Seeds And Their People - EP. 20: The Iraqi Seed Collective and Awafi Kitchen

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

In late February 2023, Annabel Rabiyah and Amanda Chin of the Iraqi Seed Collective visited the Truelove Seeds office to help fill the first packets of Iraqi Seed Collective seeds (Iraqi Reehan Basil, grown by Experimental Farm Network), and prepare some of their other collectively-grown seeds for germination testing. We took the opportunity to record conversations with them about Annabel's work with Awafi Kitchen, which focuses on preserving traditional Iraqi Jewish food, and about their seed collective, which works with a wide array of gardeners and farmers from Iraq and the Iraqi diaspora in the US. At the end of this episode, you will hear from several other collective members who sent short phone recordings about their transformative moments being part of the collective, as well as a recording Annabel sent after returning from their family's first trip back to Iraq in 50 years. The episode begins with answering some listener questions about growing and cooking Mustard Greens, dealing with the Squash Vine Borer, and shelling peas with kids.  SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Introduction: Broadleaf Mustard Greens Squash Vine Borer in Pennsylvania SEED STORIES: Sesame Rice Aswad Eggplant Amba (Mango, Cayenne, Fenugreek, Turmeric) Ali Baba Watermelon Rashad (Chamsur) Al Kuffa Tomato Fava Bean Winter Melon Flax MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: 2023 Iraqi Seed Collective General Interest Form Iraqi Seed Collective (Instagram) The Awafi Kitchen (Webpage) The Awafi Kitchen (Instagram) Beidth al Tbeet: Deconstructing the political history of an Iraqi Jewish meal (Youtube) Garrett Williamson  PA Flax Project ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Annabel "Nibal" Rabiyah - Massachusettes Amanda Chin - Pennsylvania Rivka-Suad Ben Daniel - Southern California Ali Hamad - Tennessee  Monique Mansour - Southern California Sarmed Yasser Jabra - Michigan Ali Ruxin - New York Rabab Al-Amin - Maryland Cecilia Sweet-Coll (for consistent helpful feedback)

I was just whacking at normal. Welcome back to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director of Sankofa Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We are a seed company offering culturally important seeds. grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and also you. And thank you so much to our newest Patreon members, Sam, Seed and Weed and Reap, Gabriella, and Jennifer.

If you'd like to support our storytelling and seedkeeping, you can do so at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Like in the last episode, we're going to start this one by answering listener questions. Mahogany's Garden asks another question this week, and it is, how do you grow season and prepare mustard greens? My other greens are yummy, but I haven't cracked the code on mustards. Can you start with growing tips? Well, so mustard greens, yeah, I mean, that's, so that's a green near and dear to my heart. That's one of the traditional greens in the Mississippi Delta that we prefer over the collard greens that are more common here. And I guess one, in terms of growing, mustard greens are really more of a cool weather crop.

They prefer the cool weather. Now, you know, I say that and then, you know, I come from the South where it's hot and they grow throughout the year and indeed throughout the summer. But I would suggest that you start them in cooler weather. One of the things about mustard that differentiates it from his other relatives in Nebraska family is that it tends to bolt. It will go to seed in that first year. So it is not biennial, you know, in the way that a collagrine or kale would be, meaning that the collagree and kale, you can grow that, you know, all season. And then in the next season, you know, in the spring, then they'll start sending up spikes of flowers and start. getting ready to reproduce and make seed and all of that.

Musters will do that in one season. And they're very finicky. They're very sensitive to changes in temperature. So I have found that it's most successful to start them in cooler weather. You could start them now. Of course, it's 88 degrees in Philadelphia today. So I don't know. But we're still technically in the cool season.

It's still before the summer season. So, yeah, I think that would be the biggest thing is to make sure that you are starting it when it's relatively cool or my daddy would say if you can't start it in the cool then try to start it in the shade you know the other thing about mustard greens they really prefer to be started in ground we start them in trays in the greenhouse and that's just fine but i tend to suspect that the that the transporting of them causes stress that oftentimes will make some of them bolt that is go to seed prematurely just the shock of moving them around and that sort of thing so Again, they're a sensitive plant, but a powerful plant.

You know, the chemicals in mustard greens are so nutritious, particularly to cleaning out your gut microbiome. They're just delicious. And, of course, they come with centuries and centuries of stories and relationship with human beings. As far as cooking them, I don't know, I don't, I never really think of cooking greens differently from one another. I have lots of different ways to prepare greens. And I could just tell you some ways that I like to prepare mustard greens. I like them kind of sweet and sour. Now, that's really not a traditional way to eat in that, not from where I come from,

but it's a way that I found that I like, you know, you get old and you leave your mama's kitchen and you start cooking things your way, with her influence, of course. And so I would wash those greens very well. I really prefer a flat leaf mustard that's preferred where I come from. I think it's largely because it's easier to clean them. Sand gets in the crevices and the wrinkles of any kind of savoyed or curly green or mustard green. So, yeah, so I prefer to start off with a flat mustard green if possible. Chop it fine.

I like to roll and chop my greens in ribbons. They cook down quicker and I like the mouth feel a lot better than when they're cut thicker. I like, you know, mustard greens, I think if the heat of mustard, because they are spicy, they're a spicy green, very spicy green, peppery. And if that bothers folks, of course, you want to have some of that because that's where that health and that nutrition and that healing comes from. But you can chop them and then you can steam them really quickly. They are a green that's going to cook a lot quicker than your collard green or your kale

because they're a thinner leaf. And so just to keep that in mind. So sometimes I'll steam them really quick, just to get them a little soft. you know, in a colander over some boiling water and take that out, you know, let them drain a little bit. And then I would stir fry them. And I like to put them in some hot oil, olive oil or avocado oil. What do avocado oil? You can cook, cook them, you know, at a higher temperature. And then I like to season that oil. So in our house, we are really in love with the Louisiana-based company seasoning called Slap Your Mama. It's great on everything.

of us grew up with other seasoning salts and that's just fine you can use a tony satir you can use lowries um whatever you want but i like to go ahead and just season that oil as it's heating up a little bit so that they can get that flavor and then uh i have my chopped onions and garlic uh i like to saute them get them nice and and and and and in and in and in kind of translucent and then throw those greens in there and as they're cooking down i will add to them some vinegar um now where i come from we always put a little vinegar in our greens, especially when there mustard greens. You know, so I add some vinegar.

The vinegar that I like is apple cider vinegar. You can use balsamic vinegar. That's good. It has a nice sweetness and depth to it. And then I would finish that off a little maple syrup just a tad or some plain sugar if you got it. You know, and of course you can add things. You can chop up some tomatoes and stir fry that in there with the onions

in order for it to get that good, deep, rich, umami flavor or not. Another variation of that is to do that very similarly to how I've said, but from a Sicilian recipe that I found that we eat around here sometimes because Owen is Italian and we like to eat, mix up all of our traditional food, sometimes even on the same plate, is that they would cook it the way that I just said, and they would add pine nuts and raisins, which is, you know, may sound crazy over here, but it's actually really delicious. So, you know, just sprinkle in some pine nuts as it's cooking down and finish it off with some raisins, preferably some golden raisins. So there are lots of ways to cook. You can cook it like that. You can cook it. That basic base that I sit around washing, chopping, and, you know, and stir frying with onions, steaming. That can be your base, but you can do all sorts of things just from that.

