DESCRIPTION
Feature a bit of traditional Palestinian art as part of your everyday wardrobe. Our culture, after all, is our resistance!
- This pair of earrings were inspired by this poem (""My father and the Fig Tree") by Naomi Shihab Nye:
For other fruits my father was indifferent
He'd point at the cherry trees and say,
"See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evenings he sat by my bed
weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a fig tree.
Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road and he saw a fig tree.
Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.
At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
"That's not what I'm talking about!" he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth --
gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest fattest sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)
Years passed, we lived in many houses, none had fig trees.
We had lima beans, zucchini, parlsey, beets.
"Plant one!" my mother said, but my father never did.
He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water,
let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many things he starts
and doesn't finish."
The last time he moved, I got a phone call.
My father, in Arabic, chanting a song I'd never heard.
"What's that?" I said.
"Wait till you see!"
He took my out back to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas.
a tree with the largest, fattest, sweetest figs in the world.
"It's a fig tree song!" he said,
plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.
DETAILS
- Measures to be about 1.5 in. in length and 1.35 in. in width.
- Made of stainless steel.
- Care: though the pendants are made from a very strong material, these earrings should be handled with care to extend its wear and avoid scratching/general damage.