Fig Newtons have a lot of explaining to do.
I don't remember where I first saw the fruit in question; the first mention I find in my journal is from the market in Kas:
Nice young woman with a fruit stall leaning over a large basket of my mystery fruit. Round, smallish; smaller ones the size of a plum, larger the size of a small orange. Asked her--mostly by head tilt and quizzical look--what they are and she opened one for me. Outside is dark purple, greenish where unripe. Inside pinky orange and mushy with whitish threads (if I remember correctly - why why why didn't I bring the spare camera battery?!?). Sweet, mild taste. She told me the name but I didn't get it; started with an E or an I (or a Y) I think.
The name is incir, and of course they are figs. I did guess that, later in my journal; based on the list of fruits I wouldn't recognize on sight, I decided they must be either figs or persimmons. Persimmons are in fact nothing like figs, but I didn't eat one of those until I was in Bosnia a few weeks later, and that is a story for another day.
What's really pathetic about my lack of fruit knowledge is that one of the houses I lived in growing up had a fig tree in the back yard; we buried our hamster underneath it. My mom says I've probably never seen one ripe; we used to pull them off the tree still hard and green (I remember them as brown, actually) to throw at each other. When they are ripe, they are beautiful, and they are delicious.
When I first came back from my trip, all I could say was that it was amazing. Since then I've been wrestling with how to put it in words: shall I talk about the logistics? The trains and the buses and the hotels? The ruins, the mountains, the sea? Shall I just post some of the thousands of photos I took, and not even try to put the experience into words?
I am starting to have more words than "amazing" now, but I still don't know how to put them into a narrative, so I am just going to tell you about whatever occurs to me. And today I wanted to tell you about this beautiful fruit, and the lady who gave me a bite of it in the marketplace.
Nice young woman with a fruit stall leaning over a large basket of my mystery fruit. Round, smallish; smaller ones the size of a plum, larger the size of a small orange. Asked her--mostly by head tilt and quizzical look--what they are and she opened one for me. Outside is dark purple, greenish where unripe. Inside pinky orange and mushy with whitish threads (if I remember correctly - why why why didn't I bring the spare camera battery?!?). Sweet, mild taste. She told me the name but I didn't get it; started with an E or an I (or a Y) I think.
The name is incir, and of course they are figs. I did guess that, later in my journal; based on the list of fruits I wouldn't recognize on sight, I decided they must be either figs or persimmons. Persimmons are in fact nothing like figs, but I didn't eat one of those until I was in Bosnia a few weeks later, and that is a story for another day.
What's really pathetic about my lack of fruit knowledge is that one of the houses I lived in growing up had a fig tree in the back yard; we buried our hamster underneath it. My mom says I've probably never seen one ripe; we used to pull them off the tree still hard and green (I remember them as brown, actually) to throw at each other. When they are ripe, they are beautiful, and they are delicious.
When I first came back from my trip, all I could say was that it was amazing. Since then I've been wrestling with how to put it in words: shall I talk about the logistics? The trains and the buses and the hotels? The ruins, the mountains, the sea? Shall I just post some of the thousands of photos I took, and not even try to put the experience into words?
I am starting to have more words than "amazing" now, but I still don't know how to put them into a narrative, so I am just going to tell you about whatever occurs to me. And today I wanted to tell you about this beautiful fruit, and the lady who gave me a bite of it in the marketplace.