It turned out that Elias hadn’t been as interested in the town of Bsharri—they don’t much like us here—as much as in an ancient cedar forest that covered the nearby slope.
He eventually halted their little convoy to point out the sprawling canopies.
“Arz al-Rabb,” he said. “The Cedars of God.”
Already the warm air was pungent with the fragrance of cedar wood. They rode closer until the man-high drystone wall snaking around the grove stopped their advance.
Elias unmounted and patted the neck of his horse. He handed the reins to the guard, then came to Catriona and lifted her from the saddle.
“Guess who paid for this wall,” he asked, steering her toward it with his hand on the small of her back. She wondered how much he was paying the guard to keep their secrets.
“I haven’t a clue,” she said, eyeing the lichen-covered stones.
He tipped his head to the side. “Your Queen Victoria.”
“How curious.”
“It’s true,” he said earnestly. “She heard that the trees that built the temple of Solomon were dying out because the Turks cut the timber, and the goats eat the saplings. It offended her, that goats should be the reason for the demise of biblical trees. Her wall protects a hundred hectares.” Now he cracked a grin. “Bsharri rifles protect the wall.”
The wall posed no obstacle to him. He helped her climb it, her foot on his thigh, and then he scaled it by himself, smoothly like a mountain lion, to assist her down on the other side.
For a while, she wandered among the trees in silence. They were not particularly tall, but remarkably wide, the branches spreading horizontally as though they grew with providing shade in mind. The powerful trunks seemed to emanate a calm warmth.
“They don’t rot,” Elias said. “They don’t burn. They need little. Unless you cut them down, they grow for thousands of years.”
He surprised her by stepping off the path and kneeling in the dirt, next to a sapling, perhaps ten inches tall.
He looked up at her with an apologetic shrug. “Now I do something forbidden.”
He pulled the knife from his belt and stabbed the wide blade into the ground. He moved the knife around, back and forth, loosening the soil in a generous circle around the small cedar.
“I shouldn’t mind living in two places,” he said, his attention on the digging. “Home can be many things, a life’s work, or a person.” The blade went deeper, exposing tree roots, intricate and fragile like a network of veins. “What troubles me is that I might not always come back here as planned, every winter, for reasons we can’t yet envision. You know what will happen then? I’ve seen it happen to others: two versions of my homeland will begin to exist, one that is built on the myths of my memories, and the real place, which keeps moving forward without me. One day, I might not recognize it anymore when I return. It might not recognize me.”
His fingers worked diligently now, carefully removing clinging stones and lumps of soil from the sapling’s pale tendrils. She’d never tire of looking at him, she realized; she could stand right here for the rest of the days and gaze at the strong, tanned curve of his neck, how his back muscles worked under his vest, how gentle his hands could be and how his hair curled out from under his cap. I will love you with all that I have, she vowed. Love could not fix everything, but it could be a strength, a shield, and a comfort.
“You will always have a home here,” she said quietly. “And wherever you go, you carry the mountains with you and will leave an imprint.”
He looked back at her over his shoulder, his expression softening. He sheathed the knife and stood up, cradling the cedar sapling to his chest with the care one would afford a newborn.
“It’s coming with us,” he said. “The roots are good. They will grow again.”
* * *
Waves washed over the sandy shore of the small island. A sailboat bobbed gently in place, anchored in shallow waters. A man and a woman floated on their backs, their hands entwined, their faces upturned to the blue expanse of sky above. Now and then a wave lapped over the woman’s face and left a salty taste on her lips. Her eyes were peaceful. She was smiling.
Epilogue
December 14th, 1918
The general election fell on a wet Saturday. Newspapers prophesied doom—no woman would turn up to cast her vote in the rain, in winter. We shall see about that, Lucie had said, we shall see. For the past four years, women had driven ambulances to the front lines, flown aircraft, served as spies, and replaced millions of absent men in factories, schools, hospitals, and office buildings. They might just dare to get their feet wet for an afternoon.