Meet Noha
When Noha thinks back to her life in Gaza, it’s the flavours she remembers, and the way food brought people together. Her grandma picking eggplants from the garden. Cracked bulgur wheat on fresh tabbouleh. Spices and seasonings carried on the breeze.
“We can’t afford anything, so everything comes from the land,” she says. “Anything it gives us, we make. Sumac, that’s the ingredient I really crave, and pressed olive oil.”
Noha’s family had a small olive farm in Gaza, and every September, as the autumn rains swept over the parched earth, they would gather to harvest the seeds and carefully squeeze out the precious, fragrant drops. First with a hand press, and later by machine. Women, men, children, aunties, uncles, grandparents – it was a celebration, but also a statement. We’re here. We’re enduring. We’re going to honour this land together.
Like much of Palestine, Gaza has been a centre of olive cultivation for over 4000 years, from the ancient Canaanites to the Philistines and the Ottoman Empire. Even today, thousands of families depend on it for their livelihood. Every golden drop is another link in a very, very long chain.
“The smell of olive oil, it’s the smell of land,” Noha says. “Every morning, we have a traditional Palestinian breakfast: a small plate of cheese and labneh and za’atar, and a big bowl for olive oil. We dip the olive oil with the bread and za’atar and the labneh. It’s so good.”
“I remember my grandpa, every morning he would drink a shot of olive oil.” She laughs suddenly. “Me, I can’t do that! But he’s 96 and still strong…”
Noha moved from Gaza to Australia in 2023 with her two daughters, Lama and Leah.
Noha says that although they’ve left Palestine behind, preserving their Palestinian culture – the festivals and the food and the memories – has become a much bigger part of their lives. When they landed in Australia, they were lucky to find a small Palestinian and Arab community, and they’ve done their best to keep tradition alive.
“Overseas, in my country, it wasn’t so important for my daughters to learn my culture,” Noha says, “for we lived there! But now I really want to keep all the details, carry on those traditions.
“Maybe when you leave your culture…you hold it.”
Noha wants her daughters to be proud of their heritage. She’s even teaching them the traditional Levantine dabke – a foot-stomping line dance often performed at weddings. Above all, she wants her kids to remember Palestine: the sandy coastal plains, the scent of citrus and olive, the apartment buildings with generations of family stacked storey upon storey, like a vertical village.
It seems to be working, too. Noha’s eldest, Lama, who learned English in school, wrote her a letter recently: “Palestine is more than its struggles,” it said. “It’s a recipe of love, tradition and resilience. We make the best of every ingredient life gives us.”
It’s something Noha hopes to share with people who come and cook with her. “With these classes, I want to introduce people to our culture, our food, our people, our land. The life. Everything.”
This beautiful piece was written by our friend Taryn Stenvei from GOOD & PROPER.