The Sunken Forest

Dear H, 

My sentences will be long. If you are in quarantine like I am, only read this letter when you want to plunge into the abyss like we used to, where sentences are made for pure feelings, and where they lack structure and clarity. 

Also, ‘time’ is more relative here in my letter to you. All tenses exist together. But you understand that. That’s why I have to senselessly tell you all of this.

The last time I wrote you a letter was more than ten years ago. It was an email but it was written like a letter to a friend in the nineteen-twenties – the way you prefer to write. We resorted to modern communication now and it drifted us apart, we don’t resonate with the current mediums of communication. 

Our friendship belongs to another time, even before the time in which ‘that other time’ belongs, and so I shall keep it alive ‘there’, in that time before the actual time, where the usage of the word “shall” is really not so cheesy, and from where I can refer to our friendship as present by removing the dead letters: “ed”, and replacing them with the curvy spiral of a present: “s”. 

I want to write to you about something so strange and unrelated to you. It is strange because it is unrelated to you and not because of the nature of the topic. Or I don’t know, you read and tell me. It was only One Word from all that I will now tell you of what I experienced That Day, and which only makes meaning Now, which reminded me of you. The word is: SPIRAL. It is the first word you said in the classroom when I first met you in school. The way you said it was so expressive, it stuck with everyone for a while. 

This word is enough to make me want to breathe life to what we had, through an actual letter. This is as much as I can tell you as to why I am writing to you specifically, after all this time. Nothing is random, you once said. So don’t be mad if this is boring and futile to you. You were right, nothing is random, and (how funny) as I write this bit about randomness, Just Now, Tom starts playing a classical orchestration that you would smile to as you throw your head back in your vintage floral sing-song way and say, “Oh, bee-ee-ees, but weren’t they lovely? Those old times? Weren’t they Absolutely Royal? They played good music! They knew good art! And their films! So, SO fabulous!” 

When you were in New York, remember when I told you about how Fire Island is such a thin island that it takes ten minutes to bike from bay to shore? I realise that we never discussed how long it takes to bike along the whole island. You never asked and I never said. All you cared about was that Cherry Grove village was famous for the best gay weddings and parties and you wanted to know how far it was from Tom’s parents’ house. 

Why were we so uninterested about geographical facts? I, like you, would also not have asked how long the island was. Given that the width of it is alarmingly tiny, it should have really been interesting to know about its’ length too to get a bigger picture, but I would not have asked it regardless. 

Did you also feel tongue-tied when people asked you all these geographical physical details about Bahrain when you first left it for college? We can say so much about the culture and ways and people and how frustrating and limiting or exotic it all is, but actual physical facts? –  Well, at least not you and I, we had no interest for these things. It matters now, doesn’t it? With age and while facing our shadows as we fear the world is ending while our feet are cemented to the floors of our home – I bet the entire bigger picture of everything matters to both of us now.

Anyway, it turns out that Fire Island is 50 miles long. And today I am here. And as I wrote earlier, I will write about That Day as if it is Today, so stay focused.  

Today, Tom’s dad insisted that we hop on his boat and go farther up the island to a place called The Sunken Forest, where they apparently were once being bitten alive by mosquitos, but is still somehow one of the most amazing ecosystems that they have come across, wondrous enough to go and get bitten alive again. 

Michael insisted on this trip discounting the opportune direction of wind, which today carried vicious hormonal mosquitos from Bayshore to Fire Island. This man lived by the wind and its direction. A windsurfer in all his minutiae components, he is the wind-nerd type who’d mount a wind meter on his roof, which the same-aged neighbours would rave about, some with admiration, others with skepticism, all with disbelief at the insurmountable energy this wild bird of a man can carry. Michael is no longer with us, but he is still present (I mean both in spirit, and in the actual present tense of this letter). 

