News to Write Home About

"Egypt Asks Israel to Keep Turkey Away From Gaza,” the headline in Haaretz announced. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.696080 When I first read it my wife and I were still in Hawaii. I broke out laughing. It sounded like a parody straight out of ‘The Onion.’ I labored to put the headline in perspective for people who had no inkling about Gaza’s tragedy. Or about Egypt’s, Turkey’s or Israel’s fixes for that matter, each tragic in its own asinine way.

Every morning, as we walked to the Ala Moana Beach Park from our modest hotel at the edge of Waikiki for an hour’s swim and on our way back, we passed by half a dozen homeless nests, collections of rags, cardboard and plastic in which humans huddled on the sidewalk of the Ala Wai Promenade. Misshapen tarpaulin and plastic sheets strung from the side rails of the bridge to a parked shopping cart or a beat-up bicycle provided a semblance of protection from the rain and sun. The carts were full of more nest-building materials and of bags of edible or wearable goods salvaged from waste bins.

Many of the homeless were young, a surprise to me. One husky Chinese-Hawaiian old man would hold a hand sprinkler and carefully water the flowerbed he had planted along the sidewalk. He was safe enough for me to establish eye contact with him. And one emaciated elderly haole (a derogatory Hawaiian term for white person) in particular attracted my attention. But I didn’t dare look him straight in the eye. Many years ago, in Delhi, I perfected the skill of avoiding the hungry children’s gaze. I could sleep better that way. They were there but weren’t individually registered in my conscience. This ‘present absentee’ old man usually sat in his rags by the telephone pole on our side of the stoplight just before the entrance to the Ala Moana Shopping Center, once boasting to be the biggest such complex in the whole world. Almost always he held a lit cigar in his hand. In the faintest of voices he asked for change while motioning with his other hand to his mouth. An old woman with well-combed shoulder-length blond hair sat on a wheelchair or lay on the ground next to him and listened to classic music on a radio-tape gadget held close to her thin chest. More than all the other homeless on the sidewalk, these two disturbed my peace of mind.

But another seemingly unrelated matter bothered me in Hawaii: ISIS. It is the favorite theme of a good Indian friend of mine there, a brother from college days. He seems to deny me my right of understanding Islam as I know it. He assumes that ISIS is all that Islam is or ever was. The only thing I detest more than accepting such analysis is to defend ISIS. And India did suffer centuries of colonization by Moslems. Now it occurs to me that my daily double encounter with the homeless crowd at the edge of Waikiki can serve the purpose of illustrating my friend’s misconception: What if I were to report to those who know nothing about Hawaii that homelessness is the cardinal feature of Hawaii and the only thing in it worth writing home about? Both Islam and the Hawaiian Islands have more beauty and serenity than needs defending, especially by someone like me who has resisted full emersion in their magic and richness. But, believe me, the homeless phenomenon is the one thing that struck me most on this trip and violated my lasting impression of my second home’s godly beauty.

Twice we witnessed the police clearing the illicit encampments, packing everything haphazardly in cartons and make-believe luggage pieces to be carted away for storage. Those were labeled with location, date and destination in duplicates with copy sheets hung on the rails for the owners to locate their abandoned property should they so desire or dare. Both times I saw none of the regular occupants that I had come to recognize. Neither the Chinese-Hawaiian nor the hungry old white fellow and his girlfriend were to be seen on either of the two occasions. They must have their own early warning system and didn’t care for whatever alternative shelter the Honolulu Police and Social Welfare Department offered them.

I wanted to incorporate some of this in my simile of the comic Gaza news item I had read. It pre-occupied me especially since I was scheduled to speak at a book event later that day. And there was the local couple, our friends and hosts who always try to comprehend the Middle East regional issues. I knew they would ask me about the strange headline. I needed a local simile to illustrate how ridiculous it was. Right away I could see that the destitute white couple was Gaza. The figurative owner of the shopping center has to be Israel, the worst baddy of them all in every Palestinian nightmare. And I will stand for Turkey: I am a dictatorial Moslem and can afford to help but keep my distance and am satisfied with expressing my sympathy especially in my benevolent dreams. We need only an Egypt to complete the silly allegory. We need to incorporate the beach in this charade, of course. So let us say the lifeguard is Egypt. He is physically powerful but choses to serve his mightier neighbor for payment through a third party. Don’t ask me who will stand for the USA; this is getting out of hand in complexity and we haven’t even gotten to ISIS. So now that we have this much of our insane shadow-play comedy in place, let us stop right here: The lifeguard asks the owner of the shopping center to stop me from helping the homeless old couple. It almost makes sense; it certainly makes more sense than the original headline: “Egypt Asks Israel to Keep Turkey Away From Gaza.” Ha ha ha!

