Her face gleams golden in the approaching car lights. She floats – round, distended, her womb cuddling the child orange inside her. Heavy with the earthy sap she nursed, she tugs at the umbilical cord tying her to the sagging branch. Toes clawed deep into the Earth, hair brushing the sky with hues of the sun and the moon, her mother tree feeds her all the riches that Nature freely gives.
Suddenly, a warm darkness wraps around her, lightly caressing her skin. She feels the gentlest squeeze, a sharp tug from the branch, and …
Pluck!
She rolls down the dark side of a sack to join her peers.
Ramleh Junction, 1990
A slight shiver in the gentle night breeze sets Eissa on edge. Distant barks pierce the solitude of silence. He cannot linger. An army patrol can round the corner at any minute, screech to a stop, and ask him questions, or worse. His blue West Bank license plate gives him away. He swishes these thoughts away and plucks another orange, then another. He is tempted to wander into the grove, leaving the car behind. Before he can follow that whim, he is arrested by a deep, rhythmic sound.
Moments pass. Must be his own heavy breathing that he heard.
The bag is almost full. He shuts it in the trunk and wastes no time.
Speeding away, his sigh of relief turns into a gasp as he rounds the corner, only to pass an army jeep heading the other way. One more orange… !
She’s never touched so many of her siblings before. A short bounce when swinging high was all she knew. This closeness is almost suffocating – squeezing her from every direction, pounding and rubbing as they jostle and roll and slide. “Up” loses its meaning in this bag lying sideways in a dark trunk. She is discovering a joy in the oneness, in the collective, in the crowd. Like an atom in a crystal lattice, she senses herself part of something bigger and more beautiful than each.
The old iron door creaks as Eissa opens it to Ramallah’s early morning chill. Still in his pajama pants and undershirt, he steps into the yard to the welcome of a full-throated chorus of roosters intent on awakening the sun. He washes his face in the cold water from the outdoor faucet, his leathery skin tanned by years of outdoor work. He clears his throat for what seems like minutes, coughing up the gunk of 20 cigarettes from the day before.
A ray of sunlight flutters upon the crown of the fig tree, its leaves tickled by a gentle breeze funneled up the valley. Across that valley, Eissa looks to the west. From his vantage point, he can barely glimpse the three chimneys of Ramleh. Recollections of the orange grove from the night before come faded like a dream. He looks back to the door to make sure the bag of oranges is where he left it, just inside.
His daughter Nawar rushes outside, already in her school uniform.
“Good morning,” she sings with a cheerful energy as she lets the chickens out into the yard and feeds them.
“Mornin’.”
“I didn’t hear you come in last night. Must’ve been late.”
He nods as he clears his throat once more.
“Baba, both Areej and Rawnaq got cited at school. Their uniforms are too frayed to be acceptable.”
“Hmpf! And how much are uniforms these days?”
“200 shekels each, but don’t worry. Mrs. Hisham on the upper floor will let me use her sewing machine so all I’ll need is 85 shekels for the cloth and supplies.”
“85 shekels?! Just for cloth? You haven’t bargained them, have you?”
“I did, too! Mrs. Atiyyeh from across the street paid 150 for the same the other day.”
She peeks in the door and hurries her siblings along.
“It’s not my fault,” Rawnaq chimes from inside the door, “Areej won’t leave the bathroom.”
Nawar chides her youngest brother, Mousa. “What about you? Come here and use the outdoor faucet like your dad.”
“But the water outside is free-eezing,” Mousa pouts.
“Where did you get these oranges?” Nawar fixes her dad with the question while continuing to egg her siblings along.
“A farmer had a table along the road, by Ramleh Junction. Give the kids some with their lunches.” Seeing her inquisitive look, he adds, “Now hurry or you’ll be late for school yourself.”
“So when can I get the money for the uniforms, baba?”
“Tonight, inshallah. When I return from al-Lydd. Making a few trips to the airport today.” He heads inside to ready for work.
“Allah yiwaf’ak, as-salameh,” Nawar looks back as she shepherds her siblings, schoolbags in hand, to the gate.
“Allah yisalmek,” Eissa hollers. On his way out minutes later, Eissa pauses to grab a few oranges.
She basks in the noonday sun. She’s not used to this lifestyle, the leaves filtering all but the early morning light. She finally can see the vast blueness of the sky, of which she’s heard only in the whispers of swaying branches. She spent the morning rolling along the dashboard with her two sisters, having the ride of their lives. She feels the excitement of all her mother tree’s tales about oranges that get plucked. “Hold on to your seeds and spread them far,” she recalls her favorite lullaby, a tear forming in her eye.