I've even learned to enjoy it with coconut milk, you know, as you're stir-frying. that those greens with those onions and garlic and add some coconut milk to it and of course you know you season to taste so it's never a bad idea to add some hot pepper uh to it so a chopped up cayenne goes really good um with with musters in any way that you cook it and of course a very traditional way to cook it is just to chop them up rough cut uh and um add some um some pork meat um you know some salt meat or fat back, a small amount, and cook that with a little water and let it cook down and make a liquor, make a pot liquor, you know, and so that's the more traditional way to cook it.

And then, of course, you know, again, seasoning it to taste. But yeah, I mean, those are just some ways. But overall, I think, you know, greens are greens, to me at least. And, you know, those are some helpful ways that I have found in the case. kitchen to cook mustard greens, but also lots of other greens too. All right. Thank you. We also got a question at the last seed swap we were at about how to protect squash plants from squash vine boorers. And this was from a listener who we met there. And so just real quick, because I want to get to the episode. But this is a big one here. We have a big problem

with squash vine boorers. It's a moth that flies around in, you know, earth. summer to midsummer here in Pennsylvania, and it's black and orange. It's kind of interesting looking. And it lays its eggs at the base of a lot of squash plants, winter squash, summer squash. Then the larva, the caterpillars, bore into those stems right at the base of the soil. And they fatten up so much that they kind of clog the stems and keep water from flowing. and start to destroy the stems of the squash plants and they just wilt and die. And so it's a big problem here. One awesome thing is that the Cucurbita Moschata species, which is the butternuts,

is really resistant to them. It's got a really hard stem. It's harder for them to penetrate. And so it's just an awesome species to grow in this climate that we don't have to protect from them. And so, you know, we grow the Lunga to Napoli, the giant Italian squash at our farm that's that species. The Jamaican pumpkins or the Caribbean pumpkins are that species, butternut, honeynut, and a lot of other things, Long Island cheese pumpkin. But if you're growing like zucchini, that's like a preferred, you know, a preferred squash for them or the

Cabotra squash, like things in the Cucurbita maxima species in Cucurbita pepo in particular. And so, you know, one thing you can do, and what we try to do at our farm is put hoops and Rie Mae or floating row cover, like a fabric designed for agriculture, that covers the young plants, especially in early to mid-summer, as long as we can cover them before they start bursting out. You want to uncover them when it's flowering time so they can get pollinated and make those fruits. But if you protect them especially up until July, if possible, you'll miss a lot of the kind of mating season of this moth. Another physical barrier is you could put aluminum foil, tinfoil, or other barriers around the base, the top

few inches of the stem. And we're going to try to do that this year. I've tried it in years past with some success. You can also do surgery on the plants, which I've done. They say to sterilize the knives. And you kind of make a slit at the base where you think you see the hole that it went in or you can kind of get a sense of where the caterpillar might be. be in there and you can extract it and destroy it and try to bury that part of the stem under the soil so it'll re-root there and heal. You know, some people say you can inject the stems with BT as an organic solution. I've never tried that. And there's certainly some chemical, you know, um, applications. But by the time the, the, the, the borer is in the stem, it's a little late

to be spraying things and dealing with chemicals. You know, you can also time your plantings. People do succession planting and do every few weeks with different squash so that, you know, by the time you get to July and you have some quick zucchini's, for example, that don't have a long season. You know, there are summer squash. You pick them immature. You can plant them after that mating time.

Anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think I was just really weird. the last thing you said, the timing of the planting is super important. I've heard and had some experience with fall planted, you know, or late summer planted, summer squash, you know, in order to avoid that time when the moth is out. But I would also add to that as a physical barrier of you can use kalanite clay. There's a product that one can buy called surround, which is basically chalk. you mix it up in water and people often will take the plants that are started if you start them inside

and just sort of just dump them in baptize them you know in this white milky clay the plant's going to look crazy they're going to look like ghosts sitting in your field but they will be protected and of course it will wash off and with the first rain so it's not the most effective but it is a solution I think also just to recognize that you will lose some plants to squash vine bore it's So it's just something that's going to happen. The wonderful thing, though, is that Summer Squatch is so super productive. And something else, too, is that the plants will continue to bear fruit even while being attacked for a surprisingly long time by the vineboard before they wilt out. You know, I think that's just, you know, a few things to think about.

Yeah, and you can also, I mean, we practice crop rotation at our farm anyway, but that helps because once the larvae develop, up, they go into the soil to hybridate until the next spring. And so if you move your crops away from where the squash were previously, that should help. You can hear our new kitten in the background attacking the compost bag. Finally, here's a clip from last night with our newest co-host, Brian. All right. So, Brian, what is the thing that you like the most about? Shell and peas? I like about shelling peas We get to plant the peas We get to harvest them are

We get to like do stuff with them We get to eat them and stuff like that I mean that And that's why I like it And sometimes I like it because It's the pee that's from Mississippi It's a pee that's from Oklahoma It's a pee that's from any

anywhere. That's what I like about planting sheets. Okay, and you just came up to the door. You were playing with your friends outside, the neighbors, and you said, can I play with my slimy sand? Can I play with my bicycle? And you also said, can I, do you have any seeds to shell? So you like it so much that you even do it with the neighbors? I like it so much. It's so beautiful. And some kids don't really, no seeds. They don't really don't know seeds.

What's that's mean I'm winking. Okay, they don't know seeds and so you want to share that with them? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. How do you like to eat them peas? I like to eat them. How Uncle Mel made them today.

Those are peas. Them was black beans. I also like black beans. Because beans are technically kind of like a P. They're relatives, yeah. They're very close relatives. And now for our feature presentation. This episode features the Iraqi Seed Collective.

Collective members, Annabel Rabia, and Amanda Chin, visit us recently to help out in the seed room. So we took the opportunity to record a bit of their story. Can you talk briefly about what you found interesting? about this this episode well you know all of our episodes are so unique one of the first things that stuck out to me about this very powerful episode I'm an amateur biblical scholar so I love to learn you know more facts about you know the Jewish people and sort of their their travels and travails and I think that one of the most powerful things that stood out to me is that you know I realized as Annabel was speaking, and Amanda, the Jews have been in Iraq for thousands of years.

I mean, it's, you know, the whole sections of the Bible were written during the time that Jews were in the Babylonian captivity. We refer to it as, you know, or had been exiled to Babylon, which is Iraq, you know, the old name for Iraq. And so just hearing this story about preserving not just the seeds, but the food. culture of Iraqi Jewry was very powerful to me because it's this long and and really unbroken line of a mixture, you know, it's truly a diasporic people because, you know, as Annabelle points out, I think you'll notice. And, you know, is it where Iraq is placed, you know, really puts it kind of in a very central spot culturally as a crossroads for some. many different cultures, you know. I mean, you know, you have, you have an Asian and African

connection, you know, and all of the foods and all of the stories and all of the lore and the traditions that come with that. And so all of that's blended into into Iraqi Jewish tradition. And I think that was very fascinating to me. It's something I hadn't thought about. I think in North America, most of our experience in knowledge of Jewish people's history comes from Ashkenazi Jews, you know, European Jews. All of the people. people that I've grown up with, and I've grown up with a lot of Jewish people, have come from, you know, their ancestry comes from Eastern Europe or other parts of Europe, and in their ancestors moved around a lot. And so I know in doing this work, one of the beauties and challenges

for a lot of our Ashkenazi Jewish sisters and brothers has been really just identifying what is, what would I consider to be my traditional food as an Ashkenazi do. What would I can, not my traditional food rather, we both know their traditional food, but what would be the traditional food? but what would be my traditional seeds. So I think just sort of, for me, it was very enlightening to see this contrast for people who had been very stable on the land for thousands of years up until about the past 50 or 60 years

in this land of Iraq, these Jewish people, really helped to form the culture of Iraq and Mesopotamia in general, in contrasted with Ashkenazi Jews, it seemed to me that the experience of Ashkenazi Jews was one of a lot of movement. Europe was not nice to Jewish people, you know, in many ways. And so folks had to move a lot.

