ALKHOBAR, 23 March 2007 — Despite the best efforts of the municipality, downtown Alkhobar is mostly a concrete jungle. A few trees and flowers sprout up along the main thoroughfares, but it isn’t green by any means. However, nestled behind a supermarket shopping center, near the cross of 4th and King Fahd Streets, is a lovely little vegetable garden.
It’s not a standard country garden mind you. In fact, it’s quite a city sort of garden. That said, this little patch of earth has become the attraction of the neighborhood. Just imagine, you’re walking down the street in a commercial district and suddenly your brain tells you that you’ve just passed tomatoes growing out of the wall of a hubbly-bubbly shop. Many folks have had to stop and take a second look.
“Once in a while I’ve had minor problems with local youngsters tearing off a tomato and smashing it to the ground, but more often I see entire families admiring my tomatoes and peppers. Gardening is a hobby that I enjoy, so it makes me smile when others find delight in it too,” said Abdurabu Muhammed Abu Mustafa. “Many children raised in cities have never seen vegetables on the vine. I’m really happy to see their little faces filled with wonder as they understand for the first time that the food they eat doesn’t come from supermarkets.”
Abu Mustafa grows his vegetables in two long concrete planter boxes outside the windows of his shop. These are the flower boxes that in business districts of the Kingdom are often planted with shrubs or Bougainvillea or even more frequently, just left filled with sand and used for the disposal of cigarette butts. Since the weather is fine, Abu Mustafa is growing tomatoes, peppers, dill, basil and luffa gourds. He recently harvested seven kilograms of green tomatoes from his garden. These he sliced in half and then combined with water, vinegar, salt and lemon, before packing them in jars to make tomato pickles.
Abu Mustafa’s family is originally from Khan Yunis in Gaza and even though he’s been living in Saudi Arabia for 26 years, he still maintains contact with them. His relatives send him vegetable seeds from there; he expects radish seeds any day now.
“The seeds I grow come from plants that have long been grown in hot temperatures with limited amounts of water, so they are well adapted to this climate,” Abu Mustafa said. “Even in the summer they only have to be watered every other day. In the winter, I water all of them once a week. It is impossible to grow anything accept certain herbs in July and August, but the rest of the year I am able to grow different kinds of vegetables. I really don’t like to eat any vegetables from the supermarket. They are so inferior.”
To demonstrate his point, Abu Mustafa went and pinched off the top of a dill plant, which Palestinians call “eye of locust.” He crushed the herb between his fingers and said, “Smell this. The scent is so strong. It isn’t like the dill you buy from the market. Even if I wash my hands three times, you’d still be able to smell the dill on my fingertips. All the goodness is missing from the vegetables sold at the market because of the commercial nature of the farms where they are grown.”
While his planter garden is a hobby, it’s not something that Abu Mustafa takes lightly. He has been growing vegetables outside his shop for the last four years and he believes that his crops make a significant contribution to his family’s good health. With the price of vegetables rising due to inflation, it is also a way to stretch his income. He tends his crop alone, mostly early in the morning before he opens the shop for business and he doesn’t use any chemicals or insecticides on the plants.
In addition to planting familiar vegetables, Abu Mustafa likes to grow plants that are commonly found in Palestine, but can’t be purchased in Saudi Arabia.
“Every year in the cool months I grow ‘hamsees’ or Sheep Sorrel,” he said. “I have only occasionally seen this plant growing wild by the roadside in the Kingdom after the winter rains. Hamsees is a traditional food for us in Gaza and it has many medicinal qualities, too. My wife cooks it with beans and it is very tasty. This dish provides my children with a connection to our culture and that is very very important to me. So I hope you understand that my garden is about more than providing food for our table. It is about nourishing my family’s soul, too.”
