My Home in Palestine, c. 1900
“My Home, and the Customs I Knew” from When I was a Boy in Palestine by Mousa Kaleel, 1914.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“My Home, and the Customs I Knew” from When I was a Boy in Palestine by Mousa Kaleel, 1914.
Houses in Palestine are usually built entirely of square stones. These houses are from seven to twelve meters (nine to fourteen yards) square, and generally of the same height. In other words, they are perfect cubes. A house is divided inside into two apartments, a lower and an upper one; in the lower one the chickens and other pets of the family stay, in the upper one live the people. The door is large, and is bordered by the most massive of the stones; the long one over the door extends even further than from one side of the door to the other. Each house has from one to three windows. These are very much like the door, only a little smaller. They have strong iron bars across them to keep out burglars, but these bars are rather far apart, so that many times when I have found the door closed, I have gone through the window.
The most conspicuous piece of furniture in the house is the van, a large store-box made out of hardened clay. In it may be found the provisions of the family, for the most part grain and dried fruits, such as figs and raisins. In one of the corners of the apartment is a large jar for drinking-water with a cover and a dipper, all made of the same material, baked clay. The people take much pride in these jars, and many fantastic and grotesque designs may be seen painted on them. In another comer of the house is another jar of the same size as the water jar, but older-looking and a bit heavier. In this the olive oil is stored.
The rest of the furniture consists of a large mat on the floor and many mattresses and quilts that are neatly folded and placed on boxes. Near these is the mill, a simple contrivance for grinding wheat. It is made of two flat, circular stones with a hole in the center of the top one. This hole fits over an iron bar which is fixed in the lower stone, and which serves as the axis for the grinding. The sound of the grinding is very weird and serves as an accompaniment to the singing of the women grinders. Grinding is quite an institution, and may be heard as early as four o'clock in the morning. It is while grinding that the women mourn their dead, or other past troubles, or sing of future hopes and successes. These songs are inspiring to both men and women, but to boys and girls they have a soothing effect, and the monotonous constancy of the sound drowns all the world with its noises, and promotes peaceful and prolonged sleep.
In a two-room house, one room serves as the kitchen and the women's apartment, and the other as the place for entertainment, where the men sit, eat, and chat together. It is in this room that the ceremony of drinking coffee is held. The men sit cross-legged upon the floor, while the owner of the house and his wife prepare the coffee. This is usually the method in the presence of guests. They roast green coffee berries in a long-handled iron ladle over coals burning in a clay brazier. Then they put the roasted berries into a wooden mortar, and pound them with a long stick that resembles a baseball bat. The man who does the pounding must have, besides the manual skill, a fine sense of music. He usually makes tunes resembling those obtainable from a drum.
The odor of the coffee is very pleasant. When the man has ground it quite fine, his wife puts it in a tin pot with a long handle.
Wealthy families generally use pots of brass. The coffee is allowed to cook over the brazier until it boils up in the pot several times, before it is ready to be served. It is not strained.
Coffee is served in tiny cups (“finjan”), of which there are usually no more than two in the family. The cups have no handles, and are not washed after each man drinks. Sugar is not commonly used, except for boys, cream or milk never. The order of serving is to begin with the oldest man in the company and so on down to the youngest, and then the host. This order is adhered to most rigidly. After coffee comes good-natured talk on general matters that savor of comfort and good-will. There is a tradition that a full cup of coffee is a sign of enmity, so the cups are not filled, and a small pot is enough for a surprising number. The coffee, however, is the most delicious of beverages, and the usual noisy sip with which it is drawn into the mouth is a sign of the drinker's satisfaction with the quality. So you see that coffee-drinking for the men serves the same purpose that grinding does for women. It gives them a very enviable poise.
When eating, most of the country people sit in a squatting posture on the floor around a common dish, which is usually very large and carved out of a log. Hands and spoon are hoth used. If the meal is eaten out-of-doors, passers-by are usually invited. It never happens that anybody present with the family at meal-time does not partake of the meal. In fact, he is almost forced to eat, and a refusal on his part is taken as a sign of coolness toward the family.
The first meal of the day is a light one, and is not eaten until the middle of the forenoon. It is very informal, and each member may eat whenever he or she is ready. Olives, olive oil, preserved fruits, and bread make up the breakfast of most families. In season, however, grapes and figs, with the sparkling dew still on them, are served daily. Fresh grapes may be had at all hours of the day for the picking, as the vineyards are seldom far away. Each family owns its vineyard, and most families own orchards of fig and other fruit trees. The second meal is served at noon or a little after, but the evening meal is the heartiest, because there is usually something cooked. Meat is a luxury seldom enjoyed, proving that it is not essential.
