buying tahini

I am holding two jars of tahini, trying

to decide. Why one has a green lid and

one a red, and I’m trying to decipher

the labels in Hebrew that look the exact

same when I see to my left a woman

I know from dance and she smiles

and I smile and I see she’s explaining

in English and then in Hebrew to her

toddler son that he can’t sleep on

the apples that lie in a pile on a very

low shelf.  I ask if she can help me with

my tahini debacle and before we know

it we are telling our stories where we

are from how long we’ve been here. As

you do when are from one place and

live in another. And have children. And

are at war. And wonder…and she asks

what I do when I am not dancing and I

say I write and ask her and she says

she makes bowls on a wheel with clay.

It’s my way to understand. To connect,

she says and I say I use words. And we

also dance we say, so many ways to have

the same conversation. And just then her

son dives right into the pile of apples

rolls around and we watch him. And in

the end I buy the red tahini. Red because

it reminds me of apples.