Our Dinner Today ~ Window Into Palestine

By Mike Odetalla

2-5-2005

www.Hanini.org

Today, my wife made a large pot of stuffed grape leaves for the family to eat for dinner. She had spent the better part of the day, carefully rolling the grape leaves into finger sized morsels. God bless her hands and talents, for she is one fantastic cook, ALMOST as good as my mother, and that is saying quite a bit!

Why am I writing about grape leaves at this time? Well let me explain and give some background to the grape leaves that we had for dinner today….

Back in 1969, 2 years after Israel invaded and conquered the West Bank, Palestinians were finally permitted to visit parts of Palestine that became Israel after 1948. One of those places was my father in-laws home village of Lifta. In 1948, the Zionists attacked and conquered Lifta, forcing the residents to flee, and the ones that stayed behind, were taken by truck and dumped into east Jerusalem, which was still in Arab hands! The Palestinian residents of Lifta left most of their possessions, homes, trees, and orchards behind as they instantly became homeless refugees! The Palestinian homes that remained had holes blown into their roofs and floors by the Zionists to insure that the villagers would not come back because their homes were now made “uninhabitable”!

In the summer of 1969, my father in-law ventured back to the village of his birth. It had been 21 long years since he had last set foot in his ancestral village. After walking around a bit, he came upon a large grapevine. With no one to take care of this vine, it had grown “wild” all over the courtyard of an abanodoned house in the village. After getting a closer look, he noticed large bunches of grapes were dangling from the vine. He ate a few of the golden grapes, their taste awakening his senses and bringing forth an avalanche of memories, and then decided to take a couple with him to his house in the Ramallah area refugee camp!

Once back home in his humble abode, he gave his daughters a “taste of home” by allowing them to each try the grapes of Lifta. As he and his family ate the grapes, they threw out the seeds in the flower beds that he had built in front of his house. A few weeks later, lo and behold, a grapevine was sprouting from the ground. One of the seeds had taken and was now growing into a grapevine, transplanted as it were, away from its home and surroundings, much like people of the village of the village of Lifta.

And so the grapevine grew and grew, with my father in-law tending to it as if it were a small child, watering and pruning it, it became his obsession, a passion. As it grew, he erected metal bars and wires overhead, covering entire front area of the house and the tiny little “courtyard” of his hovel in the dust choked refugee camp of Al-Khadura. The grapevine, much like a grateful “child”, rewarded the old man’s love and devotion, producing year after year, an abundance of grapes, “golden drops of honey” as he liked to refer to them. In fact, the grapevine, which eventually grew to cover the entire area surrounding the house, spilling over to the neighbors home, produced such an abundance of grapes, which he ended up distributing to his many neighbors in the overcrowded camp.

Also, apart from the tasty grapes, the grapevine’s tender young leaves proved to be ideal for stuffing and rolling into some of the best tasting grape leaves around because they had a naturally “tangy” flavor to them. Eventually, there were more tender grape leaves than his family could consume in a growing season, so they started to pack them away for use in the winter months, when fresh leaves were no longer available.

As in many rural parts of Palestine, up to the 1970’s, there was no electricity, and therefore no refrigerators or freezers to freeze vegetables and other staples for later use. Many Palestinians would “can” many vegetables, including grape leaves. My mother in-law though, thought that “pickling” the grape leaves took away from their flavor, she preferred to pick them fresh, roll them tight, and insert them through the small opening of plastic bottles, filling up the bottle as much as possible, them placing the cap on tightly and put them away, a crude and early form of vaccuum packing. This proved to be an ideal way to store the grape leaves, locking in the flavor, and freshness.

All of this brings me back to the tasty stuffed grape leave diner that my talented wife made for us today.

Last year, while we were in Palestine for the summer, my 88 years old father in-law would climb on a ladder each morning, reaching high to the new growths, and pick a couple of handfuls of grape leaves and hand them to my mother in-law. Seeing him teetering up on a ladder like that caused his daughters much worry, but he insisted on doing this himself, and would not allow anyone else to do this, claiming that they didn’t know the “prime leaves from grass”. One morning I asked him why he was doing this, and he replied that he wanted his grandchildren (my kids) to have the best grape leaves to eat when they went back to America.

Just before we left Ramallah for the last time, after many teary farewells, the most heart wrenching moment was when he hugged my youngest son Omar, holding him tight, and said, “I hope that when you come to visit me again next year, I will be here for you”, my sister in-law handed me 4-1 liter plastic soda bottles filled with the grape leaves that my father in-law had been picking each morning.

So you see, the grape leaves that we are eating today, have a history and a story behind them, much like the refugees of Palestine. They didn’t just appear from thin air nor were they “manufactured”…From a seed!

When we go back to Palestine in the summer of 2005, my father in-law will no longer be able to pick fresh grape leaves for us to take back to America. About a month ago, doctors amputated his leg, at first below the knee, then, the rest of it. The main reason for the amputation was the lack of access to medical treatment due to Israel’s oppressive and inhumane road blocks and checkpoints…

So as we sat down to eat our dinner today, I noticed that my wife’s eyes were welling up with tears as she asked God to “bless the hands that picked these”…

Mike Odetalla