malalai khan

A long time ago, there was a huge apple tree. A little boy loved to come and play around it every day. He climbed to the tree-top, ate the apples, and took a nap under the shadow. He loved the tree and the tree loved to play with him. Time went by, the little boy had grown up and he no longer wanted to play around the tree every day.

One day, the boy came back to the tree and he looked sad.

“Come and play with me,” the tree asked the boy.

“I no longer am a kid, I do not play around trees any more,” the boy replied.

“I want toys. I need money to buy them.”

“Sorry, but I do not have money, but you can pick all my apples and sell them. So, you will have money.”

(my alternate story>)

The boy pondered for a moment, and then said, “I could grow a whole orchard with those apples.”

And so, the boy climbed up the tree and picked all the apples off. Without a ‘thank you’ or a goodbye, he went away and did not return for a long while. Summers passed without bloom. The tree waited still.

But after a dreary winter, the boy returned. Or, what had become of the boy—a young man. The tree grew happy upon the sight of him and asked, “Have you come to play with me?”

Scoffing, he replied, “I don’t have time for such things,” and he brought a lady friend with him.

The young man carved their names on the tree who did not care for the pain, and instead was joyous that the man had inscribed himself onto it. After a while, they went away.

That summer, the tree blossomed white, and the man came back again with the woman. The tree was delighted, as it asked, “Have you finally come to play with me?”

“I have come to enjoy the beautiful day,” he retorted and laid a picnic on the grass under the blooming shade of the apple tree.

“You can take my blossoms and make flower crowns out of it,” the tree said.

And they did. Soon, they packed up and left.

Years passed away as the leaves fell and grew, and fell and grew again all over. The tree’s bark hardened with time over the carved marks.

One fateful night in winter, the sky erupted into a thunderstorm, rain and sleet crashing down on everything. The tree stood still and firm as ever, branches swaying now and then in the strong gale. After a while, it calmed and through the patter of the rain, the tree heard a grunt.

The tree smiled and recognised the voice.

“Have you come to play with me?” But the man only grumbled and sighed through the darkness.

“No, I have lost my way to the doctor’s for my child is severely ill and I cannot wait till morning.”

The man sat down near the tree, trembling and sniffing as the night’s chilliness wrapped around him. The tree answered, “All I can do is give you shelter against the rain,” and it straightened its branches over the man along the length of it.

The man rose, his clothes wet all the way through.

“I cannot stay, I must go.”

Briskly, the tree wrapped a root around the man’s ankle and said, “But you have lost your way. You have nowhere to go. Come and play with me while the storm passes.”

Frightened, the man yanked at his leg to no avail.

“Leave me!” He shouted in the rushing wind.

“But I have always left you to yourself, yet you took everything I gave all for granted.”

And right then, the sky flashed white and violet, as a deafening crash roared through the ground. A yellow flare lit up and died back, rain drizzling down on the split trunk of the tree, bare and black as ash.

But it smiled, for the tree crawled its roots over the lifeless body of the man and dragged him underneath the soil as the rain fell down and the night carried on.

*****

This retelling of Shel Silverstein’s famous The Giving Tree was given as the first assignment at university in my 1st semester. I had a lot of fun with this one, keeping the original writing style of the author 🙂