And so as a result, of course, you know, Ashkenazi Jewish food picked up lots of influences from lots of different places. But, you know, there was this constant movement that's very different and distinct. And also, too, the long history in Europe of prohibiting Jews from owning land in lots of places. meant that sort of the farming culture, you know, is something that folks now have to do deeper research into, to really find those connections. So Ashkenazi Jewish culture seems to have been a lot more urban historically, whereas, you know, I think just so it was very, you know, refreshing and enlightening and educating to me to hear

this story of Iraqi Jews who were on the land, you know, and for thousands of years on the land. You know, in my mind, I think just from Sunday school stories, we assumed that after, you know, the Babylonian captivity, after, you know, Jews found their liberation from Iraq, that all of them left. And that's not true. You have this very stable, you know, you had this very stable minority of Jewish people there, you know, along with all of the other, the Assyrian Christians and Jews people and all of the other people. So for me, I think that was just very powerful to hear this. very intact land-based Jewish culture. And I think that Annabelle is doing, you know, heroic work in preserving that while we're still able to, you know. Yeah.

And I also loved, and I'll mention that there are a lot of clips at the end from other members of the Iraqi Seed Collective who sent from their own recordings kind of anecdotes about their experience within the collective. and they really are from a wide variety of experiences in Iraq and over here in the diaspora. And it's just so great to have that patchwork of stories at the end. And then the fact that Annabelle went to Iraq after our initial recording and then sent a reflection after coming back for the first time. So I'm really grateful for those stories at the end of this episode as well and all the people involved from their varied experiences. Well, let's get into it.

We're going to now transport you into the True Love Seeds Office, where Annabelle and Amanda were helping us fill seed packets and clean seeds and get germination test samples ready. And here we go. Well, thank you so much for coming to our seed world today. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. Can you please introduce yourself, however you. you would like. I'm Annabel or Nibal Rubia and I co-founded the Wafi Kitchen, which is a

culinary cultural project that focuses on my family's Iraqi Jewish identity, but also just Iraqi food history in general. And over the last, I think, five or six years that the project's been going on, we've hosted pop-up restaurant events, cooking classes, and had talks on food history and cultural history, sort of uplifting history that hasn't been told as often. And more recently, I think in the last two to three years, I helped start the Iraqi Seed Collective, which came from the work I'd been doing with Awafi but also my background in agriculture and honestly being really inspired by true love and the seedkeeping work and my relationship with Amanda Chin who's been saving seats

with you guys for a while. Oh, that's sweet. I didn't realize it was such a big part of the story. Thank you. I'd love to hear more about your exploration of Iraqi Jewish food and how it compares with Iraqi food in general. I mean, simply, it's not actually that different. It's kind of the same thing. I think that the ways that it stands out is that, well, the reality is the more that I build relationships with other Iraqis in diaspora or Iraqis, even in Iraq, I realize that to be Iraqi is to be in a multicultural, you know, just jumble, it has probably some of the widest range of cultural and ethnic diversity in the world and all the migration that happened there over thousands of years. It was sort of the original, globalized, mixed up place. And so

so many different pockets of culture that are all slightly different, but then, you know, there's more similarity than there is. difference and I think a lot of people in diaspora from there grew up being told you know this is this specific thing that's Jewish or Assyrian or Yazidi or whatever was their cultural identity and then you just start to realize that actually we're not that different I think that Iraqi Jewish food is Iraqi food you know set in a period of time because all of the Jews pretty much left by by the early to mid-1970s. So it hasn't modernized in the way that, you know,

and I think that's a story of diaspora for a lot of people anyway. You know, Jews are some of the oldest ethnic groups in Iraq. So sometimes people don't believe, you know, I'll say, oh, I'm Iraqi Jewish, especially when I was younger and people think, oh, my family was Polish and they moved there. And they brought that culture.

We still eat like a filthofish and stuff like that. Which, you know, I don't throw shade on Ashkenazi food, I think it's actually delicious in its own right, just very different. And, you know, half my family is actually, like, ethnically Ashkenazi as well. So I do hold that. But on my dad's side, there's some of the oldest people there. They, you know, preceded a lot of other people that moved to the region. You know, a lot of people joke there probably were a lot of people that converted to other religions who were originally Jewish. And so it's really one of the foundational cultures of that region. And I, you know,

I do think a lot of Iraqis are realizing that in retrospect after a lot of erasure and, you know, painful separation. But it's most similar to Assyrian food, which I think more people recognize as a very ancient Iraqi culture. I always joke there was this article that was like, the earliest recipes written on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, and they have some recipes listed, and they're like Iraqi Jewish recipes. And so, yeah, like really, you know, really OG. And then, of course, the one other distinguishing factors is that some recipes follow Jewish dietary laws and Sabbath rules. So while other Iraqis use ghee, clarified butter, since, like, traditionally you're not supposed to mix different animal products.

My family would say you could recognize a Jewish household in Iraq from the smell of sesame oil and that was like refined sesame oil was the main cooking fat so things like that and then the quintessential iraqi jewish meal that i think is if you know any is to beat which is a whole chicken that's spiced submerged in a huge pot of rice and cooked overnight over the traditionally over the coals of the fire on friday night so that you didn't have to do any labor on the Sabbath and so then you would eat that for the following dinner so it's like a very slow and it's kind of like people might be familiar with a Palestinian makluba like and then you like flip it over and it's built this crust which is very quintessentially Iraqi or or Persian Tadig

Iraqi Hakaka and it has this like shell and it's almost like a cake but there's a chicken inside so yeah that's pretty epic and that is a very Jewish thing and that not that people wouldn't have the same chicken and rice, but just the method of cooking it is very Jewish. Awesome. I'm already hearing two potential seed stories from sesame to rice. I'm wondering if there's any that you think really illustrate, you know, plants that might illustrate kind of your work and your connection to food. Well, we haven't grown sesame yet, but in the collective, we have these monthly Zoom meetings

where we often just sort of divulge into nerdy food conversation. and, you know, I have been hearing more and more people in the Northeast growing sesame, and there's so many recipes with sesame in them, let alone the sesame oil that I mentioned. So being able to grow sesame and, you know, hoping to get some Iraqi sesame seed would be really special. I did get a bag of Iraqi rice at a market in Chicago, and then was so excited. I, like, made a friend in Chicago. I like venmoed him to like go get three more bags for my family because you know I think being in exile which is really the way I feel our family has been for the last like 50 years there is

this sort of obsession with having pieces of home that you know I mean for you're just like the historical political reasons we have not been able to connect with as intimately as some other people in diaspora and that yearning is like really intense and it's like amazing some the person I co-founded the collective with is two generations away from being from Iraq and is still so intensely passionate about connecting with her cultural roots and that really is so inspiring to me and I think illustrates how much of an impact has on people yeah we haven't grown rice or or sesame yet I think the main crop that I think has been, you know, and we're really in the early stages of collecting seeds and figuring out what makes the most sense. And the Alibaba watermelon is a very iconic

watermelon has a light green skin and a bright pink flesh and is oblong. And if you grow it in a warm enough climate, it can get very large. And it's cool to see even pictures from the 1950s of this watermelon in the market and has been sort of established in the US for the last couple of decades. I think an Iraqi grower brought it over a while back. So that was sort of what inspired us to start saving seeds and think about that. And then since then someone in the collective who I think we were connected with somehow through True Love and Amanda Chin, there was some seed exchange and some person met some person, but this person, Ali, who went back to Iraq. And I think the main thing that's going on is that, you know, after decades of colonialism and occupation

and just, you know, neighboring countries having influence and control over the region and climate stuff, whatever we're calling it, you know, they're running out. They're running out of water and their seed bank was destroyed. And so, you know, the cradle of civilization, the cradle of agriculture, what we think of as like one of the, or the most ancient agricultural region now is just importing all of its food and all of these heirloom varieties are going extinct. And Ali, who does not have a growing background, was struck by that on his first visit after maybe 20 years of not having been there and then became upset.

