Some Chicago-area Palestinians risk travel to homeland for olive harvest

“I miss my home,” she kept saying. “I want to go back to my home.”
Home for 80-year-old Nadia Hussien is the Palestinian village of Beitunia, 2 miles southwest of Ramallah in the West Bank. The family house is made of concrete, stone and brick, and has six bedrooms and two balconies that wrap around the property, perfect for afternoon teatime and midday walks, which Nadia takes often.
Surrounding her house on the land passed down from her father and his father before that, are fruit trees of lemon, orange, persimmon, fig and grapes, and nut trees of walnut and pistachio. And across the road from the house is a vast grove filled with about 100 olive trees.
“At the beginning, you’re raising the trees, you’re growing it, you’re working hard to make sure it flourishes,” Nadia told the Tribune in Arabic at the Nile Restaurant in Bridgeview’s Little Palestine neighborhood on a recent Wednesday afternoon. “For (Palestinians), it’s our land and we are connected to it. We need to go back and take care of it.”
For many, those trees are the lifeblood of Palestinian culture, representing so much more than a pickled or pressed fruit. And like many Chicago-area Palestinian families who travel back to their respective villages each October and November, Nadia had been longing to head back to collect this year’s harvest.
But as bombs continue to fall on Gaza more than a year into the Israel-Hamas war, and as the Israeli occupation gains a stronger hold in the West Bank, olive season is among the invaluable casualties of war. And so is the ability of Chicago-area Palestinian families to access their groves.
Hunched over a walker, Nadia strolled into the restaurant with her niece, Mona Abdullah, who was translating most of the conversation from Arabic to English. Still, Nadia understood and spoke some English.
She immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1970s and stayed for about 10 years. She worked at Western Electric for part of that time before going back home to care for her parents with her older sister while her younger brother split his time between the U.S. and Beitunia. After Nadia’s sister died in 2021, her family in the south suburbs had been pushing her to come back to the States. She finally came last fall and had to stay for an extended period because of the war.
Nadia Hussien sorts through olives at her home in Beitunia on Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi)
Nadia Hussien sorts through olives at her home in Beitunia on Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi)
Neighbors help pick olives at Nadia and Adnan Hussien’s home in Beitunia on Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi)
Olive picking at Nadia Hussien’s home in Beitunia on Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi)
Adnan Hussien picks olives with neighbors at his home in Beitunia, Palestine, Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi)
Nadia Hussien, left, is greeted by her sister-in-law, Zuhdieh Hussien, while gathering with relatives at her brother Adnan’s home, Oct. 11, 2024, in Homer Glen. Hussien, 80, and her brother are traveling back to their home in Beitunia in the West Bank, in part, to tend to the olive trees on their property despite the potential dangers and travel complications caused by the Israel-Hamas war. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
A relative of Nadia Hussien displays on a phone a picture of Hussien’s home in Beitunia in the West Bank during a family gathering, Oct. 11, 2024, in Homer Glen. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Nadia Hussien, center right, talks with a niece as they gather with relatives at her brother Adnan’s home, Oct. 11, 2024, in Homer Glen. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune)
Adnan Hussien holds his grandson, Idris, 2, during a family gathering at his home, Oct. 11, 2024, in Homer Glen. Hussien, 71, and his sister, Nadia Hussien, 80, not pictured, are traveling back to their home in Beitunia in the West Bank, in part, to tend to the olive trees on the property. (John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune) Show Caption 1 of 9 Nadia Hussien sorts through olives at her home in Beitunia on Oct. 20, 2024. (Bilal Moghrabi) Expand
There are only three siblings left in the Hussien family tree: Nadia, her sister (Mona’s mother who lives in Tinley Park) and her 71-year-old brother, Adnan. Tending to the trees now requires help from neighbors. But Nadia still tries to pluck as many olives as she’s able to herself.
“My olives are waiting for me,” she said at the restaurant. “I like it better back home, the land, big house — I have a big house. I miss my home.”
At the time of the Tribune’s sit-down with Nadia, it was unclear whether she could return for the harvest. The day before, Israeli forces had dropped more than 52 airstrikes across neighboring southern Lebanon that killed more than 490 people. Families in the Chicago area, already facing advisories warning against travel to the region for over a year, had to reevaluate their plans for a second harvest season.
