For all the generations in me, I sing, it's Ayanna.

Today we're bringing you a new series made in collaboration with Olive Odyssey,

a Palestinian olive oil brand that serves as a gateway for Palestinian farmers to connect with people around the world

and tell their story through the foods they produce. In this series, you'll hear from Ayah Gawazi Fowar,

Olive Odyssey's co-founder, about plants indigenous to the Palestinian landscape and their deep ties to

culture, resistance, and enduring lifeways.

Amid ongoing Israeli occupation and violence against Palestinians,

we hope the series serves as a reminder of not only the lifeblood of Palestinian land,

but also of the sacredness of land itself, and all the life it holds.

Plants are political, calls us to consider the way landscapes,

food waves, and connection to the earth are intertwined with systems of oppression and movements

of resistance. May this be an invitation to reflect on the central role land and the more than

human world plays in movements for justice everywhere. In this episode, we focus on watermelon and prickly pear.

Thank you for listening.

Okay, so much more to talk about there, but I do also want to be able to discuss watermelon and prickly pear.

And so I'd love to get into your relationship to watermelon and prickly pear.

And if you could tell us about your relationship with these plants and the seasonality of them

and yeah, how you experience them in the cycles of the year?

For watermelon, really, it's a symbol of Palestine.

I think today everybody knows about the use of watermelon as a symbol for Palestine.

After the occupation of the West Bank, Ghazi, and parts of even 48 in 1967, the Israeli government banned the raising of Palestinian flag.

And during this time, so people were trying to display the Palestinian flag in different ways

...