I nearly drowned. I finished formulating my analogy while swimming on my back. As I broke out in uncontrollable laughter I swallowed enough seawater to nearly drown. The lifeguard whistled and I lifted my hand and signaled ‘OK’ to him. No need to interfere. Let each stew in his own juice. Or, as we say in Palestine, let each pull out his thorns from his feet with his own hands.

Seething with Anger ands Fear

This article was published first on Mondoweiss website where it was widely shared and tweeted:

Seething with anger and fear

Israel/Palestine 

Hatim Kanaaneh on December 28, 2015 21 Comments

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Israeli wedding-goers rejoice over the killing of a Palestinian baby. (Screenshot) 

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A news item posted on Facebook from an Israeli TV station is keeping me awake this Christmas night. I have just shared a posting from the activist Jeff Halper about the Christian town of Bethlehem. I thought that his appeal for the international community to interfere to stop the madness of Israel’s occupation is strengthened by the addition of my formally Moslem voice to his formally Jewish one. I have a Hindu friend who will be happy to add his as well. Perhaps this will snowball into something meaningful.

But my feeble attempt is rendered totally insignificant by the news item causing my insomnia. The report is about real madness; vicious, murderous and ultimately state-sponsored collective insanity. And it has echoes of madness that no one denies in retrospect. And yet the Channel 10 TV reported psychosis at a settlers’ wedding party in the OPTs is, at the end, tolerated, financed and even sponsored by the very same world forces that have made pogroms an evil thing of the past and the blood libel that underlay it such an evil accusation that even thinking of it makes me shudder in shame. I will be labeled anti-Semitic and a terrorist for bringing the subject up in the new context of the crimes of the settlers and the occupation.

Yes, the thought is incoherent even to me. So let me see if I can ferret its basic elements for myself and perhaps for the reader: First here is the blood libel that watching the TV report brought to mind: European Christians in those dark times and savage locales accused the Jews in their Shtetles of abducting and murdering Christian children to use their blood in preparing the Matzoth for their holiday celebrations. Somehow the murders were believed to gladden the evil Jews in their vile celebrations. It was taken for granted that ‘their religion requires it.’ So far all of that is in the past and we all have recovered from the madness of such invented evil rumors.

Fast forward to the present with a new set of beliefs, started, fueled and maintained in the very same Western culture with daily reminders in the form of news reports: Moslems in general, Arabs among them in particular and especially Palestinian Arab Moslems, cannot go about their daily lives without murderous terror acts against the civilized world. The context in which they commit their terror is that of their daily lives but particularly to celebrate special occasions and prepare their children and youth for ascension to heaven as Shaheeds. After all, ‘their religion requires it.’ And whom can such aggressors commit their violence against but the truest representatives of Western culture in the region, Israel! Two birds with the same stone: practicing modern anti-Semitism while making up for the West’s past anti-Semitism. How else can the West pay up for its Holocaust crime against the Jews? German material compensations are not enough. It needs to pay up with sociocultural and political favors as well. 

But the picture is still incomplete and incoherent. How does the video at the base of my muddled thoughts fit with all of this? Yes, that is it; it doesn’t. That is the problem. I want to say something that is so disturbing to Western ears that I have to find someone else to say it for me. The late prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz said it by coining the term Zio-Nazism but he was too civilized to use the expletives that come to mind. Thank God for Google! Yes, my friend Gideon Levy has said it for me. Here it is: 

Religious ultranationalism, which hides behind the worn-out name “religious Zionism,” … [w]ith negligible contributions to society, the economy, culture, science, literature and art; with a common denominator based mostly on messianic, religious, racist beliefs and a hatred of the other, especially the Arab; with a fictitious love of the land, isolation from the world and a folkloric religion, all wrapped in gooey kitsch; without practical vision; with a hollow spiritual leadership that bases its power on incitement to hatred and approval of bloodshed; at the focal points of violence and breeding grounds of corruption, and with insufferable arrogance this movement has exploited the vacuum, the horrible apathy that has spread in secular society, and climbed its way up to the high reaches of power.