Early in the morning the head of the family and the other male members go to work. The women do the household work, while the children do the “running" for the family. By this I mean running errands and doing other light work, such as carrying food to men working at a distance. In the summer time, after harvesting and storing the grain, the vineyard season begins. The children spend most of their time in the vineyards, sleeping at night in little booths on top of the guard-houses. Many times I have slept under the blue sky, which is much more beautiful in Palestine than any sky elsewhere, because it is clearer and seems to have more stars. One can watch them moving. There are old men who, even though illiterate, can tell the time of night very closely by watching the positions of the stars, and who can call many of them by name. In the morning we used to find the bed-clothing soaked with dew. The grapes, of course, are all the more delicious when covered with dew, and many times when I woke in the morning did I reach after them.
The children spend the day playing games and eating grapes, and where there are fig trees, they set little traps for birds. These traps are very simple. First they bore a hole about five inches from one end of a stick; then they make the stick firm, tying it to a branch, while through the hole they pass a loop of string, tying one end of it to a bent bough. Finally they put a small twig whittled like a pencil into the hole, securely enough to hold the string which is looped over it, but not enough to stand any weight. On the top end of this whittled stick they place an open red fig, which is usually an irresistible attraction for birds. The bird wants the fig, and as all the other near-by twigs have been cut away, there is no other place on which to stand except the prepared twig. The bird's weight pushes down the twig, and the loop attached to the bent bough encircles its tiny feet. As many as five birds may be caught in one trap in a day.
Having no pictures or books, we boys had to do something for a diversion from the rest of our games. Old folk, wanting something to do, stir up an argument, and talk. We followed their example. We started arguments, only instead of talking we acted. Many a time we gathered our forces, all the boys in the neighboring vineyards, and proceeded to make war against boys in other neighborhoods. Our arms were oak clubs, smooth and worn with use, a few picked stones, and a sling. Thus armed we attacked.
Our first act was to start a disagreement by willfully trespassing, and taking grapes from their vineyards. They naturally resented our intrusion, and failing to get an excuse for our action, combat would ensue. First came a hand-to-hand, or rather, a fist-to-face affair, which continued until one side began to get the better of it. Then some of the defeated side would draw off a little and begin throwing stones. Their sure aims soon would begin to tell, and the boys on the offensive would disperse, and take up stone-throwing, both with the hand and with the slings, thus covering their retreat and preventing annihilation. We fought with stones as you do with snowballs, and very seldom inflicted any more damage with our weapons.
One of the games we used to play in the heat of the day, when we naturally were more inclined to rest, was what we called “Missrameh.'' There could be any number of contestants. The loose soil was smoothed and a circle marked on it, varying in size with the number of those wishing to play, then holes about four inches in diameter were dug in the circle. These were divided evenly among the players, not less, however, than three holes to each. To begin with, seven grapes were placed in each hole. The game started by a player taking all the grapes out of one of the holes, and putting one grape each in the other holes successively. Whenever the last grape was placed where there were an even number of grapes below seven, he took them as his gain. This was done until all players but one were out of grapes. This one, of course, is winner. The game, except that it encourages mental calculation, seems a dull one, and I fail to understand how we could play it for hours. Sometimes we broke up in a fight when some one was caught at crooked dealing.
The boys dread winters in Palestine, short as they are, for then they have to go to school. This is the only drawback to winter, however, because it is as short as may be reasonably expected. “First rain'' falls in the middle of November, but the “wet" season does not really begin until near Christmas, and continues until March. Rain falls only occasionally, and many pleasant sunny days are enjoyed, even in January. Roughly speaking we have about twenty-five inches of rainfall a season. In some seasons we have a few inches of snow. The boys take advantage of this by going up on house-tops and testing the accuracy of their aims with snowballs. Although short-lived, for the sun melts the snow in a few hours, it is great sport.
The rest of the year, that is, from March to November, is summer, during which we have no rain, generally speaking. Some days of summer are hot, but the nights are all cool and refreshing. April and May are the most delightful months of the year and are well adapted for travelling and sightseeing. Everything is budding, and flowers are at their best. Harvest begins with spring, and then follows the fruit season. After the fruit season, or, rather, during the latter part of it, comes the time to gather in the olives.
Men climb the trees and beat the olives from the branches with long sticks, while women and children gather them off the ground. When it comes from the tree, the olive has a milky juice of a peculiar bitter flavor, so to make olives fit to eat, they pickle them in a strong solution of salt, in which they must remain for several months to take away the bitter taste. The best and ripest of the olives are picked to be treated with this solution for home use; the rest are taken to the press in order to extract the oil. The olives are first placed in a large, round stone receptacle with a flat bottom, on which runs a large stone roller. This roller has a double revolving motion; it turns upon its own axis and also around a central pivot. A mule usually does the turning. The crushed mass is then carried to the press in coarse baskets. There the juice is put in hot water. The oil comes to the surface, and the impurities are suspended in the water.
An olive tree is of much value, for it takes from ten to fifteen years to bring it to a fruit-bearing state. Olive oil is much used in Palestine for cooking and lighting; sometimes it is used to dress wounds.
After having stored his crops, the peasant of Palestine is now ready for another winter.
Kaleel, Mousa. When I was a Boy in Palestine. Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co. 1914.
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