One of his biggest surprises came when a neighbour took him to a supermarket to shop for groceries. Only once before, had he seen such a large space inside a building. It was while escaping the war, when he and the others had entered an airport hangar to take a plane to escape the combat zone.
This time everything around him shone. Endless rows of colourful food boxes, bottles and jars, perfectly-shaped mountains of blemish-free fruits, faultlessly round tomatoes, and bunches of green veggies with not a leaf out of place. It appeared as if all was ready to decorate some special performance or to please fastidious customers. He carefully examined the roundness of the apples and sniffed the fragrance of the pineapples and bananas grown thousand of miles away.
Quickly, however, he found that, beyond appearance, the art was to find ripe and aromatic fruits that were not hard as rocks. He realized that the benefits of abundance and the opportunity to have produce from around the world, in the middle of winter, had a price in both monetary terms and lack of taste.
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The weeks went by rather fast. For Amani every day was a new, fascinating discovery.
Without warning, the snow began to melt away and the sunniest days no longer were a sign of deadly cold. While the snow disappeared, a brown and muddy ground started to show along the streets and in the neighbourhood’s front yards. The soggy and almost dead land brought memories of the impact of rainy seasons back home.
It did not take long, however, for everything to change, making every new day a surprise. In a matter of days, the sun’s rays got warmer and the landscape appeared to resurrect. Amani could not believe the change.
At first, a few robins, birds he has not seen before, goose-stepped over the brown grass, appeared to listen to invisible bugs ,and then claimed victory with long worms in their beaks. Very soon, everything turned shades of green that were not in Amani’s mind palette. Where he came from, the land was dry, and the trees were sparse and small. Now, every morning he saw a new green colour in trees and bushes that had looked dead earlier.. With the arrival of spring, tints of red, yellow and purple began to shine in the warmer sun, and a symphony of colour welcomed him at dawn.
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