We usually roasted eggplants two at a time. Mom would set the temperature to 375° F and leave them in for an hour, sometimes longer. We’d pierce them up and down with a fork so the air could escape. Eggplants are just like sponges, she’d say, laughing—air and water trapped in a peel! One time, when we forgot to pierce them first, the eggplants exploded all over the oven.

I’d watch the eggplants cook through the greasy window of our oven door. Bulbous and gleaming, their skins oozing caramel as they deflated. Once they were ready, Mom would pull them out, slice them tip to stem, and pry them open without burning herself. Let it cool first, she’d say as she swirled the flesh with her fork, the kitchen all smokey and bitter. The escaping steam would wrap around our faces as we spooned the stuff into a bowl. 

 Whenever I hear or say the word eggplant, I think of Mom. In Arabic it’s bitingan. If her belly ached, she’d say “ayu botni bitingani!” (“ow my belly, my eggplant!”). Maybe this was once a common phrase, something she heard when she was growing up.

 Not long ago, I found a twelfth century poem about eggplant in a book of Arabic poetry in translation. The original, which I can barely penetrate, is composed of four lines, while the translation expands the poem to eight lines. The English is spongy with air and water, fusty with forced rhymes.

I searched for other translations of the poem and came across a collaboration by two poets. They re-envisioned “Eggplant” as a concrete poem. Since visual poetry was popular in Alexandria centuries ago, I thought it might cut closer to the ancient heart of eggplant. A singular ovoid shape with one word at the tip and one at the stem. Full waist, interrupted by commas. No forced rhymes. Pried-out heart. Antipathy of tidy seed to its obscene conclusion: purple limb deprived of oxygen, blackened by the violence of becoming.