Transcript: PLANTS ARE POLITICAL on the Flavor of Za'atar S1:2
***This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Ayana Young Hi For The Wild, it’s Ayana. Today, we’re bringing you a new series made in collaboration with Olive Odyssey, a Palestinian olive oil brand that serves as a gateway for Palestinian farmers to connect with people around the world and tell their story through the foods they produce. In this series you’ll hear from Aya Gazawi Faour, Olive Odyssey’s co-founder, about plants indigenous to the Palestinian landscape and their deep ties to culture, resistance, and enduring lifeways.
Amid ongoing Israeli occupation and violence against Palestinians, we hope this series serves as a reminder of not only the lifeblood of Palestinian land, but also of the sacredness of land itself and all the life it holds. Plants Are Political calls on us to consider the way landscapes, food ways, and connection to the earth are intertwined with systems of oppression and movements of resistance. May this be an invitation to reflect on the central role land and the more-than-human world plays in movements for justice everywhere
In this episode, we focus on the flavor of zaatar.
Thank you for listening.
Ayana Young Okay, we are back now to talk about zaatar, which is one of my favorite herbs and I remember the first time I ate it was with a friend in my early 20s or late teens, and we had it with yogurt and tomatoes, I think, and olive oil. And it was just such an incredibly unique flavor to me at that time, and something that I have not forgotten, obviously. And so maybe I'll start off with a quote from your website, which is, "More than just a spice, zaatar is woven into the fabric of Palestinian life from the scent of morning meals to the memories of harvest, but in parts of historic Palestine, including the West Bank and 48 Territories foraging wild zaatar has been banned by Israeli authorities, turning this humble plant into a political act of resistance."
Aya Gazawi Faour I think probably here we're talking about one of the most important herbs in Palestine—maybe the most important. There's another plant called marmariya, which is sage. We share the same story where both were forbidden from foraging at the same time. But I think probably zaatar—that would be the most important because it's used the most in kitchens. This is the fragrance of a Palestinian kitchen. If you had to imagine what a Palestinian kitchen would smell like, it would smell like zaatar. People may know it as Syrian oregano. It grows wild in the hills of Palestine, mostly in rocky areas with a lot of sun. It's a very specific kind of land with huge rocks that the zaatar loves to be around. And this is zaatar. It’s a plant itself, but most people know it as the spice mixture because we use the same name for the plant and the spice mixture. The spice mixture is made of sumac, zaatar, sesame and sea salt. It's in every Palestinian kitchen. You put it on everything. You were talking about the first time you tried zaatar—I obviously can't even imagine the first time I tried zaatar because you try it as babies. So it's just something that you grow up with. I don't think I've ever met any Palestinian kid that doesn't like zaatar because it's just something that you eat from day one, you know?The moment you're allowed to eat solid food, one of the first will be zaatar. It's a traditional Palestinian medicine, really. It's really one of the most important foods in Palestine.
Ayana Young I like thinking about babies and zaatar and just have it so integrated that you don't even you're so inseparable in the kitchen. And yeah, if you could speak more about how zaatar harvesting has been banned by the Israeli authorities, and what does that mean? I'm so curious to understand the details of that.
Aya Gazawi Faour If there are indigenous listeners right now, they would know what I'm talking about because this is one of the tactics that are used most to control a people—it's to prevent them from accessing their food. And this is a food that is medicine, so it's very important for the Palestinian—for the native diet as well. It's 1970 and the Israeli government—they're talking about plants that are in danger and that need to be protected, and the list is ready. And then, last minute, Ariel Sharon, who is a war criminal, added the zaatar to the lists without having any tests that indicate that zaatar is actually in danger—and that was it. Zaatar was banned from being forged. If people would go out to forage for zaatar, they would be arrested. A lot of people would pay a lot of fines and if you look at the history of who are the people who are going to jail or paying these fines throughout the history of the Zion state, it would be only Palestinians. Not even one non-Palestinian was ever fined for picking zaatar.
