    As the world stands silently by and watches the rape and destruction of
    Palestine, my mind keeps reverting back to another time and place.Even as I
    got the news today that my beloved village is being walled off and its lands
    stolen.

    First Love

    By Mike Odetalla

    I can't say for sure when it happened. Nor can I say for sure how it
    happened, but rest assured it happened. I had fallen hard for this, my first
    love. I was smitten but could not really explain how or why. I was a mere
    child who could not put into words the feelings that I had for this fair
    maiden, the true extent of which did not reveal themselves until much later
    on, only after I was separated from her. The vast distance between us only
    made me yearn more for her ever more. She was in my blood and there was
    nothing on this earth that could remove her.

    Her name is Palestine. The first time I laid my eyes on her was December 1st
    1960. That was the day that I was born onto her soil and drew my first life
    giving breath from her sacred air. She nourished me with food grown in her
    earth, watered by her dew and this mixed with and formed my flesh and blood.

    It wasn't until 1965 that I began to see and feel her beauty and warmth. I
    was an inquisitive and very adventurous child, raised in the village of Beit
    Hanina, a suburb of Jerusalem. I spent days upon days exploring the hills
    and trees that encircled the village of my youth: running from my family's
    fruit and olive orchards, to the caves in the hills; I was never at loss for
    adventure. A slingshot, handmade from olive wood and the rubber of a car
    inner tube, was my constant companion. All the children in the village had
    slingshots dangling from their back pockets: one's proficiency and
    marksmanship with a slingshot was a source of pride amongst the youth in our
    village.

    How can I describe such a love affair between a man and his land? The early
    spring mornings, richly colored hills alive with wild flowers, plants, and
    blossoming trees, which are watered by life-giving spring rains. Standing on
    the balcony - high, overlooking the valleys and outward to the hills - that
    was built by my great grandfather, I saw what he had seen, admired and
    loved: an ancient grape vine planted in the early 1900's, snakes its way up
    the staircase, covering the balcony, providing shelter and protection from
    the hot summer sun, its lush emerald canopy a source of shelter and its
    leaves rolled by my mother, grandmother and sisters with tender, loving
    hands into a staple of our daily food, as were the giant bunches of golden
    grapes, hanging just above my head, dangling in the breeze.

    I would climb the hills, where my other grandfather lived and scan the
    valley below, seeing my village, and the mosque's minaret - my compass from
    every point. To the west, my family's fruit orchards, a living carpet of
    green pink and white blossoms' the fields, hills, and valleys alive with
    village people tending their crops and orchards. Mule and horse drawn plows,
    tilling the orchards and open fields; turning over long, straight lines of
    fresh earth, as the plows dug up the dirt. Shepherds and their herds of
    sheep and goats, baby lambs born in the early spring months, dot the hills
    grazing on new grasses, plants, and flowers. To the east, my family's fig
    and olive orchards: fields of red poppies waving in the breeze. The women of
    the village roaming the hills, collecting a variety of herbs and plants to
    be used in our everyday lives to season our food and heal our wounds and
    illnesses. Whatever was not used immediately was dried and saved for later.
    My mother assigned me guard duty at the edge of one our groves where the
    plums and apricots were grown: my job was to keep the girls from neighboring
    girl's school away from the trees and their fruit. The girls loved to pick
    the small unripe and still green fruits: these are generally sour and they
    liked to dip them in salt and munch them for snacks, likewise, the green
    almonds, so abundant in Palestine. My mother, bless her, used to make
    pickles from just about anything: green plums, apricots, and almonds as well
    as the usual stuff like cucumbers, eggplant, and green tomatoes. All of our
    vegetables were grown in our own gardens.

