Pomegranate

(Excerpt from Mixed City, a developing book of nonfiction by Naama Goldstein)

The Wisconsinite oboist is as entranced as her lover by the pink-glazed almond cake jeweled with pomegranate arils. Together they huddle over their desserts, conferring. I have seated this couple at my table before. They experience food in committee, I read that as auspicious. They are wise to expand the shared sensual map. 

I am rooting for the broadening turf. But do I remember or am I imagining him floating an idea, on the earlier occasion, causing me to scan the oboist for her reaction? I couldn’t read her response. He had referred to travel. 

He was suggesting she might accompany him on a trip to his home soil. With his next breath he proposes a commitment of another category. He refers to conversion. The tone is seriocomic or purely jokey, unclear. She lets his banter hang. 

Were she to follow him, what experiences does she prompt? 

The Middle East is a region much warmer than the Upper Midwestern USA. One climate produces a Wisconsinite’s shy politesse, the other her lover’s irrepressible riffs. She may take to his society of origin as she does to him. An extravagant expressive range can represent a welcome lesson to the speaker trained in reticence. 

Will she learn to voice with timely force and eloquence the experience of a Wisconsinite arisen of Irish Catholics who bonds with an Israeli guy of mixed Jewish heritages, Kurdish and Ashkenazi, in the chapter when his society seems to be losing rapidly its last grip on reality? She originates on a soil where a similar process is underway. The immediate implications to ordinary people differ.

Concerning the rosewater icing, I advised the young couple on the method when asked. The pink hue owes to a drop of hibiscus tea. 

The hibiscus tang marries naturally with the lemon juice. The floral bouquet prevails as a pure hit of the headiest roses on a hot day.