I've been back in Dubai a little over a week promoting my book, @Home in Dubai, and I'm staying in my old compound with a very dear friend. She still uses Mohammed, the same gardener we both used while I lived in Dubai and it reminded me of a little story I wrote about one day when I pulled in my driveway and he was up in the palm tree in the front yard. I thought I would share it for a little change of pace!
Dates...They
Grow on Trees!
Our
first summer living in Dubai brought with it the harvesting of dates.
What a novel idea. I had never really thought about where dates come
from. I’m not a big date fan so I never had a burning desire to find
out...and then one day…
I
drove into the driveway on hot and steamy day and saw Mohammed the gardener up
on a ladder on one of my palm trees in the front yard. I adore
Mohammed. He has a great smile and infectious laugh. Every day he
would come to take care of my yard he would greet me with a hand over his heart
and we would always exchange a word or two and a laugh. I’m not sure what
we laughed about since his English was limited but we always seemed to be able
to make ourselves understood and often ended our conversations with a high
five. Anyways, I got out of my car, waved and smiled.
“Hi
Mohammed. Looks like you’re working hard today.” It looked to me
like he was cutting down these nasty looking pods at the top of my beautiful
palm trees that had gone to seed (or so I thought). He had a plastic
grocery bag in his hand that he was putting the pods in.
I
was expecting his usual broad grin but he hurried down the ladder, looked at me
very sheepishly, hung his head and said, “Sorry madam.”
Puzzled,
I asked, “Sorry about what?”
He
handed me the bag of nasty green seedy pod thingys and said sorry again.
“No,
no. That’s fine. These needed to be cut down. They look
terrible,” I said pushing the bag back at him. “I’m so glad you went
ahead and did it.”
Then
I finally got the familiar big grin as he realized that I had no clue what they
were. “Here,” he pushed the bag back at me. “It’s dates madam.”
I
looked at him confused, “Dates?” They were green! But then as I
looked more closely there were some that were a golden yellow and others that
were a light brown. To my untrained eye they looked like they were
rotten.
He
nodded enthusiastically and handed me one and then bit into another one.
I wrinkled up my nose in mock disgust but he made mmm-mmm noises and pushed my
hand, encouraging me to taste mine. Now, as I said before, I’m not a big
date fan but things usually taste better right off the vine, so to speak, so I
was willing to give it a try so I bit into it. I won’t say that I was
blown away by the taste but I had to admit that it wasn’t bad. I smiled
at him and nodded. “You’re right. They are edible and they do taste
like dates.”
It
took me a minute but it eventually dawned on me then that he thought I would be
mad that he was “stealing” my dates. I reassured him that I wasn’t mad at
all and he could have all the dates he wanted. I would keep just a few
for my husband to try but insisted he take them all. You would have
thought I had given him the moon he thanked me so profusely. You just
never know, do you?
Dates
are actually a very special crop in the UAE and there in my front yard were two
DATE PALMS. Who knew? Good thing I didn’t cut them down as
apparently I would have received a hefty fine. I learned that there are
even date growing competitions and an annual date festival held in the
summer. There are numerous varieties of dates as well. There’s
actually an International Date Palm Conference held every year in the UAE where
date palm scientists and experts from all over the world share their knowledge
and experience to the benefit of date lovers everywhere.
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