    Summer, with its heat, helped ripen the golden apricots, plums of every
    color of the rainbow, fuzzy peaches and other fruits that were in abundance.
    The early summer months meant the apricot harvest, later the plums and
    peaches, and finally grapes and figs that ripen only in late summer. Nothing
    has stuck in my mind more than the early mornings, waking at dawn and
    running down to our orchards to collect fallen apricots from the ground:
    these were ripened by Mother Nature and still covered by the cool, early
    morning dew that waters the Palestinian countryside in the summer months in
    the absence of rains. I would select one of these golden beauties, lift it
    over my mouth and squeeze the drops of golden sweet nectar onto my tongue.
    The taste still lingers with me today, 35 years after the fact, never
    duplicated. What we did not consume, my mother transformed into jams and
    jellies - so that year round, we enjoyed the abundant and delicious fruits
    of our land.

    Fall ushered in the olive harvest: the most celebrated of harvests in
    Palestine. Olive trees can live for many hundreds of years and are a very
    vital part of Palestinian life. Cared for as one would for a newborn child,
    olive trees are synonymous with Palestine and her people. The orchards and
    their crops are an integral part of Palestinian life. The olive harvests
    were festivals: the hills and valleys become alive with people; entire
    families, scores of people carry ladders and sacks as they make their way to
    harvest their precious crops. The olive harvest was, by far, my favorite
    season of the year. I loved to be with my siblings as we picked olives and
    ate our meals under the very trees that my ancestors had planted and
    harvested before me: where they ate, like me, under the same trees hundreds
    of years before.

    After the harvest, olives are either turned, cracked and pickled or sent to
    the nearby presses to become the best cold pressed virgin olive oil on the
    planet. To this day, I still receive olive oil from my mother that is
    pressed from the olives grown on our lands: the same trees that my ancestors
    harvested and that I climbed and harvested as a youth.

    The winter months were spent in relative quiet indoors. There was no
    electricity in the village of my youth: we burned wood to heat our humble
    abode. A large metal barrel, with both ends cutoff, would be placed atop the
    round stove; the wood piled into the barrel and the fire lit. After the wood
    had become glowing embers, it would be carried inside to heat the house. Some used
    kerosene heaters but most used these simple wood-burning stoves that I
    loved. As kids, we'd take eggs and bury them in the hot ashes of the fire to
    roast; after a few moments they were ready to be taken out and eaten: the
    taste so much better than simple boiled eggs; sometimes we'd bury potatoes
    and other vegetables to get them cooked. The elders would make coffee and
    tea at the edge of the glowing embers.

    The winter months brought the much-needed rains, even the occasional
    snowfall: we kids absolutely loved the snowfalls. We would run outside to
    play in the snow, knowing full well that it would melt fast at it touched
    the earth. The sight of the snow-covered hills was a rare and awesome sight:
    olive trees covered in snow is also a sight to behold. Families huddled by
    the fire, exchanging stories and tales handed down for generations. We had
    an old radio, but we usually provided ourselves with our own entertainment,
    giving root to an indescribably feeling of closeness with community and
    family. Such was the life that made me fall madly in love with my beautiful
    Palestine. Her soil is intermixed with my blood; her air fills my lungs; her
    beauty forever displayed in the museum of my mind. One never forgets his
    first love.

    Today, my village is barely recognizable from what I remember. It is
    encircled now by Jewish settlements that seem to dominate and choke her.
    There is a Jewish only highway that cuts straight through the heart of my
    beloved village like a giant scar on an otherwise beautiful face. Most of
    the olive orchards have been destroyed and uprooted by the Israelis in their
    unquenchable thirst for land. The village is cut in half; its people are not
    allowed to travel from one side of the village to the other - not even when
    their lands are there. People are cut off from their lands, crops, orchards,
    more importantly, families by roadblocks, and soldiers. Palestine today, is
    a land bleeding and in pain. May the grace of God heal the wounds and mend
    its broken hearts so that she may know true peace.

    If I close my eyes and think hard enough, I can still see the things that
    made me fall madly in love with my homeland. Yes, she has changed. And yes,
    she has a few scars, some wrinkles and lines, but these only make me that
    much more attracted to her - my first and true love.

    Mike..." A seed in the Fruit of Palestine"
    Mike Odetalla
    Hanini@comcast.net
    "Come, I'll tell you about Palestine"  www.Hanini.org