a punnet of figs

Hot food isn’t conducive to heartbreak. Neither is being alone on an island in Greece, I suspect.

Every morning I cut myself a peach and rip open a handful of figs to have with my yoghurt. I take the bowl to the ocean and eat it sitting on the cement as the sun rises. No one seems to rouse until 9 a.m. here, other than the street cats, so I mostly have the coastline to myself. I go for a swim. I read my book. And then I wander back to the apartment.

I haven’t eaten a fig since I worked on a fig farm owned by a Coptic Egyptian Christian family a decade ago. I remember waving my father goodbye while I hauled a suitcase up the gravel driveway to the weatherboard house where the man in the white kaftan and wirey beard stood.

At first, I would pick, taking the delicate pillows from their branches and carefully placing them into boxes. This left my arms red and raw and covered in a painful rash – the milky white sap from the stems had me cowering in the shower. Someone must have taken pity on me, as I was quickly moved to the cool room to silently pack with the woman of the house instead. The wife and mother of four teenage sons.

While I was working on the farm, the eldest son visited and we sat down for a family meal. He had just sent off his divorce papers – a great shame for his family. Later that night he snuck into the annex where I was staying to give me a kiss. He told me he had never seen his mother cry.

I didn’t know how to tell him that earlier, she had cried to me in the storeroom. I put my hand on her shoulder while she silently wept and the radio played. I was too young to understand what was on her heart, but I was a woman, and maybe that was enough.

I think of her now while I eat the figs, her lone back standing at the kitchen sink, the table of men picking at their teeth while I cleared the plates.

The figs are more affordable here than they are in Australia. They are so fragile and are often spoiled in the time it takes for the big trucks to get to the commercial markets to sell them. They are at their best right off the tree.