October 7, 2023: Rain and olive trees
It’s raining. I love rainy mornings. October rain is particularly eagerly anticipated by Palestinians, especially my father. He’s on pins and needles for it. It’s the season for Palestinian festivals. People consider it a sign from Mother Nature, signaling the start of the olive season, a gesture from her to cleanse the grains with green gold, as they call it. This morning seems beautiful. In Palestinian slang, this time of year is called the “Jad al-Zeitoon” season, where the bond between the land and the people is renewed, and families gather to pick olives in an atmosphere of cooperation and joy.
My grandfather, born in 1898, “before the establishment of Israel and the British Mandate,” spent much of his life planting his land with olive and prickly pear trees – my family’s name ‘sabra” comes from their reputation for planting it. Over 80 years ago he established orchards that my father and my uncles then inherited. My grandfather lived a long life, nearly 100 years, and when he passed away his sons pledged to care for his trees as if they were their own children. My grandfather used to say, “The olive tree is like Palestine: its roots burrow deep into the earth; its branches are a symbol of peace, and its oil is the elixir of life.” Despite all the colonisers” attempts to steal his land, the Palestinian clings to it to every last inch of it, facing the Israeli thirst for annihilation with an even more steadfast determination for life, dying a thousand times, if necessary, only to rise back up with a newfound love for the homeland.
Every October, our family, from the youngest to the oldest, prepares for this season. My father has bought a new ladder, and my younger brother Mahmoud fetched out a large, elegant glass bottle he had put aside, to fill with oil, after the pressing, to give to his friend at school. Yes, in Palestine, we give olive oil as a gift and a symbol. A present for a friend, a reward for success, a blessing for a bride.
For me, I try to convince my father to buy a new tea kettle, but he insists on keeping the old one that has been so charred by fire over the years it’s now completely black. My father cherishes his things. He doesn’t let go of them easily, and shows endless fondness towards them. He is the same with his relationships. He always says, “The dearest things I own in this life are my land, my library, and you,” referring to us “his children”. I’ll let you in on a secret; throughout my childhood, I felt jealous of my father’s library because of his preoccupation with it. I used to chide him, “The dearest things you own in this life are me, me, and me… then your books. I’ll donate all your books to my school, if you don’t accept that.” “I’ll donate you,” he’d reply jokingly. “Or better still, I’ll sell you and buy more books with the money.”
Picking olives is as laborious as it is enjoyable. Tasks are divided among the group. One spreads out the mats on the ground, another undertakes to pick the olives from low-hanging branches, another climbs the ladder to pick those on the higher branches, and another prepares breakfast, usually skiving the bulk of the work to sip a cup of tea and wait for the others to join them. We pick the olives by hand, a method my late grandfather insisted upon. Others get machines or even chemicals to do the work for them. But my father says picking by hand is gentlest on the tree and causes it the least harm; it also yields the richest oil. The olives that fall on their own, or with a gentle shake of the branches, go for pickling and rather than being squeezed for their oil, for reasons of quality. They are the best.
The mats placed under the trees catch everything that falls. During the picking process, large leaves, old or sick ones, fall with the fruits and must be separated out before they’re sent for pressing or pickling. The separation process is done either with a large sieve or by exposing them to an air current, such as the waft of a palm frond.
Harvesting activities begin in the early hours of dawn. Our visit today is to prepare for the season, and we won’t start picking today. My four-year-old sister, Fatima, woke up and didn’t allow anyone else to sleep; the whole family has to wake up once she’s up. No one dares to break this rule, not even our cat Oscar. We prepare for the busy day ahead. We load the necessary items for the season into the car – ladder, ground mats, cooking pots – and head towards our land. We haven’t even had our morning coffee yet; we’ll have it on the land today. Once we’ve had breakfast, each of us will go about our separate tasks. On the way there, I receive a message from my writer friend Mahmoud El Basyouni reminding me of our meeting. Because he can be a bit bird-brained, I often skip some details that he considers important, so he’s chasing me. Mahmoud is publishing a sequel to his first novel, and we are planning a launch event. He knows I’m passionate about Arabic literature and poetry, and he chose me, “proudly”, to be the MC for the event.
As soon as we reached the land, and got out of the car, explosions began to echo in the distance. Consecutive explosions rattle off in time to our own heartbeats. What is this? Is it a new war launched by Israel? Didn’t they have enough bloodshed in previous wars and escalations? But these rockets are coming from Gaza. Is it a mistake in the resistance’s missile platform system? My questions are interrupted by the screams of my little sister Fatima, screams that fill the orchard. I hug her tightly and try to calm her down. Fatima is very attached to me, but I can’t seem to ease her shock. I remember this fear well. I have lived with it throughout my childhood. My lungs can’t forget it. The smell of gunpowder still lingers within them.
This is what it’s like for Gazan kids. Alongside the alphabet of letters, we learned the alphabet of wars. I was in the Arabic language test hall, when my eight-year-old heart was tested on this latter subject. We received our papers, and explosions began to thunder around us, their sounds creeping closer and closer to my school – the Cairo Elementary School, in the Rimal neighborhood. The words “war”, “escalation”, or “conflict” weren’t yet in my vocabulary, and I didn’t understand the subtle differences between them. We poured out from our desks, into the rows between exam tables, then out into the corridors of the school, screaming and stumbling. What is this? What will we do? Why is this happening to us? I wanted a hug that day from my mother. I remember needing it so badly, so I don’t leave Fatima for a moment. Panic gripped everyone that day, including the teachers and the administration. For the first time, I saw my teacher trembling with fear and crying. Then I knew it was serious. This was in late December 2008, when Israel launched a bloodthirsty war on Gaza, killing over 200 Palestinians on the first day alone. In this war, Israel used white phosphorus for the first time and has reused it in all subsequent wars on Gaza, despite it being banned internationally. They even used it in an attack on Al-Fakhoura school which is run by the UNRWA, killing 40 civilians.