with getting seeds and bringing them back. And the reality is, like, he wasn't a grower, you know, and so some of this stuff wasn't isolated, you know, and it was, but it was an incredible thing that he did, and the fact that we were starting this collective but didn't have seed from Iraq. We had these American seeds. And then someone was like,

do you know there's this person who has all these seeds and he has no idea how to save them? And it was just this, like, I think there's been a couple of moments, especially with the seed saving work, like definitely to some level with Awafi, but even more so with the seed work that I'm not that, like, religious or spiritual, but there's moments where it just feels like this is unbelievable the way that circumstances are aligning.

Can you tell me about a couple of those most powerful spiritual moments of things aligning? Yeah, I think definitely being connected with Ali in that moment, and that year that we had started, it just, you know, that was very, that was very powerful. and the way that some relationships have aligned and showed up has been really powerful. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of thoughts rolling my head. I think I mentioned to you that in two days I'm going to Iraq for the first time in my life. And some of the things that have aligned in that way that we just sort of did a little promotion of the collective on our social media. And then like yesterday I got this email from someone who had been connected through someone.

that there's an Iraqi food sovereignty network in Iraq and there's someone who's going to be in the town that I'm going to be in in like three days and that I can meet up with them and like you know thinking oh am I actually going to be able to do this you know I mean this is the first trip I don't have a lot of expectations about like what it's really a trip for my family and and being able to return and see you know but the fact that it just feels like the world's being like, hey, keep going, like, we're paving this for you or, you know, I think I've heard on previous episodes of the podcast people talk about, or just honestly, seed keepers and thinking about the fact that seeds have their own agency and, you know, like that they're like helping

you out and getting reconnected. And it is a real moment right now where it's not perfectly stable, but it's, the region is kind of the most stable it's been in 50. years and or you know or at least in like 30 years and there is a wave of people going back and I've been following people online and you know hearing stories from people who really feel like there's a level of like waking up after you know I hope I hope that that is sustained I mean you just you know I think when and anyone from and I'm sure beyond the region but anyone from southwest Asia North Africa the Middle East like like you just never trust like you just never know what, like, the next month is going to bring for, like, the motherland or whatever you want to

call it. It's just, like, you know, something can be, like, totally stable and then, you know, something, you know, and so I think that's part of why we're going. It's just like, we don't know, like, we could wait a year and, like, who knows? And so you have to, like, pick a moment. And yeah, just some of my conversations with people who are in the collective. And even if we haven't really successfully saved that many seeds yet like the relationships and the fact that Iraqis have been pinned against each other really intensely for many decades and the fact that there's some elder Iraqi Jewish woman who spent her grew up in in Israel 48 and has that experience and then like a Muslim like young Iraqi who moved here very recently and that we're like you know

and like everyone in between and that we're all like you know and like queer people you know, you know, just like all sorts of jumble of people and we're all like sitting on a Zoom call together, like, obsessing about whether or not we can grow sesame seeds or what butnage is. I know you are, I'm like hoping that I'll figure out what butnage is when there's like this herb that, that everyone has like a dried version of. And like I grew up having the dried version. You can get a box of it, but no one has. And you know what's funny?

People will like message the seed collective and they'll be like, hey, do you know what? butnage is and I'm like no I don't know what it is I really tried yeah oh and really really try and then yada was like no that's not it you like found some herb and you're like I think this is it and I was like I don't think that's it but one night I brought him our dried herb that I had spent all season growing thinking it was this bootnage and brought it to him outside his house and he was like yeah no yeah no and handed me some from the store and I could see. It's different.

Yeah, someone, someone, oh yeah, someone also messaged me who's in the collective. I think she's like some non-Iraqi, maybe a North American person who's been living and working on some farm, NGO farm in Soleimania. And she just, she just messaged me a week ago being like, she was like, hey, do you know any Jewish restaurants in Soleimania? I was like, first of all, no, I've never been there. What are you talking about? But I guess, like, I will be there in a week, but that's actually crazy.

I just want to emphasize how crazy that is because, like, no one I know has been there for 50 years. And then you just message me and I happen. And I'm going to see her. So, and she was like, I think I figured out what Butanage is. So I'm not, I'm kind of holding my breath, but like, maybe that'll be. Well, can you describe what it is for people who don't know? So, like, just even trying to describe it, everyone's like, it's sage. It's fenugreek leaves, it's oregano, it's like, it's some green herb that has, you know, like kind of oily, woody herb maybe that you often have dried and you, the way I learned you would use it is with fava beans, which is also, I mean, a very Iraqi crop that we are growing and we have seeds from Iraq.

So that's something I'm really hopeful we'll end up being in the true love catalog. And we have a couple of growers growing it in California right now. There's a number of Iraqi recipes, like ancient, like, but I actually not positive how to pronounce this, which is kind of embarrassing. But hey, it's real diaspora. You don't know how to pronounce everything. But like bagila or baguilla, which is, you know, often, you know, it's like sort of stewed fava beans. And there's breakfast, there's like breakfast meals.

where you have the fava beans on leftover bread from the day before. And so you, like, would put that herb mixed in with the fava beans is the main way I know how to use it. I'm sure there are other. But, yeah, it's like one of those things that it's like, you know, I know everyone obsesses over molchia. And I think that was how I really got hooked onto True Love was your Molchia podcast episode. And I worked with a new beean farmer.

