In Lebanon, families that moved to Beirut have a daya’a, or hometown away from the capital city, that they each originally come from. Even for those who were not born in these hometowns, when asked where you’re from, the person asking is usually inquiring about your daya’a. It is the place you go on holidays or weekends not only to escape the city’s humidity but also to do your duty as a grandchild: to check on your elders. Although it can be problematic when elections roll around - you have to vote according to your roots rather than your place of residence - there is something tender about retaining this connection to those who came before you. My father’s family is from a town on the southern Lebanese border with Occupied Palestine and therefore I am part of this too. Although I was not born there and I did not grow up there, the rope tying me to my late grandmother’s ochre stone house gets tugged every October when her olive groves bear fruit.
The olive tree is, according to Columella’s De Re Rustica (c. 1st century A.D.) the first of all trees. Carbon dating of ancient olive pits have indicated that the tree has existed in Anatolia and the Mediterranean Basin for at least 8,000 years but pollen and fossil analyses tell us that they could even date back even further. Olive oil production is documented on the walls of Ancient Egypt’s Saqqara, dating back to 2500 BC, and olive cultivation was known to have been spread across the Mediterranean via the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans.
In Lebanon, the oldest huddle of trees grows in Bchaaleh, a northern daya’a at 1350 meters above sea level, but robust, capillaceous trunks can be found all across the Mediterranean coasts carrying many symbolic meanings to the communities that nurture them. One of the most widely known is in the story of Noah’s ark, where a released dove brings back an olive branch after the floodwaters have receded. In other religious and mythological references, the tree’s sprigs are signs of hope, growth, and peace. Commonly a source of income, lamp fuel, soap, and a basic ingredient for the Mediterranean diet, olive trees and the oil they bring forth have long been the sacred vessel of a hallowed liquid.
In neighboring Palestine, where olive trees have been cultivated for at least 5750 years, many have been uprooted, harvested, or burned by Israeli settlers. These plants are slow growers and providers of life’s essentials, which means the forced removal or death of a tree can be an emotional loss that cuts much deeper than the sudden death of a house succulent. They’re an emblem of generations past.
The oldest trees in my grandmother’s groves on the border were planted by my great-great-grandfather on a plot called khalit el lawzeh. The name, which means “slope of the almond tree,” is indicative of what that land was home to before our trees took hold. As his trees continue to persist in the soil for decades, they are physical proof of my family’s intervention there and they are tied to our identity in and with the daya’a. Through these olive trees, we know we have been rooted in this land for a century at least.
All olives are naturally green. Darkness equals ripeness but they all grow on the same tree. In the sunlight, the tree tops look like sea waves, and each day the olives take on a new skin. A grove’s palette has three main hues from a distance: silvery green speckled with dots of plum floating over brick-red earth. When the olives begin their transformation from green to purple and the trees carry droplets of all the spectrum of colors in between those two colors, it is time for harvest.
My grandmother, or teta, passed away in the last week of October 2018 and her funeral was the first time I’d made the drive to our daya’a before this cascade of olives dropped into the red earth under them. I had somehow managed to miss it every year, being too caught up in school or work. Nevertheless, evidence of these missed harvests still made it to my immediate family’s kitchen in Beirut. Tanks of opaque olive oil and tubs of olives were so ubiquitous at home that we would forget that city-slickers had to pay for them. For us, they were just there.
That October, the trees were loaded with indigo orbs by the time my grandmother fell asleep forever on her couch by the balcony. There, she could look out to her swaying trees, the ones she planted well before she was a grandparent with Alzheimer’s. It was that week spent in my daya’a after her passing that I realized I didn’t know enough about her or her trees because I hadn’t asked enough questions when she could’ve still told me the answers. This haunts me now and our country’s repeated rounds of carnage have made me unforgivingly aware of how fickle life is. More often than I’d like, I think about my parents dying, troubling thoughts which have kindly made me more patient and quieter with them. I catch myself consciously giving them space to speak and I start to miss them even though they’re not gone.
This year, thanks to a global pandemic and a non-nuclear explosion that rocked the city of Beirut, our family has had more time to spend tending to the dusty-green trees that hug my grandmother’s ochre house. The lower olives were picked by hand and the branches out of reach were whacked with a stick so their olives came raining down. For days, the gentle sound of olives dropping onto a tarp underneath each tree was the meditative beat that marked the steady passing of time.
The majority of this harvest was sent in burlap bags to the village press. While we could have had them pressed with machines, we opted instead for the traditional iffayyeh, or layer method that is essentially a form of cold-pressing. After the olives were ground into a paste at the mill, they were packed into woven pouches stacked high on a grooved cart. Pressure was then applied to each stack so that it shrinks like a closed accordion. The oil flowed out the grooves.
Unlike the oil we see in supermarkets, our freshly-pressed oil was a high-acid, bright, borderline-fluorescent green. The oil has a smell I have known my entire life but for once, I was watching the Mediterranean’s signature scent being born with a pungent punch of sea salt and earthy citrus. There was sweetness too. I thought the oil from the khalit el lawzeh trees tasted of banana and nuts and my father scoffed at me until he tried it. As this kitchen staple settles through the year, its murky color and potency will soften into an almost-odorless golden, translucent green.
After all the juice was extracted, the coveted jifit, or olive pomace, that was left was packed up and brought home to be used this winter as organic tinder for the oven and furnace that still run on wood. There is no waste when it comes to these cherished trees.
For the olives that were not sent to the press, we crushed them open gently with a wooden mallet (these olives are known as marsous, or cracked) or we cut them longitudinally with a knife (mjarah, or wounded). Then we washed them with water until the liquid ran clear and left the fruit to soak for a day so their bitterness died down. For emallah, or salted olives, the day-soaked batches were stored in jars with coarse salt, halved lemons, lemon leaves, and some chili peppers. The extra salt speeds up the curing so those were on the breakfast table a week later. The others preserved in brine take months to be ready to eat.
With every step of the process, I asked questions: how we washed the olives, why we crushed them first, how we were going to press them into oil, and how long the others would have to sit on shelves in reused mason jars. Most of the time the answer my father or aunt would give would end with, “I don’t know why, that’s just how my mother would do it.” In a time when we needed it most, the harvest of 2020 brought solace. To be in the shade of trees that have seen my ancestors through their days, picking drupes off a branch felt like I was tapping into their collective memory. It gave me some answers but it taught me to ask more questions when I have them. It made me appreciate what goes into each jar. And despite the flood we have been wading through as a country, the trees continuing to stand tall gave me hope.
About a month later, my father left his family groves and visited the legendary centennial trees in Bchaaleh in the north. There he found that the two old men who act as the grove’s guardians were actually father and son. Naturally, my father asked the 96-year-old for his secret to a long and fulfilling life. “Zeitoun kil yom,” was his reply. Olives, everyday.
As someone who wishes she could always have fresh olive oil, I love this. I hope your family's trees stay safe and sound.
Thank you for your beautiful writing. May peace reign in all the olive groves of the world