The Tomato He Picked Up and Held to His Nose
The morning had been kind to Mariam Haddad until the two officers stopped in front of her crates. The sun stood high enough to warm the pavement, and the smell of the market rose all around her, the sharp green smell of the leeks and the soft earth smell of the potatoes. She had tried to sell to three customers since the officers arrived, but each time a customer reached for her crates the officers shifted their weight and the customer thought better of it and walked on. Mariam kept her hands still. She held the plastic bag of leafy greens close to her chest, the way a woman holds something that belongs to her and to no one else. She watched the two men the way she had watched every trouble that had ever come to her corner, with patience and with her feet planted firm on the ground she had stood on for thirty years.
Karim Nasser was the younger officer. He stood nearest to the crates, with the complaint paper folded in his hand. He had read it twice before they left the station, and he had not liked the sound of it even then. The complaint said that crates blocked a shopfront. It said the pavement belonged to walkers. It did not say that the woman who owned the crates was seventy four years old, or that her hands were rough from work, or that she looked at the officers the way a mother looks at sons who have come home late. Karim had expected a shouting match. He had expected a woman who would argue and plead and bargain. He had not expected stillness. He had not expected the quiet dignity of a woman who simply stood her ground and waited to be told, in plain words, what she was supposed to have done wrong.
Karim unfolded the paper. He looked down at it, and then at the crates, and then he did something that neither Omar nor Mariam expected. He bent down, the way a man bends when he does not want to frighten anyone, and he reached one hand toward the top crate. The crate was full of tomatoes, round and red and warm from the sun, each one sitting in its place like a small sun of its own. Karim chose one from the top, a tomato that was ripe and heavy and smooth in his palm. He lifted it, not high, not like a piece of evidence, but close to his own face, at the level of his chest. Mariam watched his hand. Omar watched his hand. People passing on the pavement slowed and watched his hand too, because there was something strange and careful in the way he held the tomato, as if it were fragile and not something to be taken by force.
Karim held the tomato to his nose. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he smelled it closely, deeply, the way a person smells something that has taken them by surprise. The smell was strong and sweet and green, the smell of a tomato that had ripened in real sun and had been picked at the right hour, the smell of earth and vine and summer rain. It was not the smell of the covered market, where tomatoes sat cold under electric light. It was the smell of a garden. It was the smell of a kitchen with the windows open. It was the smell, sudden and sharp as a voice calling his name, of a place he had not been in a very long time. Karim did not speak. He stood with the tomato at his nose and his eyes closed, and for a few seconds the whole street seemed to hold its breath along with him.
Omar shifted his weight and cleared his throat, a short sound, the sound of a man reminding another man that there is work to be done and that the work does not wait for memories. "Karim," he said, in a low and firm voice. "Get on with the job." Karim heard him clearly. But he did not put the tomato down at once. He kept it at his nose for one more second, and then another, as if he were listening to something only he could hear, and then, slowly, he lowered his hand and opened his eyes.
"What are you doing?" Omar asked, and now there was an edge in his voice, the edge of a man who feels control slipping and does not like the feeling. "Put it down. Read the complaint. We have a job to do here."
Karim looked at Omar, then at the tomato in his hand, then at Mariam, and he saw that she was watching him, and that her eyes were steady, and that she was not afraid of him, though she had every reason to fear what he and Omar had come to do. He wanted to say that the tomato smelled like his grandmother's kitchen. He wanted to say that he had not smelled a tomato like that since he was a boy. But an officer on duty does not tell stories about his grandmother to a woman he has been sent to move along. So he said nothing at all. He held the tomato a moment longer, and then he set it back in the crate, carefully, in the exact place where he had found it, nestling it among the others as if he were putting something precious back where it belonged.