|
 A clear sky requires a date. No cloud. To the sun from morning to evening. Inferno Arabian! No wonder the Arabs even put together a proverb, which translates like this: "A date has its feet in the water, and its head is on fire!"
Another translation sounds no less definite: "The date has its feet in heaven, and its head is in hell!" However, why does a palm tree need such an amazing heat, no one really knows. We noticed something else: as soon as the disk of the daylight appears above the horizon, the date immediately stops growing. And it doesn't grow all day. But for the night it makes up for all the lost.
For all that, the palm tree does not come out of the cloudless fryer and does not dare to appear in the edge of clouds and clouds, in the humid tropics, except for certain varieties ... Fruits especially suffer from rains. If it rains, they will crack, sour, and then completely rot on the tree. In order not to lose the harvest, paper bags are put on the bunches of fruits. And this is troublesome and expensive.
In the dry desert, the date is the only tree that doesn't need an umbrella. All others need and survive only under the canopy of the desert guard. And lemon, and orange, and pomegranate. Above them a tall date rises like a pine in a felling. It happens 20 meters in height, or even all 30! And in such unbearable heat it lasts for a hundred years. People also enjoy the welcoming shade. The soldiers of Richard the Lionheart, having fallen ill with malaria, survived, only fleeing under the shadow of dates. True, young palms, like all young creatures, are somewhat more sensitive to heat. When they are planted in the hot desert sand, some of the leaves are cut off, and the remains are tied in a bunch and wrapped in old newspapers. And they stand for long days in chains, like strange sheaves on stubble.
In the Arab East, dates are like bread. They are pressed into loaves, after removing the bones, and cut into slices for dinner. They say that a good housewife can cook a new dish of dates every day. And so for a whole month! In fact, however, this rarely happens. Arabs are restrained in food and often eat just a few dates with an unleavened flat cake, washed down with cold water.
Of course, any unusual food needs a habit. The French traveler D. Palgrev, having entered the borders of Arabia, tried to switch to Arab food, but at first he was tired of the sugary dish. However, he gradually became involved and then could no longer do without these gifts of the desert. It happened that for several days he could not buy dates anywhere. In his notes, he admitted that he could not resist the temptation and in one of the oases climbed into a strange garden behind them, jumping over the fence. There the owner overtook him, but, having learned what was the matter, he let him go in peace, providing him with a sufficient amount of provisions.
Another story is told. A certain literate, who was invited to read the letter, could not fulfill the request - there was no lamp at hand. Resourceful owners made a vessel out of dates, poured oil into it and inserted a wick. The literate read the letter, and took the lamp as an indemnity. Throwing away the wick, drank the oil and ate it with a vessel!
Loves dates and all kinds of animals. Doves and turtle doves eat both fruits and bones. Migratory birds, probably, would take their crops clean, but it helps that there are few oases and the bulk of them fly by without stopping. Ants are not indifferent to sugary fruits. They have to hang the precious product in pillowcases from the ceiling. An inexperienced traveler, in doing so, pays for his lack of intelligence. Dates give juice. At night he drips on the weary traveler. The dress is impregnated with sticky glue. And since the water in the desert is always tight, you have to continue the journey in candied clothes.
Growing a palm tree is not easy at all. The "legs" of the palm, as it was said, should be in the water. And she is not always there. Sometimes deep.We have to dig a hole and plant a palm on the bottom. There, and the shadow will serve her at first. You look down from the mountain at the green oasis - all the palm trees, both old and young, are sitting in holes.
But the main difficulty is pollination. The date is like a willow. His trees are different. There are men and women. Two or three men are put on a hundred women. At the time of flowering, pollen is carried in clouds, but does not always fall on the stigmas of flowers. You have to climb first onto the male trunk, cut off the inflorescence, then go down, rearrange the ladder to the female palm tree and tie a useful decoration there. The date owners sadly joke about this: "We don't even have a day off for a holiday!" After all, there are 30 million palm trees in Iraq alone. Go pollinate everyone!
Fate has not always been favorable to the first tree of the desert. They bred them a lot - and then the blessing descended on the avaricious Arabian land, then hordes of enemies flew in and cut them clean (it was considered a military valor!), Then they taxed dates with such taxes that it became meaningless to keep them.
By the end of the first millennium AD, a lot of dates were cultivated. In 1106, the Russian traveler Abbot Daniel entered Jericho. The city was buried in trees, and it was called Palmograd. The crusaders who stormed Jerusalem would have been swollen with hunger if not for the dates. It was their only food. Palm plantations stretched along the shores of the Dead Sea, and it did not look dead at all.