They, the neighbours, the lifeguards, the windsurfers and co., and myself included, all waited to see where the wind would take him everyday. If you caught him squinting anywhere to the horizon on one of the pictures of my wedding day, he was thinking about the wind, take my word for it. 

He was The No-Type Type who was always being studied, scrutinised, observed, and wondered about. And if he had to be a type well then he was surely the kingly type, the intimidating type, the God of wind, friends with Zeus type, the type that loved to talk about no-type types of men as admirable free willed souls.  The type that read a lot of novels and the type that dreamt things he could touch and like someone said, turn into Gold. But you only got to know all that if he wanted you to. He was also the very quiet type. 

Since there was not much left of this charming summer, Today, August 25^th, 2014, the wind and its consequences did not guide Michael’s decisions on what to do, rather, it was on what Not To Do that he focused his energy. And since he focused on Not doing what he would go off alone to normally do on such a 16 miles/h windy day, he took us on his boat and we went to this mosquito infested ecosystem called The Sunken Forest. Note that it is rather special that he chose Not To Do the usual, for he gave me this memory.  

He enthused Tom, my son-of-the-lion windsurfer husband, to show me the hidden gem of their summerhouse island by sharing hilarious family stories and memories of their several trips to The Sunken Forest. Those memories drew identical wise, warm, yet foolishly wide smiles (bordering on outrageously large grins) on their lips. So we went to The Sunken Forest, more to give their memories vitality and validate their gusto for life and its’ biting creatures, than to show me a gnarl of trees. 

It was a buttery yellow afternoon when we got off the boat and walked onto the boardwalk towards the Sunken Forest, following its sign on the varnished plank of wood shaped like a shield. The deceptively soft sunlight at 17:05 was gradually torching Tom’s skin, which you described as Scandinavian Salmon once. 

Michael looked silvery with an unbothered expression, a glint from the sun on both lenses of his retro aviator chromatic sunglasses made him look even cooler. He looked more like Ralph Lauren than he did on my wedding 5 months prior to That Day, Today. Here, in case you haven’t noticed, I am using capital letters for irrelevant words to signify the weight of certain feelings. Only someone as reckless with rules, as you and I are, would get it. 

So we are there now, and I am wide-eyed at the amount of flies around, and Michael starts saying, 

“Do you see how different it is from Saltaire?” He addressed the question to me but was quizzically looking at his son’s aggressive slapping of sun block on his shoulders. 

I realized he was talking to me and rushed forward to stand closer to him, demonstrating my attentiveness – you know, like daughters in law do to fathers in law they admire. I said, 

“Yes! It smells totally different! It’s dark and eerie!” And it was. He liked my usage of adjectives, I saw him smile out to nothing with satisfaction. 

My husband smiled at my kiss-ass smug face and before I could retaliate with a responsive expression, I slapped my arm as I got my first mosquito bite. Michael saw that and although his laugh did not make a sound, it made his Adam’s Apple bounce up and down to what would have been a deep chuckle, 

“Get used to it, Beisan”, he said, “Today is a lesson of adaptation.” And he naturally led the way on the boardwalk towards the start of the trail inside this small forest. He led the way like a draft of wind coming in from one window and going out another, and Tom and I were rustling behind him pulled by his leadership like leaves carried by the breeze. He really is like that. 

The walk was brutal. And I hissed to Tom that I will say it out loud because I could not take it anymore. He is used to adrenalized ways of enjoying nature, not me! Michael half-turned his neck, with a half-knowing-smile that I was going to give up and demonstrate my inability to join the fun yet again, but that this time, I had no choice. 

That half-smile of his father’s pumped Tom up a bit, so he tells me, “This is part of Fire Island life! They are welcoming you with their bites, they love you here! Haahah!” So I hustled onwards, just to challenge Tom. 

I endured a few more minutes of swatting mosquitos away, until I felt my head would explode. I gave up and tried my luck to end this nightmare and said, 

“Michael, you don’t mind the horseflies? Don’t they hurt you? I am being bitten alive! So are you! Here is one. There, another. I admire how you enjoy it.” 

