Olive Harvest in Financial Times
Zaytoun on December 25th, 2008Fiona Dunlop recently visited Palestine as part of the Zaytoun harvest trip. Below is a piece she wrote for the Financial Times about her experience.
Pressed into service
By Fiona Dunlop
Published: December 20 2008
In the shade of gnarled olive trees, their leaves stirred by a gentle breeze, we look out over endless Biblical hills of chalky limestone. As the muezzin’s call reverberates across the valley, Mashour, a Palestinian farmer, joins us and we tuck into a glorious picnic of meze as intensely flavoured as any I have tasted.
The fresh ingredients, simply combined, have produced a concentrated tomato dish laced with grassy olive oil, velvety foul (fava bean stew) with even more swirls of oil, mutabal (smoky aubergine, garlic and tahini purée) seasoned with lemon juice and oil, creamy labneh (yoghurt cheese), and, of course, hummus - all mopped up with flat bread that we saw baked just hours earlier by the farmer’s wife. The extra virgin oil, barely a week old, is exquisite, cold-pressed from olives that have been cultivated in the surrounding hills for thousands of years. Without that oil, Palestinian food would fade away.
Above us the layered branches are so thick with olives that they resemble huge bunches of plump grapes. This has been a bumper year.
Stripping them by hand is satisfying, leaving hands dirty but unscratched and surprisingly smooth. No wonder the Myceneans used olive oil as a base for ointment.
The farmer is grateful for the help as, with only a few weeks to harvest, the pressure is on. Throughout Palestine, picking is manual and, therefore, labour-intensive though this supposedly produces better quality oil than when trees are mechanically shaken, as in most of Europe. One of Mashour’s workers is agile Abu Hassan who, at 54, is as prolific as a father (he has 23 children) as he is at picking olives.
Clambering round the top branches like a goat, he descends only to pray, drink tea or swap trees. Mashour’s day starts at dawn when he climbs the terraced hillside with his donkey and ends late at night when a friend drives him and his sacks of olives to the nearby press.
One thing is for sure, I discover, these olives will not be going to Nablus, the nearest Palestinian town and most logical marketplace. On a trip there, I learn that getting truckloads of olives through the checkpoint is an insurmountable problem. No profit can compensate for the long hours of waiting, unloading, being searched and reloading. I stop off at the Toukan soap factory, a surviving landmark of the town’s 19th-century heyday, to find out where they source their olive oil. “Italy,” replies the manager. “It’s cheaper and I can get large quantities without any problem.”
As far back as the 14th century, Nablus’s oil and carob paste were lyrically praised by Ibn Battuta, seven centuries before Israel named Nablus the capital of terrorism and bombed it heavily in 2002. It is a chilling feeling to explore a street market where the stone walls are plastered with posters of so-called martyrs clutching AK-47s.
Yet this is the case inside the peeling medina. Slipping through an archway into a shadowy alleyway, I instantly smell za’atar, a zesty Palestinian seasoning of wild herbs and sesame seeds, as well as that timeless Middle Eastern aroma of sweet tobacco. Deep crimson pomegranates are plentiful but not squeezed as in Ramallah or East Jerusalem. Instead the street tipple of choice served by bell-ringing vendors turns out to be nauseatingly sweet. Discreetly I spit it out - not quite the delicious liquorice and carob juices that I have read about.
Nablus’s narrow lanes hum with gastro-activity, foul and falafel-makers, bakers, tea-stands and of course narguileh cafés where Biblical-looking old gents in white keffiye puff, chat and drink tea for hours. I join them for a refreshing sage tea and we discuss the origins of local streetfood. Foul ? Egypt, I suggest. No no, Palestine, they reply. Falafel ? Lebanon, I say tentatively. No, they laugh, wrong again - it’s Palestine. Hummus ? No conclusion is reached about this regional obsession. Middle Eastern food is as complex as its politics, and the borders just as disputed.
Armed with the address for the best kunafeh (cheesecake) in town, I leave my new friends. Past a mosque and an Ottoman bell-tower I find a lone man working in an open-sided, tiled kitchen beside a mountain of metal trays. This is kunafeh central, producing the top Al-Aqsa brand.
Unhurriedly, the cook shifts from one huge platter to another, smearing them with ghee, then a thick layer of goat’s cheese, which bubbles gently over a burner before receiving a final topping of semolina and almonds. Once baked golden-brown, the cheesecake is drizzled in syrup.
Across the side-alley, a steady flow of customers enters the café to devour a hot slice at table or have a box filled to take away. I at last indulge in this perfect textural mix, comfortingly sweet, highly addictive.
Back in the market, my harvester’s heart leaps as I spot sacks of firm, fresh olives, pale green, pink and deep purple, backed up by recycled plastic bottles of that familiar liquid gold. But considering the thousands of trees in the rolling white hills around Nablus, the quantity on sale is laughable, probably the production of one extended family.
There are an estimated 10m trees in Palestine and about 100,000 families depend on them, yet vast quantities of oil remain unsold due to the occupiers’ restrictions. The contradictions mount up but the oil, when you can get it, is sublime.
Website here
www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26975b8c-cbcd-11dd-ba02-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
