Grandpa Moses' Disappearing Olive Trees

Thanks to Ozcan Gulkesen for the above photo of a grove of olive trees on the north west side of Marash, the photograph taken in 1972. The grove is no longer.  According to folks living in (Kahraman) Marash today, most of the olive groves have been taken down to make way for apartment buildings..

 For years Marash Girl heard the story from her grandfather . . .  and later her father and uncle . . . how Grandpa Moses had planted 100 olive trees in Marash round about 1885, before he left for the United States . . . olive trees that would mature and bear olives in time for his descendants -- his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, his great-great-grandchildren  -- to enjoy.  But when he returned to Marash years later, to marry and have a family, the olive trees had all been cut down.  Not a tree left standing.

Marash Girl wonders if Grandpa Moses had heard the Nasreddin Hodja story that goes (in English) like this.

One day Hodja went out into his garden early in the morning to plant some saplings.  When evening came, he uprooted all of them and took them back into the house.

His wife asked him, "Hodja, what are you doing?"

Nasreddin Hodja answered, "We are living in bad times so I don't want to leave any of my belongings out in the open where someone might steal them!"

[From 202 Jokes of Nasreddin Hodja, Miniature Yayinlari, Istanbul, Turkey.]