DOTE Garden is a physical space in the city of Palermo, conceived and cared for by the collective Aterraterra. It is born out of Listening to Seeds, the third moment in our Year of Listening. You can visit the garden by reading the stories of the seeds that have been planted in it.
I brought seeds of chick-peas to plant in this common garden.
I grew up in the south of Lebanon, where the soil is very red, very soft and fertile.
As a child we used to stop at the side of the road, while driving from one place to the other, in the season when chickpeas made fruits, and buy a bouquet of chickpeas from children that would be standing there with their arms stretched out towards the road, waving to the cars passing by.
My father would put them in the back seat, between my brother and I. I remember the smell filling the car, because we would of course not wait to arrive anywhere, and we’d start opening the little green pockets on the green branches with our lips and teeth, and roll the green chickpeas on our tongues and under our teeth. I feel that the smell is that of the color green, very fresh and crisp. The skin outside is a bit salty and lemony somehow, the green chick peas are juicy and sweet.
We would share them in the car, making a carpet of leaves and skin under our feet. And when we’d arrive home my father would open a cold beer and drink to accompany the green chickpeas. I did that too when I grew up.
I like chick-peas because they are eaten in so many forms in Lebanon.
Roasted is another form. If they’d keep the skin then it is crunchy and hard, if they’d remove it then it is sticky and thick on the tongue. Sometimes they also grill them, so you’d have this smokey taste. Eating them in these forms is connected to passing time. To having a hand-full of them and enjoying a slow conversation or starring at something.
We bought them from old vendors on the sea boulevard, that roasted them in improvised small carriages, and rolled them in a paper cone to sell them. They changed the pace of my walking. I’d walk to the pace of putting my fingers into the cone, picking up a chick-pea and moving it towards my mouth, then the next. I enjoy the physicality of this, the memory of their movement and texture between my fingers.
One could also find a sweet variation; roasted and coated with pink, white or blue sugar. These are connected to feast days or celebrations. I never really liked those.
And there is of course the famous Humus. Which I think is also very interesting in relationship to the politics of food. The identity of humus, where does it come from, who labels it as local, how is it being branded and consumed in different parts of the world. How are we complicit through the food we buy in supporting systems and economies that do violence to local economies, to communities and enforce dominant narratives.
Besides eating it as a starter with the meza in Lebanon, we eat it in the morning on Sundays’ with fresh garlic, onions, cumin, olive oil and fresh warm bread. It can also be the lunch of workers during the week, with bread, olives, pickles and a cup of black tea afterwards.
I have a lot of memories making humus. Living in Amsterdam I almost never wanted to make it because of the excess amount of humus and variations on humus you’d find in supermarkets and restaurants. Everyone is eating it. It has been massively appropriated.
It was not special anymore making a Lebanese dish for my friend’s when they’d visit.
Living in Palermo now, I can’t find it in the supermarket, so I am making it again.
I wonder what happened to the producers of chickpeas, and its price if anything have changed in that economy due to this boom of humus. How many variations of the seed of humus are out there? When will my humus in Palermo taste like the one my uncle Yousef prepares for me every time I visit Lebanon?
Click here to read/see the different stories…
Photo by: Ségolène Bulot