While this happens, understanding and knowing very well how important zaatar is for the native diet, and how important...You know, in the kitchen, it's one of the most important ingredients Palestinians have in the kitchen. It's used as antiseptic. It's a medicine, not only food, right? And right after it's banned, Israelis start to grow zaatar and sell it to Palestinians. And I think this is something that happened in a lot of places around the world—where you take something that is important for people and you forbid it, and then you sell it. And now they rely on you for this thing. And this is the story of the zaatar. People kept foraging for zaatar, obviously. It was harder and harder to do so. Today, people still get fines, by the way, till this day. Mostly the zaatar...The areas where that were hurt, where the zaatar grows, is where settlements are built, which is most of the land. Like many other plants, zaatar grows because you cut it, right? Just so a lot of food needs animals to eat it for it to grow back or to grow healthier and bigger. And this is the same for zaatar. If you don't prune the zaatar, or you don't cut it, you don't eat it, not a lot of animals eat zaatar. So the only animal that eats the zaatar here is the humans. It relies on humans using the zaatar so if you don't cut it enough, you're hurting the zaatar. It's not gonna grow. And this is one of the things that actually, instead of helping protect the plant, it's hurting the plant.
Ayana Young Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about what's in my herb garden right now, and it's like, whether it's thyme or cilantro or nettle—the harvesting it does, it helps it grow. It needs that connection and needs that relationship. And, yeah, I'm imagining Palestinians being criminalized while—
Aya Gazawi Faour Yeah, we had a lot of practices being criminalized. Gathering and foraging of wild zaatar was one of them—clearing a plant, a protected plant, and then have the law selectively enforced against Palestinians. It's something that didn't happen only with zaatar. It happened with sage as well. It happened with another plant called akkoub, which is a thorn that Palestinians eat. And all of this happens while Israeli agricultural companies are cultivating plants and exporting the plant under , you know, the plant being Israeli—Israeli zaatar, Israeli sage. And this was always about severing Palestinians from their land and traditions and it's not only with foraging, but it's mostly a forbidding gathering. And I think probably one of the things we've mentioned before, having the people be disconnected from the land, from the plants, from their culture, the practices that were practiced for hundreds of years. You know, you damage this tie, this connection that you have with the land, and when you don't feel this connection to the land, it becomes less important to you. You don't feel the need to protect it. You don't feel the love that one would feel.
I saw this TikTok a couple of days ago…And this woman, she said, "If you don't pick berries, how are you going to fall in love with life?" I was like, yeah. I mean, this makes complete sense. So if you don't forage for zaatar, how are you going to feel connected to the land? How are you going to understand what your ancestors have been doing for thousands of years here? All of these plants, you know, our ancestors have been feeding from them. The connection to these plants, to the land, is a connection to our ancestors in a way. So criminalizing these practices and these traditions damages the connection with our ancestors and with the land, and all this without talking about how important the zaatar is for the native diet.
Ayana Young Would you walk us through the collecting of zaatar and the preparation? And, you know, if you were out on a walk, like, where would you find it? How would you cut it? Would you dry it? Yeah, I'd love to imagine that with you.
Aya Gazawi Faour So you would forage for zaatar during winter. And if you forage for zaatar in the beginning of winter when it's raining heavily, it would mean that the plant will have a lot of water in it, so it would be harder to dry. So this is the zaatar you would use, you would eat fresh. So we'd put it over your labneh. You put it in your bread. You make dough with it—we call it fatayer. You mix it within the dough, and you make these pastries, delicious pastries. So this would be the season for eating fresh zaatar. You boil it and drink the water. It's antimicrobial. It's really good for your gut health. So this is the time you use fresh zaatar, when it's still raining and the zaatar has a lot of water. It wouldn't make any sense to dry it because it would take a long time, and most of the time it's going to have mold on it and things like that. So you wouldn't gather a lot of zaatar in that time. Probably like a month or two months later, when it stops raining, you would start gathering for the whole year, and this is the zaatar that you would pick and dry at home.
