By Zolt\u00e1n Grossman\u00a0<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/358\/2018\/01\/Pom-300x224.gif\")
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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Pomegranate soda tastes pretty good.<\/p>\n
That’s what I thought on a visit to Canada in 2005.<\/p>\n
Why not take a couple of 12-packs back home in our car?<\/p>\n
Nothing to declare when we passed through the border,<\/p>\n
only to discover to our horror that during the War on Terror<\/p>\n
we had smuggled in two crates of grenades.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You see, in Bilingual Canada, all products have<\/p>\n
to be labeled in both English and in French, so<\/p>\n
it’s “Pomegranate” on one side, and “Grenades” on the other.<\/p>\n
After perplexing why someone would name a fruit after a weapon,<\/p>\n
I did a little Wikipedizing and found out–it was the other way around.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
French soldiers in the 16th century named their cool new exploding ball<\/p>\n
after the French word for pomegranate. The grenadiers thought<\/p>\n
their invention resembled the size and shape of the fruit, whose<\/p>\n
blood-red juicy seeds resembled the soon-to-be-bloodied shrapnel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In many other languages, the pomegranate and grenade came to share<\/p>\n
similar or identical terms: Granada in Spanish (hence the city in Spain),<\/p>\n
Granata in Italian, Polish and Russian, and even Rimmon in Hebrew.<\/p>\n
The pomegranate giveth life, and the grenade taketh it away,<\/p>\n
by cutting through the skin, and puncturing internal organs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Each pomegranate has about 600 seeds, encased by arils,<\/p>\n
or tiny sacks of juice. The proper way to extract the arils is to<\/p>\n
First, carefully cut off the calyx, or crown.<\/p>\n
Second, lightly score the leathery rind into quarters.<\/p>\n
Third, gently pull apart the fruit to expose the arils, and<\/p>\n
Fourth, peacefully pluck them out from the white membrane.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Preparing a pomegranate is like disarming a grenade.<\/p>\n
If you push in the calyx, you have armed the striker lever.<\/p>\n
If you violently tear apart the fruit, or cut too deeply into it,<\/p>\n
the arils will be punctured. They will bleed red stains.<\/p>\n
They will scream and cry. They will die.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The original homeland of the pomegranate stretches from<\/p>\n
Iran to India, through Afghanistan and Pakistan.<\/p>\n
It spread across the Red and Mediterranean Seas in ancient times,<\/p>\n
and was worshipped by all peoples who ate its succulent fruit.<\/p>\n
To the Romans, it was the Pomum Granatus, or Seeded Apple,<\/p>\n
whose tree could live up to 200 years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To the Egyptians, it symbolized everlasting life, and was buried with King Tut.<\/p>\n
Like the Phoenicians, they grew pomegranates for religious purposes.<\/p>\n
To the Greeks, it symbolized love and fertility, and the blood of death.<\/p>\n
Juno and Aphrodite offered the sensuous fruit in marriage,<\/p>\n
and Greek brides wore its twigs in their hair, but<\/p>\n
Hades also tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds,<\/p>\n
thus creating the four barren months of winter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To the Jews, the pomegranate was a blessed fruit,<\/p>\n
its calyx the source of the design for King David’s crown,<\/p>\n
its seeds symbolizing the 613 mitzvot, or commandments of the Torah.<\/p>\n
To the Christians, the Seeded Apple may have been<\/p>\n
the fruit that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.<\/p>\n
It stood for suffering, resurrection, and the blood of martyrs.<\/p>\n
To the Muslims, the fruit is associated with the Garden of Paradise,<\/p>\n
and was a favorite of the Prophet Muhammad. It is still used in<\/p>\n
red pepper spread in Syria, tabouli in Turkey, and chicken stew in Iran.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To the Americans, the pomegranate is a life-saving food and an elixir of health,<\/p>\n
an instrument of war and a tool of occupation.<\/p>\n
When their towers were toppled by a flying army,<\/p>\n
The Americans invaded the homeland of the pomegranate,<\/p>\n
bringing the fruit’s namesake as part of their vast arsenal.<\/p>\n
The Grenade Machine Gun had its first use in Afghanistan,<\/p>\n
where it became a “very popular weapon” against the Taliban.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pomegranates themselves still grew along the Arghandab River<\/p>\n
in Kandahar province– the Pashtun heartland of the Taliban.<\/p>\n
The strategists of U.S. counterinsurgency looked to them as a lucrative cash crop<\/p>\n
that could lure Afghan farmers away from growing opium poppies.<\/p>\n
The way to curb addiction to narcotics would be addiction to export-oriented capitalism.<\/p>\n
Instead of grenadiers harvesting blood, harvest pomegranate juice for grenadine cocktails.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was only a matter of months before the aggressive worldwide campaign began:<\/p>\n
The War for POM in the War on Terror, by the Antioxidant Superpower.<\/p>\n
As the Army fought insurgents in the pomegranate groves,<\/p>\n
the engorging growing industry fought for customers in the globalized market.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Within three years, by the time I bought my soda,<\/p>\n
nearly 200 pomegranate products had hit the shelves:<\/p>\n
wine and vodka, beer and salsa, soap and pills, dressing and shampoo.<\/p>\n
The fruit’s miracle properties could cure high blood pressure, cancer<\/p>\n
and heart disease among citizens of the heart of the empire.<\/p>\n
They do little to heal wounds caused by Hellfire missiles,<\/p>\n
cluster bombs, or shrapnel from shiny new Grenade Machine Guns.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the Arghandab Valley, the 5th Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis, Washington,<\/p>\n
set up a base in Pomegranate Country, in the middle of Taliban Country.<\/p>\n
One platoon “cut down some of the pomegranate trees to<\/p>\n
dry up the courtyard to ease the mosquito problem.”<\/p>\n
Other Stryker platoons “got marooned in an orchard for several days.<\/p>\n
Supplies ran so low that they turned to juice-filled pomegranates<\/p>\n
to maintain their strength.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Like the Greeks and Persians, the British and the Russians before them,<\/p>\n
the American soldiers had to sip the blood of life from the ancient pomegranate<\/p>\n
to give them the energy to hurl the tools of death.<\/p>\n
Because of the battles and the booby traps in the Arghandab Valley,<\/p>\n
no one can pick the fruit, which now lies in rotting piles<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Preparing a pomegranate is like disarming a grenade,<\/p>\n
Carefully<\/i> cut off the crown.<\/p>\n
Lightly<\/i> score the rind.<\/p>\n
Gently<\/i> pull apart the fruit.<\/p>\n
Peacefully<\/i> pluck out the seeds.<\/p>\n
Handle it with care<\/p>\n
so it doesn’t explode in your face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Powerpoint Poem By Zolt\u00e1n Grossman\u00a0 Pomegranate soda tastes pretty good. That’s what I thought on a visit to Canada in 2005. Why not take a couple of 12-packs back home in our car? Nothing to declare when we passed through the border, only to discover to our horror that during the War on … Continue reading POMEGRANATES AND GRENADES:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3910,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/zoltan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}