A Tale of Love and Darkness

THE GARDEN wasn't a real garden, just a smallish rectangle of trampled earth as hard as concrete, where even thistles could scarcely grow. It was always in the shade of the concrete wall, like a prison yard. And in the shade of the tall cypress trees on the other side of the wall, in the Lembergs' garden next door. In one corner a stunted pepper tree struggled to survive, with gritted teeth; I loved to rub its leaves between my fingers and inhale its exciting smell. Opposite, near the other wall, was a single pomegranate tree or bush, a disillusioned survivor of the days when Kerem Avraham was still an orchard, which obstinately flowered year after year. We children did not wait for the fruit but ruthlessly cut off the vase-shaped unripe buds, into which we would insert a stick that was a finger's length or so, and thus make them into pipes like those the British smoked, and a few better-off people in our neighborhood who wanted to imitate the British.

Once a year we opened a pipe shop in a corner of the yard. Because of the color of the buds it sometimes looked as though there was a reddish glow at the tip of each of our pipes.