So zaatar is a bush that grows through the whole year. Instead it stays there. So some of the branches, they stay for over more than a year. So you would pick the green ones, the small ones, the new ones—not to damage the older plants, and, you know, to allow it to stay big and grow bigger. So you would only gather, you know...You kind of have to feel the plant where it tells you. If it can bend, can be bent, it means you can gather it. You know, it's like gathering asparagus. You kind of have to hold the plant and bend it. And where it breaks is where you are able to gather anything else. If you have to work hard for cutting the zaatar, it means you're not supposed to. Some people—they dry it separating the leaves and, for some, you separate the leaves and dry it. And once it's dried—if you're doing it at home—it's easier to do with your hand. You kind of hold the leaves in your hand and rub it together and the leaves break. This is a zaatar that you call mafrouk, which means to rub, because you rub it in your hands. Once the leaves break into the size that you want, you add a little bit of olive oil, and you rub it together, and then you add sesame, sumac, and sea salt.
Ayana Young And through Olive Odyssey, you sell a zaatar blend, right? Yes, and it's what you're speaking to with the sumac and sesame?
Aya Gazawi Faour Yeah, the woman who makes our zaatar, her name is Aida. She is from Biddu Village, which is in the West Bank. This is a village that has been affected. Actually talking about foraging, just a couple of years ago, two children, one 18 and one 14, were shot at while foraging for zaatar and sage. One of them was killed. This is a village that really feels the occupation because they're surrounded by settlements. A lot of their land was taken to build settlements. They've built a road on top of some of the village, and then they have to go underground to move from side to side. A lot of people, Aida, specifically, she has an olive grove right outside of the border that they've built, so she can't access her land. Last year, she was given permission to collect her olive for two days. They give her permission and only two people. And because she's afraid for her sons, she doesn't want to send her son because they would shoot him, so she goes with her daughter. And so, you see these two women trying to collect olive tree olives from, I don't know, 30-40 olive trees in two days, which is impossible, because they don't have any machinery allowed to go in with anything. So they only were able to collect from, I think, seven or eight trees. And then, you see their olive trees. If the fruit is not picked, it would mean that it's not going to give fruit the next year. And a lot of the times settlers would come and they would steal the fruit of the trees.
But back to zaatar—they can forage outside of their village, but a lot of the times they're restricted to it. And like I said, there were incidents where people were killed foraging for food. So it's not only criminalized, but people are actually killed while doing it. So Aida makes our zaatar. She has a small store where she sells spices, and she has her own recipe that we worked very hard to perfect, and she's really amazing. And we talked before about supporting Palestinian farmers, but this is also another thing that we're able to do to support very small Palestinian businesses. Aida has a very small store in a very small village in Palestine and, now, people from all around the world try her zaatar, and this is zaatar that she makes by hand. She dries it herself on the rooftop over there of her house. And you know, she has a part of her soul with so many people around the world. So it's another thing that we're really, truly blessed to be able to do.
Ayana Young Wow, I'm so grateful to all of you. You, and the people at Olive Odyssey, but the people on the ground drying the zaatar on their roofs, and just going to such lengths to be with these plants and to share the plants.
I mean, I know we touched on this a little bit, but if you could walk us through the process of, like the checkpoints and even how to export? I mean, it seems like from being able to either harvest or get back to people's lands, to even harvest on their land, and then try to make it into something to sell, either domestically or internationally, is like a huge feat. And you had mentioned this earlier, but maybe if you could even speak to the process of Olive Odyssey and how the farmers are able to get to their land, and then how you're able to ship it?
Aya Gazawi Faour And see there's two different aspects because before October 2023, things were a little easier. It was never easy, and there were always restrictions, and there were always checkpoints and blockage, but it was a little bit easier than today. Today, it's, you know, you have no idea which village they will close at what time for what reason. And most of them, it's actually for no reason. They have a whole system of just doing that, you know, to prevent people from moving around. And, you know, kind of plant fear and sadness into people's hearts. For Olive Odyssey, the last harvest was really difficult, and the one before that as well, because the one before that was in October of 2023 and the harvest starts 5th of October, and the genocide begin in October 7th. I can't even explain to you what was happening here because almost nobody was able to get to their land. We had problems.
