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We are moving quickly into summer now. Temperatures of under 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) are a cause for rejoicing. The horses don't work in temperatures above 35 as it's really difficult for them to cool off when the temperatures are too high, and doubly so if the humidity is high. One of the signs of summer's approach has been the wheat harvest, an event that a North American transplant like myself would usually associate with autumn.
The latest food price hikes in Egypt give a special emphasis to this yearly spring ritual. Most of our local food is grown on the tiny plots of the farmers in the Nile Valley, plots so small that they pay the guy who owns the tractor by the hour, or the half hour, to plow them. Once the field is plowed and fertilised with the last season's water buffalo manure, the wheat is planted, tended, and weeded for the next few months until the lengthening days signal the time for harvest of the golden heads. The family cuts the stalks by hand, laying them flat on the field, and then goes back to bundle them for easier threshing.
At one time the wheat was threshed by cattle walking on it or a similar method. Currently most of the time a threshing machine is brought in to the field behind a tractor and the machine set up with a long belt traveling to the rear axle of the tractor. This belt drives the threshing machine. This method is much faster than the older ones, but moving around downwind is not too pleasant. Wheat chaff has to be some of the stickiest stuff in the universe, both in the sense of adhesion and in the sense of piercing.
The end result of the process is bags of wheat that will be sold by the family as a source of disposable income or perhaps kept to be milled for their consumption later in baking bread. The chaff, or the chopped stems of the wheat, will be bagged up to be taken away so that large blocks of it will be shaped for later sale to people with livestock who eat it. My horses consume quite a lot of tibn, as it's known.
I was surprised to see wheat growing in Egypt when I first began exploring the countryside. It simply isn't a crop that I'd associated with Egypt. Corn, okra, aubergine, clover...all of these, sure, but not wheat. Wheat to me was a cold weather crop. But on the other hand, after last winter, I'd think that we'd have had a great wheat crop this year.
The hand of God spins the year’s wheel backwards here.
Autumn’s grain grows gold in the spring.
A rich harvest of early summer prepares for
Hell’s blast in place of snow.
God touches every word
Reassuring uncertainty
Reinforcing rigid dogma
To give structure against another world with other seasons.
They spin out of time
Rooted in the earth
Secure in a way that is lost to us,
The space observers in the outer rings of progress.
copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
