The Sweet and Sticky History of the Date
It’s possible to divide the world in two: the part that venerates the humble-seeming fruit known as the date, and the part that does not.
我们可以将世界一分为二：一部分崇拜看似不起眼的枣子，另一部分则不崇拜。
The part that does is home to hundreds of millions of people, from the Atlantic coast of Morocco across North Africa and Egypt to Mesopotamia and east to India.
该地区是数亿人口的家园，从摩洛哥的大西洋沿岸穿过北非和埃及，到美索不达米亚，东至印度。
In this part of the world there aren’t really “dates,” because only a philistine would speak in such generalizations.
在世界的这个地区，并不存在真正的“日期”，因为只有庸人才会说出这样的概括。
There’s the plump sugar-bomb medjool , the chewy khalas beloved of Emirati connoisseurs, sweet and sticky Saudi sukkary , tart yellow barhi peeled and eaten fresh, the varieties picked early, called rutab , and served frozen with coffee at the upscale cafés of Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.
其中有饱满的糖炸弹 medjool、阿联酋鉴赏家喜爱的耐嚼的 khalas、又甜又粘的沙特 sukkary、去皮新鲜食用的酸黄 barhi，以及早期采摘的品种，称为 rutab，在利雅得或阿布扎比的高档咖啡馆与咖啡一起冷冻。
There’s ajwa from Medina, said to be the favorite of the Prophet, the dark Persian kimia , the translucent deglet noor , and many others with evocative names like halawi or Sagai VIP .
有来自麦地那的 ajwa，据说是先知的最爱，还有深色的波斯 kimia、半透明的 deglet noor，以及许多其他名字令人回味的名字，如 halawi 或 Sagai VIP。
I grew up in the part of the world that doesn’t care (in my case, Canada), where supermarkets banish this queen of fruit to remote corners of the health-food aisle with the lowly prune and the most obscure nuts.
我在一个不关心我的世界长大（对我来说是加拿大），那里的超市将这种水果皇后与低等的李子和最不起眼的坚果一起驱逐到健康食品货架的偏远角落。
But I’ve spent the last three decades living and writing in Israel, part of the world where the date reigns.
但过去三十年我一直在以色列生活和写作，以色列是世界上以日期为主导的地区。
Now when I visit North America and see these fruits languishing on their remote shelves, it feels like climbing into an Uber with that Washington, D.C. driver who was once finance minister of Afghanistan.
现在，当我访问北美并看到这些水果在偏远的货架上萎靡不振时，感觉就像是和一位曾经担任阿富汗财政部长的华盛顿特区司机一起爬进优步。
You can almost hear them whispering: Don’t you know who I am?
你几乎可以听到他们在窃窃私语：你不知道我是谁吗？
In Israel, I was first drawn to eating dates mainly because they were around all the time, served plain or stuffed with walnuts to guests in living rooms.
在以色列，我第一次被吃枣子所吸引，主要是因为枣子随处可见，在客厅里为客人提供原味或核桃馅的枣子。
Then I began to see them less as a fruit than as a kind of cultural marker.
然后我开始不再将它们视为一种水果，而是将其视为一种文化标记。
There are so many forces pulling apart the people of the Middle East and North Africa.
有太多的力量在分裂中东和北非人民。
But the date and its magnificent tree are woven through thousands of years of common history, rising elegantly above the dividing lines.
但枣子和它那棵雄伟的树，交织在数千年的共同历史中，优雅地矗立在分界线之上。
The date offers a different view of the region than the one we’re familiar with, and the best place to start its extraordinary story is at the top.
该日期提供了该地区与我们熟悉的不同的视角，而开始其非凡故事的最佳位置是在顶部。
This article is a selection from the November/December 2022 issue of Smithsonian magazine
本文选自《史密森尼》杂志 2022 年 11 月/12 月号
At ten feet up the trunk of a date palm and rising, you’re still thinking about the ground receding beneath your feet, but at 20 feet your gaze shifts upward toward the approaching explosion of green above your head.
在枣椰树树干上方 10 英尺处，您仍然会想着脚下的地面逐渐后退，但在 20 英尺处，您的目光会向上转向头顶上即将爆发的绿色。
At 40 feet the hydraulic platform shakes to a halt, and Yuval Shabo and the other workers at this Israeli date orchard grasp the trunks and leap into the fronds.
液压平台在 40 英尺处摇晃停止，尤瓦尔·沙博和以色列枣园的其他工人抓住树干，跳进叶子里。
It’s spring, when date palms reproduce, and the workers use curved knives to harvest pollen from male flowers, place the pollen in squeeze bottles and then apply it to the white petal clusters atop the female trees.
春天到了，枣树开始繁殖，工人们用弯刀从雄花上采集花粉，将花粉装入挤压瓶中，然后涂在雌树顶上的白色花瓣簇上。
It’s a different world at this height—birds gliding at eye level, the Jordan Valley stretching north toward Syria and south toward Egypt, the green frond sea waving in all directions.
在这个高度，这是一个不同的世界——鸟儿在视线水平上滑翔，约旦河谷向北延伸到叙利亚，向南延伸到埃及，绿色的叶状海洋向四面八方波动。
The workers stop on occasion to sip water or roll a cigarette.
工人们有时会停下来喝水或卷烟。
Ground-bound humans and their concerns seem irrelevant.
地面上的人类和他们的担忧似乎无关紧要。
Up here all that matters is the little brown fruit.
在这里，最重要的是棕色的小水果。
I found the same attitude in an orchard 1,300 miles away, near the Persian Gulf in the United Arab Emirates, at the famed oasis of Al-Ain.
我在 1,300 英里外的阿拉伯联合酋长国波斯湾附近著名的艾恩绿洲的果园里也发现了同样的态度。
Here, too, it was pollination season, but at this oasis the old methods are preserved, and the treetops aren’t reached by hydraulic cranes but by fearless workers climbing barefoot.
这里也正值授粉季节，但在这片绿洲上，古老的方法得以保留，树顶不是通过液压起重机到达的，而是由无所畏惧的工人赤脚攀爬。
Instead of modern drip irrigation, the trees are watered by an ancient system known in Arabic as aflaj , which pipes in water from springs miles away and distributes it through an ingenious network of open channels, flooding each farmer’s plot in turn.
这些树木不是通过现代滴灌系统浇水，而是通过阿拉伯语称为 aflaj 的古老系统进行灌溉，该系统从数英里外的泉水输送水，并通过巧妙的明渠网络进行分配，依次淹没每个农民的土地。
As I crossed the oasis a flash of white fabric far above my head alerted me to a young man named Maksood Baluchi, holding a curved dagger and a basket of male flowers.
当我穿过绿洲时，头顶上方一抹白色织物的闪光提醒我，有一个名叫马克苏德·俾路支的年轻人，他拿着一把弯曲的匕首和一篮子雄花。
He shouted down greetings but didn’t have much time to talk.
