We wait under a pomegranate tree for James to take a photo. The red/orange fruit hangs low, brushes my shoulder, and I run a finger over the rind as hard and unyielding as a nut.
Sol comes up. "This is the pomegranate. It is not good until November, December, during Chanukah. Did you know that this year, 2000, the Christian Christmas, the Muslim Id-EI-Fitr, and the Jewish Chanukah is falling together?"
"I didn't know that."
"It happens only once in forty years." He digs a thumbnail into the pomegranate shell and pries it open. "When the fruit is ripe, the seeds is red as rubies. Now they show yellow and they don't taste like nothing." He tosses the fruit away.
James joins us and as Sol ushers us to the van, he says, "There is the dispute where is Eden, but I say 'Why not here?' The twenty thousand square miles of Israel has the four climates. The Mediterranean seashore, the desert, mountains with snow, and jungles for every kind of animal and plant. We have enough animals for Noah's Ark and enough fruit for the Garden of Eden. Some people is saying the fruit in the Garden of Eden is the apple, but I say why not the pomegranate."
