Hêlîn Asmîn

 

ŞEHBA - The women who were forced to migrate to the Fafînê district of Şehba remind that Afrin’s lands are more fertile and the olives are also very good. Women say that the olives they pick in Şehba to make a living are not good and they are scarce this year.

 

With the attack of Turkey and the groups it supports against Afrin on March 18, 2018, thousands of people, including women and children, were killed, injured and displaced. On the other hand, the olive groves, the income source of the canton, where the houses were plundered and the goods belonging to the people were seized, were also targeted with this attack. While some of the seized olive trees in Afrin are cut down, the rest continues to be used for commercial purposes.

 

As the olives begin to be picked every year with the coming of October, women who migrated and settled in the Fafînê district of Şehba due to the attacks on Afrin continue to live their lives despite all the difficulties during the three years since the attacks.

 

‘We pick olives to make a living’

 

Eyde Ebdirahman states that they used to pick olives in Afrin and now they do the same in Fafînê. Eyde said, ‘’We used to pick olives every year to make a living of our house. But mostly now women have to stay at home because they do not have trees. The majority of our people here are unemployed and do not have working conditions. We have to pick olives with someone else to make a living. Families get together and we go olive picking. There was very few stone in Afrin land. But here the olives are not good because the soil is both yellow and too much stones. The olives are small, we used to pick four sacks from each tree in Afrin. But now we cannot even pick half a bag’’.

 

‘We work six hours a day’

 

Saying that they work in difficult conditions, Eyde continued, ‘’We are now four groups here. Everyone is responsible for their own group, 13 people work in my group. We start work at 06:00 in the morning and work until 12:00 and sometimes until 15:00 pm. We work about six hours a day and get 6000 liras. We are living in difficult conditions’’.

 

‘Afrin was beautiful’

 

Noting that they extract olive oil from the olives they pick, Hatîce Hebeş said, ‘’We have been here for a week to pick olives. We take the olives we pick to the factory to extract olive oil, and we share them because the people here cannot earn their living. Our hope is to return to Afrin one day and live in our own land. Because Afrin was very beautiful, its possibilities were many and its nature was very beautiful. All kinds of crops were grown there. It was full of grapes and olive groves’’.

 

‘There are few olives this year’

 

Fatima Hebeş, who stated that olives decreased this year, says the following words, ‘’This year, we could not achieve the yield we wanted because there were very few olives. We picked olives here for a week. Here are olives of different names and qualities. But the best olives are picked for olive oil. There is an olive called Xilo. We also prepare and consume them in a different way. We send the ones for olive oil to the factory. We consume the olives called Xilo, which are separated from their seeds and put in oil and pepper. We also leave the green olives in the rain and wait for them to turn black. We call black olives ‘Etûn’.’’