jordan pulse -

Atef Abu Hajar
In the hills of Umm Zaytouna, and in the western slopes of Salt where plains stretch and hills embrace, oak trees stand tall like guardians of the first memory. There, we used to collect acorns scattered on the ground, and sometimes climb the interlaced trees growing close to one another, touching the branches, testing the strength of the trunks, and storing the details of the place the way first features are etched into the soul.
I still remember the acorns of fash oak, shaped like exquisite works of art that even the world’s most renowned visual artists could not replicate—its colours, lines, and natural harmony mastered only by the Creator. I also recall the first time my father brought chestnuts into our home. Their shape was strange to us, yet their taste—raw or roasted—was delicious. Still, the difference remained clear and wide between the oak of our land and the chestnut of theirs.
Oak trees spread across our country in Ajloun and Jerash forest reserves, Dibeen and Suf, the forests of Busaira and Al-Rashadiya in Tafilah, the forests of Al-Koura in Irbid, as well as Zay, Jalaad, and the western areas of Salt, especially Umm Zaytouna, Al-Bateen, and Wadi Shu‘ayb. These trees are not merely wild plants; they are an image of us—resembling us in the pride of their crowns, the features of our elders, and the marks of age and years carved into their trunks, just as they are carved into memory.
Chestnut forests, by contrast, stretch across the Qinling Mountains in China, the Black Sea coast in Turkey, the Apennines in Italy, and the Massif Central in France. Their fruits may be tasty, different in shape and flavour, but they remain—despite their beauty—foreign to us. They do not carry the warmth of the land that carried us, nor the features of the identity we know.
In the end, love of the land is the deepest root—one that years cannot uproot and distances cannot alter. Land is not merely soil beneath our feet; it is a memory that inhabits us, a childhood that never grows old. In the details of the oak, we read our first stories: small hands gathering fruit, innocent hearts learning the meaning of belonging without lessons or slogans. Every acorn carries the trace of an old laugh, and every ancient trunk bears witness to lives that passed and endured. This is how we grow, while the land remains firm within us. We return to it whenever exile weighs us down, and there we find ourselves under the shade of oak trees—where the homeland begins, and where belonging never ends.