他大声打招呼，但没有太多时间说话。
There were lots of trees to go.
有很多树可以去。
The same overriding sense of the date’s importance struck me several times during the past few months, sitting in air-conditioned libraries, hunched over books, looking at the ancient art and literature of this part of the world.
在过去的几个月里，当我坐在有空调的图书馆里，弯腰伏在书本上，观看世界这一地区的古代艺术和文学时，我多次感受到这个日子的重要性。
When I began my research, the date palm seemed to appear merely as a background detail in art, from pharaonic tombs and Assyrian palaces to a 2,500-year-old seal impression showing the Persian Emperor Darius shooting arrows at a lion.
当我开始研究时，枣椰树似乎只是作为艺术中的背景细节出现，从法老坟墓和亚述宫殿到 2500 年前的波斯皇帝大流士向狮子射箭的印章。
But after a while my perception changed.
但一段时间后我的看法发生了变化。
The date palms stopped looking like decorations and came to the fore.
枣椰树不再像装饰品，而是脱颖而出。
After all, the pharaohs are long gone and Darius no longer matters, but the date palm does, feeding multitudes, linking people with their ancestors, rising everywhere like millions of green fireworks frozen mid-blast.
毕竟，法老早已不复存在，大流士也不再重要，但枣椰树却依然重要，它养活了无数人，将人们与祖先联系在一起，像数以百万计的绿色烟花在爆炸中冻结一样，到处升起。
Maybe these trees are the stars in the story of this region, and we’re the extras?
也许这些树是这个地区故事中的明星，而我们只是临时演员？
The date palm is a very old plant.
枣椰树是一种非常古老的植物。
Fossilized remains show that its ancestors were already flourishing 50 million years ago.
化石遗迹表明，它的祖先在五千万年前就已经繁衍生息。
It was only recently, around 4000 B.C., that enterprising humans in the vicinity of modern-day Iraq domesticated the trees.
直到最近，大约公元前 4000 年，有进取心的人类才在现代伊拉克附近驯化了这些树木。
In the right conditions, a modern date palm can reach the height of a five-story building, live past 100, and produce more than 150 pounds of fruit a year.
在适当的条件下，现代枣椰树可以达到五层楼的高度，寿命超过 100 年，每年结出超过 150 磅的果实。
Long before refrigeration, dried dates could keep for years, making them invaluable for travelers across seas and deserts.
早在冷藏之前，干枣就可以保存多年，这对于穿越海洋和沙漠的旅行者来说是无价的。
They can be turned into honey by boiling and straining the fruit; in fact, the biblical phrase “land of milk and honey” refers to honey from dates, not bees.
通过煮沸并过滤果实可以将它们变成蜂蜜；事实上，圣经中的“牛奶与蜂蜜之乡”指的是枣子蜜，而不是蜜蜂。
They can also be fermented into liquor, like the date wine enjoyed by ancient Babylonians, according to the historian Herodotus.
根据历史学家希罗多德的说法，它们还可以发酵成酒，就像古代巴比伦人喜欢的枣酒一样。
The tree itself was a source of fiber for ropes and baskets, fronds for shelter and shade and columns for construction.
树本身是制造绳子和篮子的纤维、遮蔽和遮荫的叶子以及建筑柱子的来源。
That led one rabbi to remark at least 1,500 years ago, long before environmentalism was cool, “This date palm—no part of it is wasted.”
至少在 1,500 年前，早在环保主义还很盛行之前，一位拉比就曾这样评论道：“这棵枣椰树——没有任何一部分被浪费了。”
Egyptian architects building the temple of Sahure 4,500 years ago shaped their stone pillars like palm trunks, and the style was still in use 2,000 years later when Herodotus noted “pillars carved to imitate date palms” at a different Egyptian temple.
4500 年前，埃及建筑师建造了萨胡尔神庙，将石柱塑造成棕榈树干的形状，2000 年后，当希罗多德在另一座埃及神庙中指出“雕刻的柱子模仿枣椰树”时，这种风格仍在沿用。
By that time the “palmette,” a stylized motif based on palm fronds, had spread through the civilization of ancient Greece.
那时，“棕榈叶”（一种以棕榈叶为基础的风格化图案）已经在古希腊文明中传播开来。
In The Odyssey , Odysseus washes up on a beach and meets a princess.
在《奥德赛》中，奥德修斯在海滩上被冲上岸，遇到了一位公主。
He has never seen anything as beautiful as her.
他从来没有见过像她这样美丽的东西。
“Wait,” he stops.
“等等，”他停了下来。
“Once I saw the like—in Delos, beside Apollo’s altar—the young slip of a palm-tree springing into the light.”
“有一次我在提洛岛阿波罗祭坛旁看到了类似的景象，一棵年轻的棕榈树在阳光下绽放。”
Most cultures in these parts had a role for the date palm in the story they told about the world, as the Iraqi-born food writer Nawal Nasrallah describes in her 2011 book Dates: A Global History , an invaluable compilation of lore.
正如伊拉克出生的美食作家纳瓦尔·纳斯拉拉 (Nawal Nasrallah) 在她 2011 年出版的著作《枣子：全球历史》（这是一本宝贵的传说汇编）中所描述的那样，这些地区的大多数文化都在他们讲述的世界故事中扮演了枣椰树的角色。
The Sabians of Mesopotamia associated the tree with lunar worship and called it sindirqa , or “road to the moon.” The ancient Sumerians believed the palm was the first tree ever created, and that it was tended by a godly raven.
美索不达米亚的萨比安人将这棵树与月亮崇拜联系在一起，并将其称为“sindirqa”，即“通往月球的道路”。古代苏美尔人相信棕榈树是有史以来第一棵树，并且由一只神圣的乌鸦照料着。
The Roman chronicler Pliny the Elder believed the date palm to be the nesting site of the phoenix, the self-incinerating, self-resurrecting bird of myth.
罗马编年史家老普林尼认为，枣椰树是凤凰的筑巢地，凤凰是一种自焚、自我复活的神话之鸟。
For the past few millennia a prime tract of date-palm real estate has been the area around the Dead Sea, in what is now Israel, Jordan and the West Bank.
在过去的几千年里，死海周边地区一直是枣椰树种植的主要地区，即现在的以色列、约旦和约旦河西岸。
Date palms need water underground and dry heat above, and the summertime climate here, at the lowest point on earth, is perfect for this purpose, if unsuited for other purposes, like walking outdoors or thinking straight.
枣椰树需要地下的水和上面的干燥热量，这里的夏季气候位于地球的最低点，非常适合这个目的，如果不适合其他用途，比如户外散步或思考。
For this reason the biggest city in the area, Jericho, is described in the Book of Deuteronomy as the “city of dates.”