But Nadia and Adnan persisted in their push to return for the harvest, especially as they learned a relative was traveling back for his own olives and offered to take them with him.
“They don’t want to relinquish the task of picking the olives,” said Abdullah, adding that they would not take no for an answer. Nadia and her brother flew to Jordan on Oct. 12. From there, they were driven to Beitunia, and will likely stay a few months. Though Nadia — finally home — might object to coming back to the States
Sociologist Louise Cainkar, who has extensively studied Arab Americans in the diaspora, said the restrictions preventing Palestinians from returning to their home “are nothing new.”
“The barriers have been in place since 1948 and what I have found in my research all through the decades is that Palestinians’ sense of yearning for belonging in Palestine is extremely strong and does not wane from generation to generation to generation,” Cainkar said. “And I think that with all people and all situations, once you can’t have something you want, you want it more. That’s just a very human reaction.”
During this year’s mid- to late October harvest season, Adnan began by laying out a giant blue tarp under a section of trees. The lower hanging fruit is plucked by hand, brushing it along the branch to knock off the olives, and the ones at the top of the tree usually require a ladder. While picking the olives, Adnan, Nadia and their neighbors also prune the trees, removing the bad leaves to maintain it year after year, a task Nadia’s been doing since she was 17.
Depending on the size, each tree might yield 1,000 olives, give or take a few. With a limited crew, it’ll likely take Nadia and her brother several weeks to complete harvesting.
Once picked they transfer the fruit into giant burlap sacks and haul it in a truck to the people in the village who press the olives into olive oil.
Because the facility is in high demand during harvest time, families must call ahead to make an appointment for their turn to press the olives.
There are families in the West Bank who plant and harvest olives for commercial use, but Nadia’s family has always lived off the land.
At the Nile Restaurant, Nadia was tearing pieces of pita and swooping them into hummus, which was served in a flat, large platter and drizzled with pine nuts and, of course, olive oil. It’s often served alongside a plate of pickled cauliflower, cabbage, chilies, bright pink pickled turnips and beets, carrots and, again, olives. Nadia said the olives are too bitter to eat uncured, right off the tree. She’ll spend many days during the harvest out on her beloved balcony, sifting through the green olives before soaking them in water and brine.
Though it’s a meticulous undertaking, separating the olives from the leaves connects Nadia with the fruits of her and her family’s labor.
“It’s important because we worked hard on it,” she said. “By the time it grows, you get olives from it. You have to pick it, separate it. You’re connected to it; it’s your land.”
Along with several jars of pickled olives, each season Nadia’s farm produces about 20 golden yellow, 10-gallon tins of olive oil one might find at a grocery store.
Nadia noted that she doesn’t use any other type of oil: “I only use olive oil.” And one harvest lasts her an entire year.
Whatever she doesn’t keep is divided between the extended family to share and sent back to America with whichever family member came to help with the harvest. If no one’s able to help, Adnan will ship them the oil.
Nadia said that years ago, Jewish residents from the settlements also would be interested in buying the oil, or the fruits growing in her gardens.
“The (present day) settlers are different from the Jewish people that used to come (buy our crops) because they were people who always lived in Palestine like us and they had respected the land,” she said.
Palestinian farmers are tenaciously faithful to the land they have cultivated for centuries. One of Nadia’s fears is that the generation after hers won’t be as devoted to it.
“We never sold our land. My biggest worry is the young people of the family wanting to sell it because they don’t go back home,” Nadia said. “Who is going to take care of our land? Who is going to do what I do there? It affects me a lot.”
Her eyes welled up: “I miss my home.”
Holding on ‘with their bare hands’
Meanwhile, less than 40 miles from Beitunia, in Turmus Ayya, Ansam Hussein was running errands during a busy harvest season.
Like many residents of the Palestinian village in the West Bank, Ansam is a dual Palestinian American citizen. She lives in Oak Lawn, but returned to Turmus Ayya with her husband to approve the final touches for the home they’re building in the village as well as seeing to the olive groves of their respective family homes.
“We are building a house from scratch. It’s beautiful. It’s on the mountain. And we really want to move in with the kids for a year or two, or whatever Allah writes for us,” Ansam said. “We want them to experience four seasons. We want them to experience the olive season. And hopefully things got better in regards to schools and safety in general, politically, and we can move in and live in our house.”
