IN STEREO

I’ve been working on this land for 17 years. Before, when I was a young boy with my family, we grew up on it. I mean, we grew up with love for the land since we were children. I can’t see my land messy without planting it. [But] you know, jobs don’t give the right income. I made my children study at universities. They consider the income of agriculture insufficient. I mean, for the effort they make. [But] my children [still] live off the land. The elderly who used to work and had experience passed away, [and] now the new young people like our children don’t have sufficient experience to work on the land, so that’s why the land doesn’t produce properly. Experience, they don’t have experience. So they plant the land [and] it doesn’t produce. I mean, one day we met at the hall, [and] many of the farmers were saying, “We don’t know what we’ll do! How will you teach us?!”

I went through all these matters. I mean, 17 years I’ve been planting. The method in order that agriculture succeeds: we have to plough first, to prepare the land. We have to weed. Now what we’re using is the drip irrigation method. All the agriculture became on dripping because, first, we save land; second, we save water. We want to use every drop of water [carefully]. Of course, we have to pick at the appropriate time. I mean, if I don’t pick the zucchini every day, for example, one day it’ll be big like this. That doesn’t work. I consider that land is the base, not the job. This is why I cling to it, because there’s a relationship between the land and me. But when going deep into the thing, you find that we say the land has a baraka [blessing]. I mean, I eat, I give to neighbours, friends… This makes them happy. [But] it’s difficult. – Fuad