” Professor al-Risala said. “I can hear my stomach protesting also.”

Professor al-Risala and the photographer went to one of the Rovers and brought back a dalu full of water, along with a woven mat, a charcoal brazier, a blue ceramic tea pot, and a basket that contained tea, bread, goat’s milk, cheese, butter, olives and dates—everything bought fresh at the Sabha suq that morning.

The photographer spread the mat out to use for a tablecloth and took the food from the basket. Professor al-Risala lit the brazier and placed the teapot on it.

Pouring the tea back and forth between two cups to reduce the foam, Professor al-Risala kept looking at the tree with a curious expression.

“Perhaps it is not real,” the professor speculated.

“Ah!” exclaimed Professor Hassan. “An intriguing theory.”

“Not real?” Doctor Smythe said, taking a drink from the dalu. “It jolly well is real. There it stands in front of us. How can you chaps declare that it does not exist?”

“Perhaps it is a mirage.”

“Or perhaps only it is real and we are but mirages,” Ali Abdu Hakim suggested. 

 “Spoken like a true artist,” said Doctor Smythe. “A chap with his head always in the heavens.”

Professor Hassan excused himself and resumed digging. Doctor Smythe spread butter and sprinkled olives on one of the loaves of bread.

Although urban planning was not part of the doctor’s United Nations’ mission, as he ate he imagined the new town that Professors al-Risala and Hassan envisioned. An oasis between the Sabha and Khofra oases would certainly be a plus for the fledgling nation, providing much needed jobs and income as well as rendering useful the desert interior. And to think it all started with the chance discovery of a single tree.

“Come quickly!” Professor Hassan yelled to the men. “I have discovered something of interest.”

Doctor Smythe and the other two men stopped eating and went over to where Professor Hassan was standing staring into the hole he had dug.

“It’s a human skull,” Doctor Smythe said. “By its size, a newborn.”

Professor Hassan carefully removed more of the sand, exposing little by little the bones of the tiny skeleton. The photographer recorded the event.

“The tree must be the marker for the grave,” Professor al-Risala said. “We must rebury the baby immediately. The spot is sacred, and evil will surely fall upon us if we disturb it.”

Professor Hassan began shoveling the sand back over the bones, trying to restore the site to its original appearance.

After the bones had been covered back up, the four men stood around the grave. The three Arab men each recited a different verse from the Holy Qur'an. Doctor Smythe, who wasn’t a very religious person, nevertheless was moved to recite the seventy-second Psalms, which he remembered from his childhood in the Anglican Church:

Doctor Smythe was first to break the silence that followed. “We had better leave,” he told his companions, “if we are to arrive at the Khofra Oasis by nightfall.”

The men sped their Rovers across the desert; they knew the trick to sand travel: maintain as fast a speed as is safely possible, and do not slow down. Doctor Smythe, whose Rover was last,

Doctor Smythe glanced in his rearview mirror. All he could see beyond the rear window was the top of the dune bouncing around above the hot, pulsating horizon. The tree had disappeared from sight in the vastness.

The accelerator pedal held down until it almost touched the floor-pan, Doctor Smythe could barely keep up with the other two Rovers. Doctor Smythe suspected that the two drivers weren’t speeding so much to avoid becoming bogged down; it was because they wanted to get away from the grave as quickly as possible.

***

At the Khofra Oasis, the three Land-Rovers entered the city gate and proceeded down the sandy road to the guest house. The four men, once inside, went their separate ways, each lost in his own world of thought.

The call to evening prayer echoed through the oasis from the minaret, which was a pale yellow in the evening light.

“We must perform the sunset prayer,” Ali Abdu Hakim said to the two professors.

“It is the same mosque in which al-Sayyid Idris and his Sanussi brethren prayed for our people’s freedom from the Italian occupiers,” said Professor al-Risala.

“Before entering the mosque, it is a tradition to kiss the dust the holy feet have pressed,” Professor Hassan reminded Professor al-Risala and the photographer. Humbly, the three men walked to the mosque, leaving Doctor Smythe by himself.

Sitting at the table in the center of the room, Doctor Smythe reviewed his notes by the light of the kerosene lamp, getting them in order for when he presented his findings to the Minister of Engineering later that evening. But he couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t take the image of the grave from his mind.

