Passing Oranges in the Park (and other Distressing Cultural Encounters)

I sat in a park this week, my two older children digging wildly in the sand, and the baby in my lap, cooing and twisting my necklace. It was a brightly sunny morning, with whipped clouds, and the northern Virginia park, often desolate on a Monday morning, was filled with children running free on spring break.

I found a shady spot and sat on the cool, damp ground and nursed my baby. A little girl plopped down on the grass next to me. I noted her thick hair, her hot-pink sparkly baseball cap, her white long-sleeved shirt and too-short purple pants. She didn't say anything, just sat next to me as I nursed my baby. She spread out her sweatshirt as a makeshift picnic blanket, took out a sandwich. I was charmed. Soon, a little boy joined her. He was sturdily built, with curly brown hair peaking out from under his hat. As he darted back to the playground, the thought flitted through my head:  I think that they are Israelis.

Anywhere in the world, I can always pick out the Arabs, and the Israelis. It's something you learn how to do, when you are living a blurry, line-crossing life in Jerusalem. When you are an American and an Arab and an Israeli and a Palestinian, you learn to read the fine print.

I was right. A woman came over from the nearby picnic table, to sit cross-legged in the grass with the little girl. She spoke to the little girl in Hebrew. As I nursed my baby, along came two more women, the little boy, another little girl. The circle grew wider and wider, closer and closer to me.  A little girl in stretchy pants frog-hopped all around me. I smiled at the woman and said, in English, She is so cute. She smiled back.

I sat and listened to them speak to each other, listened to the sounds of my home wash over me. For a second, the ground tilted, and I was sitting on the lawn of Independence Park, in West Jerusalem.

I wanted to ask them where they were from, what they were doing here, in the park, and tell them that, I, too, was from Israel. We've eaten the same tomatoes. We've browsed in the same shops on King George's Street. We've hiked the same wadis. Our feet have pressed into the same soil, eaten the same olives, poured the same water.

And yet.  I stared straight ahead at my children.

It really wouldn't do, would it?

There was always The Wall, even before it went up, one cement slab at a time. When it went up, I thought:  now we see what has been there all along.  Even though I was able to pass through the checkpoints, the soldier with weapons slung over his body waving my Israeli passport through, we both knew. It was just a piece of paper.

Better to let them talk and eat, just outside of my arm's reach. It was better that way. It was what we would have done if we were sitting in Independence Park.

The Israeli woman pulled out an orange and a knife. A real naval orange, not one of the little baby clementines I usually see mothers pull out in Fairfax, Virginia. And a real knife - a small kitchen knife. She scored the orange with her knife and peeled off the orange skin, and then handed out slices of orange to everyone in her circle. I looked down at my baby, smiling to myself, because that simple act reminded me of every picnic I ever had with my mother, every road trip, every packed lunch. It always ended with my mother, a piece of fruit, and a knife. Somehow, in Fairfax, I had lost this practice.

It's delicious, have some, the Israeli woman said to the circle. It's a Cara Cara orange.  

The girl in the sparkly hat, the curly-hair boy, the little women in head-to-toe black, the woman with the huge backpack, all ate the orange and agreed:  it was good.

My children ran back and forth between me and the sand. They were making friends with some blond children, who were also playing in the sand. In the distance, I could hear my daughter telling the little sand boy about me. She ran up to me, scooting around the frog-hopping girl and the women with the orange. And she asked, loudly, Mommy, were you born in Bethlehem or Israel?  

It was like the crack of gunfire. Quick panic washed over me. I tried not to glance over to the circle of Israelis.

Nazareth, honey, I told her quietly, carefully. I was born in Nazareth. She ran back to tell the little blond sand boy, and I looked straight ahead.

The circle of Israelis did not say anything to me. I was thankful. They finished up their orange. My baby fussed in my lap, it was time to go home.

I wondered, as I gathered up my children, my own brown-haired daughter and my own sturdy little boy, if it would always be this way:  the see-saw of being both on the inside and on the outside, the pull-and-push of wanting to say who you are, but knowing that it is just less painful (for them? for you?) to sit in the shade, next to, but not with.  Will there always be the matching of passports and blood?

My daughter brought me her sand treasures:  natural clay, excavated from the sand with a stray shovel and an old bucket. She brushed sand from her hair, her pants and hands, and carefully selected one lump of clay to show in science class this week. I didn't ask her why she was talking about who I am, and I didn't tell her not to talk about this with strangers. Her mother is from Nazareth, and right now, she will tell anybody who asks (or even doesn't), while I wince, and wait, watching the oranges being passed.