I'm selling molchia. You know, and it was meaningful to me as someone from the region. I don't have, you know, I think. of it more as like an Egyptian or Nubian crop, but, you know, people in Iraq have Malachia, people in the whole region have Malachia, but the way that across, people from across the world just like have this sort of like flip out when they see fresh Molchia versus having had it frozen or dry since they left home. So like trying to replicate that with other things, I think But Nudge would be really cool. Totally. I would love to have you send us a voice.

message when you come back from your trip okay stay tuned i mean here's here's hoping everything goes okay yeah totally you also i think we may be able to share your eggplant seeds this year so i'm wondering if you could say something about that variety sure so eggplant is maybe oh i mean i guess i could say that about a bunch of things but i i would venture to say that eggplant is one of like the most beloved vegetable I think of when I think of Iraqi food and it's like the whole thing where people will be like oh I don't like eggplant or like oh no you just haven't had it cooked the right way which is smothered in oil but not like battered like just fried in so much oil that it so it's it's sweet so I think a quintessential Iraqi like street food or lunch food is like an

egg and eggplant sandwich and there's actually a particular Jewish version of that, which is Bede al-Tibit, which is, it has the word to beat in it. To beat just means overnight. So that goes back to that chicken and rice dish. Basically, you take whole eggs and you put them on the lid of the rice and chicken dish as it roast overnight. And the eggs get steamed with that spiced aroma. And then those are hard-boiled eggs that you, like, put in a sandwich with eggplant. and you have, you know, maybe pickles and salad or fresh herbs is, you know, often whole fresh herbs

are included in a luffa, which is like that kind of sandwich wrap thing. Yeah, the eggplant and umba, which is a whole, I could do a whole podcast on umba and I'm sure anyone Iraqi will understand that. It's actually an Indian product originally. It's pickled mango and somehow, I think through the spice trade or whatever, tea trade just really took off in Iraq and now was like the national condiment of Iraq and the and the claim of Amba is that when they found Saddam Hussein in his hideout, he had just like a stockpile of Amba.

I don't know like I mean, but like that is the thing. So yeah. So and Amba has taken many forms. I think yeah, there's like the OG ship brand label that has the green lid that I grew up with. But there's more modern versions too, but that would be a common ingredient in that sandwich with the egg and eggplant. But yeah, so eggplant, you know, and it's also in a bunch of other dishes. Tebzi is a, you know, sort of cooked vegetable tomato dish, which I think the equivalent, the Jewish word for Tebzi is Ingrilla. That's one thing that people think the dishes are different, but actually just dialects are different, and then people come up with different words for things and then you realize it's actually the same thing. Yeah, so eggplant, so there's this

eggplant, Aswad eggplant. I've cooked with it and noticed that it's like really great for frying because it's already quite dry so you don't have to sweat it as much before frying it. So it's like really cool to cook with things that are meant for your cuisine. I learned from Yadab, who's also in the sort of true love network, Philly. You know, Uswed means black and Arabic and he said that that is the colloquial term in Iraq for eggplant. So the word for eggplant is bid and gen, but apparently if you go to the market and you're like, I want a swad, that's, that's eggplant.

Awesome, thanks. Too bad we can't save mango seeds here. Yeah, I mean. The most iconic plant story. But the thing is mangoes don't really grow in Iraq either. So, because it's like a South Asian, It's more of a tropical thing. I mean, I don't think mango is growing.

Anyway, it's not made there. It is an imported product, which is really funny, that it's so Iraqi. But, yeah, Amba, like, I think a lot of South Asians think it's funny that that's something that I eat so regularly, because you can go to DEC market, and, like, there's a whole row of pickled mango. But none of them are quite like that.

And I have tried to make it, I actually have gotten used green, mangoes. So like if I've traveled somewhere and been able to get green mangoes, I've made umba. And it's, it's pretty, it's never quite the same as the, obviously, the product that you get. It's like Heinz ketchup. Like, you're never going to fully compare it to that, but you can use the spices and get pretty close. So some people make their own, some Iraqis make their own amba. What are the spices in it? Feneric, turmeric, I think. And like, cayenne or some chili. And actually, the funny thing is the modern umba is a yellow powder

that you rehydrate and it kind of has almost like a gelatinous, kind of like the Molchia slimy texture, but it's just the spices. I don't think there's even mango in it anymore. Like the standard like sort of mass produce, but the great thing is it's like a dry powder and you can just stockpile it. So if you have umba at a restaurant and it's more of a yellow sauce versus an actual like pickle, that's usually just the space. spices, which is funny because Amba, I think, means mango in like some South Asian language. So it's like, doesn't even have mango in it anymore. Well, that's amazing because that means we could actually grow it here.

It's true. Actually, modern Amba. Actually, that's a cool idea. Yeah, just like grow fenugreek. I definitely have grown fenugreek a couple of times, like for the leaves and for the seeds. And, yeah, peppers and. Timmer grows here too. Whoa, okay, thoughts for the future. Kind of switching gears, I went to one of your workshops here in Philly, and maybe it was a year and a half ago up at the Schuylkill Center. And I remember you had family members here and family friends here. And I'm curious how it's been with your immediate, you know, your family here, like kind of witnessing your journey and maybe informing your journey. How has that been for them and you? in terms of your relationship to your food ways.

I will say, it's really cool that you were there. That was like such an incredible experience through Yadab, who I mentioned with the eggplant, invited me to do that. I always like to have my, the generation above me around because I think like I'm in, I'm pretty American and people like don't believe Iraqi Jews exist. Feels like we're like this unicorn thing.

And they see me and they're like, okay, like you could be. anything you know I'm like multi and I'm not saying I'm not trying to belittle you know like my experience is real and whatever but I could kind of pass as whatever I'm multiracial I'm a much watered down version of whatever the OG thing was and it's really cool to have them around and I I recognize what a privilege it is and that I'm in good relationship with them and they're close spy and they really they're like you know Iraqi super Iraqi you know and they've been here for a while so they're American but like and they're Jewish and they exist and sometimes I just want to be like look like you know but also they're very special people to me and yeah I think it was reflecting

my dad and his siblings through everything that they went through in that beheaval and rebuilding their lives like they've had a really special relationship the four of them and it's something that is cool to witness how they've like uplifted each other despite, you know, family's family and they're going to drive you crazy. But yeah, I think specifically my dad, I think originally he had so, and all of them, to varying degrees, had so much messaging when they arrived here because, you know, as it continues to be Jews are associated with Zionism and there's a lot of mistrust in the Arab community of Jews in general.

And my family are relatively anti-Zionists in the scheme of things. And my aunt especially is like a pretty fervent anti-Zionist, like has very outspoken views on that. But despite their politics in that respect, we're just kind of excluded from Arab-American community. When they moved here, they didn't have the ability to build those relationships as easily as, you know, my brother and I have. been much more accepted explicitly. So I think when I was like telling my dad at first,

I'm like, yeah, like I'm really leaning into like being Iraqi and like identifying this way. He was like kind of cynical about it at first. Like, oh, you can't claim like I couldn't even claim that. How could you could claim that? And then like it has been almost cool to be able to pull them back a little bit with us because we didn't have as much of the baggage as they did and have been able to claim it more. And I think that is, like, I've talked to other friends who are, like, second-gen or first-gen or whatever you want to call it, reclaiming.

And I think that there's been a lot of work to get to the point that my aunt and uncle and my brother and I are going on this trip, and that we've cross-pollinated with each other and, like, made them feel like it's safe to, like, be able to be who they are and you know and they helped us feel that too you know i think it's just been it's been a cool cross-pollination and i think especially my aunt and uncle i think they were also old enough when they left like they can't completely leave it at the door when they arrived and and they still are very in touch with their culture and and so it's been cool to learn from them and share back with

them like look at what you know it's going on now and yeah and so yeah I'm I'm very I feel very grateful I mean they're older and I think that's part of why we're going now because you know once again you just have no idea what you know I've had family I'm like oh I'm going to go learn how to cook this thing with them and then you know they're gone before you know it and so really trying to cherish this time that I have with these like really special elders who hold a lot of really, really important stories. That's beautiful. May I ask what they remember of leaving?

