Dangerous

This is a dangerous fruit.

I first encountered one while walking on the shores of the Aegean with my mother. Having been thwarted by figs just beyond our reach, scarlet flesh taunting from burst blue-black skin, my mothers ecstatic exclamations at these rather scary looking things seemed a bit exaggerated.

However, Swiss Army knives at the ready and armed with discarded newspapers, we went hunting in the thickets for the perfect specimens. My mother looked at them, red-orange and armed with spines and spikes (the hunted, not the huntress), and knew exactly what attitude to take with them. Holding them firmly in hands protected by newspaper, she rubbed them vigourously, periodically shaking out the fine shimmering dust that came away in the paper, and being careful not to get any on herself.

When that was done, still protected by the paper, she cut around the north and south poles of the oval fruit and then cut down the Greenwich meridian. Carefully peeling away the skin away from the center line, mom revealed the fruit within.

She then cut a slice for me speared it with the point of the knife and handed it to me. Sweet and wet and filled with lots of large, unforgiving seed, they were perfect food on a hot Greek summer's day. We ate our spoils and all was well with the world until I started to talk.

There must have been some fine, hair-like spines that had stuck to the knife and had wiped off onto the very first chunk. From the knife they had lodged themselves in the middle of my tongue and, though they didn't hurt, they were incredibly irritating, and not something that I wanted in my mouth longer than necessary. So my mom took out the knife again, pulled out the trusty little tweezers and told me to "say ahhhhhh..."

I looked rather foolish, I am sure, standing in the middle of a well frequented path, with my mother playing doctor and alternating between trying to get a hold of the spines with the tweezers, and trying to scrape them of with the knife.

(This isn't my tongue - just an example...)

She managed to get the majority of the spines out, but one or two remained in, bakig be dak lhaik dis undihl dey disohlb'd.

I learned my lesson, but being a bit of a rebel, that doesn't stop me from dancing with the devil and eating sabra's with abandon when they are in season!