因此，该地区最大的城市耶利哥在《申命记》中被描述为“椰枣之城”。
The date also figures in the dramatic saga of the siege of the Masada fortress not far away, on the banks of the Dead Sea.
这个日期也出现在不远处死海沿岸马萨达堡垒围攻的戏剧性传奇故事中。
Masada was built by King Herod around 31 B.C.
马萨达由希律王于公元前 31 年左右建造。
on a towering hill south of Ein Gedi, a Jewish date oasis in ancient times and today.
位于恩戈地 (Ein Gedi) 以南一座高耸的山丘上，这里是古代和今天的犹太枣树绿洲。
According to the historian Flavius Josephus, writing about a century later, Herod equipped the fort with weapons and provisions including wine, wheat and “dates in great piles.” But Josephus was primarily concerned with the great Jewish revolt against Rome that began in A.D.
据历史学家弗拉维乌斯·约瑟夫斯（Flavius Josephus）记载，大约一个世纪后，希律王为这座堡垒配备了武器和粮食，包括葡萄酒、小麦和“成堆的枣子”。但约瑟夫斯主要关注公元后开始的犹太人对罗马的大规模起义。
66, seven decades after Herod’s death, in which the historian himself participated as a rebel commander before switching sides.
66，希律死后七十年，历史学家本人在转投立场之前作为叛乱指挥官参与其中。
When a group of rebels took over the fortress, as Josephus wrote in The Jewish War , they found Herod’s food stores intact, a remarkable fact he attributed to “the atmosphere.” (The area’s parched climate does help preserve ancient artifacts, the most famous of which are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were rediscovered in the mid-20th century after spending 2,000 years in nearby caves.)
正如约瑟夫斯在《犹太战争》中所写，当一群叛乱分子占领这座堡垒时，他们发现希律王的食物储存完好无损，他将这一引人注目的事实归因于“气氛”。 （该地区干燥的气候确实有助于保存古代文物，其中最著名的是死海古卷，这些古卷在附近的洞穴中呆了 2000 年之后于 20 世纪中叶被重新发现。）
The Jewish revolt ended when Roman legionnaires finally breached Masada’s walls and found, according to Josephus, that the Jews had committed suicide rather than surrender.
根据约瑟夫斯的说法，当罗马军团最终攻破马萨达的城墙并发现犹太人自杀而不是投降时，犹太人的起义结束了。
Left behind on the hill, along with clothes and trinkets belonging to the rebel families, were date seeds, one of which would resurface 2,000 years later to play a role in this story.
山上留下的还有叛军家庭的衣服和小饰品，还有枣子，其中一颗枣子会在 2000 年后重新出现，并在这个故事中发挥作用。
After their victory, the Romans struck celebratory coins emblazoned with the words “Judea Capta,” or “Judea conquered,” showing a captive woman seated beneath the symbol of the restive province—the date palm.
胜利后，罗马人铸造了庆祝硬币，上面刻有“犹太卡普塔”或“犹太被征服”字样，上面画着一名被俘虏的妇女坐在这个动荡省份的象征——枣椰树下。
It was around this time that the palm began to weave itself into religious traditions that spread across the known world.
大约在这个时候，棕榈树开始融入宗教传统，并传播到整个已知世界。
I’m writing these lines in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the Christian holiday marking Jesus’s entry into the city in the days before he was crucified.
我是在耶路撒冷的圣枝主日写下这些文字的，这是基督教节日，标志着耶稣在被钉十字架之前的几天里进入这座城市。
The New Testament describes how Jesus was greeted by followers who carpeted his path with palm fronds, a scene echoed at this very moment by thousands of Christians carrying fronds through the alleys of the Old City, a short drive from where I live.
《新约》描述了耶稣如何受到追随者的欢迎，追随者在他的道路上铺满了棕榈叶，此时此刻，数千名携带棕榈叶的基督徒在老城的小巷中回荡着这一场景，距离我住的地方只有很短的车程。
It also happens to be the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when believers abstain from food during the day and break their fast each evening, according to tradition, with dates.
这也恰好是穆斯林的斋月，根据传统，信徒们白天禁食，每天晚上用枣子开斋。
“If you break your fast with coffee or bread, you’ll feel dizzy and a bit ill,” Saoud bin Hamoodah, an affable Emirati I met during my visit to Al-Ain, told me just before the holy month.
“如果你用咖啡或面包开斋，你会感到头晕，而且有点不舒服，”萨乌德·本·哈穆达（Saoud bin Hamoodah）是我在访问艾恩期间遇到的一位和蔼可亲的阿联酋人，他在圣月前告诉我。
“But with a date you’re okay.” Here in Jerusalem, thousands of Muslims are gathering to break the fast in the enclosure known in Arabic as the Haram al-Sharif , the Noble Sanctuary.
“但是有约会就没事了。”在耶路撒冷，数千名穆斯林聚集在阿拉伯语称为“Haram al-Sharif”（高贵圣地）的围场内开斋。
The site, famous in Judaism and Christianity as the Temple Mount, is a monumental platform raised by Herod, the same king who built Masada, at the location revered as that of Solomon’s Temple.
该遗址在犹太教和基督教中被称为圣殿山，是由建造马萨达的同一位国王希律王修建的一座纪念性平台，所在地点被尊为所罗门圣殿。
Only Jerusalem’s Jews lack a major date-related ritual this week.
本周只有耶路撒冷的犹太人缺乏与日期相关的重大仪式。
It’s in the fall that the date palm figures into our tradition in earnest, during the festival of Sukkot, when you’ll see people around town carrying the sharp, closed palm frond known as a lulav .
秋天的住棚节期间，枣椰树正式融入了我们的传统，届时您会看到镇上的人们携带着被称为“lulav”的锋利、封闭的棕榈叶。
Jewish tradition has a lot to say about dates.
犹太传统对日期有很多说法。
“A righteous person will flower like a date palm,” goes the verse in Psalms, one explanation being that the date palm, like the righteous, grows straight and sustains others with its fruit.
《诗篇》中有这样的诗句：“正义的人会像枣椰树一样开花”，一种解释是枣椰树像正义的人一样，笔直生长，并用其果实支撑他人。
A scientifically minded rabbi in 12th-century Yemen, Netan’el al-Fayyumi, explained that just as the pinnacle of the animal kingdom is people, and the pinnacle of the human species is prophets, the pinnacle of the plant kingdom, according to God’s design, is this tree.
12 世纪也门一位具有科学头脑的拉比 Netan’el al-Fayyumi 解释说，正如动物王国的巅峰是人，人类的巅峰是先知一样，根据上帝的设计，植物王国的巅峰就是这棵树。
“And among the plants,” wrote the rabbi, “He created the most honorable species, which is the date.”
“在植物中，”拉比写道，“他创造了最尊贵的物种，那就是枣子。”
This year, as Christianity’s holy week coincided with Muslim Ramadan in this Jewish-majority city, news reporters were busy covering sporadic rioting and clashes with police as Jerusalem’s different groups jostled uneasily in their sacred spaces.