So I think there was always, like, I would say, like, there was always an idea. Most of, I think most of the Jews that left left at 1951, there was like a deal, basically, with the Israeli government. And there's a lot of theories about, you know, I think it was in the Israeli government's interest to get more bodies there in that time when they were like founding this country and trying to like push out as many Palestinians as possible. So a lot of people left and you know, there's a whole thing about whether or not, I mean, I think they were treated pretty shittily and sorry, I don't know if I'm a lot to be swearing. But, but yeah, my family stayed

later, like an extra, like almost 20 years, which is also like in the layers of lesser known history and even lesser known history. And the reality is like it's because they had privilege and connections in Iraq, I think, like just acknowledging that, like people left for Israel when they didn't have the privilege of staying. But like those 20 years were not like, I think there was already an idea like we might not be able to stay here based on after once the state of Israel was created. It just created a huge rift. it was a lot easier to blame Jews than to like acknowledge that this military power was going to outpower the surrounding Arab nations and be able to like do the things that they did.

And so yeah, increasingly Jews were scapegoated and it became an increasingly hostile. Like I think the later half of like my dad and my uncle's childhood, for instance, like they, they remember with a lot of hostility, like they had to hide their identities walking on the street and change their dialogue. dialect. So the Jewish dialect actually in Baghdad more closely resembles like Moslawi dialect. And I actually would love to like talk to a linguist about this, but the idea that I've understood is that Moslawi dialect is the most ancient version of Iraqi Arabic. And so the Jewish dialect, even in Baghdad, was just like a much, they were just like a more insular group that was less changing. And so, but it was notable when you're in Baghdad. Someone could tell

you were Jewish based on the way you talked. So they would change their access. when they left the house. And then my, my aunts were out of the country at the point that the 67 war happened. But when the 67 war happened, I mean, I've read books. Like we like, you know, it's like people are obsessed with this. But this idea, like, if the Israelis win, they're going to kill us. And if the Israelis lose, then the people we know and love there are going to be killed. You know, it was like that kind of.

But they didn't. They had no relationship with Israel, other than they had some distant cousins there and probably family friends there, but they had no interest in going there. They had no, like, Zionist agenda. But the reality was when the Israelis won the 67 war, the Iraqi government, like, basically said that all Jews were spies and Zionists. And they were like, targeted. And they, my family had their passports taken from them and they fled the country, which unfortunately is a very, very common Arab-American story. You know, everyone has their flow, like, oh, how do you flee? Like, you know, like, what's your fleeing narrative? You know, what's your escape route, you know? But it is like, and it was like, it's funny. It's like, it was our childhood bedtime story. Like, and I think that's where sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm going on this trip and everyone's like, have fun. I'm like, I don't think you understand. Like, since I was like a baby, I've been like, you know, told this story. And the thing is in the grand scheme of things, they had a very privileged migration narrative.

They had a pretty harrowing departure. And then they had enough family in the U.S. that they were able to integrate and came at a time in history where like just hearing immigration narratives now. Like it was just so much easier. I mean, like being a foreigner was hard and everyone thought they were communists and, you know, whatever. And, you know, had to learn a new language. but just in terms of the actual legality of it. Like they were like had asylum immediately, like had a citizenship not long after that. You know, they weren't in a refugee camp for several years before coming.

So there's like a lot of ways that it was actually pretty, especially for my uncle who was there, like, anticipating going back. He just, he says it feels like a wound that's like healed over that he's like ripping open again and having. But like if he can go and like not and be able to walk down the same streets and not experience that. that fear. I feel like that could be such a healing experience. And my dad's decided not to come. And, you know, I think that's a choice. And some people don't want to see, want to ruin the image in their mind. But I think we wonder if like it goes well. Like maybe he'll change his mind. And if not, like, that's, that's okay too. Like everyone has their own choices about what's right for them. Thank you for sharing that. I'm wondering if this conversation the

what's your fleeing story has come up in your collective? You know, no. I think on some level it's actually kind of amazing that we just talk about plants and like that that's kind of nice. Like we don't trauma dump all the time. I mean, sometimes like I think in the conference, there has been a conversation of people going back. I think that has been because I've said there's been a real movement recently.

But honestly, I don't think anyone's explicitly done that. And, like, I've never thought about it explicitly, explicitly creating a space for that. I think so much about having reclaimed and reconnected has been about everyone sharing trauma with each other. And it's kind of nice for a bunch of Arab Americans to just, like, celebrate things and, like, be plant nerds together and, like, not have to talk about it. Like, I think actually I don't want to feel like we have to do that. Yeah. Awesome. I wonder if it makes sense to get a better sense of your collective to bring in Amanda. Oh, yeah. Here we bring Amanda Chin into the room. You know, I know, and I'm sure you can speak to this more. I think like we call it the Iraqi Seed Collective. And I remember having a conversation with Amanda about this because Amanda has a Syrian heritage, which is like one of the main, you know, most ancient ethnic groups in Iraq, but is not content. in a nation state, is it exclusive to call it Iraqi when we're like, want to be regional,

want to be Mesopotamian or Fertile Crescent or Southwest Asian, but that it has felt important to call it Iraqi in light of how Iraq is represented otherwise and especially U.S. media and just being able to have some other thing associated with that, that more better highlights pieces of the culture that get so erased. But, you know, making sure to be inclusive and think about our language to be inclusive to people who are not just from this actual nation state, but the wider region has been like a really great contribution that you've offered. Yeah, like I have a lot of love for Annabelle and I think they've been really formative for me. Like I think we've gotten to explore a lot of our identities together and you make me help.

make meaning of a lot of my identities and it's been really special to be a person of the diaspora holding multiple complicated identities. So I feel like it's really special to get to move forward with you and this and the ways that we overlap in the ways that we have our own moving forward to do. And yeah, it's like it's really isolating. So it's awesome to be together in that work. here Annabelle gives a big hug to Amanda and leaves us to talk My name is Amanda, Amanda Chin, and I grow at Garrett Williamson, based here in Philadelphia. We've been working with your organization for years and you for also years. It's been awesome to collaborate there, especially when we were both farming in the same town and still today.

Annabelle and I met each other in 2014 as co-workers in Massachusetts doing school garden work and yeah, I love them deeply and it's very sweet to get to reclaim a lot of pieces of ourselves together. I grew up not knowing any Assyrian people outside of my family and that's still primarily the case. I think like homeland feels really far away. away and, you know, like we don't have a land that is ours. I think, yeah, there's like a nationalism that exists with many Assyrian folks. And there's also many radical Assyrian folks out there too. It's been really special to get to connect with the Iraqi Seed Collective, which also has many Iraqi folks and Iraqi Assyrian folks. And our narratives are different and also have

many connections as well and my family fled from harput turkey and that's our ancestral land as far as i know it was assyria before it was turkey yeah so you know it's it's it's it's a complicated history of like fleeing genocide to come here and that also you know being complicated and my family spoke assyrian and some armenian um so i find a lot of camaraderity with armenian folks and yeah i think always like trying to gather the pieces where I can and build my own identities as a mixed heartage person in this place. And so what have you been growing as part of the collective? Yeah, I've been growing the Alibaba watermelon, which is a big, beautiful melon with a light green skin and a red flesh. And yeah, it's so fun how big they are. And it's very tasty.

Awesome. So you're growing a bunch of melons because you also grow the, winter melon. I love melons. Yeah. So I'm also growing the winter melon or dungua, pulling from another of my identities being twice anise. My family is also from the Pearl River Delta of China. And yeah, so getting to connect with my uncle Fong in Massachusetts and talk to him about his garden has been really beautiful. Have you been able to connect with anyone on your Assyrian side about food? And what does that? that looked like? My family primarily made pastries growing up. I don't really know the story, but there are too many veggies that we bond over. And I should go deeper with the conversation.