Yes, Gideon says what I am thinking. He is sounding out the right alarm. The extremists are taking over the country. But I am still unsatisfied with the sign-off; I still search for the exact closing note that keeps ringing in my ear from within.

I keep searching and find this: 

Judaism Israel-style has taken on the trappings of the Nazis Blut und Boden (“Blood and Soil”). But not just blood as the Nazis conceived it, that is, a form of ethnic purity and bloodlines, but actual blood. … What does this video show if not Jews seething for blood? The blood of Palestinians? What will we expect to see next? Snuff videos of Eshbal and his fellow terrorists actually stabbing Palestinian babies to death? Perhaps drinking their blood? Where does it end?

Yes, in that last line Richard Silverstein said what was on my mind. Thanks, Richard, for the clarity. Yes, they will drink blood. We have seen it all before. We saw the same religious fanatics eat the liver of their enemies. Yes, ISIS and these guys are one and the same and ‘their religion requires it.’ And, yes, the West started it all way back with the anti-Semitic pogroms. Even now it funds and arms both.

Yes I am damn upset!

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/seething-with-anger#sthash.UdIlOJpO.dpuf

Romancing the Cherimoya

Laiali, my third-grader granddaughter guides me to the roof garden of her home where my daughter is busy tidying up the space. She collects the fallen leaves and deadheads the roses, adding by her presence to the garden’s sunny exuberance while the second Indian summer lasts. Many annuals are patiently awaiting the first frost to take their frigid leave. Laiali points excitedly overhead to the neighborhood’s resident hawk circling above Tomkins Square Park. Dozens of park pigeons take notice and take flight in wavelike formation undulating in synch with their neighbor’s fitful bursts of vertical energy. Suddenly Laiali gets distracted and turns her attention to a more immediate diversion: One incidental tomato plant has taken root between the flowers, grown and bore fruit. She hands me the one ripe strawberry tomato. She doesn’t like the veggie-fruit. Besides, my wife and I had just arrived and our granddaughter is keen to show us her welcome. Back in August, at our home in Galilee, our visiting two sets of grandchildren had a great time every morning feeding the chickens, collecting eggs and picking apples, pears, lychees, passion fruits and figs. Laiali is paying me back, I sense.

I bite into the tiny tomato and tears run down my cheeks. It is sugary sweet. Why couldn’t we have stayed home for a couple of weeks longer? But missing my garden never brought tears to my eyes before. Why now?  True, the persimmons were just ripening when we left. I had put a few dozen fruits underwater to take away their astringent bite. At the height of the season it takes only three daily water refreshments to render the fruit edible. But this was early in the season and I misjudged. They needed four or five daily water changes. I left them for friends to savor; I totally missed out on the persimmon season this year. The pomegranates as well were just short of their peak ripeness. I had been feasting on them with my morning cereal for a couple of weeks already, comparing the gradually less tangy flavors of the four varieties in my yard. One more week and the balance of citric acid and fructose would have peaked together with the antioxidant explosion that justifies the festive individual aril-by-aril culling and careful juicing for a yearlong supply of the aging antidote. I had to trust my nephew and his wife with the delectable task on the traditional farming understanding of sharing the liquid product equally. The same unspoken agreement holds for the prodigious carob crop. I can already taste the fresh molasses over whole-wheat pancakes.

I know my nephew will keep some of the ripe feijoas in our icebox for us. But, alas, with storage the fruit looses much of its exotic flavor and despite the low temperature most of the tropical fruit will rot before we get back. But the cherimoyas! My God! Those custard apples with their candy-like tangy sweetness must be what brought tears to my eyes. I had been indulging myself with them for one full week before I was dragged away kicking to the airport. What adds to the pleasure of eating the fresh fruit is the needed delicate swishing around in one’s mouth of all those smooth black seeds that help squeeze the delectable juice out of the tender white chunks before you manage to separate what to swallow from the small hard projectiles you, or rather I, so love to spew in rapid succession to keep the roosters and the cats away from me in the garden.  Absent-mindedly I relish the arty essence of the fruit’s constituent parts.