The Khofra Oasis, whose strip of sun-bleached palms had welcomed the traveler for hundreds of years, for they meant water, had been one of the stopping points for caravans that crossed the Sahara carrying ivory and gold, salt and ostrich feathers, rugs and mats, tea and henna. Doctor Smythe remembered that there was another item that traveled with the heavily laden camels: human slaves. The baby in the grave could have been born to a slave woman during one of the long journeys.

What agony that stretch of the journey across the Rabianah Sand Sea must have been for the slaves, who were driven over the hot sand in barefooted herds—naked men; women carrying crying babies; sickly children—their black skins gray with dust and broken with sores, stumbling on bleeding feet over the sharp rocks, lurching and falling, held upright only by the wooden yokes that tied them to their neighbors. Each night the dead and ill were cut loose from their places between those who, come daybreak, would be forced to continue the journey to the slave market. The bodies of the dead were piled on the ground; the ill were left behind to perish. Doctor Smythe had read that the slave trade was so lucrative the slave drivers could afford an eighty-percent loss of their cargo and still make a profit.

One day in the blazing sun, or maybe on a freezing night after one of the caravans had halted, a pregnant woman, screaming with labor pains, was cut loose to have her baby on the desert floor. The baby was either born dead or, because it was a burden to the slave drivers, left behind to die. Someone, perhaps one of the sickly who had also been abandoned, dug a grave for the child. A seed was planted at the head of the grave, a seed that defied the harsh environment and sprouted into a tree.

Doctor Smythe closed his notebook. He could hear the voices of his companions returning from the mosque. A strange sensation began to overcome him as the three men approached the guest house, which was once a zawia, a lodge that served as a center for the teachings of al-Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Sanussi, founder of the Sanussiya Order. Pilgrims had come to the guest house from all over the Moslem world.

Later that evening, the town’s police sergeant escorted Doctor Smythe and his companions to the Minister of Engineering’s quarters. They sat with the Minister on the cushions that were arranged in a circle on the floor.

A servant brought a silver tray on which sat a pitcher of sweet mint tea and plates of peanuts and dates. Holding the pitcher high, the servant poured the tea into five crystal glasses.

“If you will be so kind,” the Minister said to the men, after he had eaten one of the sugar-coated dates and taken a sip of the tea, “what are the results of your expedition?”

None of the men volunteered an answer.

“Well?” said the Minister. “I am most anxious to hear of any discoveries.”

“Just as we suspected,” Doctor Smythe finally said to the Minister. “The area is a wasteland. Reclaiming it would be economically unfeasible. I would venture to say even foolish.”

Professor Hassan was quick to agree. “Doctor Smythe is right. We found nothing but sand.”

“Not one sign of anything green,” Professor al-Risala added. “The color brown in all directions, and of course no water to be found. Only God knows the purpose of that godforsaken place.”

The Minister, who was listening intently, took a sip of tea and turned to the photographer. “And you, Mr. Ali,” he said, “were you inspired to take any pictures?”

The photographer glanced knowingly at the three men he had accompanied on the expedition.

“I concur wholeheartedly with Doctor Smythe and Professors Hassan and al-Risala,” the photographer told the Minister. “It is rare that not one thing excites my imagination to the degree that I do not want to record it on film.”

Turning back to the doctor and the two professors, the Minister said, “So you would not recommend further expenditures to develop the area?”

“Most definitely not,” Professor Hassan replied. He looked at the other three men in turn. “I think we are all in agreement that it would be a waste of money and time.”

“A drain on the treasury,” stressed Professor al-Risala.

“My notebook is empty,” Doctor Smythe told the Minister. “I found nothing of interest.”

“Such is the nature of the Rabianah Sand Sea,” the photographer said. “Nothing worth preserving on either paper or film.”

“Then I shall report your recommendations to the Minister of Soil Reclamation when I return to Tripoli tomorrow,” the Minister said. “I bid you gentlemen a good night and may God guard your souls.” The Minister bowed, touching his forehead and mouth with the palm of his right hand, and dismissed the men.

The four men prepared for bed. While they slept, the moon was casting its timeless light on the tree and the grave under the starlit desert sky.