But yes, we love to have like filo dough sweets. Yeah, I guess there's a parsley that we do and some bed egg that is cheese and parsley and filo dough. Yeah, there's walnuts in the burma that we eat. which is rolled filo dough that's smooshed with a simple syrup and walnuts. And you're growing as part of a school project and a camp. And what is that meant to be able to grow, obviously grow things from all over the place as part of the school garden, but to include your own cultural crops? And there has that played any role in the way you interact with the kids around those crops? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think that she,

She maybe recognized the moment that I was having, but yeah, just like having like a moment with a mixed heritage Chinese student of mine having her like recognize the Dongwa in the garden and get so excited. And like that feels really special to be able to offer that for her. Yeah. So moments like that and just getting to be out in the land and processing the beans and all the things. If you could grow anything, let's think of like a dream farm. or dream garden situation, right? Because it's still the beginning days of this collective and really of your connection to Assyrian or Iraqi food.

In your kind of dream world, what would your relationship to these foodways look like in the future? Yeah. I mean, I would love to have a farm that is all of the parts of me and, you know, and also be doing it collectively. So all of the parts of whoever, I'm doing it collectively with. I love folk crafts, so getting to connect it to all pieces as the PA Flax project develops.

That's really exciting. I think there was Flax in Assyria. Yeah, the PA Flax project, can you mention what that is for people? Sure. Two folks out here are trying to build a localized system and reboot the Flax industry, which has historically had some holding in Pennsylvania so that we can have some local fiber and build out the systems for that here

since the equipment and the machinery doesn't exist at the moment in this country. And I am remembering now that at least one of the varieties, the many, many varieties of flax that we'll be trialing at our farm this year with them is from Armenia and maybe many others too because I haven't seen the list of all their origins, but certainly in the region. So that'll be cool. Oh, awesome.

Yeah, I bet we can get at least a few seeds for you to trial, if not this year, than many in coming years. Great. Yeah. Awesome. Well, maybe what we could do is walk into the other room where Annabel is and where all the seeds that we've been working with are. We're kind of closing out our interview,

but we happen to be here, you know, you two are both visiting for the day helping out with various seed projects so I'm wondering if you can kind of describe the projects that are in front of you and like what you've been doing with your own seeds today sure I'm counting out dungua seeds to send off for a germination test and putting labels on envelopes oh and also counting out the smooth bitter melon which I also grow nice and you also did some packets of also some blue sesame seeds yeah which i didn't realize until we were talking annabel how that's also a ancestral crop so it was kind of a cool cool connection maybe not blue sesame but sesame

so this is a basil that was originally seed from iraq that was grown out by experimental farm network, Nate Clyman's in our collective. So yeah, grew enough seed that it'll be for sale through their catalog and True Love. And then also counting out Alibaba that Amanda grew that we'll hopefully have enough to put in the True Love catalog as well this season. So for germination tests as well.

Awesome. And this morning, I just happened to get a shipment a package from one of your other growers. Both Jeff and Rivka, I think. Rivka had a handwritten note with a bunch of seeds for you, which is the Aswad eggplant that she saved. And Rashad, which you're going to try growing out this season. And then Jeff sent you some Iraqi radishes from Michigan. And she also sent these melons, which I think I'm going to actually take with me

because they're not true to type, but we call them Rivka's magic melons. because they have so many different melons, and that's part of seed saving. Sometimes things get cross-pollinated and have multiple different varieties that come out and leaning in to that. Yeah, I know I mentioned to you that we have a kusa squash from Palestine that was given to us by our friend Kristen Leach in California, who got it from the Palestinian Seed Project, Vivian. originally, and it has also many types of squashes. It's like a very much mixed-up summer squash.

But we offer it through the catalog alongside the quote-unquote pure cusa, and it's actually more popular, because it's so interesting, I think, can you get so many types of summer squash in one? So you never know. Maybe people would love this mixed-up melon, magic melon, sorry. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I got to think about it a little bit more. How to hold it? this exciting new crop well thank you both i might read the last couple lines here unless you want to do it um from rivka i hope rivka doesn't mind it says enjoy the seeds may they continue to multiply and enrich our world exclamation point thank you all for the ways that you're helping to multiply these seeds and enrich our world and for talking to our listeners today thank you

True love. We love true love. Thank you so much again to Annabel and Amanda for sharing their stories with us. And here we're about to hear from other collective members, Rivka Suad, Ali, Monique, Sharmad, Ali, and Rabab. And I'm grateful to each of you for sending these clips to share with our listeners, your reflections on your your experience with a collective and Iraqi seeds. Thank you. My name is Rivka. I was born in Iraq in the city of Kirkuk.

My Arabic name is Suad. I have been living in the United States for the past 35 years and was looking for opportunity to preserve my Iraqi culture and couldn't find anywhere anything until I heard about the Iraqi Seed Collective Group. And these girls were so amazing. They both, they all are connected to their Iraqi roots and wanted to preserve the Iraqi cuisine.

Happily, I joined them. And after receiving seeds from Iraq, I grew up in my backyard, egg plants, melons, fava beans, and Rishad, which is a green that grew up in Iraq. My family tradition was every Saturday morning to eat a sandwich, kind of, a pita filled with hard-boiled egg, salad, fried eggplant, and amba. The green that was in the sand. which was something that's called Rishad.

It's a little bit like a rugula. It is yummy, delicious, and a very distinct flavor, but could not find it in the United States at all until I grew the seeds that we received from Iraq and I planted the seeds, grew the Rishad and sent it to Owen and the true love. And of course, I saved some for myself and had an Iraqi sandwich with Rishad from my childhood. So ever since I was a child, I was always fascinated with the fruits in Iraq.

I remember at some point I started to like the fruits more than candy. And for a kid, that was unusual. But they always mesmerized me by their colors, their shapes, their flavors. Of course, back then, I took it for granted, how good they taste and how available the varieties are. After I moved to the United States in 2015, I started to appreciate the Iraqi produce much, much more. Because for some reason, the fruits in the United States are a bit bland. They don't have that strong punchy taste, if I can call it that. So I was a bit let down by this being.

being a fruit enthusiast if you can call me that. I would day dream about that day I can visit Iraq and dive into those produce and enjoy myself again. It's really a, it's a silly dream, but I generally have that dream of going back and trying to food again.

