The Pomegranate Argument

The pomegranate splits in your hands if you know where to press — along the ridges, the faint lines the fruit draws on itself like a map of its own dismantling. My grandmother could open one without a knife. She'd press, twist, and the crown would come away clean, and the arils inside were like a jeweler had packed them — ruby, precise, wet. I cannot do this. Every pomegranate I open looks like a crime scene. Juice on the counter, the ceiling, the shirt I was wearing which is now evidence. My wife has asked me to open them in the sink. I have been asked to open them in the garden. I have been asked to open them outside the house entirely, which is fair. The fruit is older than the country. Older than most countries. Persepolis had them carved into the staircase walls — stone pomegranates for a stone empire that outlasted the real ones by two thousand years. In Isfahan, my uncle grows a tree that is eighty years old. It produces more fruit than any person can eat and he gives them away in plastic bags left on doorsteps with no note, which is his version of love and everyone on the street knows who left them. My daughter, who is seven and American-born, thinks pomegranates come from a store. I have not yet told her about the tree. I'm waiting for the right time, which will be the first time she asks where things come from and means it. Until then: the fruit splits. The seeds are sweet and tart and stain everything they touch. My grandmother's hands were always faintly pink from September to November. Mine are too, now. Same stain. Different kitchen. Same fruit, doing what fruit does — carrying something sweet inside something tough across however many miles and years it takes to get from her hands to mine.