今年，在这个犹太人占多数的城市，基督教的圣周恰逢穆斯林斋月，新闻记者忙于报道零星的骚乱以及与警察的冲突，耶路撒冷的不同群体在他们的神圣空间里不安地相互推挤。
No one took any interest in a place called the Kathisma, which is never on anyone’s list of places to visit in the city; in fact, most people have never heard of it, and until recently neither had I, though it’s a short bike ride from where I live.
没有人对一个叫卡蒂斯玛的地方感兴趣，它从来没有出现在任何人的城市旅游景点清单上。事实上，大多数人从未听说过它，直到最近我也没有听说过，尽管它距离我住的地方只有很短的自行车路程。
When it was built more than 1,500 years ago, the church called “the seat,” kathisma in Greek, stood alone on the side of the road to Bethlehem, apparently marked by a venerable date palm.
1500 多年前建成时，这座教堂在希腊语中被称为“圣座”kathisma，孤零零地矗立在通往伯利恒的路边，明显以一棵古老的枣椰树为标志。
The site is still at the side of the same road, even if the road is now paved, the palm is long gone, and the building is an octagonal ruin exposed to the elements in a rock-strewn lot by a gas station.
该地点仍然位于同一条路的一侧，即使道路现在已经铺好，棕榈树也早已消失，建筑是一个八角形的废墟，暴露在加油站旁边布满岩石的地段中。
According to an early Christian story from the Protoevangelium of James, a text that didn’t make it into the New Testament, Mary, then pregnant, was traveling to Bethlehem when she experienced a vision of two groups of people, one jubilant and the other despondent, and felt her child pushing to be born.
根据詹姆斯《原始福音派》中的一个早期基督教故事，当时怀孕的玛丽在去伯利恒旅行时，看到了两群人的异象，一派兴高采烈，另一派沮丧，并感到她的孩子即将出生。
She rested on a rock—the seat that gave the site its name.
她躺在一块岩石上——这个地方因此而得名。
In a related story from another text known as Pseudo-Matthew, set after Jesus was born, Mary was resting at the roadside and wanted to eat from a date palm but couldn’t reach the fruit, so the infant Jesus ordered the palm to lean over, and it did.
在另一本名为《伪马太福音》的相关故事中，故事发生在耶稣出生后，玛丽在路边休息，想吃枣椰树上的果子，但够不到果子，于是婴儿耶稣命令枣椰树倾斜，果子就这么做了。
Christians built the Kathisma church in A.D.
基督徒在公元后建造了卡蒂斯玛教堂。
456 and it became a popular stop for pilgrims.
456，它成为朝圣者的热门停留地。
Two centuries later, after the advent of Islam, part of the church became a mosque.
两个世纪后，伊斯兰教出现后，教堂的一部分变成了清真寺。
A story about Mary and the date palm appeared in the Islamic tradition, which also venerates Jesus, known as Isa, and Mary, or Maryam.
关于玛丽和枣椰树的故事出现在伊斯兰传统中，该传统也崇拜耶稣（被称为尔撒）和玛丽或玛丽安。
In the Quran, labor pains forced Maryam to grasp the trunk of a palm tree, exclaiming, “Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!” But then a divine voice told her to shake the tree and “it will drop ripe dates on you.” When the archaeologist Rina Avner of the Israel Antiquities Authority excavated the site in the 1990s, she found a stunning floor mosaic of a towering date palm flanked by two smaller ones.
在《古兰经》中，分娩的阵痛迫使玛丽亚姆抓住一棵棕榈树的树干，惊呼道：“哦，但愿我在此之前就死了，并且被完全遗忘了！”但随后一个神圣的声音告诉她摇动树，“它会把成熟的枣子落在你身上。” 20 世纪 90 年代，以色列文物管理局的考古学家 Rina Avner 挖掘该遗址时，她发现了令人惊叹的地板马赛克图案，上面有一棵高耸的枣椰树，两侧是两棵较小的椰枣树。
It had been crafted by artists working for early Muslim caliphs more than a thousand years ago.
它是由一千多年前为早期穆斯林哈里发工作的艺术家制作的。
(As is common practice, the mosaic has since been covered over with earth to protect it, fortunately for posterity but inconveniently for curious visitors.)
（按照惯例，马赛克后来被泥土覆盖以保护它，这对子孙后代来说是幸运的，但对好奇的游客来说却很不方便。）
The buried mosaic might be the best illustration of the way traditions here quietly draw on the same landscape and on each other: Muslim art rooted in a Christian story about a Jewish woman.
埋藏的马赛克可能是这里的传统如何悄悄地利用同一风景并相互借鉴的最好例证：穆斯林艺术植根于一个关于犹太妇女的基督教故事。
My favorite cross-cultural date legend is much more recent.
我最喜欢的跨文化约会传说是最近的事。
It’s a spy story.
这是一个间谍故事。
The central character is Avshalom Feinberg, a Jew born in Ottoman Palestine who was secretly gathering information for the British during World War I when he vanished.
主角是出生于奥斯曼巴勒斯坦的犹太人阿夫沙洛姆·范伯格 (Avshalom Feinberg)，第一次世界大战期间，他在秘密为英国收集信息时失踪。
It was 1917.
那是 1917 年。
The British Army was advancing from Egypt against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine, and Feinberg had joined an espionage ring led by Aaron Aaronson, an agronomist famous for discovering the wild ancestor of domesticated wheat.
英国军队正从埃及进攻巴勒斯坦的奥斯曼土耳其人，范伯格加入了由亚伦·阿伦森领导的间谍团伙，阿伦森是一位农学家，因发现驯化小麦的野生祖先而闻名。
On January 13, Feinberg and a companion set off on camels, disguised as Bedouin, heading south toward Sinai to link up with British forces.
1 月 13 日，范伯格和一名同伴乔装成贝都因人骑着骆驼出发，向南前往西奈半岛与英军会合。
But soon, lost in the desert by el-Arish, they were spotted by Bedouin gunmen accompanied by Turkish soldiers.
但很快，他们就被阿里什迷失在沙漠中，被土耳其士兵陪同的贝都因枪手发现。
The Bedouin disguise didn’t fool real Bedouin.
贝都因人的伪装并没有欺骗真正的贝都因人。
Feinberg’s companion was shot but managed to escape, though not for long, and he was hanged by the Turks in Damascus later that year.
范伯格的同伴被枪杀，但设法逃脱，但时间不长，同年晚些时候，他在大马士革被土耳其人绞死。
Feinberg disappeared.
范伯格消失了。
“The desert swallowed Avshalom’s body,” as one chronicler put it, “and with it the secret of his death.” Once the British conquered Palestine, and especially after the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the spy became a Zionist legend.
