Olive Season
I fell asleep under the olive tree
with my back against the dirt
and one arm over my face.
My mother was somewhere nearby,
calling to someone to come eat.
I could hear olives dropping into the plastic tarp,
small, hard sounds, one after another.
The sun came through the leaves
in broken pieces.
I remember the smell, mostly,
I also remember the dust, crushed olive leaves,
the bread we had wrapped in a cloth,
and the sweetness of tea
from a cup someone had left beside me.
I must have slept only a little.
In the dream, we were still harvesting.
My hands were dark with dust
and bitter from the olives.
Someone laughed when I missed the basket.
My father said something I could not hear
because the wind moved through the branches
and took his voice with it.
Then I woke up.
I didn’t see olives falling.
I didn’t hear voices between the trees.
I just heard the low sound of the heater in my room in America,
and a strip of October light coming through the blinds.
For a few seconds,
I did not know which place was the dream.
My hand was still open on the blanket
as if I had been holding olives.
I closed it.
Hakoura
In the Hakoura*
My grandfather would reach through the cactus
barehanded,
past those blond, nearly invisible needles
that stayed in his fingertips for days,
and twist one prickly pear
until it gave.
He never flinched.
With his thumbnail,
black with soil,
he cut the crown,
scored the skin once down its belly,
then pulled both sides apart.
There it was.
Red. Wet.
A hundred hard seeds
holding on to sweetness.
We ate standing around him,
juice gathering in the small lines of our palms,
while he peeled another,
then another,
then another,
never taking one for himself.
I used to think
that was because he wasn’t hungry.
I didn’t know you
could feed children
a place
we would spend the rest of our lives
talking about.
*Hakoura (حاكورة) is a small farm that’s usually beside a home.
These poems first appeared as part of the poet’s newsletter.
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Mohammed Arafat is a Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza based in Washington, D.C. His work explores memory, home, displacement, family, and the ordinary details of life that survive alongside loss. Much of his poetry returns to Gaza through intimate scenes and personal memories, tracing the distance between the place he knew and the place it has become.
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As a second-generation artist, Paul Herman’s practice began when he was old enough to hold a brush. He believes that, if one is careful to get the tone right, one can take liberties with the orthodox rules for colors. This unexpected use of color surprises the viewer, which introduces a liveliness that can make a common subject newly interesting. He is presently engaged in a doctoral thesis focused on Rembrandt and as a result feels like he is learning to paint all over again.
