White Mulberries

I spent many a contented hour of my childhood grazing on wild mulberries in the woods near my parents’ home. My friends and I would feast on the dark, ripe berries, rushing to get to them before the birds, and return home only when we were dizzy from their sweet flavor. Our mouths and hands would be stained a reddish-purple, and the scent of the fruit lingering on our clothes and in our hair.

Memories of those lazy childhood summers were brought back to me in a wonderful way yesterday, because I have arrived in Tashkent’s peak mulberry season. For only fifteen short days in late Spring, white mulberries ripen to perfect sweetness and appear in the markets. Picked in the early morning, the fresh fruits are spoiled by afternoon unless dried or preserved, so the opportunity to enjoy them is fleeting indeed.

I bought some mulberries from the woman in this pictures and picked at them while walking through the market and into the evening. The flavor of the fresh berries is incredibly sweet, but different and less robust than their darker cousins I enjoyed as a child. They are sweeter, but seem in some way less ripe or less ready than red mulberries. No surprise then, that in the west, mulberries are associated with young love of the forbidden kind. The kind of love shared by Pyramus and Thisbe in Babylon.

In the Ovidian drama, the young lovers who have been forbidden to meet by their feuding parents, and speak to each other through a crack in the wall of their adjoining houses. They even share kisses through the wall. When they can no longer stand their separation, they agree to meet by Ninus’ tomb in the shade of some mulberry trees to profess their love.

When Thisbe arrives, she encounters a lioness fresh from a kill, she flees and leaves her veils behind as she runs. Pyramus arrives and sees the same bloodied huntress and assumes that she has killed Thisbe. Bereft, he falls upon his sword to join his love in the afterlife. As he falls, his blood splashes upon the white mulberries and stains them, turning them dark. Thisbe returns and finds Pyramus slain by his own hand, and grieves for her lost love. Then she takes his dagger and dispatches her own life. The Gods, hearing Thisbe’s lament, changed the color of the mulberry fruits to honor their forbidden love.

Feuding families . . . star-crossed, young lovers . . . a double suicide . . . If it all sounds familiar, it should, because it is a plot shared by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. He also later wrote a farcical version of the story in the play performed by the Rude Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Heady stuff to be thinking of while browsing the Chorsu Market in Tashkent.
(Words and Photo of Woman Selling White Mulberries by Laura Kelley. Illustration of Thisbe from Wikimedia)