"The most new York couple is: very sweet man that everyone loves with a wife way out of his league that he’s obsessed with."

That's the top rated comment on this TikTok about Rama Duwaji, the wife of Zohran Mamdani:

@cheflivvasquez These portraits of the incoming first lady of NY are incredible. #RamaDuwaji in her own words for #TheCut #zohranmamdani #NYC #themayorofnyc ♬ original sound - Pool Rules Comedy

ALSO: From The Cut: "The Artist in Gracie Mansion Rama Duwaji is excited for her husband Zohran Mamdani’s new job. Just don’t call her the mayor’s plus-one." Excerpt:

She brought... intentionality to her cover shoot, where she wore a mix of young designers alongside New York–based, POC-owned, and vintage brands, all on loan; she even wore a pair of ceramic hands made by photographer Szilveszter Makó, a nod to her own artistic practice. “I love fashion, and I love being creative and putting things together and styling things.” She’s spent years compiling the best stores for thrifting in the tristate area, even if she’s not ready to blow up their spot just yet. “I used to have a Google Maps folder with 50 different places. There’s some great ones in Queens. There’s some great ones in the Bronx,” she tells me. “If you have a car, New Jersey.”...

She teaches a ceramics class: 

She explains that the evening’s theme is “Tooty Fruity” — Duwaji has doodled the O’s as a pair of cherries — which she encourages guests to interpret as they wish or ignore altogether as they paint their tiles. She shares the visual references that inspired her, swiping through images of names carved into a watermelon, a butterfly made of root vegetables, a Palestinian flag made of produce, and covers of Fruits, the now-shuttered Japanese fashion magazine. There are pictures of Duwaji and her friends harvesting molokhia, a leafy jute plant popular in Arab cuisine, upstate; of the olive harvest in the West Bank, where Palestinians tend to their trees and pick up branches axed by Israeli settlers; and the kind of cheeky clip art that Middle Eastern aunties love to send their family WhatsApp chats. “I love how intertwined fruit is with the language we speak with our loved ones,” she says. 

ADDED: Duwaji gave no examples of that fruit talk. I guess we might call a beloved child a "peach." There's "apple of my eye" — a cliché that, I think, no one even understands. 

Looking for some good examples of love-as-fruit talk, I found this from Mother Teresa: 

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set."

 Khalil Gibran wrote:

"Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit."

And D. H. Lawrence wrote this poem, called "Pomegranate":

You tell me I am wrong.

Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?

I am not wrong.

 

In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women,

No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate trees in flower,

Oh so red, and such a lot of them.

 

Whereas at Venice,

Abhorrent, green, slippery city

Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes,

In the dense foliage of the inner garden

Pomegranates like bright green stone,

And barbed, barbed with a crown.

Oh, crown of spiked green metal

Actually growing!

 

Now, in Tuscany,

Pomegranates to warm your hands at;

And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns

Over the left eyebrow.

 

And, if you dare, the fissure!

 

Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?

Do you prefer to look on the plain side?

 

For all that, the setting suns are open.

The end cracks open with the beginning:

Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.

 

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?

No glittering, compact drops of dawn?

Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument,

            shown ruptured?

 

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.

It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.