Eissa checks his watch. At least another hour before Dr. Kareem comes out of security. Not enough time to run another call. He’s thankful he found a spot like this, some shade and at the edge of the lot, far from the eyes of suspicion by the main doors. With the windows rolled down, he gets enough of a cool breeze, and the patch of sunlight on the dashboard is perfect for ripening the oranges.
He languidly opens his lunch.
A plane readies to take off from the runway he faces, separated only by a tall fence and barbed wire. A sign bearing a yellow thunderbolt hangs below the uppermost wire. The engines roar, momentarily sending a plume of dust and fumes near to him.
He coughs, then continues eating as the plane rolls into position.
A rumble and the plane races for the wind.
Eissa wonders its destination. America, perhaps, remembering his brother Yaqoub.
“Bills, bills, bills,” he spouts after suddenly recalling the school uniforms. With the checkpoints, it takes him twice as long to make that airport trip, and every now and then he’s losing business because the roads are closed.
Another plane thunders overhead and onto the runway, sweeping him in its shadow.
They say ‘a child brings his blessings with him.’ Not after Azizeh died. He closes his eyes to recollect the smile that brought him joy. It bothered him that her likeness was fading.
Azizeh’s energy was unstoppable until that diagnosis. He’s never seen that face on Dr. Kareem. “They have this new treatment at Hadassah.” A word of consolation nurturing a hope he cannot forgo. Two years of hospitals and pain, and mounting debt.
The roar of an airplane readying for takeoff restores him to the present. A whiff of the fumes again sends him coughing.
He puts away his lunch. He could not have managed the younger kids without Nawar. She’s an angel in disguise! Soon enough, her sisters and she will be done with school, but who will step forward to marry them when we’re this destitute?
He lights a cigarette.
He could’ve gone to America like his brother. Yaqoub made it. Big, too, judging by the cash gifts he sends on every occasion. Eissa almost resents those gifts. Too proud to be taking money from Yaqoub, out of all people! But then again, bills, bills, bills.
More noise and fumes.
He can find a job in Ramallah. Saves him the idle time at the checkpoints. Yet, it’s as if he finds pleasure in the torture.
Eissa picks up an orange, and twirls it with his fingers, gently. He brings it to his nose for a moment and closes his eyes. With her fragrance, he inhales colors into fading memories.
A landing jet shudders the sky above him.
In a practiced ritual, Eissa peels away the rind in one piece looking like a lotus flower. He then separates the wedges, laying them in a circle on the spread flower-peel – a liquid-henge trapping the shadows of time.
He closes his teeth gently on a wedge, barely breaking the skin but squeezing out memories. Yaqoub and he playing hide and seek with their cousins in grandpa’s orchard, the fragrance of orange blossoms overwhelming their budding senses. He almost hears the buzz of bees.
A buzzing propeller kicks more dust his way.
Another wedge and he can almost taste the red soil – the same soil that covers Yacoub and him after their splashing in the pond. Earth’s buried treasures make their way through tangled roots and bumpy trunk into this tiny wedge, sealed inside a glowing orb.
He leans out the window to spit the seed towards the foot of the fence, where a lonely patch of soil lies in the sun. Only a couple of cactus shrubs hold root.
Yet another bite and Eissa is taking his first steps in the orchard, to his father’s cheers. That small, chunks of soil are hills to him. How many scratches and falls have left their marks on his skin?
He checks his watch again before picking another wedge, glad he has a few extra oranges to offer Dr. Kareem for the road. Coming from Ramleh himself, Dr. Kareem can tell an orange from these orchards. There’s nothing he can do to repay Dr. Kareem’s generosity, having taken care of Azizeh’s hospital debts.
Another plane. Losing count, he spits another seed.
On summer nights, he loved sleeping in a hammock under their canopy. “So many trees in Sido’s orchard,” he would tell his mother the next day. She would lovingly hold his hand, “Let’s go count them. One, two, three, …”
Spending a childhood in the orchard, he gave the trees names. He could see their uniqueness. Baldie, the one missing its top; Droopy, with its drooping branches; Rosie, the one by the rose-bush; or Cave-tree, missing its westerly branch. Each has its patterns of bumps on the trunk, its branches arranged like a bouquet of marigolds.
A 747 landing low shatters his peace, shaking his car like the cataclysm that shook his family out of Sido’s orchard and into the refugee camp. He wonders which of those planes waiting for the runway is carrying oranges from that very grove, packed into industrial-sized crates bearing scribbles in a foreign tongue and a certificate of origin with forged names?
Sighing, Eissa slips back into the orchard, recalling a tree name for every seed he spits. There at that patch where the cactus still grows, he aims, returning the seeds from trees he loves into the red soil to reunite with the Great Mother.
2025