The Land of Sour Oranges
an ode to Palestine's sweet oranges, and a longing to return.
Salam!
I launched without an official newsletter name because nothing was sticking, and I’ve been writing posts, and deleting, and drafting and starting over again. I don’t think I’m the first to mention how difficult it’s been to focus at work or to create anything since October.
Giving anything attention or time aside from action items and news updates from Gaza, has left me with a hollow pit in my stomach. Waves of rage and frustration have either immobilized me or charged me with energy waiting to be directed. When speaking with friends, they’ve shared that a numbness consistently engulfs them.
This is how it feels to be displaced. Uprooted from the soil you belong to in an attempt to live in an environment that has not been adjusted in the slightest for your existence. There isn’t enough sun and nutrients to allow you to flourish and spread your seeds.
Forced displacement causes shockwaves that permeate through generations. It’s not the same as picking yourself up and planting yourself on your own terms in a place that awaits you through the proper modes of transportation and applications.
No matter how much time and energy is spent, there’s a root problem that was never addressed. No amount of therapy or success can fully change our condition. For to be a child of refugees or immigrants living in the diaspora is to permanently be in at least two places at the same time, never fully here or there.
It’s an experience that’s been more evident now than ever before. Where our minds are preoccupied with distress and a sense of urgency over suffering in Gaza, Sudan, and East Turkistan, while our peers seem glazed over in a universe that’s keeping up with a Kardashian or watching stock prices. Offices that claim to want us there and claim to care about our identities but shy away from showing any real solidarity.
The feelings of betrayal aren’t new. The disassociation among most Americans from the suffering around their neighborhoods isn’t new.
We live in a selfish and greedy world where the easiest thing to do is to focus on our own lives and “climb the ladder” in the pursuit of success and a happy life. Neglecting everyone else behind, and blindly believing that there’s nothing else that we could do. Purchasing the same products and clothing that please us, without even checking how it will impact other people, or the environment that sustains us.
It’s a sour reality, and a sour land. But still, efforts to sweeten it have to be made. If not for ourselves, then for our descendants.
When my mom’s cousin was killed in the West Bank on May 15th, I laughed while I cried. It sounds manic, but I truly felt like I was losing my mind. Ayser Safi was 20 years old and was shot in the neck by Israeli forces on the 76th anniversary of our family’s forced expulsion from Beit Nabala (1948 Nakba).
On that same day (this year), more than 600,000 people were displaced from Rafah as Israel began its ground invasion in Gaza’s southern city. This day is already heavy for most Palestinians, and this year, it felt like it was only getting heavier as we witness another Nakba.
My maternal grandfather was about two years old in May of 1948 when he was forced to leave his home in Beit Nabala with my great grandparents on foot. We don’t have photos, just memories passed down orally.
But when I saw the images of displaced families from Gaza, I saw two year old boys who could have been my Sido Hasan, crying as they held onto their mother’s skirt. Getting picked up, and dropped back down as their parents tried to balance the weight of whatever belongings they scrambled to pack on their way out of their homes.
I had read some of the short stories by Ghassan Kanafani in his book, The Land of Sad Oranges (ارض البرتقال الحزين) and the story about the exiled Palestinian refugees who cried over the oranges always stuck with me. They were leaving behind memories, furniture, and other belongings more important than just their orange trees.
But it was a different loss. No longer would they taste the sweet fruit, or smell its citrus scent with every draft of wind.
My grandparents live in Deir Ammar Camp and have an orange tree in their garden that I’ve climbed so many times as a kid. The one and only time I visited Palestine in the winter was January 2010, when oranges were in peak season.
I remember plucking countless of oranges during that month-long stay and shoving my teeth into the flesh of the fruit to suck out every last bit of pulp and juice. I love sugar, so the sweeter the orange the deeper in love I fell.
After I reread Kanafani’s short story on oranges this past week, I asked my mom if she knew when the orange tree was planted.
She said her grandfather, Sido Al-Abed (الله يرحمه) brought back some orange tree roots that he dug out from one of his few visits back to Al-Lydd area (where the Tel Aviv airport is located today). The camp they moved to used to be a barren land on a hilltop adjacent from a small village, and after ‘48, it filled up with UNRWA tents.
Today, it’s a densely populated village of refugees with no vegetation unless something was planted by its residents. It’s not the same lush landscape Beit Nabala and other cities in the north possess — full of fruit trees, flowers and greenery.
I can guess my great grandfather yearned for the orange trees he was forced to leave behind, and decided to reclaim a single tree by uprooting it and bringing it to his new home. That tree has roots north of where it currently lives, and I wonder if it longs to return to its original soil like the rest of us.
But whether or not the tree will ever return, she still bears her sweet oranges every season.
Every time I question something else about our history, I learn something new and it pains me all over again. I didn’t realize I was having displaced oranges from my grandparent’s garden and I wonder if the oranges in Beit Nabala would have tasted even sweeter.
I can say I’ve never been satisfied with a single orange I’ve bought in the United States. No matter how sweet the sticker label describes them, they’re too sour for my tongue.
Every cup of Simply Orange or any American brand — with or without pulp — shocks my system with its acidity. This land is full of sour oranges.
I dream of the next time I can pluck an orange from our tree, or buy a cup freshly squeezed on my walk in the Old City of Jerusalem.
But more importantly, I dream of the day the orange tree can be replanted back to its original soil and for it to fully flourish, spreading its fruit across my family’s land.
(Banner and logo credit to Sumaia Alhaidar who designed the gorgeous graphics; follow her work on Instagram @sumaiaalhaidar or at sumaiaalhaidar.com)
So true, fruit in the homeland makes me reflect on the taste of paradise fruits mentioned in the Quran