Where the Wood Anemones Bloom

It wasn’t until April that Adib realized that something was wrong. It was early morning and he was sitting by the open kitchen window, his dark hair still tousled from sleep. Despite the blanket which he had wrapped around his shoulders, goosebumps crept up his arms and he fought the urge to pull up his shoulders and tuck his head like a tortoise to hide from the cold air. The coffee helped. It was sweet and thick, and both the smell and taste lingered like a welcome specter of someplace warmer, where the mornings were pleasant and the nights long and lively. 

The last shadows of dawn faded into a cover of gray that hung over the stout and lackluster houses. Behind the houses, only a few streets away, the town ended and merged into a field that blended into a forest that, still gray and bare but for a few specks of green, stretched to the horizon. 

When Adib had come to Germany, the forest had scared him, and the first time he had set foot between its trees, he had turned around after only a few steps. It wasn’t the lack of light under the canopy or its expanse that had filled him with a kind of terror that sank into his stomach like a boulder, but the unfamiliarity of that which grew and crawled in it. He missed the twisting shapes of Aleppo pines, the evergreen of Kermes oaks, and the scent of oleander along the rivers. Instead, he was surrounded by tall smooth-barked trees that he did not know the name of, a blanket of needles that had fallen like leaves on the ground, and in spring, the pungent smell of some weed that swept through the forest. It had taken him a long time until he learned their names. But once he could identify beeches, the boulder in his stomach shrank to a rock. When he could point to the trees that lost their needles and call them larches, he began to enjoy walking in the forest. And the first time he foraged wild garlic and cooked with it was the first time he felt a little bit at home.

The forest lay still under the gray sky, and the small garden outside the house, too, was unmoving and silent. Adib put down the coffee mug and pulled the blanket tighter around himself. He listened. His eyes skimmed over the hedgerow, the blackthorn that had snuck in between the hornbeam. It was not yet in bloom, and its branches stuck out bare and thorny from the hedge, the seed ball he had hung there for the birds, untouched.

Later that day, Adib went out to sit in a café. When he returned, the street was empty except for him and a family filling their weekend with an afternoon walk, and were it not for vague shapes or the flickering of a TV behind some windows, he might have thought that he had entered a ghost town. Even the sky mirrored the absence that engulfed him. 

He was close to home and his fingers closed around his keys when he saw one of his neighbors coming his way. She was as stout and dreary as the houses that lined the road, with a never-changing sullen expression that was perfectly mimicked by the pug that trotted beside her. Adib’s steps grew hesitant and faltered. The rock in his stomach that had never entirely disappeared, even after years, churned and sank a little deeper as his fingers closed and relaxed around the keys. 

“Good afternoon, Uschi.”

The woman stopped, an uncertain expression on her face, her dog’s eyes fixed on Adib. Uneasily, he shifted his weight from one foot to another. He had never exchanged more than a few words with her. Their longest, and somewhat strained, conversation had been months ago at a neighborhood gathering, and when they met on the street, she avoided eye contact with him as a general rule. But then, finally, Uschi returned his greeting. It was not more than a nod and a half-smile that failed to reach her eyes, but it was encouragement enough. He cast a quick glance back to the dog that seemed to have lost interest in him, and instead intently sniffed the sidewalk with breaths akin to the wheezing of an age-worn steam engine. 

“I am wondering, could I ask you something?” Adib began. “Did you see any birds lately? In your garden?”

“No.” The neighbor tucked on her dog’s lead, and Adib was sure it was a sign as much to him as to the dog that for her the conversation was over, but he pushed on.

“Only, I noticed this morning that there were no birds and they haven’t taken the seeds I put out for them, either.”

Uschi shook her head, and Adib thought he saw her roll her eyes. “Well, it’s still very cold, isn’t it? Things might be different where you come from, but here there tend to be less birds when it gets cold. And then there are the cats…” she added with a grim look at the house on the other side of the street. 

