Brook Wilensky-Lanford writing

Excerpt from her work in progress…

In the beginning, Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden, but the tree they ate from remained, at least for a while.
Two days before Christmas 1946 the Times of London ran a news brief below the fold on page 3 in the Imperial and Foreign section:
    “Tree of Knowledge” Dead
The “Tree of Knowledge,” which has stood from time immemorial in the traditional site of the Garden of Eden at Qurna, at the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, and was visited by thousands of sightseers, has withered and died.
    Doubtless concerned for the continuity of knowledge, the enterprising local authorities have planted a new one.
After 32 years of British military entanglement in Iraq—before, during, and after both World Wars—Times readers would have been accustomed to much bloodier headlines. Perhaps the Imperial and Foreign editor thought this innocuous item by the Baghdad correspondent would be a lighthearted Christmas time novelty. The paper was not about to weigh in on the question of Biblical literalism—not before Christmas, anyway. “Tree of Knowledge” is safely within quotation marks. The site of the Garden of Eden is not “definite” or “absolute”; it is “traditional.” Real or not, the “Tree of Knowledge” will live on, thanks to those enterprising locals.
    But several retired servicemen, veterans of World War I in “Mespot,” didn’t find the item either reassuring or novel. They thought the story was incorrect, not to mention thirty years late. And they were in a position to know.