Mystery fruit

On the ferry there are usually one or 2 little kids selling pocket packs of tissues. Tourist price one Egyptian pound each. Locals get two packs for that price. There are roughly 6 Egyptian pounds to the U.S. dollar right now, by the way. So the price is less than 20 cents for one or two packs, depending.

For the past couple of weeks, other little kids have been selling clear plastic bags filled with laymun. The price of these is one Egyptian pound per bag.

I thought these little green fruits must be limes. The Arabic word laymun sounds similar. And these fruits look like limes, although not exactly like any limes I'm familiar with.

So I finally got up the nerve to spend big bucks and buy a bag. The seller—a boy maybe 10 years old—told me, in English, "eleven". Sure enough, there were eleven items in the bag.

So, what is a laymun? Or what are laymun? The word laymun is the same for singular and plural, I'm told.

Laymun are indeed limes. But not like any limes most of my readers have ever seen. These limes are small, and more round than ellipsoid, but not perfectly round either. The length and the diameter are each less than 2 inches (4 centimeters or less.) The color is a vivid green or yellow-green.

These limes are certainly tart! I suspect that these are similar to the limes that the children craved in Little Women, by the way. And I bet these limes would make wonderful limeade, if I knew how to make lemonade or limeade. But on the internet I found the suggestion of pouring boiling water over a lime (cut open), making a refreshing summer beverage. I'll have to try that. It should be very healthful, too. Limes are supposed to be beneficial in remedying all kinds of medical conditions.

Believe it or not, sampling these limes is also research! These tiny fruits are probably much less hybridized than their giant supermarket counterparts. (I'm just guessing about this.) In other words, these limes would be genetically more ancient. So I'm hoping that they're similar to the first limes to be cultivated in the Middle East/North Africa region, a little more than three thousand years ago. Limes were the first citrus fruit to be cultivated, by the way. I believe they came from the Far East.

I find that these limes improve a cup of tea. Just divide one almost all the way through, and then perch it on the rim of your full-to-the-brim tea cup. It adds a subtle zing.

I wish the internet could transmit flavor, so your teeth could be set on edge by one of these little babies!

A Reminiscence by Author Lee Child--and by the Ibis Child

A Child's Fan Letter - The Barnes & Noble Review

Please click on the dove-gray print above, to see Lee Child's article. They won't let me change the color or even underline, for some reason.

I just had to post a link to this article by author Lee Child. He grew up in much the same postwar England that I remember. Although I grew up in London (and Oxford for a couple of years) and he grew up in the country; and although I was a more sedate child than he was.

My favorite library books, at one stage, were the hilarious "Just William" series. My parents thought these books were a bit silly, I think, but they were happy that I was reading. I also enjoyed a series of books about twins. Each book was a novel about twins from a different country or culture in the world.

My parents bought me Ladybird books, as well. Even on a tight budget, they could afford these books  (priced at 2/6 each and very well produced.) Each book had the same format: text on one page and an illustration on the facing page. There was a series of 3 books on British birds, one book on wildflowers, one on garden flowers, books on various kings and queens and inventors and so on.
There was even a series about a family traveling by plane (very exciting, in the early 60's) to each of the 5 continents. This little series of books is so politically incorrect now that it's quite funny.

My TV watching was limited. My father watched The Lone Ranger with me. And then we watched a silly cartoon called Top Cat where all the cats had Bronx accents. To us, these accents were hilarious. Little did we know that we would soon be moving to the U.S.