正如一位编年史家所说，“沙漠吞噬了阿夫沙洛姆的尸体，也吞噬了他死亡的秘密。”英国征服巴勒斯坦后，特别是 1948 年以色列建国后，这名间谍就成为犹太复国主义的传奇人物。
But the site of his disappearance was across the Egyptian border, inaccessible to Israelis, and no body was found.
但他失踪的地点位于埃及边境对面，以色列人无法进入，而且没有发现任何尸体。
Nothing new emerged until 1966, when the case drew the attention of an Israeli investigator who specialized in locating soldiers missing in action.
直到 1966 年，这起案件引起了一名专门寻找行动中失踪士兵的以色列调查员的注意，才出现了新的情况。
Several sources provided an intriguing detail, as the investigator, Shlomo Ben Elkana, recounted in a book about the affair: Out in the desert was a lone date palm that some locals called el-qabr el-yahudi , the “Jewish grave.”
正如调查员什洛莫·本·埃尔卡纳 (Shlomo Ben Elkana) 在一本有关这起事件的书中所叙述的那样，几个消息来源提供了一个有趣的细节：沙漠中有一棵孤独的枣椰树，一些当地人称之为 el-qabr el-yahudi，即“犹太坟墓”。
When the Sinai desert fell under Israeli control the very next year, during the Six-Day War of 1967, the investigator traveled to the spot.
次年，即 1967 年六日战争期间，西奈沙漠落入以色列控制之下，调查员前往现场。
Local Bedouin contacts led him to the lonely palm tree.
当地贝都因人的联系人带领他找到了那棵孤独的棕榈树。
He hired workers and started digging.
他雇佣了工人并开始挖掘。
First, they found animal bones, then a button.
首先，他们发现了动物骨头，然后是一颗纽扣。
Then a hand grenade.
然后是手榴弹。
Then two human arm-bones and bits of a spine, parts of a skeleton that was tangled in the roots of the tree.
然后是两块人类臂骨和一段脊柱，以及缠在树根上的骨骼的一部分。
A yard below the surface they found Feinberg’s skull, pierced by a bullet hole.
在地表以下一码处，他们发现了范伯格的头骨，上面有一个弹孔。
The palm had grown from a date he had in his pocket.
手掌是他口袋里的一颗枣子长出来的。
But the story didn’t end there.
但故事并没有就此结束。
The investigator tracked down a Bedouin elder named al-Haj Muhammad Abu Safra, a devout Muslim who seemed to know a lot about the spy’s death.
调查人员找到了一位名叫哈吉·穆罕默德·阿布·萨夫拉 (al-Haj Muhammad Abu Safra) 的贝都因长老，他是一位虔诚的穆斯林，似乎对间谍之死了解很多。
In fact he’d been there, Abu Safra admitted, though he said it was a Turkish soldier, and not a Bedouin tribesman, who fired the fatal shot.
阿布·萨夫拉承认，事实上他曾在那里，不过他说是一名土耳其士兵，而不是贝都因部落成员，开出了致命的一枪。
He called Avshalom Feinberg by an Arabic version of his first name, Abu Salim.
他用自己名字的阿拉伯语版本阿布·萨利姆（Abu Salim）称呼阿夫沙洛姆·范伯格（Avshalom Feinberg）。
Abu Safra said they buried the spy where he fell.
阿布·萨夫拉说，他们将这名间谍埋葬在他倒下的地方。
A year later the palm sprouted.
一年后，棕榈树发芽了。
The old man explained that this proved something about the spy’s character, echoing the same idea expressed in Psalms.
老人解释说，这证明了间谍的性格，与诗篇中表达的观点相呼应。
“We understood that this man had been just and righteous,” Abu Safra said.
“我们知道这个人是公正和正义的，”阿布萨夫拉说。
“Otherwise, no date palm would ever have grown.”
“否则，枣椰树就不会长出来。”
And now back to Masada, the site of King Herod’s fortress and the Jewish rebels’ last stand in the revolt against Rome.
现在回到马萨达，这里是希律王的堡垒所在地，也是犹太叛军反抗罗马的最后一站。
The site was excavated by Israeli archaeologists in the 1960s.
该遗址由以色列考古学家于 20 世纪 60 年代发掘。
Among striking artifacts that included biblical scrolls, jewelry, weapons, cosmetics and sandals belonging to the rebels, they found a number of seemingly inconsequential items, including date pits.
在属于叛军的引人注目的文物中，包括圣经卷轴、珠宝、武器、化妆品和凉鞋，他们发现了一些看似无关紧要的物品，包括枣核。
Almost nobody noticed, and the seeds were stashed in cardboard boxes at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.
几乎没有人注意到，这些种子被藏在特拉维夫郊外的巴伊兰大学的纸板箱里。
They remained there until 2004, when Sarah Sallon, a doctor specializing in herbal medicine at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, came and asked for them.
它们一直留在那里，直到 2004 年，耶路撒冷哈达萨医院的草药专科医生萨拉·萨隆 (Sarah Sallon) 来找它们。
Although they were 2,000 years old, she had the strange idea that she could make them grow.
尽管它们已经有两千多年的历史了，但她却有一个奇怪的想法，那就是她可以让它们成长。
The scholars in charge of the seeds were skeptical.
负责种子的学者对此表示怀疑。
Two years earlier, a biologist at UCLA had succeeded in germinating a pair of lotus seeds that had spent 500 years buried in a dry lakebed in China—but the Judean date seeds were four times older.
两年前，加州大学洛杉矶分校的一位生物学家成功地让一对在中国干涸的湖床上埋藏了 500 年的莲子发芽，但朱迪亚枣子的年龄是其四倍。
Sallon was persistent, though, and the custodians yielded.
然而，萨隆坚持不懈，保管人屈服了。
Her friend and research partner, the horticulturalist Elaine Solowey, planted three seeds at the kibbutz where she lives in the desert of southern Israel.
她的朋友兼研究伙伴、园艺家伊莱恩·索洛威 (Elaine Solowey) 在她居住的以色列南部沙漠的基布兹种下了三颗种子。
“No one believed in the idea at first,” Solowey told me as we walked among saplings of myrrh and frankincense in her greenhouse at Kibbutz Ketura.
“一开始没有人相信这个想法，”当我们在基布兹凯图拉温室里的没药和乳香树苗中行走时，索洛威告诉我。
“They thought Sarah was crazy.”
“他们认为莎拉疯了。”
Solowey, a veteran researcher at the kibbutz’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, spent six weeks checking in on the seeds every morning: nothing.
索洛维是基布兹阿拉瓦环境研究所的资深研究员，他花了六周的时间每天早上检查种子：什么也没有。
“I didn’t think anything was going to happen,” she admitted.
“我认为不会发生任何事情，”她承认。
Over the years she has tried to grow 500 plant species in this desert, and most of them don’t make it.