So for me, a Palestinian who lives in 48, I am more free to move around Palestine, but we couldn't get to most of our farmers. We had to take unofficial roads, and, you know, through the woods to get to some of our farmers. We weren't able to move big containers of olive oil, so we had to do small containers of 16 liters, which is nothing, really. So going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It was the amount of times we had to go to each farmer to get their olive oil was insane, really. So if, instead of, you know, a normal operation where you would go to the mill and get huge containers of olive oil, now you have to go, first of all by car, because no trucks are allowed in. So you go with a regular car. You take small containers of 16 liters, and you have to take that and drive three hours and then go back and do that over and over and over again.
On our account, on Instagram, well, you can see some of this process. You kind of never know what will happen. And this is one of the things that you know, we're worried about this harvest coming next month. We just have no idea what farmers of ours will be able to get to their land, which ones will be prevented. And we try and help them with the farmers in the West Bank because a lot of Palestinians in the 48 Area can go there to the West Bank and collect the olives for the Palestinians in the West Bank. So we kind of try and do that. But the last couple of years, nobody was allowed to get to a lot of the land. Fortunately, for our farmers, this didn't happen. This year, one of the farmers that we were supposed to work with, his land was confiscated, and so we can't work with them anymore because they are not going to be able to get to their land, and we can't get to their land either. Because in other situations, we would be able to go there and collect the olives for them, and we've done that before, but unfortunately, with the specific farmer, we are not able to do that.
So a lot of farmers, you know, their land is just left and it's really, really sad. I'm saying this, and you know, my heart is breaking for this person and for these trees. I think how much a person would miss their tree not being able to grow it for a generation. Your grandfather planted it, and then your father takes care of it, and then here you are standing looking at your trees, not able to visit them anymore. And these trees are used to having somebody to serve them and care for them, all of a sudden, being left alone and growing wild. And olive tree grows wild very fast. I don't know. I kind of am talking about it, and I feel like all of these olive trees, you know, might feel loneliness in a way, or you know that we have left them, and, you know, not being able to know why we're not there anymore. It's really heartbreaking.
So the whole process of bringing the olive oil from the West Bank into 48 and then exporting is very, very, very difficult. And in a lot of places, you know, like the US, we can't write "Made in Palestine" on our products. So we have to kind of work around that. The first year we did that we were writing "Made in Palestine," and then they stopped our product and made us relabel all over the bottles. So yeah, it's very difficult. It's not easy, but, you know, we do it and every year we just want to do more and more. So I guess whatever they're doing is not working for them.
Ayana Young So what did you have to say that it...What did you label it as? Like if you couldn't say "Palestine?"
Aya Gazawi Faour We had to write “Product of the West Bank.” Like this is not what we had to write, but what we could try—"Product of the West Bank." What they wanted us to write is "Made in Israel," and this is one of the tools of, you know, stopping the boycott from working. Right in the beginning of the war—I think it was probably in November of 2023—they were lobbying to stop writing "Made in Palestine" and instead write "Made in Israel" on all products and this would be to prevent the boycott from working. Because if you couldn't write "Made in Palestine” and you had to write only "Made in Israel," people wouldn't be able to know which one is Palestinian and which one is Israeli, and then the boycott wouldn't work and wouldn't be as effective. And, "You would be hurting Palestinian businesses if you didn't buy Israeli products," in quotation. But what we legally could do is write "Product of the West Bank," since Palestine is not recognized as a state. So this is what they allowed us to write, and we just write the word "Palestine" on our product. So we don't write "Made in Palestine," but we do write "Palestine." This is our way of doing it, and a lot of other Palestinian brands do it the same way we do it.
Victoria Pham Thank you for listening to this episode of Plants Are Political, a collaboration with Olive Odyssey. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham. Music for this series is by Doe Paoro, with this episode featuring the tracks “Rosa” and “Anima.”
We extend deep gratitude to Aya from Olive Odyssey for their generosity and guidance in the groves. In these lands, where plants stand as witnesses to both heritage and struggle, we honour the enduring resistance and solidarity of the Palestinian people whose care for the land continues to inspire movements for justice and liberation everywhere.
For more information, you can visit our website at www.forthewild.world where you can discover more details about Olive Odyssey in the episode description. Thank you for listening.
Credits
This transcript was brought to you by For The Wild.
©2025 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by any means without written permission from For The Wild and Olive Odyssey.