The Citrus Grove
"When Lama returns to restore her grandparents' abandoned citrus grove near Jaffa, she finds caretaker Mahmoud has kept more than just the trees alive."
The Citrus Grove
The oranges hung like golden lanterns, impossibly bright against dusty green leaves. Lama stood at the grove's edge, inhaling a scent that had haunted her childhood—citrus and earth and her grandmother's stories of paradise lost.
"You must be the granddaughter."
The man who emerged from the trees was perhaps forty, work-worn and sun-weathered, with eyes that held both suspicion and something softer.
"I'm Lama. You're Mahmoud?"
"Your grandmother hired me thirty years ago. Before she left." He wiped his hands on his trousers. "I've been waiting for someone to come back."
The grove was larger than she'd expected—twenty acres of ancient trees, half-wild from decades of minimal care. Mahmoud had kept them alive, but barely, his caretaker's salary insufficient for proper maintenance.
"Why did you stay?" Lama asked, walking the rows with him. "You could have found better work."
"Your grandmother saved my family during the first intifada. Hid us when soldiers came." His jaw tightened. "A debt like that doesn't expire."
"You don't owe us anything."
"I owe her everything." He stopped beside a massive tree, its trunk gnarled with age. "This was her favorite. She used to sit here and tell me about your mother, about you. A granddaughter in America, studying business. She was proud."
"She died thinking I'd never come."
"But you came." His eyes met hers. "Better late than never."
Lama stayed. Rented a room in the village, spent her days learning the grove's needs. Mahmoud was there always—teaching, guiding, occasionally arguing when their visions clashed.
"You can't modernize everything," he insisted one evening, reviewing her business plan. "Some of these trees are two hundred years old. They don't respond to efficiency."
"They respond to care. Which requires money. Which requires—"
"I know what it requires." He set down the papers. "I've done the math too. But there's a difference between sustainability and exploitation."
"I'm not trying to exploit—"
"You're trying to make it profitable. There's a fine line." His voice softened. "I've protected this place for thirty years, Lama. Let me help you do it right."
The attraction crept up slowly—a brush of hands while harvesting, lingering glances across the rows, conversations that extended into twilight.
"Tell me about yourself," she asked one night, sharing oranges on her grandmother's favorite bench. "Beyond the grove."
"There is no beyond the grove." His smile was wry. "I was married once. She couldn't compete with trees. There was a son, but he lives in Amman. I'm a simple man with a complicated love."
"For the grove?"
"For what it represents." He looked at the trees, silver in moonlight. "Memory. Resistance. The stubborn insistence on remaining."
"That's beautiful."
"It's lonely." His eyes found hers. "Less so, recently."
The kiss tasted of oranges—inevitable, explosive, thirty years of waiting compressed into a moment.
"This is complicated," Lama gasped as Mahmoud pressed her against her grandmother's tree.
"Everything is complicated." His mouth traced her jaw. "I've stopped caring."
"I'm your employer—"
"Fire me." He pulled back, eyes fierce. "Fire me right now, and I'll kiss you again as an equal. Or tell me to stop, and I will. But choose."
"You're fired."
His smile was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
They made love among the trees, the scent of citrus wrapping around them like blessing. Mahmoud worshipped her body with a farmer's attention—thorough, patient, attuned to every subtle response.
"Helwa," he breathed against her breast. "Zay el burtuqan." Like the orange. "Sweet. Perfect."
"Mahmoud—please—"
He entered her slowly, years of loneliness melting into connection. They moved together in rhythms older than the ancient trees, building toward a harvest neither had expected.
"Ana bahebik," he confessed as they crested. I love you. "Been bahebik min awwal youm." Since the first day.
Lama shattered around him, pulling his release with hers, their cries echoing through the grove like the songs of ancestors.
"What now?" she asked afterward, wrapped in his shirt among fallen oranges.
"Now we save the grove. Together." He kissed her forehead. "Partner, not employee. In everything."
"My grandmother would have a heart attack."
"Your grandmother," he said gently, "prayed for this every night. For you to come home, to love this land the way she did. I heard her."
"You're making that up."
"I never lie about oranges." His smile was warm. "Or love."
Lama looked at the grove—her inheritance, her obligation, her unexpected joy. Then at Mahmoud, this impossible man who'd kept faith when everyone else had left.
"Na'am," she said. "Partners. In everything."
The old trees seemed to sigh with approval, and somewhere, Lama was certain, her grandmother was finally at peace.