Clementines from Morocco

'We have dressed the dining room/with black and white photographs of spires, squares'

(Photo credit)

Where I live, Moroccan clementines are bought every December when they go on sale. They add an element of color and citrusy tang to the holiday season.

I had the good fortune of picking winter citrus years ago in California. When I eat Moroccan clementines (which are delicious), I think of how far the fruits traveled to reach me. I also think of the lands that sustain them, the trees that bear them, the people who pick them and load them onto trucks and trains, those who unload them, those who reload them (stevedores) onto ships that cross the seas, the seas the ships cross, the waters on which the ships make their passage, the dock workers (again, stevedores) who unpack the containers and load them onto trucks, the truck drivers who bring them to large metropolitan produce markets, the workers who unpack and then repack the clementines at those markets, the supply chain coordinators who oversee the movement of produce on trucks, the supermarket stock staff who unload and then stock the clementines, and the cashiers who handle payment for the fruit.

I imagine I’ve missed something or someone in this lengthy description.

I also think about how it used to snow heavily in December and now seldom does. The clementines seemed more exotic, more of a surprise in snowy and frigid weather. Now, winter rain and mud make the fruit seem commonplace like the rain should make local farms produce citrus. And I think about how the process of getting the fruit to me, and my consumption of it, is one of the reasons it seldom snows anymore.

*

“Clementines from Morocco” appeared in Up The Staircase Quarterly in 2015.

Clementines from Morocco

I made a model of the
Karol Bridge and placed it by
the front window. We have dressed the dining room
with black and white photographs of spires, squares
and damp Parisian thoroughfares.

In the living room our
guests are served brandy, water
crackers and Roquefort. There is a discussion of the
novels of Turgenev, the films of Bergman. I am
learning Hungarian.

Outside the garden fills
with snow. In the wind it is 30
below. The maple trees are skeletal. We heat our home
with natural gas and when I pass around the fruit bowl
it is filled with Clementines from Morocco.

-Jeremy Nathan Marks