That Hill Was Like Any Other

That Hill Was Like Any Other

That hill was like any other. A gentle serene olive grove overlooking the citrus orchards skirting the southern parts of Tripoli. Tripoli was named “Al-Faiha’a” literally meaning the scented. Approaching Tripoli during spring was a floral explosion, buzzing bees, swallows, all scented with the aroma of orange blossom filling the air. Spring was such a festival in the air, on the ground and in every nook and cranny. It started early, as early as winter, each season with its own crops of marvel. Feasts of flowers both great and small carpeted the ground with every colour of the rainbow.

That was the Tripoli I grew up in and had known as a boy. On that hill, some half a century ago, my family had many picnics. During one of them, for some silly boyish reason, my middle brother took Mum’s wedding ring and threw it there, not admitting his guilt till twenty years later. That ring stayed there, probably still hidden underground, telling an untold story and keeping the days of glory alive paved with gold.

That hill was like any other. Nothing was different about it. Not back then. Then the wind of change began to blow and the gentle olive groves had to give way to the urban sprawl and the ugly concrete jungles. The new invention “plastic” marred the ground and replaced the flowers, the grass, and all what filth could cover and stifle. Only the hardy plants were still able to survive in hidden hard-to-reach places.

Unable to spot trees, even the sparrows now nest in the shrapnel holes the Civil War left behind in ugly building walls. All those olives trees that I once knew one by one, as personal friends, have been chopped down.

Nothing is left behind, nothing at all. In the last few months, I tracked those graveyards looking for figments of past glory to find nothing but filth and more filth.

In between one pile of filth and the next, I could only see the odd Oxalis flower here and there. Would it be possible at all to ever find a Cyclamen? I often wondered!! How could I? How could I ever imagine finding that shy and sensitive queen of the Lebanese winter flowers amongst all that carnage?

But just yesterday, my Susan and I found our feet taking a turn during our walk ending us up on that hill where the wedding ring sits patiently in silence. That hill is no longer like any other hill. Unlike other hills, it hadn’t changed and all of a sudden, it was unique, clean, and buzzing with tiny buds gearing up for the spring rhapsody. There were some Tulip leaves, Arum leaves, with their flowers still in their inception waiting for the message from heaven to get up and bloom. Tiny violets were here and there together with millions and millions of the run of the mill Oxalis.

Would I be still dreaming if I were to search for the elusive Cyclamen or has it deserted Lebanon in protest to the sprawl that has contaminated its land and dignity?

With hope and apprehension, I kept looking. I had to keep looking, and then in a little shady spot covered with some spikes, my eyes finally saw what they haven’t seen since I left this land some three decades ago. I found the local queen, the elusive shy violet Cyclamen. Not very far from my mother’s ring, that gorgeous flower refuses to give up and die away. It is here throwing its seed in hope that it will be here when the hands of destruction have grown sick and tired of violating its home. The queen and the ring keep each other company, adamantly refusing to leave and vehemently declining to give up their inner beauty.