Iqlim Al Kharroub, Oakland

3794 Patterson Ave, Oakland, CA. View Larger Map

An in-joke for my Lebanese readers. If you can't see the carob tree, use the little "turn" arrows in upper left corner to view the slope with trees just below an apricot-colored small building (portable classroom). There are at least two healthy large carob trees along this stretch of school garden. Nobody harvests the carob pods and in the fall they merely drop to the ground and make a mess.

Iqlim al Kharroub is a coastal area of Lebanon which we drive through to get to my village from Beirut. I always thought the name was evocative - you leave the over-populated suburbs of Beirut, drive along the coast, and suddenly you are in a district of trees, mountains and sea called the Region of Carobs.

The carob tree thrives in semi-desert conditions; its pods are nutritious fodder for animals as well as a hippie's substitute for chocolate, and can be distilled into carob syrup. My cousin N told me the carob tree was sacred to the Jews, but I haven't found documentation of this. A plant which can tolerate drought and neglect while providing sweet-tasting calories should be sacred to any desert-dwelling people.

Have Oakland's permaculture types figured out the benefits of the carob tree? They ought to take note.

The one monastery in Lebanon to which I have a close, personal connection, Deir MKhalles, is known for its carob syrup. Thanks to Rami Zurayk for documenting this and other slow food treasures of Lebanon.

Comments

[Attention to People]

While there are trees in Lebanon, the people deserve a little study, too.

With your intellectual honesty, you could give us some insight on the honesty, dishonesty, decency, indecency of some people from the Lebanese landscape.

Please let us hear a decsription on the silent calculating mind of the many types of people from Lebanon.

Perhaps it can inspire the Lebanese to forge a civil society there.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Dear Attention - I don't do sketches of the mind of a whole nation, especially one as diverse as Lebanon.

Furthermore, there are so many Lebanese bloggers that you might as well read all of them to get a picture of the many types of Lebanese. I invite you to google Lebanese bloggers, or browse the Lebanon aggregator site here:

http://lebanonaggregator.blogspot.com/

Good luck in your researches on the Lebanese mind, whatever that is.

[Rami Zurayk]

Great pic Laila, and scary too! such details...do these street pics exist for every corner of the US? Anyways, back to carob: it is used in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine as molasses, but surprisingly not in Jordan where it is only fed to animals. In S, L and P it used to replace sugar in cake recipes until less than 100 years ago. Oh, and well answered to the mind mapper too ;)