on Skype certainly isn’t the same as in person.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Grandma,” Amani said. “And that’s just the way I like it.”
Grandma Hana was a petite woman with a big heart. She was wearing an Amish straw hat from Lancaster over a scarf made in Turkey. Her long, pale green cotton Pakistani kameez fit comfortably over her American-made pants. She had leather Moroccan sandals on her feet and a handmade bag made of Yemeni cloth across one shoulder. She, like the country of her birth, was a mixture of cultures that somehow seemed to work.
No one had ever heard Grandma Hana say a mean thing about anyone. If something good happened to her, she said “alhamdulillah.” If something bad happened to her, she said “alhamdulillah.” Her whole being sparkled like her blue eyes. Just being around her made you feel good.
“I want to hear all about your first train ride by yourselves,” Grandma Hana said. “We have so much to catch up on. For one thing, a new family is moving in behind us. And I can’t wait for you to see the farmhouse. It looks just as it did when I left. And the peach tree. I think it’s going to be a great harvest this year, inshallah.”
Grandma Hana had spent the last two years in Turkey. She had met and married their grandfather in Istanbul over forty years ago. They both converted in the Blue Mosque. After he died two years ago, she decided to return for a visit. A few weeks turned into a few months, and months turned into years. She had rented out the farmhouse while she was away. Her old friends Fenby Moore and his wife, Hazel, took care of everything that needed to be done at home. This was the first time Hude and Amani had seen their grandmother since she had returned to the United States.
“What are these horrible things, Grandma?” Amani asked as she jumped out of the way of an incoming bug.
“They’re seventeen-year cicadas. They live in the ground and feed on tree roots. After seventeen years, they crawl out to mate. The males make those sounds to attract the females. After mating, the males die. The female cuts tiny slits in small tree branches where she deposits eggs. After she lays her eggs, she dies. The eggs hatch and the nymphs fall to the ground and dig about twelve inches under. Seventeen years later, they crawl out of the ground and the cycle starts again.”
“They’re disgusting,” Amani commented.
“But harmless,” Grandma Hana smiled. “They don’t bite, sting or chew. They’re terrible flyers, so you can outrun them. Although I did get one caught in my hijab seventeen years ago and that wasn’t particularly pleasant.”
Amani shivered at the thought. Grandma Hana continued.
“They survive because of their numbers. There are so many bugs that predators can’t possibly eat them all. Everything likes to eat them—dogs, cats, birds, squirrels, deer, raccoons, mice, ants, wasps and even humans.”
“Humans!” Amani shrieked.
“Let me show you,” Grandma Hana pointed to a food cart in the parking lot. “I’m parked right near it.”
Amani, Hude and their grandmother walked towards her car. A crowd was standing around the food cart. To Amani’s horror people were waiting in line to order. The menu was listed on a large, handwritten poster board: “Roasted Cicada, Cicada Stir-Fry, Soft-Shelled Cicada, Chocolate-Covered Cicada, Cicada Surprise....” Amani stopped reading at Cicada Surprise. She started feeling sick.
“Tasty, yum!” someone yelled from the crowd.
Amani and Hude looked over. A boy was crunching on a mouthful of roasted cicadas. He held several others in his hand. When the boy saw Amani and Hude he started to laugh. Bits of half-chewed cicada fell out of his mouth and onto his T-shirt. Hude recognized the boy and the T-shirt immediately. Amani also recognized the boy, Bobby, from the train. This was the first time that she had gotten a good look at him. It was difficult to determine the exact color of Bobby’s hair because it was buzzed so closely to his head. He was shorter than her brother but around his age. He was wearing a red, white, and blue T-shirt that said JOAD on it. Amani had seen that word before when she went with Hude to target practice.
Looking at Bobby, Amani somehow knew that her summer vacation in the country wasn’t going to be quiet and peaceful. And Hude believed that he would see that boy again. They were both right.
The peach tree on Sycamore Street
GRANDMA Hana lived on Sycamore Street in the small town of Cherry Hill in Fairfax County, Maryland. The funny thing about it was that there were no sycamore trees on Sycamore Street and, as far as anyone knew, no hill anywhere in town covered with cherries. But there was Grandma Hana’s famous peach tree.
The peach tree first became famous because Grandma Hana had planted a nectarine pit. She had eaten a freshly picked nectarine that was so delicious that she decided to plant the pit. But instead of growing a nectarine tree, the pit turned into a peach tree. As she later learned, peaches and nectarines are so closely related that sometimes when you plant one, you get the other. The second thing that made the tree famous was the way the peaches tasted. The honey-colored flesh was smooth and oozed with juice. Each bite had the perfect mixture of sweetness and tanginess. Grandma Hana’s peaches tasted like peaches should taste, and like no other peaches in all of Maryland. The third reason for the tree’s fame was its strength. It had survived ice storms, blizzards, hurricanes, and all sorts of pests and diseases that took down countless other trees. Yet it never failed to produce the best peaches, even though it was more than thirty years old, decades past what should have been its peak. What made the tree the most famous of all was that Grandma Hana’s peach pie never lost the pie contest at the Fairfax County Fair. Friends, neighbors, just about anyone who knew about the peach tree, looked forward to the harvest, so they could eat some of Grandma Hana’s pie. At one point, a businessman approached Grandma Hana and offered to help her start a business selling pies. But Grandma turned the offer down. She told him that “peaches were a gift from God and gifts were meant to be shared.”
Splat!
A huge cicada smashed loudly against the front windshield of their grandmother’s car and stuck there.
“Ahhh!” Hude yelled like a young girl and jumped back in his seat.
He was sitting in the front passenger’s seat but it was still hard for Amani to hear him amongst the deafening, screeching, shrill sound of the cicadas.
“This is awesome!” Hude yelled, smiling back at Amani.
This unwelcome bug adventure was decidedly not awesome, Amani thought.
It was one thing reading about Tad Walker and the ginormous Hercules beetle he discovered in his hammock. It was quite another thing to experience a ginormous bug oneself!
“When will this end, Grandma?” Hana yelled up front.
“It’s been going on for a few weeks now. In a few days we’ll be back to the normal sounds of summer.” Grandma Hanna smiled. “You’ll be twenty-six years old before you see this glorious show again, inshallah.”
“Too soon as far as I’m concerned,” Amani said.
Trying to forget the world around her, Amani imagined the delicious smell of peaches ripening on the tree. Nothing compared to biting into a freshly picked, perfectly ripe peach on a hot summer day. The first bite of the season was always the
