The Lemon Tree Blog Post 2

     I am a little further along in reading my novel, the Lemon Tree. To add onto what I mentioned in my first blog post, the story begins around the time that Bashir Khairi (a Palestinian) and Dalia Eshkenazi (a Bulgarian Jew) are born in the 1940's. It follows the major events in their lives throughout the book. The major events line up pretty well. There will be a chapter written from the Khairi perspective and then a chapter written from the Eshkenazi perspective. The two chapters will have some event in common. For example, the chapter after the Khairis were forced to leave, the Eshkenazis come to their town, Ramla (Israeli name) or al-Ramla (Arabic name). The book also references hardships of their ancestors and how history happened to put them both in the situations they were in, the events that lead to them both having a connection to the house with the lemon tree. 

     The significance of the title, the Lemon Tree, is that there is a lemon tree in the backyard of the old Khairi residence that the Eshkenazis currently live in. Both Bashir and Dalia make emotional connections to the Lemon Tree. Once, while Dalia was looking at the lemon tree, she was thinking "why would anyone leave this place." Her government told her the Palestinians left willingly, when in fact they were forced, and so she did not fully understand the situation at that time. 

     I have noticed that many conflicts in the world stem from a lack of knowledge. People do not often have the patience to hear another perspective or point of view on a topic. This book illustrates how much the two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli, have in common. They both have faced many hardships, both have been discriminated against, and they are both wanting and searching for a place to call home. 

     This book, so far, has not made much reference to the extremists, both  Israeli and Palestinian, that we read about in the media. Tolan has instead focused on the majority of Palestinians and Israelis and their points of view, specifically the emotions and thoughts of these two families. He has broken down this massive and much debated conflict to a human and personal level. He succeeds because he, to my knowledge, has told this story according to the many interviews he conducted rather than inserting his own opinions into the mix.