Mangueiras e jabuticabeiras were my favorite. ( Use Google translator. Don't be lazy.)
I was not alone in my love for jabuticabas; bees loved that fruit. Every season, they would fly to my grandmother's house and build their nest at the tree's pentbranch. Then, while I was in school staring at Karla Maria, ( DOCTOR Karla Maria Piffer. Seriously girl 😒) these little working bees would devour as many jabuticabas as they could.
They started up on top and made their way down like crack-heads Zionist Unjews, unstoppable. I started from the bottom towards the top due to my inability to fly. And at some point, we met in the middle and being a 9 year old child, I resented them for arriving in my house, uninvited, and making a ruckus while acting like our land belonged to them. The mid point of the tree was Gaza.
Finally, I had enough. Mid afternoon, my grandmother would finally sit down and begin her beautiful embroidery work, and get so distracted in her art that I could set the house on fire and she wouldn't notice; which I almost did, many times.
I was always creative; and those pesty bees demanded all I had to give, so, I went into the pantry and grabbed a bottle of alcohol, matches and got to work. I harvested a long bamboo from our canoe, that we use as a roar and covered one of the edges with a T-shirt. I tied it down. Drenched with alcohol. And lit a match. It was a thing of beauty.
Now, all I had to do was to lift that bamboo until I reached the hive and those Zionist Unjews would learn to respect property lines.
I made it to the hive and had my first physics lesson at 9 years old: Quantum Mechanics. Instantaneously, those bees followed the bamboo until we were face to face, and I just ran like the little kid I was.
Inside the house. Into the kitchen. Where my beautiful grandmother worked peacefully. My diabetic grandmother.
Pandemonium is a proper word to describe that delightful afternoon.
I got a beating. Time out. Screamed at. Abused verbally by my gay uncle no one could say was gay but everyone knew that he was. Just like Israel violence towards Palestinians.
My face was swollen. I couldn't eat jabuticabas for a week. The Zionist bees? They played the victims. After all they just wanted to survive. I tried to make the case they didn't belong in our yard but no one listened. 😢
I buried my grandmother. Moved to New York City. Karla Maria married someone else. And 30 years later when I went to visit my grandmother's house, my relatives had cut all the trees. Every single one of them. Including the roses 🌹 I watered every sunset ☀️ for my grandma. There was nothing left. The beautiful fertile ground that would glitter in the afternoon rain and the petrichor emanating from it, was replaced by cement. They paved over all of which my grandmother held dearest in her heart.
My visit was short and illuminating. I was an orphan and none of that was ever mine. The only family I ever had was gone. And the Brazilian singer-songwriter Fagner was right when he wrote: " Quem vai da terra natal / Em outros cantos nao para..." "The ones who leave their homeland/ Grow roots nowhere else."
Within weeks, my thespian partner and I, will call Paris, France, our home. She loves gastronomy as if she belonged in my dearest friend Ms. Ellen Elvin's Les Dames d'Escoffier. I will fight my addiction to sugar. bread and coffee as the Zionist Unjews fight the Palestinians. We both believe we can succeed.
And that's why the Palestinians need to stay. Because unlike myself, my relatives and the Zionist Unjews, they, like my grandmother, took pride in caring for the land. Today. I know what my grandmother knew all along: the Zionist psychopath was I and my relatives that tore everything down.
The bees and my grandparents were the Palestinians. Living in communion with the land and each other. Sharing the fruit of the land. For many, many generations before we came. With our misguided bad ideas.
Perhaps, when Israelis grow up, they will come to understand as much.
The Qoran and the Bees.