By the beginning of the 14th century, the trees in Palestine had thinned out, and only Jericho was still basking under their feathery foliage. But now the 15th century ends. 1488 year. Already in vain they are looking for palm trees in Jericho. There are three trees left for the whole city, and even those without fruit. They ask a local resident: "Where to get at least a bunch of dates?" Answers: "There was one tree eight years ago, but now it is no longer ..."
1833 year. Jericho has a single barrel. 1866 year. Another traveler writes: “Alas, the last palm tree died out in Jericho, and its graceful crown no longer sways over the plain that gave its name to the city of Palms. Dates have also disappeared along the shores of the Dead Sea, and only archaeologists, sorting through crushed limestone, find their fossilized remains ... "The result sounds even more sad:" And where all this splendor disappeared, it is difficult to imagine. "
Despite all the perturbations, the date continues to live. The Arabs pass along the chain of generations: "The date is your life, take care of it!" And they cherish. Experts believe that M. Yu. Lermontov was misled when he wrote his "Three Palms". The caravan, which had found shelter at the foot of the palm trees, could not cut them down. On the contrary, they tried to plant palm trees along the route of the caravans.
How is a palm tree planted? This is a special art. A scion is taken from an old tree. It's safer than sowing seeds. The scion will give the same variety. It is not yet known what will turn out from the bone. There is one more inconvenience: if you sow seeds, half of the male trees, half of the female trees will grow. What to do with so many men? But in Egypt, seeds have been sown from time immemorial. In Spain too. And therefore half of the trees there do not bear fruit. Of course, palm trees are good in themselves - with shade and beauty. But the practical Spaniards have found completely unusual uses for male trunks.
They arrange a holiday in honor of the date - Palm Sunday. Something like our New Year tree. Leaves are cut from male trunks when they see this beautiful tree at the edge of the salty sea.
"Look," they say, "the date is not afraid of salt." And they point to the surf foam that rolls over the root paws of trees during a storm.
In fact, the date is also afraid of salt, but where it comes to the very shore, fresh ground water splashes near the surface. It is she who leads newcomers to false conclusions. And they planted a date at the edge of the surf not because they wanted to ask a riddle for beginners, but out of need. The fact is that, although this plant is considered unpretentious and can grow on anything, the result is deplorable. A date will be planted on a mountain, on a hill, where it is far from the groundwater, it grows, but does not bear fruit.The Arabs also have a saying on this score: "Stupid as a palm tree on a hill!"
Understanding date fruits is also an art. They can be soft, like marmalade, semi-soft and dry. Dry - so hard that they clatter like stones in a tin can. Fruits of soft varieties are also hard if they are not ripe. The connoisseur can determine by taste the country from which the fruits came. The best dates come from the south of Iraq, and in the north of the Libyan Desert they do not always have time to ripen properly. Among the many varieties, there is one seedless. It is grown in only one place - near the village of Kerman in Iran. The fruits are slightly smaller than usual. But in the USA, a variety was bred with large fruits, like Murom cucumbers. True, with bones.
For sending abroad, dates are carefully packed so that as little air as possible remains between the fruits. It is believed that you can achieve high quality packaging only by using your own bare feet. For this purpose, one of the packers gets into the basket after taking off his shoes. The second one gradually pours fruits, and the first walks on them and kills them with his weight. Bare fingers feel well where the goods are not tight. By the way, for harvesting, palm trees also climb barefoot on the trunk. They believe that this is safer and more reliable.
The bulk of palm trees are in southern Iraq, along the Shatt al-Arab river. There are 14 million of them - a fifth of the world's reserves!
And it’s a shame that this is the richest place on earth with dates that is causing the Iraqis a lot of anxiety. Geographer from Moscow State University Ali Abdel Kerim Ali tells the following story. In the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which merge to form the Shatt-el-Arab, the palm tree has been considered an inviolable plant for centuries. Even one and a half millennia BC, the king of Babylon Hammurabi issued a law: whoever cuts down at least one date tree must pay a fine of 225 grams of silver. This was the world's first conservation law!
But times have changed. The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are more and more used for different needs. Shatt al-Arab grows shallow. And the sea waters, which twice a day with high tide, fill the ancient river, are now not diluted, as before, with the fresh water of the Tigris and Euphrates. And the salt water now irrigates the roots of the dates during the flood. And then the channel is being built Shatt al-Arab - Basra. He will dump the waters of the El Hammar swamps not into the river, but bypassing it - into the bay. And oil refineries were built along the banks. They clogged the waterway so much that the fish disappeared.
And the palms began to ache. Little by little they dry up. And near the cities many groves were cut down - it is necessary to build. Yes, and fellahi were drawn to the city: it is difficult to feed on dates, prices are low. So gradually the date splendor created by millennia collapses.
A. Smirnov. Tops and roots
|
