A farmer’s tale

By Nesreen | April 1st, 2008 | No Comments

My mother is a country girl, sort of speak. She is no longer in the countryside and she is no longer a girl, but if you knew her, you would think to yourself that you met yourself a country girl. I say this in an entirely respectful, sense, one full of praise.

My mother is 70 years old. She was raised in a West Bank village called Taybeh, only a hamlet really these days. Taybeh is famed for being the site of an authentic Palestinian brewery and now, an Octoberfest. I suppose in some ways Taybeh has grown up. But Taybeh remains a special place where, like much in the Holy Land, the old resides lethargically with the new. The terraced hillsides lined with olive trees as ancient as their hollowed ground don’t seem to mind the brewing tanks and casks, the smell of ferment wafting in the air.

Taybeh is were my mom grew up, and while it has changed, I can still imagine life as she had lived it here. I can see her blowing out the wick from her oil lamp before sleep or in the day helping her mother cure or press olives or her father pluck them from the trees. When she was sleepy, I can imagine the tree where she napped under the shade of its generous boughs. Or the fields from where she picked the wild chamomile flowers, with ochre hills on one side of her view and terraces on the other.
Farming has been a way of Palestinian life for two thousand years. Sure there are Internet cafes, burger joints and grid-supplied electricity in some homes nowadays, but Palestinians, when they can reach their fallow fields or aged trees, still farm. They still cure their olives, always preferring the smaller green ones for their bitter taste.

In fact throughout Palestine, the olive harvest remains a tradition that sustains the people there economically as well as culturally and spiritually. To explain the connection Palestinians have to their olive trees would be like trying to describe the devotion a Catholic feels when taking communion. It’s not that you have to be there, but you do have to care as much, and if you don’t it can be difficult to imagine.
My mother still has this reverence for olive trees, and I know that she misses the village where she grew up sometimes. More so, I think, now that she’s older. Yet for mom, being back in her village is more painful than not being back. She can go because she’s an American citizen but she will not be shielded from the conflict’s many manifestations that will await her. I know she won’t go back for now, though maybe she’ll return again soon. Until she does, she’ll just continue to keep Palestine with her in a private way.