It had been cold when he had arrived in Germany. Surrounded by strange people, unfamiliar buildings, and flooded with information in a language he did not speak, he had not been able to take in much at first. But when the first confusion cleared and he no longer lay awake throughout the night, when he was able to find his way without help, and he began to hope that he might be allowed to stay, his attention had expanded outward. In the endless meetings with immigration officers who rarely addressed him directly, speaking to his interpreter instead, his gaze had often wandered to the window in the hope of catching sight of any signs of life. He grew particularly fond of a small bird with a yellow chest and blue wings that would fly up to the window, tilt its white and blue head and eye him curiously, only to disappear again between the leafless branches of some tree or bush. On some days, he felt like this bird – a blue tit, as he learned months later – was the only creature that showed him kindness.

Even though the gesture felt strained, Adib smiled at his neighbor, who was already continuing her way down the street. “Have a good day.”

Her pug turned its head and cast him one last look as if to say What did you expect? Then, it hobbled ahead to sniff on a lamp post. Adib sighed and turned, but instead of walking up to the front door, he passed the building and walked down the street until the space between the houses grew bigger and the asphalt was replaced with bare soil. The field under his shoes was compact and dry, and soon, he reached its end, where hedgerows stood as a last barrier between the town and the forest.

Adib stepped between the trees. Their smooth gray trunks seemed to swallow the little light that fell from the overcast sky. Dead leaves covered the ground and softened the sound of his footsteps. Even though a breeze whispered through the canopy, silence seeped through the forest. The absence of rustling in the undergrowth and the lack of birdsong rang in Adib’s ears.

When was the last time he had heard the warbling of a blackbird or the chirrup of a robin?

“Not this morning. Not this week?” Even though he barely mumbled to himself, his own voice rang in his ears, unbearably loud, and yet it failed to break through the eerie quiet. “Not in a long time.”

Adib slowed down his pace and let his eyes wander over the trees. Ahead, a few firs were scattered, adding a touch of green, but the beeches and larches were still unchanged from the winter. Adib frowned. 

“Too late,” he mumbled. “Like the blackthorn – much too late.”

He kept walking, his eyes on the ground. Pale needles and brown leaves that were crumpled and faded to reveal their veinlike structure carpeted the forest floor. Gently, Adib pushed aside some of the decaying foliage to reveal nothing but cold and dark ground and a few roots protruding from it. 

He sat down on the ground, his back resting against one of the beech trees, and closed his eyes.

“Snowdrops in January. Yellow anemone,” he listed, his words barely more than a movement of his lips. “Crocuses in February. Blackthorne blooms, and wood anemone.”

He opened his eyes again and scanned the forest floor once more. Where there should have been a white and green blanket of wood anemone, there were only the remnants of last year’s life. He listened, but though he should have heard the chirping of chiffchaffs that had returned from the south, there was only silence still.

His stomach clenched, and a sinking feeling spread from his guts to his chest. Adib dug his fingers into the soil as if searching for the pulse of the Earth, but there was no movement, no heartbeat; only the branches highest up in the canopy swayed in the shallowest of breaths. He dug deeper and felt dry soil becoming stuck under his fingernails. Mud caked his fingers as he reached earth that still held some moisture. Cold spread through his hands, trickling into his arms, as he clawed into the ground. His fingers tore through small roots and mycelium that broke without resistance. And then, finally, he found something to hold on to. 

His skin touched slippery wood, and a faint tremor ran through the ground as his fingers closed around the root. He grasped it tightly, and the root returned his touch. Adib could feel it wind around his wrist, slowly – almost unnoticeably. The cold spread from his arms into his shoulders, his chest, like droplets of dew in his veins. His breath caught in his lungs, and he moved to pull his hand free. But the root held him tightly. Fine roots grew from it and pierced his skin. His body felt heavy, stuck in clay, and weighed down by rain-soaked moss. Above him, the sky broke open to release the light of a pale sun that wound its way through the blurring branches of the trees. Adib blinked and forced himself to take deep breaths. The air smelled of rot and growth. He felt it flood and ebb through his lungs in a rhythmic rise and fall. His body grew heavier and heavier still, but the knot in his stomach eased, and thoughts on his mind calmed and quieted down to become part of the silence of the forest.

It was April, and life was marked by absence. But somewhere in the forest on the edge of town, a single wood anemone bloomed.

Written by Merle Emrich.

Cover photo by Diana Parkhouse [edited].