ILIL ARBEL'S "THE LEMON TREE"
Photos from left to right: #1. Sasha, Ida and Feera. #2. Dr. Ilil Arbel, the
author of "THE LEMON TREE". Truly, this woman is one of the greatest writers
of our time.
I knew a big secret-the nature of the best present- and was terribly excited. It was still dark and bitterly cold, despite the stove in every room, and I hurriedly put on my wooly blue dressing gown and furry slippers before running downstairs to the warm kitchen. It smelled of cinnamon and cloves, since Mama was already creating the birthday cake, her arms deep into flour and sugar. No one could make and decorate cakes like her. Later in Israel, during a desperate shortage of eggs, butter, and sugar, she made cakes from powdered eggs, coarse flour and imitation margarine, and they were still the best cakes I ever ate. I remember her melting raw brown sugar with a tiny birthday candle to create decorations on those cakes, and I still firmly believe that if necessary, she could conjure perfectly good food from virtually thin air." This is how Arbel brought to life the fond memories of her parents, her mama, her grandmother, the aroma that floated in their warm kitchen, the loving, cozy and affectionate warmth which surrounded her parents in Siberia. But the tour de force is how she described the atrocious trip her parents took from Siberia to Israel. And the piece de resistance which will melt the ice in your heart and paint rainbows of one million splashes of rays, lights and mesmerizing tenderness is Arbel's depiction of a tiny potted lemon tree which traveled with the family on a yearlong hard journey. Arbel tells us that "Sasha, their son and brother, raised the lemon tree from a seed that floated in his tea. Dying at age ten, his last request was that the lemon tree would be planted in an orchard in Israel. Nothing would deter the family from fulfilling Sasha's dream." They barely escaped from being shot in Manchuria for smuggling the very few necessities they needed to survive. They chased and chased and chased trains, almost arrested at each port, threatened by illness and feared catching diseases and typhoid fever. Could they survive? Could the small lemon tree in a pot survive the unmerciful cold, the hard, hard and long journey?
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