Three Kilos of Clementines

Flash fiction

Amine wasn’t weaned until the age of five and a half. Breastfeeding was simply cheaper than buying a kilo of clementines. His mother, Ma Aïcha, had used the same method for each of the nine others. She knew better than to let herself get overwhelmed by problems. At the Sunday baths, her face lost in the eucalyptus steam, she was unmistakable: her long breasts swayed from side to side as she walked. Among women her age, wisdom was measured by the length of one’s breasts. After years of breastfeeding and solving problems, her back had curved, and her breasts, which had first nourished at seventeen, now grazed her ribs.

Yet, after five and a half years, she had to start buying clementines. Hungry for the milk he no longer had, it was all Amine ate. He ate them everywhere: on his mother’s lap, on the counter, on the bed, on the floor. The only exception was the bathroom, which was often occupied by his older sister, studying her lessons with great focus. On the rare occasions she took her books to the park, Amine ate clementines in the bathroom too.

His mother didn’t like him eating clementines everywhere. “Your fingers get sticky,” she would say, “then you pick up all the dirt, and the whole house gets sticky and dirty.”

She loved saying the word “house.” It had the same effect as mirrors. They didn’t have mirrors, but saying “house” gave their one room a sense of depth. Whenever she went to the grocer and placed an order, she would say, “Send your courier to the house with my three kilos of clementines.” Instantly, the room expanded, a hallway appeared, stairs formed in the wall. And most of all, it brought her joy.

Ma Aïcha wasn’t a fanciful woman. 

The grocer, too, liked it when she said, “Send your courier to the house with my three kilos of clementines.” It made him feel like the owner of a big business, with employees whose jobs came with important titles — even though his “courier” was actually his thirteen-year-old nephew, sent from the countryside because no one knew what else to do with him. 

So when Ma Aïcha would say that phrase to the grocer — “Send your courier to the house with my three kilos of clementines” — she brought a little perspective to everyone’s reality. It made her happy, it made the grocer happy, it made everyone happy. Even the courier, struggling up the slope to Ma Aïcha’s house, felt a small pride. A working man in the big city, now. 

No, Ma Aïcha wasn’t a fanciful woman. All ten of her kids grew up just fine. 

Until, years later, when Ma Aicha’s breasts reached her ankles, and Amine was thirty and a half. A friend offered him a slice of clementine, but he politely declined. 

The thought of them brought back sour reflux and bathroom stench. Some other times, it was the bathroom that brought back clementines’ smell.