But of course, H, you know I didn’t. My dishonest endurance is my demise! 

He smiled to nothing in front of him as he kept on walking, and although he gave me the back of his head I knew exactly the kind of smile he was smiling. I can always hear him laugh even when he doesn’t, and see him smile even when I can’t. He responded, 

“They are just large mosquitos. You’ll get used to it. It’s a nice place to be. It’s a valley, you see. Two dunes made it so. So now here is a forest that is sunken in between them, in the middle of this small island. Look how different it is”, he gave his head a slight look-around. “It’s a great ecosystem. It’s a Spiral and a Mystery”. 

(And here is where I thought of you for half-a second that seems to be lasting a lifetime, and that forever attached you to this memory of mine.)

Tom neared closer to his father and added, 

“True. Look at the trees, they don’t grow taller, they grow sideways. The salt from the ocean reaches the tall trees and stunts their growth, but it doesn’t kill them, they still keep growing sideways creating a tent. It’s so dark under there, there’s wildlife.” Tom was educating me, but also inspiring me. He knew I needed time to understand wilderness in all its forms. Especially wildlife! I gave him a scornful look, because mosquitos trump inspiration! 

But that isn’t entirely true because at some point I stopped feeling the bites. I looked at the gnarled quilt of trees deprived by the ocean mist from growing as tall as they independently should, and yet still found a way to grow together and create an impressive ecosystem that provided a private closed home for a wildlife hidden from human view. 

I later googled which species of trees those were, different yet intertwined like a team huddled to make a pact before a final match, very much like Fire Island regulars and their force of connection. Very much like the lifeguards and how their mission is one. They were Black Cherry trees, Shadblows, American Hollies, and Sassafras. Trees I have never heard of before surrounded and protected by Red and Gold Poison Ivy, Blueberry and Inkberry Bushes. 

Wait – Now I will leave this memory right where I paused it near the Inkberry Bushes to say something else. Something I would only tell a childhood friend who understands the preference to build up a memory rather than the present life, because only she would remember how vulnerable we were and always will be to the bite marks of change. 

Everything Spirals in the direction it needs to Spiral towards. Stunted by a virus called Corona, we have no choice but to Spiral together. (Did you know that corona also means the rare round glow-y envelope of the sun and the stars, a glow that surrounds the black disc of the moon during a solar eclipse? And did you also know that corona is a part of the body, looking like a crown? Yes. It is kingly in anatomy! In botany, it is a cup-like growth in a center of a daffodil. In architecture, it is a circular chandelier in a church. Why is all this so important to me?)

The world cannot end, you see? Ask the trees Sunk in the Forest on this strip of shoeless thin land. Ask the Black Cherry, the Shadblow, the American Holly, the Sassafra. Ask their guardians in Red and Gold Poison Ivy leaves and the Blueberry and Inkberry bushes. 

Those trees will tell you that they would have all otherwise lived expanding and growing alone and separate from each other, were it not for the salt of the ocean mist that forced them to join arms. Branches and trunks and twigs and bushes gnarled and twisted around each other. Together forever, making a new home for untouched life.  

Thank God for the word Spiral that started all of those memories of Michael, and of you, and of an ecosystem that twists itself to prove that when anything stunts our growth, our limbs can still grow longer, spiraling towards the direction of survival through oneness alone. We have become immune to the forces that separate us. In the words of Michael: It is a Spiral. It is a Mystery. 

Your truly childhood friend, B

P.S. Please write me when you can, do not call me on Whatsapp, I have nothing to say there. 

Beisan A. Alshafei

March 31st, 2020

I started to write this to you on August 6th, 2019, in the memory of my father in law’s passing on the same date in 2016. I then left it and came back to it on March 31st, 2020. Among all the different memories that came after his passing, I always referred to my memory of August 25th, 2014, the memory of That Day described in this letter, as: Today.