We were making a U-turn. A family was out on the street, adults on metal chairs, children playing with sticks, all gathered around a fire in a rusty metal barrel.
A night under the stars? No, our driver explained. The IDF has taken this family’s home. There it was, actually.
We looked up and saw an apartment on the second story of the building in front of which they sat, an apartment smothered in blankets of white-and-blue.
As we passed the dispossessed family, they mistook us for Israelis and jeered at us. Not a moment later, we passed an Israeli boy — this time close enough for him to see through our tinted windows.
He spat at us. Our driver spat back.
It was tit for tat and that was that.
***
At my home in Amman, I had made a makeshift centerpiece for my coffee table. The pine cones hailed from forests at University of Jordan and the acorns smelled of Amman’s northwestern countryside.
I walked the vistas of the Noble Sanctuary in search of a rock or pine cone to take home. I wanted one of them to preside in regal fashion over the rest of my collection. Was there not a fallen prince for me restore to his former glory?
Pine trees dotted the place and pine needles were in excess, but not a pine cone was to be seen. I looked up, and there they were.
N pitied my pathetic attempts to procure a pine cone, so she called out to her cousin. (For the physics-minded, his displacement from our location was 5 meters and counting. His speed was increasing, his acceleration constant.)
He returned to humor my childish wishes, but at the last moment, released the branch into the air.
“It’s better we leave them here,” he said as if he’d almost forgotten. “The boys use them to pelt the soldiers.”
The pine cone was a fish that slipped through my fingers. But there, in its element, it looked lofty, dignified even. And, when the breeze shook the pine-laden branches, I could hear the swish of the river that all these stubborn fish called home.
