My grandfather holding my brother, Haidar, with my Aunt Salma standing with them. Photo: family archives

I was four years old when I first played on the swing that hung from the huge touta (mulberry) tree in my grandfather’s garden. The garden wrapped around his house from three sides and stood out as a color palette. It wasn’t a large piece of land, but it was full of life.

Omar Al-Astal, my grandfather on my mother’s side, is now 82 years old. He studied chemistry and geology, so he knew exactly what to do. He watered the plants, trimmed the branches, and taught me and my cousins how to pick the fruit with care. Every day he worked so hard every day to care for his garden.

I spent so much time as a child in his garden that it became a main part of my childhood. It was where we played under the dalia (grape vine), helped out, had BBQ parties, and ate together.

Last year, in 2024, his garden was brutally destroyed. The life was sucked out of it, branch by branch, tree by tree. The Israeli tanks wiped out the land in one of their military ground operations in Khan Younis. The trees, some of which had stood there for decades, were gone in a minute. The soil was left bare. Seeing the destruction of my grandfather’s garden was both scary and heartbreaking—not just because it was part of my family’s livelihood, but also because it held so many memories. Now it existed only in our imagination.

What is left of my grandfather’s garden. Photo: Roaa Aladdin Missmeh

During the 2025 evacuation of Khan Younis, my family and I vacated to Al-Mawasi. Amidst the bombardment and the disruption of moving from one place to another, I always find peace when I talk to my grandfather.

I sat with him one morning and asked him about the trees that once had thrived in his garden. “They stood there a long time ago, before you were even here,” he said.

At first he said little but once he began talking, he remembered every tree. He explained how he came by his first saplings of apricots and peaches, where he planted the apple and pomegranate trees, how he arranged to plant the olive and lemon trees so they would have room to prosper, and how one qutuf inab (bunch of grapes) from the vine sometimes weighed more than a kilogram.

He described how he always had sackfuls of different kinds of fruit for when his friends or family members came to visit. And as long as I can remember, every Thursday when we visited my grandfather’s, we left with a bag full of either lemons, oranges, mulberries, grapes, my grandma’s mint, or guava. Always.

Part of the garden before it was destroyed by Israeli tanks. Photo: Tassneem Ashour

When my grandfather was speaking, I saw the pain in his eyes. A pain his voice never echoed. It was as if he was looking at the garden in that moment—a garden that no longer exists but still lives on in our memories. And yet when he spoke about the garden, I felt strength. The way he remembers had a power all of its own. He spoke with dignity, not hatred. He was proud that he had once had his garden, and had worked in it.

He amazes me. Even in loss, he honors the land and what it gave us. His calm presence and quiet resistance, that once spoke louder than thunder, remind me that we carry our roots with us, even when they are torn from the soil. Listening to him made me realize that our connection to the land is not easily erased. It is stronger than we think and feel.

My grandfather today. Photo: Fedaa Al-Astal

These memories are not just my grandfather’s story. They are the story of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have lost their trees—especially olive trees, which are deeply tied to our identity and connection to our land. Israel’s destruction of Palestinian land is a part of a broader pattern of land confiscation and forced displacement. For in Palestine, trees are more than crops. They are part of family history and collective memory. Some olive trees are hundreds—even thousands—of years old. When they are cut down, something irreplaceable is lost.

My strong love for trees always bewildered me. I took pictures of trees everywhere, in gardens, on my university campus, or even in the streets. Now I realize that this love runs in my genes. It comes from my grandfather, the great man who still speaks proudly about the garden he worked in for years, the garden that was taken from him in a blink of an eye.

My grandfather remembers every tree. Photo: Salma Al-Astal

In his poem “An Al Sumud” (“Of Resistance”), Mahmoud Darwish wrote, “If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.”

The loud silence I heard after my grandfather stopped speaking for a while reminded me of this line. I would like to believe that my grandfather’s trees knew him as much as he knew them.

We haven’t planted a new garden yet, but I carry my grandfather’s seeds in me. Even though the garden is now gone, I still remember it clearly—where every tree stood, where to walk without stepping on plants, and how to pick the fruit. I remember everything. These memories are my form of survival. They remind me of what we once had, what was taken, and what we continue to carry, including the hope to one day replant my grandfather’s garden.