A Laterally Sliced Persimmon

The first time I bit into a persimmon, I didn’t even know what it was. I was rewarded with not just that sweet, vanilla-like flesh, but also the revelation that the mythical khormaloo of my parents’ stories was real. But my real joy comes from looking at what’s inside.

For years, khormaloo was just part of the lore with which I’d grown up — stories from an Iran of the past: lemons you could eat straight off the tree, stargazing on rooftops in the summer heat, and how nobody knew how good they’d had it under the Shah. I had filed persimmons away under “things you could only get in the Good Old Days.” We didn’t have them where I lived, but I remembered the name.

Then, at nineteen, I found myself working in the Middle East, on a job with night shifts that were risky in theory (because of the vague threat of violence) but boring in practice (because nothing ever happened). To pass the time, I flirted with mischief. I hacked the company’s network, hunting for contraband on staff computers — to my disappointment, finding none. I bothered local staff into teaching me Arabic. And, most memorably, I raided the staff kitchen.

That’s where I found persimmons.

I didn’t know what they were — just that they looked interesting and there was a whole box of them. One bite, and I was hooked. Sweet, lush, almost floral — unlike anything I’d had before. After that, I nicked persimmons regularly, at first just one at a time, and later three, five or more. Nobody seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t care. In the end, it wasn’t the persimmons that got me — it was the hacking. It took them seventeen months to notice and give me a dressing down. But nobody ever mentioned the fruit.

These days, I wait impatiently for persimmons to arrive every autumn. When they finally become available, I always get one and slice it laterally, right across the middle.

Look at that thing of beauty! That orange etched starburst pattern is a miracle of nature’s geometry. I always bring it excitedly to my partner, even though she’s seen dozens, maybe hundreds, by now. I can’t help myself. She is happy for me, which is good enough.

Sure, you don’t have to slice persimmons like that. Some people bite into them like apples. Others, like my Korean mother-in-law, peel and cube them neatly. But I’ll always slice mine across the middle. That star — it should be a logo for something. Maybe even my next app, if it’s one that I actually launch.

I’ve had plenty of exotic fruits since then. Durians drive me bananas. I can demolish a mountain of lychees. And I’m not fancy — for me, nothing beats the crisp snap of a fresh apple. But the persimmon holds a special place.

I always cut them the same way. Even now, knowing what’s inside, I still get a flicker of excitement when I open one up. On the outside, an ordinary orange fruit, with nothing special about it; on the inside, magic, every time.