Cainkar, a professor of social and cultural sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said despite the risks, many Palestinians from all over the world have the drive to create an actual home in their homeland.
“It’s a very common thing. … They want their kids to learn the culture and the language,” Cainkar said. “Palestinians never stop building, returning to their land. Nothing will stop that. Short of killing every one of them off, there’s nothing that’s going to stop that process. They’re very resilient and they love their country.”
For Ansam, though she has much to look forward to, she finds herself thinking back to what is going on not too far away in Gaza.
“We looked Gaza up (on Google maps) and it’s two hours away from Turmus Ayya. … Two hours,” Ansam said. “It’s been a whole year and the whole world is watching, and they’re just next door. And I’m so weak I can’t do anything for them. I’m full, and they’re starving. Our fridges are full and theirs are not, and we’re just two hours away. Can you imagine?”
With most of Gaza in ruins, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported widespread destruction to the territory’s agricultural areas since Oct. 7, 2023, including damage to over 57% of total cropland, which includes olive groves.
While Turmus Ayya is an enclave between the bigger cities in the West Bank and is relatively safe, the area and its olive trees are not completely spared, Ansam said.
Ansam’s grandmother’s grove is spread out across a terraced landscape below the mountains, covering acres and acres of land. Her grandmother spends most of the year in Turmus Ayya when she’s not in Oak Lawn, but has been wanting to keep a closer eye on her trees lately.
Years ago, Ansam said, Israeli settlers took the land higher up on the mountains near her grandmother’s farm, and are “slowly crawling down.”
“They took a lot of the acres of land that belong to my grandmother and my in-laws, and if they go and check on their olive trees on that land, the settlers will come down and threaten them and sometimes they will hit them. Sometimes they will burn their trees,” she said. “Those trees are basically gone. No one has had the courage to go there anymore.”
Ansam’s family roots in the area predate the 1967 war, when Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories began, including the establishment of settlements in the West Bank. Over the decades, entire communities have been displaced by the settlements, with Palestinians having restrictions on their movement and access to their land, water and other natural resources, like olive trees.
“Whatever’s left of their olive trees around their homes, they’re literally holding on to it with their bare hands,” Ansam said about her mother, grandmother and uncles. “That’s why they will come here even in the middle of the war to monitor what is so dear to them.”
Separate from personal run-ins with settlers in the West Bank, Palestinian farmers have also faced military restrictions since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The agency said close to 100,000 Palestinian families rely economically on the olive harvest, and half of Palestinian farmers could not harvest because of the restrictions last year.
No land to go back to
Ansam noted that not every Palestinian living in the Chicago area is fortunate enough to travel back for the olive harvest.
For some, like Rama Atieh, there isn’t land to go back to.
“I never had that experience, unfortunately, because we were expelled from our village during the 1948 Nakba, so we don’t have ties to our village,” said Atieh, a mental health professional who lives in Bridgeview.
Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic, and refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
Atieh said in terms of a village to call home, she lives vicariously through others in her community. And olive oil that’s brought back from her homeland tends to get passed around.
“Like many Palestinians living in the diaspora, I’m a product of a refugee family that was expelled so I am living proof of the transgenerational trauma,” Atieh said. “Everything my grandfather worked for is not there. We don’t have a village. Many villages are still there, but there are many villages that are occupied and some are being cleansed.”
Atieh, who often tries to unpack the unresolved emotional baggage of her people, said the olive harvest remains a constant source of light.
“It’s part of our identity and something they’ve been doing for generations,” she added. “So it’s almost like they’re letting their ancestors down by not completing the harvest every year despite the more current risks.”
While Nadia’s harvest is underway, Ansam’s elderly mother is gearing up to travel to Turmus Ayya for her own.
Ansam hopes that someday soon her kids, who are ages 12, 11, 6 and 1, can do more than just spend the summer months in Turmus Ayya — they could live there for a chapter of their childhood. It’s easier said than done, Ansam said, but she is an eternal optimist.
“SubhanAllah, Palestine is so beautiful … the fresh air, the food, even under occupation, even under war, there’s something about the air that’s so peaceful that I cannot describe it,” she said as she was preparing to fly back home to the States. “Just sitting on a mountain in front of your home, overlooking your family’s olive trees, eating a pack of chips, the smell of street foods, the chatter from the markets. There’s so much life here.”