That was how Djon, my Indonesian college roommate and lifelong brother thereafter, had introduced me to the exotic fruit. It was in Hawaii with our Indian brother, Jagy. We couldn’t afford to buy one for each of us. So we must have borrowed the fruits from someone’s tree:

“ There is nothing like it except perhaps for durian.” Djon insisted. “But no one can slight the fresh fragrance of cherimoya or the celadon tinge of its outer covering. Just touch the surface of those dips between the tiny ridges. It is like glazed porcelain. And yet it is tender to the touch, almost inviting your fingertips to caress and squeeze it. You know how amorous wahines respond to your touch, brother!? That is the feel of fresh ripe cherimoyas to my hands. And you haven’t gotten to the magic of the flesh yet, brother! You take out that plug at the center, which by releasing its centripetal hold on the surrounding meat admits to the ripeness of the fruit. Only then can you split the virginal flesh open to feast your eyes before you do your taste buds. Just look at the way those closed-flower-shaped chunks of glistening white pudding await the touch of your tongue. And look at the central shiny black seed in each chunk giving it its individual charm as the whole bunch of them compete which will be the first to tickle your throat.”

Djon was in love with cherimoya and tried and succeeded to infect me with the affliction. No wonder when we travelled to Andalucía he never stepped out without a serrated edge spoon carefully tucked in the inner pocket of his his sport coat.

Yes, Djon had the imagination, the intimate friendliness and the touch of humor to bring a fruit to life and give it sex appeal. But, no, this second most favored fruit of his never got enough under my skin to bring tears to my eyes as I take leave from it. Of course, I must have cried for Djon, not for the fruit.

The night before my crying fit I had attended a presentation by another dear friend, Dr. Ghada Karmi, the grand dame of Palestinian Londoners, and picked up a copy of her latest book, Return: A Palestinian Memoir. I fell asleep mentally and emotionally ruminating on the way she expresses her sense of loss as she is forced to deny her dying father his request to go home and is mentally transported to another scene of colossal loss, her forced expulsion from her family’s Jerusalem home:

“He sank back and closed his eyes. This memory returns to me even now, because I know that passionate longing for normality, for life to resume as it has always been, and yet be powerless to make it happen. It took me back to an April morning long ago and to the child I was then, standing helplessly at the closed garden gates of our house in Jerusalem that my heart feared I would never see again.”

Finally I comprehend my tearful reaction to tasting that cherry tomato: I bet you I can draw a four-dimensional map of the neuronal synapses that led from the taste buds on my tongue to my subconscious brain, via stored memories of fun and intimacy from college days, to the neural record of my and Djon’s drifting apart to separate commitments and raising of families, to his illness and my partaking with his family of his love as he passed on, back to my own private loss of my mother, dead and buried in my village while I was away attending school in the city, to Ghada’s loss of her father and home, to the collective loss of the homeland experienced by all Palestinians, back to Djon, my family and home away from home, to the beautiful taste of cherimoyas in my orchard.

I love you, Djon!

Health Advisory

Sept. 8, 2015:

Today we woke up to a sandstorm blanketing the entire country. In Arrabeh it is so thick streetlights are on at noon. I don’t know if it is done automatically or if our mayor still turns them on and off manually himself because of budgetary constraints. Regardless, it is obvious that somebody up there is upset with someone down here. So, who is doing this to whom? I’ll leave figuring out the angry party to others and invest some thought in figuring out who angered Him or Her. Since this all is happening in Israel and Palestine, let me try and guess who is to blame, Abbas or Netanyahu. Abbas is threatening to resign. I think that should bring a smile if not a snicker to the continence of the Gods. The first page headline in Haaretz warns of him disturbing the status quo with his forthcoming UN speech. No wonder he goes around with that permanent whimsical look in his eye. I recall a fellow worker at the Ministry of Health once threatening to revolt if he didn’t get a pay raise; he would start referring to himself as ‘Palestinian,’ he said. Would Abbas do that now?

In my judgment it must be the Israelis who are raising all the dust. I just shared an outrageous piece on my Facebook account about teaching the Arabic Language at Jewish schools in Israel. It turns out that it is all done under the auspices of Israel’s security apparatus and in the context of stopping terrorist acts by Arabic speakers. The texts taught are inimical to the language and to its speakers and the overall scheme revolves around knowing thy enemy. That, of course, has meant that no Arabs are involved in the program thus leading to the current state of affairs where less than 10% of the teachers of the subject at Jewish schools are actually fluent in the Arabic language. For the several centuries that the Philippines was a Spanish colony, its educational system focused on teaching Catholicism to the locals. Many priests who served as school principles were actually illiterate. The important thing was to spread the faith.