多年来，她尝试在这片沙漠中种植 500 种植物，但大多数都未能成功。
She told me, “I’ve had plants that look at this place and die.”
她告诉我，“我有一些植物看到这个地方就会死掉。”
But one morning there was a crack in the soil of a pot.
但有一天早上，盆土上出现了一条裂缝。
And then a tiny, pale white sprout appeared, like ET’s finger reaching for contact—a time traveler from ancient Judea.
然后，一个微小的、淡白色的芽出现了，就像外星人伸手接触的手指——一个来自古代犹太的时间旅行者。
Solowey rushed to add fertilizer and switched to potable water instead of the saline water usually used for crops here, trying to give the frail sprout the best shot at survival.
索洛维赶紧添加肥料，并改用饮用水，而不是通常用于农作物的盐水，试图为脆弱的芽苗提供最好的生存机会。
By June she had a thriving little date palm.
到了六月，她已经有一棵茂盛的小椰枣了。
Sallon believes the preservative qualities of the Dead Sea area, and in particular the uniquely low UV radiation, are responsible for the extraordinary viability of the seed, which was the oldest ever to have sprouted.
萨隆认为，死海地区的防腐品质，特别是独特的低紫外线辐射，使种子具有非凡的活力，这是有史以来最古老的发芽种子。
(The record was subsequently broken when Russian scientists germinated a seed that had been frozen in permafrost for 32,000 years.) The palm tree, which the two researchers called “Methuselah,” made headlines around the world and became a kind of celebrity, the closest thing the date world has to King Tut or Beyoncé.
（随后，俄罗斯科学家让一粒在永久冻土中冷冻了 32,000 年的种子发芽，这一纪录被打破。） 这棵被两位研究人员称为“玛土撒拉”的棕榈树成为了世界各地的头条新闻，并成为名人，是世界上最接近图坦卡蒙或碧昂斯的树。
After that success Solowey and Sallon planted more seeds, and a second from Masada sprouted—Adam, which started out as Eve, until the researchers realized the tree was male.
取得成功后，索洛维和萨伦种植了更多的种子，马萨达的第二棵树——亚当树发芽了，一开始是夏娃，直到研究人员意识到这棵树是雄性的。
Five more have followed, all named for characters from the Hebrew Bible, including Jonah, Judith and Hannah.
随后又出现了五个，全部以希伯来圣经中的人物命名，包括乔纳、朱迪思和汉娜。
In 2020, the project made history again when Hannah became the first to bear fruit.
2020年，该项目再次创造历史，汉娜成为第一个结出果实的人。
Only in the past few years, though, have scientists begun to extract significant information from the trees, using an approach they call “resurrection genomics.” Biologists studying the ancient world usually have to make do with scraps of ancient DNA that have badly degraded over time, but the genetic material they are extracting from the trees is simultaneously very old and brand new.
然而，直到最近几年，科学家们才开始使用一种他们称之为“复活基因组学”的方法从树木中提取重要信息。研究古代世界的生物学家通常不得不使用随着时间的推移而严重退化的古代 DNA 碎片，但他们从树木中提取的遗传物质既非常古老又是全新的。
“In this case we have lots of genetic information—as much as we’d have from a modern palm,” said Muriel Gros-Balthazard, a scientist at the Institute of Research for Sustainable Development in Montpellier, France, and a member of the team studying the trees.
“在这种情况下，我们拥有大量的遗传信息，就像我们从现代棕榈树中获得的一样多，”法国蒙彼利埃可持续发展研究所的科学家、研究树木的团队成员穆里尔·格罗斯-巴尔萨扎德 (Muriel Gros-Balthazard) 说。
What has emerged is a fascinating story about geography, agriculture and politics in antiquity.
一个关于古代地理、农业和政治的引人入胜的故事已经出现。
Today’s domesticated date palms originated in Mesopotamia, but the trees on the southern coast of the Mediterranean, west of Judea, were crossed with a species from Crete.
今天的驯化枣椰树起源于美索不达米亚，但地中海南岸、犹太西部的枣树与来自克里特岛的品种杂交。
The oldest Judean seeds, Methuselah and Hannah, from the fourth to the first century B.C., are also the most similar to palms from Mesopotamia, as you might expect in a country long dominated by eastern empires like Babylon and Persia.
最古老的犹太种子玛土撒拉和汉娜，从公元前四世纪到公元前一世纪，也与美索不达米亚的棕榈树最相似，正如你在一个长期被巴比伦和波斯等东方帝国统治的国家所预料的那样。
The seed called Adam is interesting as the intermediary example: Adam’s mother tree grew in Judea around the first century B.C., as Roman power rose and the imperial grip on the region tightened.
作为中间例子，名为亚当的种子很有趣：亚当的母树在公元前一世纪左右在犹太地区生长，当时罗马势力崛起，帝国对该地区的控制加强。
Although Adam’s genome remains characteristic of “eastern” or Mesopotamian trees, it contains a significant number of “western” genes from Cretan palms growing in the Roman orbit around the Mediterranean.
尽管亚当的基因组仍然具有“东方”或美索不达米亚树木的特征，但它包含大量来自生长在地中海周围罗马轨道上的克里特岛棕榈树的“西方”基因。
The trees that grew from younger seeds have even more western genes than Adam.
由年轻种子长成的树木比亚当拥有更多的西方基因。
“The genetic story parallels the history of the region that we know, and particularly the Roman conquest,” Gros-Balthazard said.
“基因故事与我们所知的该地区的历史相似，特别是罗马征服的历史，”格罗斯-巴尔萨扎德说。
When I visited Solowey’s little colony of resurrected trees, she pulled out a plastic bag of light-brown fruit—last season’s yield, among the first dates to be harvested from an ancient Judean palm.
当我参观索洛维的复活树小群时，她拿出一塑料袋，里面装着浅棕色的水果——这是上个季节的产量，是从古老的犹太棕榈树中收获的第一批枣子之一。
I could wax poetic about the unique flavor of the Roman Empire and the Bible.
我可以对罗马帝国和圣经的独特风味充满诗意。
I could claim to have tasted history itself.
我可以说已经尝到了历史本身的滋味。
But the truth is that it tasted like a date.
但事实是它尝起来像枣子。
In Arabian Sands , Wilfred Thesiger’s classic account of his travels through the famous “Empty Quarter” of Arabia in the 1940s, the British writer and explorer mentions Abu Dhabi as a sleepy coastal village on the desert’s edge.
在威尔弗雷德·塞西格 (Wilfred Thesiger) 的经典著作《阿拉伯之沙》中，这位英国作家兼探险家在 20 世纪 40 年代穿越著名的阿拉伯“空旷之地”时，提到阿布扎比是沙漠边缘一个沉睡的沿海村庄。
He would not recognize the metropolis that has sprung up since then thanks to the more profitable brown product exported by the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is now the capital.
