The Apricot Tree

Each spring Hayk dared to hope again. He looked out the window one morning and saw that his apricot tree was beginning to blossom. He picked up his walking stick and made his way down from his apartment. The neighborhood bak was full of children playing hide-and-seek between the nooks and crannies of the garages and gray apartment buildings. He dreaded those children. Some of them snickered at him and glanced at his apricot tree. Hayk wanted to shake his stick at them before they had even done anything, but he did not.

He made his way to the tiny plot of land he had managed to acquire, boxed between the garages. He had always wanted to have a large garden, to work with the earth and forget all else. He had wanted to feed his family with what he could grow. Like most dreams, however, his reality had turned out to be a smaller, less significant version of that.

He closed the fence to his plot of land, where there was room enough only for a single apricot tree. The fragrance of the blossoms was something he could not describe to anyone who had not smelled it; you could only understand it if you had experienced it. It filled him with hope that maybe this year, at last, he could get some apricots from his tree, and also a sadness that momentarily stung his heart.

He had planted this tree with his son, Narek, who was now gone. Hayk should have persisted more, begged him to stay. But even now, as he traced the bruised bark of the tree, he knew Narek could not have lived with himself if he had not at least tried, if he had not given the last of what he had had to liberate his homeland. He had died, but the tree kept on growing.

The children did not seem to understand it or maybe did not care. He told them that the tree belonged to him and his son, so did all the things that grew on it. But the children merely pointed out that he did not have a son. Barely had the blossoms managed to turn into green tsogols when they ambushed his tree. He woke up one morning to find that four boys had climbed into it, picking the tsogols and throwing them to the group of children gathered around his fence.

Hayk screamed all the threats his desperate mind could think of. The children were alarmed, but seeing that Hayk was in his apartment, they relaxed and went on dipping their tsogols in salt and eating them. Hayk screamed for the other neighbors to intervene, he begged. Some of them made a few scolding remarks as a favor. Others looked up at him, then kept walking.

Helplessly, Hayk grabbed his walking stick and made his way down. His arched back was killing him, but he went down the stairs as fast as he could. As soon as he exited the building, the children screamed excitedly and scattered. He shook his stick at them. How he wanted to hit them! The boys hopped off the tree. One of them broke a whole branch to take with him, as though he had not stolen enough. Hayk nearly grabbed the tail of that boy’s shirt, but he escaped with his branch. He saw all the wasted tsogols on the ground below his tree that would never turn into apricots. Oh, why could they not let them grow?

Hayk wished he could stay there all day and guard his land. His neighbor carried one of his stools down for him and placed it in front of the tree. Hayk woke up and sat there as early as he could and stayed as long as he could keep his eyes open. During the meal times, the kids still managed to steal. So he started bringing his food down with him, even if it meant only eating cold and stale meals. But even that was not enough. Sometimes the kids managed to hop onto the tree from the garage rooftops, right above his nose.

He felt so helpless as he shook his stick at them and yelled all the threats he could, while they went on stealing the apricots and stuffing them into their pockets. Even when their pockets overflowed, they still continued filling them, laughing at Hayk’s inability to do anything. Why his tree? Why his apricots? It made Hayk wonder that maybe it was not even about the apricots at all. He could not understand why it would give them so much joy to see how helplessly he stood below them because he could not climb. It made him long all the more for his Narek—the sweetest child he had ever known. Had he been there, he would protect him and their tree. But he had died protecting so much more.

A time came when Hayk could not take the pain anymore, so he stopped going down. He stopped even looking out the window. Even when June came by and he knew the apricots would be ripening, he dared not go to see if any had survived.

One day, he pulled out his axe from a dusty cabinet. He did not even know how he would manage it, but he was going to cut down the tree. He could not bare another year of disappointed hopes. With his stick in one hand and the axe in the other, he made his way towards his tiny plot of land. There were no more children around his tree, which meant that there was nothing more to take. Somehow they had robbed even the tip of the highest branch. He withheld his tears no longer. He did not even care that others saw him or that all his life he had managed to be strong and could not be so anymore.

He laid his stick against the fence and lifted the axe as high as he could. It nearly broke his back, but he brought it crashing down into the bark of the tree. He felt as though he was cutting into his own son. He sobbed as he landed the second blow. But just then, an apricot fell on his head, as though from the sky. He picked it up, disbelieving that one could have been concealed so well. He looked up into the branches in search of more, but that seemed to have been the last one. He enclosed it in his hands and held it close to his heart. He wanted to keep it, but there was no point, as it would rot. He split it in half and took out the seed.

For a moment, his son was there with him, his unrestrained excitement as Hayk had explained what the purpose of the seed was. He had jumped up and down as he had begged him if they could plant it somewhere, so Hayk had promised to find him a plot of land where they could.

He put away the axe now and sat down on the stool, which was now weathered and dirty. He leaned against the strong bark of the tree and cried as he ate the apricot. He held the seed tightly in his hand and decided to keep it for as long as it took. It was not much, but it was something, and maybe one day it could be more.