Remember, we are speaking here of the Department of Jewish Education. In the Department of Arab Education in Israel, where for years a non-native Arabic speaker ran the show, the goal seemed to have been to help Arabs forget the language or at least not to be as stir crazy about its hypnotic charm, what with all its classic poetry and Koranic roots. Arabic language connoisseurs are regularly seen retching their guts out at hearing our youth speak Arabic with its generous sprinkling of Hebrew terms and structures.

And here is another potential brewing dust storm for you: This year, two weeks from now, Jewish and Islamic holidays coincide. Jewish customers calling to book rooms at the Crown Plaza (and some other resorts) in Tiberius and Eilat regularly receive an unsolicited advisory about the high likelihood that there will be many Arabs on site. As vacationers, that is, and not only as cooks, waiters, dishwashers, busboys, gardeners, maintenance staff and parking attendants. In some resorts officials went into some detail about known Arab characteristics such as offensive smell and tendency to messiness. The Channel 10 News team that aired the program went the extra mile and attempted to reserve rooms at the facilities under Arabic names and was not warned about the likelihood of finding Jewish vacationers there. It seems self-evident that Arab families would love for their children to brush against Jewish kids at the playgrounds.

I wonder if Israeli tour agencies issue regular travel warnings to their American and European pilgrim clients about the likelihood of running into some Arabs in Jerusalem despite the state’s persistent efforts to sanitize the holy site of such life forms.

WARNING: Because of the high atmospheric particle count, people with compromised lung and heart functions, pregnant woman, and the elderly should stay indoors and avoid physical exertion. Whatever you do, avoid exposure to Arabs, especially Palestinians.

Review of Chief Complaint by a Harvard classmate

I am aware of half a dozen reviews of my book, Chief Complaint, having appeared in print or online, all enchantingly positive, I have collected those in a Word file that I treasure and keep expanding. But I haven't posted them on my blog. This is different. It has a certain value added at source; it is from a Harvard Medical School class mate (1968) who is the world expert on the subject of kinship and fertility. He posted his review to the class listserve. I expect some noise to be generated by this review. But noise is always good for sales. I hasten to add that the esoteric few last paragraphs left me less than clear about what my dear classmate exactly means. I visited his website and emerged not much clearer about his aim though, on the whole, it sounds positive. But that is Harvardese for you and I have been weaned from it for near half a century. Still, I am happy to gloat about all the praise and the bright spotlights that my classmate shines on my book in his first few paragraphs. Here it is for your (and my) enjoyment:

Review of Chief Complaint:

I have had the great pleasure of reading Chief Complaint by Hatim Kanaaneh MD (Just World Books, Alexandria, Virginia 2015 and available from Amazon).

It is with some trepidation that I discuss a book that touches on such sacred things. It is a collection of short stories, which is like saying a Mozart sonata is a collection of notes.  The stories are partly fictionalized, as the author points out, with most of the names being changed and some episodes that happened to different people being linked in one person.  The book is disarmingly simple in its organization, being the tales of people who came to Dr. Kanaaneh put together by chief complaint in the routine order of a systems review by a good clinician.

Beneath that inviting cover I found a narrative of different levels, which I shall try to describe. 

The easiest level for me is the political.  Let me quote the first two sentences from “The Gray Champion” by Nathanial Hawthorne.  “There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones that brought on the Revolution.  James II, the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous, had annulled the charters of all of the colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion.”  Chief Complaint makes clear that British rule was not improved by time, nor was the puppet government they installed.  As with Hawthorne, the doctor’s tale is one of the persecuted as seen by the persecuted – in flagrant defiance of the commonplace that history is written by the victors.  This is Palestine under Israeli rule, British Mandate rule and even Ottoman rule.  The protest is most clear.