他不会承认从那时起，由于阿拉伯联合酋长国（阿布扎比现在是其首都）出口更有利可图的棕色产品而崛起的大都市。
In my time there, I learned that when local people reach for an expression of their authentic selves, from the time before oil changed everything, they reach for the date.
在我在那里的时候，我了解到，当当地人寻求表达真实的自我时，从石油改变一切之前的时间开始，他们就追求日期。
The pillars at the Grand Mosque, for example, are designed like date palms—gleaming white columns topped with golden fronds.
例如，大清真寺的柱子被设计得像枣椰树——闪闪发光的白色柱子顶部有金色的叶子。
In the neighboring emirate of Dubai, there’s an entire artificial island shaped like a date palm.
在邻近的迪拜酋长国，有一整座人工岛，形状像枣椰树。
(Another thing I learned is that if you type “dates in Abu Dhabi” into Google, not everything that comes up is related to fruit.)
（我了解到的另一件事是，如果你在谷歌中输入“阿布扎比的日期”，并不是所有出现的内容都与水果有关。）
The first stop for modern date connoisseurs might be the luxury date chain Bateel, which has a franchise next to the Nespresso store at the Abu Dhabi Mall.
现代约会鉴赏家的第一站可能是豪华约会连锁店 Bateel，该公司在阿布扎比购物中心的 Nespresso 商店旁边拥有特许经营权。
According to a salesperson named Wendy, the biggest seller in the pre-Ramadan high season was a date stuffed with salted macadamia nuts, though one with candied orange peels was also going fast.
据一位名叫温迪的销售人员介绍，斋月前的旺季最畅销的是咸味澳洲坚果枣，不过蜜饯橙皮枣也卖得很快。
A golden date-box emblazoned with the traditional greeting “Ramadan Kareem” seemed like a good souvenir until I calculated the exchange rate and realized it came to $400.
一个印有传统问候语“Ramadan Kareem”的金色日期盒似乎是一个很好的纪念品，直到我计算了汇率，发现它达到了 400 美元。
The ordinary customer might be better advised to take a cab to a less fashionable part of town and visit Al-Mina wholesale market.
普通顾客最好乘坐出租车前往城里不太时尚的地方，参观阿尔米纳批发市场。
Many of the workers here, like Nisherd Korath, at Ashiq Dates, are Indians from the state of Kerala.
这里的许多工人都是来自喀拉拉邦的印度人，比如 Ashiq Dates 的 Nisherd Korath。
Korath gave me a tour of his shelves: two dozen varieties of the fruit and also date vinegar, date jam, date-seed coffee, pickled dates, and cookies made from dates and camel milk.
科拉斯带我参观了他的货架：两打水果，还有枣醋、枣果酱、枣子咖啡、腌枣，以及用枣子和骆驼奶制成的饼干。
A few stores down I met Muhammad Ali, also from Kerala.
在几家商店里，我遇到了同样来自喀拉拉邦的穆罕默德·阿里。
He told me that the big medjools are popular, but mainly with tourists.
他告诉我，大型 medjools 很受欢迎，但主要受游客欢迎。
Locals prefer the Emirati khalas and the Saudi sukkary, which are smaller and homelier, and have a complex taste that hints at caramel and coffee.
当地人更喜欢阿联酋 khalas 和沙特 sukkary，它们更小、更普通，味道复杂，带有焦糖和咖啡的味道。
I tasted them all and the locals know what they’re talking about.
我都尝过，当地人知道他们在说什么。
In the pre-Ramadan rush, Ali said, his store was moving about 2,200 pounds of dates every day.
阿里说，在斋月前的高峰期，他的商店每天要运送约 2,200 磅枣子。
But all is not well in the date world.
但约会世界中的一切并不顺利。
The enemy is at the gates, and this is what brought me to Abu Dhabi, the scene of the International Date Palm Conference , held at the Emirates Palace hotel under the royal patronage of President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
敌人已近在眼前，这就是我来到阿布扎比的原因，这里是国际枣椰树会议的举办地，该会议在总统谢赫·哈利法·本·扎耶德·阿勒纳哈扬的皇家赞助下在酋长皇宫酒店举行。
(The elderly sheikh died in May 2022, not long after my visit.) The conference played out beneath vast chandeliers and life-size artificial palm trees.
（这位年长的酋长于 2022 年 5 月去世，就在我访问后不久。）会议在巨大的枝形吊灯和真人大小的人造棕榈树下举行。
At a stand near the escalators a representative of the Emirati date concern ZAD handed out cookies made with date sugar, and also wondrous dates that tasted exactly like chocolate, which turned out to be fake dates made of chocolate.
在自动扶梯附近的一个摊位上，阿联酋椰枣公司 ZAD 的代表分发了用椰枣糖制成的饼干，还有味道与巧克力一模一样的奇妙椰枣，结果是用巧克力制成的假椰枣。
The date palm has many old antagonists—fruit rot, for example, or the Black Scorch.
海枣有许多宿敌，例如果腐病或黑焦病。
But none matches the red palm weevil.
但没有一个能与红棕象甲相媲美。
Native to the Indian subcontinent, the weevil reached the Middle East in 1985 with a shipment of palms from Southeast Asia to a port in the Emirates, according to Jose Romeno Faleiro of Goa, India, one of the top scholars in the field.
据该领域顶尖学者之一、印度果阿的何塞·罗梅诺·法莱罗 (Jose Romeno Faleiro) 称，这种象鼻虫原产于印度次大陆，于 1985 年随一批棕榈树从东南亚运至阿联酋的一个港口而到达中东。
“The weevil has conquered most of the ecological habitats across the world,” Faleiro told the audience—from the palm enclave of Elche, in southeastern Spain, to the Caucasus, on the southern border of Russia.
“象鼻虫已经征服了世界上大部分的生态栖息地，”法莱罗告诉观众——从西班牙东南部埃尔切的棕榈飞地到俄罗斯南部边境的高加索地区。
At another session, an Emirati scholar named Ali Elbattay laid out the grim statistics: 50 million farmers worldwide are affected by the weevil, which burrows into the trees and eats them from the inside until they die.
在另一场会议上，一位名叫阿里·埃尔巴泰 (Ali Elbattay) 的阿联酋学者列出了严峻的统计数据：全世界有 5000 万农民受到象鼻虫的影响，这种象鼻虫会钻入树木并从内部吃掉树木，直至死亡。
Around the Mediterranean alone, the weevil’s damage is estimated at more than €450 million as of 2019.
截至 2019 年，仅在地中海地区，象鼻虫造成的损失估计就超过 4.5 亿欧元。
Mekki Chouibani of Morocco offered a grim prediction that he illustrated in cartoon images projected on a screen: first a weevil infestation, then a loss of income, abandonment of trees, encroaching desertification, and finally a farmer forced to leave home, hunched over with a pack on his back.