And my wife, Caitlin Chamber, always ask me when you go to Iraq and bring some seas with you, because she's a seat collector. So, I moved to the United States, 2015. Six years later, I was able to visit Iraq, and I was excited. and looking forward to it but the problem i found is there was not any produce there was no there

is no local produce available in the market it was disappointing and very heart-breaking i remember my mother my sister they spent a week trying to find an iraqi lemon i would say 80 percent of the produce that i found come from another country which was very shocking to me there's ali baba watermelon some few other things but most of it is it's pretty rare to find you know a lot of the date varieties are gone a lot of the uh food varieties are not available and it's it was really shocking to me so my casual trip to see family and home and break some seeds turn into a mission to save the seeds because of that discovery so i got in touch with kathland and i explained the situation to her and and she said bring as much seed as you can hopefully we can save those varieties so i brought

seed i brought those seeds along with me and uh the iraqi seed collective was founded and uh yeah it's been uh it's been a wonderful journey since then i hope we are successful to save whatever varieties we are able to save i wasn't really interested in farming or interested in seed collecting. I did it out of heartbreak, to be honest, out of disappointment, because it's the wonderful flavor that I remember as a child. I could barely taste them when I went there because they weren't there. So anyway, yeah, that's the sum of the story. I first started growing a rocky al-cufa tomatoes in the spring of 2021. They were ready to be harvested and eaten later that summer in July and August of 2021, and it really was a transformative experience for my family and for

myself, not only to bite into a tomato that was local and known to our ancestors in the motherland, but what was really intriguing was to find and to discover how well this tomato paired with our cherished ancestral dishes. And I'd love to share an example with tapuli. So tapuli is a dish that uses finely chopped tomatoes and cucumber and parsley and other wonderful ingredients to create a delicious, fresh and bright salad. And growing up here in the U.S., I was taught by my parents that when we used the tomato varieties that were available to us commercially here, we would chop them up, put them in a

strainer over a bowl with some salt to help drain the excess liquid from the tomatoes so that when we added it to the salad, it wasn't watery, that it held its form and that the salad came together beautifully in the tongue on the mouth and the flavor palette was still there. But with the Alcufa tomatoes, we found that that salt draining technique was not necessary because it was such a crisp variety that didn't have too much excess. liquid. It paired beautifully well with the salad, with the dish. And it was just the most amazing reminder that our ancestral dishes came together because of that local Iraqi produce and that they thought about how well each plays off one another.

Hello, my name is Sarmad Yasser Jabra. I'm in Detroit, Michigan. I'd like to share story I've had with a transformative Iraqi crop. I was born in Baghdad in the late 80s, but I've lived in the United States for most of my life. And recently, I've been into gardening. I grew things from seed last year. I'm looking forward to doing that again for this year. And one of the things I grew that had a big impact on me was the El Kofia Tomata. they're small compact almost a grape chair tomato sized they're incredibly flavorful easy to grow I grew them in several containers and I had so many that I distributed some to my family and I brought them to my Jidu's house and he really enjoyed them and I got a lot of pleasure

from sharing this tomato from a land that we are both from in a land that we have immigrated to to, and it helped me feel connected to my country. It also helped me feel closer to my family, whom I love dearly, and I also was able to share great joy with them, all with something that started off as a tiny little seed that has its historic origins, where we have our historic origins. And I was able to bring that here to where we live now and give us. me hope for finding a place in this world, which might be a lot to say about a humble tomato, but for me, it was really beautiful and I look forward to growing more this year. Thank you.

I'm set up to grow up the Aswad and Alcufa tomato and the basil this year, but I've been moving around a bit for the past two years and haven't had reliable growing space of my own. So thus far, I've been filling more of an organizing role within the collective and can speak to that a little bit because it really is just so energizing to grow as a collective. And I think seeds can be so hopeful the way you can grow them out. You have just a few and get hundreds more. And then you share and grow and save and continue. And that's what we've seen with the collective. And every year we've gotten more interest and built up our seed library more and hearing from folks who are so excited to have found us

and intergenerational, too, like people that find us on Instagram and then are thrilled to connect us with their parent. It's so special and such a part of the stories of these seeds. And we started this collective around the time my grandmother, who grew up in Iraq, passed away. And so for me, it's also been just the perfect way to carry on her memory and spirit.

And my Iraqi grandfathers, too, he always grew tomatoes and cucumbers when I was growing up. And my little story about growing them out is that I did last year try to grow out a swad. Eggplant, I started the seed that Rifka had sent me in my apartment. I had a friend who had recently passed away, a Mexican marigolds were of significance for him. So I grew the two out side by side. I started the seed. And I remember taking a picture of that and sending it to a friend who knew of the significance of the Mexican marigolds.

for our friend and also of the significance of the Iraqi seeds to me and just feeling like their lives lived on through those seeds and all of the lives they touched. And it was such a special experience to care for seeds in that way. The Mexican marigolds I did manage to transplant outside and get seed from and share some of that too, actually, which has been great. But the Oswald. I took it outside to harden off, and I think the rats aided. I live in New York City, so I'm excited to try again this year. And also, I mean, it highlights another reason the collective is special, which is that my eggplant did not survive, but we still got thousands of seeds from eggplant that did from others in the collective last year. So I hope to contribute

to our library this year. And I'm just really so grateful to be part of it. of the collective. Hello, this is Rababit Amin, Chinese medicine practitioner and medicine woman. I want to speak about my experience with the Iraqi Seed Collective. When we started in 2020, it wasn't, and like we didn't even have a name, we didn't know how this was going to shape up, but I responded to an Instagram post that Somebody was looking for interest in Iraqi seed savings, and I thought, oh, my God, this is right up my alley. And so I got on the Zoom calls, and the beauty of what happened is that we suddenly became connected with people that we haven't even met each other.

in person. And it reminds me about the power of plants and how they bring us together. We came together to collect seeds, our looms of Iraqi origin, and keep their purity together intact. And what happened is that we became a community. plants bring people together watching the seeds grow become a tomato an eggplant a watermelon takes you back to home like connects to home it's just the most fantastic thing I'm really happy to be part of this group and see where it grows from here. And here, finally, we're going to hear again from Annabelle after returning from their family

trip back to Iraq for the first time. Thank you, Annabel. So I just got back from Iraq yesterday afternoon. My thoughts are swirling, but I'll share a few reflections. It was an incredible experience. Just being there with my family, hearing the Iraqi dialect, hearing them speak it on the streets, tasting things, seeing things that I've only ever heard of or dreamed of my entire life. I feel so lucky that we have that opportunity and I also understand why people are reluctant to go back there were ways that it was really hard especially the brief time that we were in Baghdad where my family grew up you logically know that it's not 1970 anymore and all of these memories these beautiful memories they had of

this place that was really thriving before they left is no longer there, but then facing it in reality is visceral in a way that you can never really prepare for.

The reality is that after 50 years of war in occupation the city has not been able to thrive in the way that it should have been. It's tired as people said

to Albana and also facing the fact that we've been severed from this place for so long those things are things that I feel like I have to grieve in a way in a way that I haven't yet before but that being said

we met so many incredible people people who have left and returned, people who have been there through it all, people that we had never met before, people we hadn't seen in so long we would sit with, and it felt like we were connecting with long-loss family members. There were so many deep connections, and it's so comforting to know that I have this refound family there, a place. that I hope to return to. I was even able to connect with some farmers who are growing more sustainably, growing native crops, saving seeds.

It was so surreal. I was able to go to a farm outside of Baghdad and harvest ful for Bajila. And I'm so excited to continue collaborating with them and just knowing that they exist. gives me so much hope my my aunt said it right she said no matter what happened we're no longer severed from this place that no one in my family has gone back to in over 50 years and just knowing that feels like enough so i'm i'm missing it already despite everything

But today I'm in the greenhouse, and I brought back some Iraqi Saluk charred seeds, and I'm planting them today, and I'm excited for a few months from now when I can harvest them, cook with them, and have a piece of home here in Boston. Thank you so much to the Iraqi Seed Collective for sharing their stories with us. And thank you for listening and sharing this episode of Seeds and their people with your loved ones. Please share this episode with someone you love and subscribe to our show in your favorite podcast app. And thank you also for helping our seedkeeping and storytelling work by leaving us a review and also ordering seeds, t-shirts, and more from our website.

TrueLoveseeds.com. And again, please join our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Your support keeps the episodes coming. And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. God bless.