The second level is still manageable for me.  That is the narrative style.  I graduated with high honors in English from Wesleyan University, so if this next paragraph is folly, at least it is by a fool with credentials.  There are multiple themes woven into the tale.  It is like spending days on a sailboat accompanied by an enormous pod of many-colored cetaceans.  Sometimes one passes submerged and the is only the hint of color gliding below the surface followed by another and another or more than one.  Then one of them breaches clear of the water and for a time all too brief shines resplendent in the sun.  And there are characters, many characters.  I think I have met more people of the village of Arrabeh than I can recall with such distinctness and understanding from my childhood plus present life.  We see them at their best and at their worst, their injuries and ailments, their deepest woes and their highest dreams, through the attentive eye of the clinician. 

At the third level I panic.  Long years among many different cultures have taught me that some things are fair game for conversation with anyone: family, weather, sports, ghosts, machinery and so forth.  One might not agree, but at least one knows the lie of the land.  But when one ventures into what is precious, sacred memory or dream, table manners and alcohol or tobacco, things immediately in touch with the physical body, one may all unintentionally offend.  The story is set with the constant presence of a wistful, mistful past when the people owned land, the land was bounteous and mouthwatering delicacies were available in their season.  It took hard work to wrest a living from the soil, from the goats and especially from the trappable wild things.  I have no doubt that these sweet memories are valid.  My own experience has been that the past is forgotten or seen through a distorting lens such that friends who seemed to be bounding with joy when they were with me recall later unfairness, squalor and privation I do not recall.  And yet the dream of this lost past summons problems; what would fix things?  Arrabeh is now a city of over twenty thousand.  It could never support itself on the produce of the land.  Nobody could possibly, any longer, be friends with every adult.  Natural increase has dimmed the dream.  Some things could be fixed, obviously, but all? 

The fourth level takes me where others might not choose to venture.  So if you have problems, let me say, “READ THIS BOOK.”  Now you can bolt any time you like.  The thing is that I see in this book not only the past but the future.  The rich countries of the world have an unsustainably low birth rate.  That is common coin.  My own work suggests that the middle class the world over will have a birth rate fall that will be extremely abrupt and profound.  But I do not see that in Arrabeh.  A large proportion of the Palestinians are highly educated and highly skilled.  They make money.  And they make babies.  Nobody else seems to be able to do both.  I imagine the reason is that there is such a close emotional attachment to the land, to the place, to the community, that they marry cousins frequently enough to keep the babies coming.  So the rest of us (I can’t even get a date, and that is really no new thing.) will not leave the world to the places that still have substantial growth: Yemen and Afghanistan I’m thinking, and sub-Saharan Africa.  Nice folk.  Love ‘em all.  Not so keen on the education thing.  But the Palestinians will endure.

And the fifth and final level is a voice that says, “Why wait?” Marrying cousins, specifically third and fourth cousins, maximizes your birth rate.  Tell them.  Ah, but high birth rate is already a problem; don’t blame global warming on the Palestinians, but just maintaining their society is difficult.  And I, after years of study, can’t tell you just what to do.  Go to my last summary of January 1, 2015 on nobabies.net and you can verify in the Iceland study that those third and fourth couple pairings are the most fertile, first cousins less so in the second generation and that distant ones, say ninth cousin or greater, even less so still.  Incidentally there is no difference between ninth cousin and somebody from the far side of the world.  Nature doesn’t care how distant your distant kinship is; what matters is how many generations it goes on.  (It doesn’t matter how far from the building you jump, it’s how long you fall.)  The Icelanders have looked at children and grandchildren, and it is the same story.  They have not seen fit to extend, as it seems they could, their study to great grandchildren.  I’ve written to encourage that.

Again on the web site I mentioned there is a Swedish study showing that rich people (who presumably leave forever their ancestral villages) have the same decrease in children and grand children and the decrease in great grandchildren is greater than the first two generations of outbreeding combined.

Ah but people keep track of such things in Arrabeh.  Do memories go back that far into the Ottoman regime?  Do the elders still chat?  Could they put together their own genealogies and see whether the rule holds, “Each generation of mating outside ninth cousin cuts fertility in half?”  That does not seem to be exactly the case, but something close to it.  Even so, it’s tricky.  The family trees will not be symmetrical at any level.  But we are talking about people intelligent and well educated who like to use their minds.  Maybe they can work it out.

But this summons another demon.  Now you know.  What do you do about it?

In the end, thank you, Dr. Kanaaneh, for this warm hearted, gripping and well woven book. 

Linton