Date Palm Trinity

Date Palm Trinity

by Khaled Mattawa

Today the date palms were pruned,

the branches taken before the fruit ripened,

before sweetness littered the sidewalks.

The man who sawed them worked alone,

a crane lifting him to the yellowed fronds.

Beside his truck, he stood tall, American,

a pensive pioneer. The top of each palm

looked like the back of a man's head

after a close-crop haircut, the neck

cooled to a stubbly remembrance of hair,

or was like a cat after being spayed,

startled by a strange newness, pacing

familiar rooms, darting, confused, and you

(had you wished to console) are greeted

with a barren gaze. The rubble of bark

and fronds reminded me of Iraq,

not the ruined bridges, or the surrendering

soldiers' hands begging food, but the 16 million

date palms, one per capita, lining

the seams of the Tigris and Euphrates,

a reminder of my own Libya

and its 10 million date palms and the years

of easy wealth that brought them neglect

except in Huun, a magical city where

they stuffed dates with almonds and sent them

as far as Tanta and Oum Dourman.

From Huun this story: a boy stands by a palm

imploring his uncle to toss him a fistful of dates.

Flustered by the boy's monotonous cries

the uncle loses his feet, and as he falls

to his death, cries down "Here nephew,

I'm coming down with the dates!"

So that's what we got from Huun, almond

stuffed wonders and proverbial last words.

There was another reminder, a tale

of the prophet Muhammad living for months

on water and coarse wheat bread, his wives

protesting the austere measures of his faith.

Muhammad, who praised honey and had

a professed love for cantaloupes, and who once

declared "the best meat is that which lines the bones,"

found in dates the solution he required.

To his Arab followers, and to his wives,

the fruit was "three skies above luxury,"

and as indispensable as water and air.

I once had this dream of Whitman:

I found him under one of the palms

on Sherman Way gazing admiring.

Though he had seen palms by the Gulf of Mexico,

he had never tasted a date. So we drove

to a supermarket, and he who had been

thoughtful, even dignified, until then, began

to sign and moan at the taste of "Araby's

sugared dust clouds." When we walked

the aisles he insisted on pushing the cart.

The frozen foods did not surprise him since

his Granny buried potatoes in the cold dirt

of her homestead. Still I had to explain

tofu, plastic, tacos, and the foods labeled free.

He ran his hands caressing the waxed floor;

"Smooth as a girl's wrist," he exclaimed.

The bright fluorescent lights reminded hirn

of the opera, and Walt sang a gravelly tune.

The children sitting in carts reached for him,

their hands were Lorca's butterflies on his beard.

At the cashier he filled pockets with candy,

and was shocked by the headlines of our news.

Honda, Toyota, Saturn, Oldsmobile—

in the parking lot the names waltzed

on his tongue. At the fast food stand he ate

heartily, the burger's slipperiness amused him,

and at his clumsiness we both had a laugh.

Then the talk grew quiet, the table stretching

like the expanse of time dividing us; I felt

he no longer wanted company, having begun

to understand our world. Despite his old resentment

of Blacks, and now my neighbors, the foreign-born

Hispanics and their engines roaring through

Balboa and Saticoy, and the Koreans' karoake—

the baseline's muffled thuds, voices doused

in Canadian Mist, and the off-key pleadings

to the lover who never comes—, America

remained to him luminous-industrial-fuming-

sublime, and as he wished, beyond others'

adjectives, beyond what anyone could have conceived.

Mumbling a farewell, Whitman stood to leave.

And with this my dream ended, Whitman wishing

to depart and I holding on to his wrists.

All day I wanted to hold his wide wrists.

If you drive west of Alexandria

your path will run through Alamain,

Barani, and Matrouh. Then Egypt will end

with a town on a steep hill called Sallum.

If you go through the two checkpoints,

Libya will unfold its dry pastures for you.

On the Sallum hill there is a hotel

where people stay to await relatives

crossing the border or to hear word

if it is safe to return. Across the road

a tired bluegreen tea house sits

like a bruise permanently on the verge

of fading from the prairies' skin.

You will also see the money changers—

all teenage boys. With their right hands

they will wave thick wads of money

at your windshield, and with their left

they will jostle to give you the best rate.

The last time I stayed in Sallum

few cars came from either direction,

and among the boys fights flared

with curses and stones hurled at brows.

When the boys' rabble grew loud

a man lazily stepped out of the tea house

to call them bastards and sons of whores.

This went on for hours until

the sun settled in the middle of the sky,

the boys taking shelter under

a torn canvas shed, and the man

to the tea house's dusty cool.

Then just when all movement

and noise seemed to surrender

to the September wind and heat,

four of the boys broke for a run

racing—money still clutched in their hands—

to a young date palm in the distance.

Pressing shoulders and backs against it,

they shook the palm until the season's

first fruit began to rain. The other boys

joined them, and soon the tea house

emptied of the men slouching inside.

Those were my brothers who cowered beneath

the date palm to gather handfuls of fruit,

rubbing each date clean on their sleeves,

chewing softly to savor the taste

as though it were a good omen, and rising

to resume their lives, on their faces

the smiles of those who once were blessed.