Afarsimon

My favorite fruit, or one of them, is the persimmon, 'afarsimon' in Hebrew. The truth is, I don't even know how I am supposed to pronounce the word in English. Is it PERsimmon, or persimON? I don't know how to say it English, because I have never eaten one in America.

The first time I saw a persimmon was in Sweden. My Japanese friend was thrilled to find one in the grocery store in our small town in Sweden. She didn't know what it was called in any language but Japanese, but she told me that it was her favorite fruit and they were common in Japan. It looked to me like a little pumpkin the size of a plum. She cut into it carefully, almost tenderly, and proffered me a little piece. I was so taken with the fact that it looked like a pumpkin, and with the firm texture of the flesh of the fruit, that it tasted almost like a pumpkin to me- and it was just plain weird.

In Israel, persimmons are everywhere this time of year and throughout the winter. At my job there would be plates of fruit at many of our meetings and in the winter there were always little orange persimmons buried among the oranges and apples. I don't really like apples, and I couldn't concentrate while peeling an orange, much less take notes with sticky hands. I was left with the persimmon- a fruit that doesn't need to be peeled, doesn't crunch loudly, and the juice rarely runs down over your hand as you eat.

I don't remember the first one I ate in Israel, or if it was the first time that I tried it that my love affair with them began, or if I came to a gradual understanding that this was the most incredible fruit in the world. I started rushing to meetings to get to a persimmon before they were gone. I'd take any left over ones back with me to my office, and stop by the market on the way home to get more.

It's officially autumn in Utah and my craving for persimmons is rising. For the last month I have been looking in stores for them to start appearing. I figure if there are mangoes and guavas, there should be persimmons. Yesterday at breakfast I asked my companions to let me know if they ran across any persimmons while shopping.

Immediately after breakfast, I went shopping in a fine foods market, thinking maybe, just maybe, this was the store where I would find my favorite fruit. I walked in and allowed myself to be distracted for only a moment by the bags of nuts, the jars of jam with flavors like Almond Orange Blossom, and then rushed into the produce section. I meandered among the root vegetables and then found myself in the plum section and right next to the plums, there were the persimmons!

There was no price tag, so I tracked down an employee to help me. "What is this thing?" he asked when I handed one to him. "Can you spell it for me?" he asked. He showed it to another employee who also had no idea what it was. He wandered away. Five minutes later he came back. "It's $1.99. Each." Ouch. I couldn't do it. My experience with splurging on figs had taught me that fruit that has ripened while being trucked across great distances, doesn't taste anything like fruit that has been picked yesterday and transported 15 miles to the market, and so probably isn't worth the enormous expense. Until I just can't take it anymore. And then I buy it anyway, and think about the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia where the children realize that they have been living in a shadow world, where the colors are dimmer, the tastes less intense, the smells nearly non-existent. In Utah, I eat shadow produce.

I am not yet that desperate. So, I put down my little fruit and walked out into the snow. Yes, snow. For the second time this year- and it is only the first part of October.