March 9, 2020

Apricot Season

The only thing I really remember coveting growing up was the Hot Wheels Race Track with the loop de loop.

It was in bright orange plastic. I already owned two or three Hot Wheels cars. And Stevie Sheen had two of his own.

But we didn’t have the track. I asked my mother.
She said, “Ask your father.”
So I asked my father.

He was doing his paint by numbers on the patio near the garden. He said it relaxed him. I asked if he could buy me the Hot Wheels Race Track.
This is what he said: “Inchaalah.” Inchaalah means God willing.
God willing.

I just wanted the Hot Wheels Race Track. To paraphrase Tina Turner, what does God have to do with it?

Inchaalah was not bad. Inchaalah was not a no. Inchaalah still gave one hope.

“On va voir” was also hopeful. It meant we’ll see.

“Dieux est grand” was also in the inchaalah family. Any reference to God meant you never know what could happen. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great.

“Ne me derange pas waled.” A mix of French and Arabic—don’t bother me son—meant your timing was bad. Real bad.

In my house, there was always still hope until one of my parents invoked apricots.

“Can Stevie and I take the bus downtown on Saturday night and then a subway to the Montreal Forum so we can see the Canadiens?”

To be clear, I wasn't stupid enough to ever ask for anything which began with me getting on a bus—as if my mother would ever allow that—but the response for that kind of request would be “bokra fel mesh mesh.”

Which translates to, “When apricot season arrives.”

As best as I, my brother, my sister, and all my cousins could ascertain, apricot season almost never arrived in Cairo.

And it never ever arrived in Montreal. Bokra fel mesh mesh.
Translated. That’s a hard no. Translated: When pigs fly.

But here’s the funny thing about apricots.

Whenever my cousins and I would ask our parents for a toy, this is what they would say.

“Barbie doll?”

“GI Joe?”

Go ahead and fill in the blank for any desired toy: “______?”

“Do you know what we played with when we were growing up? We dug a hole in the ground and played a game with discarded mesh mesh (apricot) pits.”

Mesh mesh.
Again with the apricots.
I call my cousin Monica and ask her, “What game did your mom play growing up?”
She doesn’t miss a beat. “The game with the mesh mesh pits.”
I call my cousin Morris. He says the same.
I leave a message for my cousin David. He texts me back the next day. Mesh mesh pits. Seems like a lot of people were playing with apricot pits.

The rules of this game were never clear. Pits were thrown. Pits were picked up. Was it like jacks? Were there points? Nobody seems to know. In a world where sisters competed to be best at everything, nobody seemed to brag about their mesh mesh pit prowess.

But, despite the fact they could not really remember how to play, every time we asked for a toy, they reminded us of this hole in the ground with the discarded mesh mesh pits.

My father bought me the Hot Wheels Track. Not, however, before first declaring the whole endeavour was “de la folie fourieuse”—madness.

Stevie Sheen and I played with it for a while. We made elaborate tracks running in and out of the house. The loops were cool though. Eventually we lost all of the cars but one and then one of the main bridge track pieces broke. Stevie and I went back to playing Stratomatic baseball and we boxed it up. I think we eventually sold the one car and what was left of the track at a block yard sale. I think we got fifty cents for it.

For a while my sister and I saved our apricot pits. We kept them in an old olive jar we hid behind the can of lupini beans in the cupboard. I am not sure what we were planning to do with them. Play, I guess. We had gotten to about ten or eleven pits when my mother discovered them.

She asked if we were saving them and my sister and I both sheepishly shook our heads no. It was ridiculous. We had rooms full of toys.

“One game,” she said as she ran the mesh mesh pits under water. “Your mother was the best.”

I looked it up. It turns out apricots are only harvested two weeks a year in Egypt and were very hard to come by in Cairo. The ephemeral nature of the season gave rise to the expression.

Which leads me to ask this question: if apricots were such a rarity in Cairo, where the hell did they get all those mesh mesh pits?

The end.