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Paper short abstract

Muhammad Makhzangi’s short story Safar Shajar (The Journey of Trees) imagines trees uprooting themselves to wander in protest against immobility. Their exodus causes ecological collapse, yet a lone palm remains as fragile hope, redefining vegetal agency through mourning, and resilience.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines Mohamed Makhzangi’s short story Safar Shajar (The Journey of Trees) from the collection Rashq al-Sikkīn (Stabbing with a Knife) as a striking meditation on vegetal agency, exile, and ecological collapse. In the tale, trees, mocked by birds and other creatures for their rootedness, violently pull themselves from the ground “like a nail torn from flesh” and begin to walk. Yet their movement is short-lived: roots erode, leaves lose color, and the trees soon collapse, leaving scars and hollows in the land.

The story dramatizes a paradox: the very quality that defines trees—their immobility and endurance—becomes the source of derision and shame, prompting a mass exodus that ends in devastation. This vegetal uprising unleashes cascading catastrophe: fish, birds, and animals die, the skies darken with falling crows, and the world becomes a barren desert. At the narrative’s end, only a solitary palm remains, symbolizing both fragile hope and the stubborn persistence of vegetal life.

By focusing on images of uprooting, wandering, and desertification, this paper argues that Makhzangi reimagines plants not as static backdrops but as actors capable of protest, tragedy, and memory. Safar Shajar stages a vegetal ecology of mourning while challenging anthropocentric hierarchies of movement and agency. Ultimately, the story expands Arabic eco-fiction by showing how plants can narrate resistance and resilience in times of crisis.