摩洛哥的梅基·舒伊巴尼（Mekki Choibani）提出了一个严峻的预测，他用投影在屏幕上的卡通图像来说明：首先是象鼻虫的侵扰，然后是收入损失、树木被遗弃、荒漠化蔓延，最后是一名农民背着背包被迫背井离乡。
The weevils are everywhere.
象鼻虫无处不在。
Many palms in my Jerusalem neighborhood have fallen victim, including one across the street that expired as I wrote this article.
我所在的耶路撒冷社区的许多棕榈树都已成为受害者，其中包括街对面的一棵，在我写这篇文章时已经过期了。
If the weevil poses a global problem, it has also summoned global ingenuity.
如果说象鼻虫造成了一个全球性问题，那么它也召唤了全球的聪明才智。
One solution proposes drones with thermal cameras that can spot infestations: Trees invaded by weevils are hotter than healthy trees, and the hope is that if infestations are caught early, individual trees can be treated without spraying a whole orchard with pesticide.
一种解决方案是使用带有热像仪的无人机来发现虫害：被象鼻虫入侵的树木比健康的树木温度更高，并且希望如果及早发现虫害，可以对个别树木进行处理，而无需在整个果园喷洒杀虫剂。
Other solutions have been tried and abandoned, like dogs trained to smell or hear the bugs as they burrow into the trunk.
其他解决方案也被尝试过但又被放弃了，比如训练狗在虫子钻进树干时闻到或听到它们的声音。
My personal favorite is a contraption devised by Italian scientists called the EcoPalm Ring, which looks like a giant metal dog collar but is actually a circular microwave.
我个人最喜欢的是意大利科学家设计的一种装置，名为“EcoPalm Ring”，它看起来像一个巨大的金属狗项圈，但实际上是一个圆形微波炉。
The ring wraps around the trunk and is lifted by a crane up the length of the tree, cooking the weevils inside.
环缠绕在树干上，并用起重机将其吊到树的长度上，烹饪里面的象鼻虫。
Of particular interest at the conference was the presence of a few Israelis, which would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, before the American-engineered agreements known as the Abraham Accords inaugurated official ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
会议特别令人感兴趣的是一些以色列人的出席，这在几年前是很难想象的，当时美国策划的《亚伯拉罕协议》开启了以色列与阿拉伯联合酋长国、巴林和摩洛哥之间的正式关系。
If we understand the date palm as a unifier in a divided part of the world, dates offer an obvious field of cooperation.
如果我们将椰枣理解为世界分裂地区的统一者，那么椰枣提供了一个明显的合作领域。
A weevil sensor manufactured by an Israeli company, for example, has already been drilled into thousands of trees in the UAE and Morocco, as well as in Arab countries that won’t trade directly with Israel but purchase the sensors through a third party.
例如，以色列公司制造的象鼻虫传感器已经被钻入阿联酋和摩洛哥以及不与以色列直接贸易而是通过第三方购买传感器的阿拉伯国家的数千棵树上。
The sensor picks up the vibrations of weevil larvae and sends a warning to an app installed on the farmer’s smartphone.
传感器捕捉到象鼻虫幼虫的振动，并向农民智能手机上安装的应用程序发送警告。
Conference participants heard from Dror Shalitin, the Israeli CEO of a company that has pioneered a genetically engineered substance that is injected into date palm trees and eaten by the weevil.
与会者听取了 Dror Shalitin 的发言，Dror Shalitin 是一家公司的以色列首席执行官，该公司率先将一种基因工程物质注射到枣椰树中并被象鼻虫吃掉。
Once ingested, it switches off a vital gene and kills the bug without leaving any chemical trace, as a pesticide would.
一旦被摄入，它就会关闭一个重要的基因并杀死细菌，而不留下任何化学痕迹，就像杀虫剂一样。
The precise details are a trade secret.
确切的细节属于商业秘密。
Eventually, Shalitin told me, the substance can be genetically engineered into the trees themselves, making them weevil-proof.
沙利廷告诉我，最终，这种物质可以通过基因工程植入树木本身，使它们能够抵御象鼻虫。
The panel’s moderator was noticeably cold to the Israeli, and one woman slipped out when he stood up to speak, suggesting that dates can’t overcome all entrenched divisions.
该小组的主持人对以色列人明显很冷淡，当他站起来发言时，一名女性溜了出去，这表明约会无法克服所有根深蒂固的分歧。
But most participants seemed open-minded, and the Emirati organizers did their best to make their Israeli guests feel welcome.
但大多数参与者似乎持开放态度，阿联酋组织者也尽最大努力让以色列客人感到受欢迎。
Sarah Sallon, the Israeli researcher behind Methuselah and the resurrection project, received an award for her work.
玛土撒拉和复活项目背后的以色列研究员莎拉·萨隆因其工作而获奖。
The conference was an argument for shared tastes and affinities, or at least for the salutary effects of a common enemy—in this case, a little red bug that cares nothing for borders or religion but only about date palms, and needs to be fought by people who share that way of thinking.
这次会议是一场关于共同品味和亲和力的争论，或者至少是为了共同敌人的有益影响而举行的争论——在这种情况下，这是一种不关心边界或宗教，只关心枣椰树的红色小虫子，需要由拥有相同思维方式的人们来对抗。
Date palms have been domesticated for so long that it’s easy to forget they once grew wild.
椰枣已经被驯化了很长时间，以至于人们很容易忘记它们曾经是野生的。
Occasionally you’ll see a palm growing alone somewhere like a gleefully escaped convict, feral and unkempt, surrounded by offshoots protruding from the trunk, looking less like a tame orchard tree than like a fierce bush.
偶尔你会看到一棵棕榈树孤零零地生长在某处，就像一个兴高采烈地越狱的囚犯，野性十足，蓬头垢面，周围都是从树干伸出的枝条，看起来不像一棵驯服的果园树，而更像是一丛凶猛的灌木丛。
But these are cultivated palms gone rogue, not authentically wild trees.
但这些都是失控的栽培棕榈树，而不是真正的野生树木。
In fact, for a long time no one could find the date palm’s true ancestors.
事实上，很长一段时间以来，没有人能找到海枣的真正祖先。
A few years ago, Gros-Balthazard, the French scientist, heard from colleagues about unusual palms growing in the Hajar Mountains of northern Oman.
几年前，法国科学家格罗斯-巴尔萨扎德从同事那里听说阿曼北部哈吉尔山脉生长着不寻常的棕榈树。
The trees produced strikingly small seeds, the researchers observed, a common feature of wild plants, which have not been bred to bear larger fruit.
研究人员观察到，这些树产生的种子非常小，这是野生植物的一个共同特征，这些植物尚未经过培育以结出更大的果实。
Gros-Balthazard and her team sequenced the trees’ genome and found that they were dramatically more diverse than the palms we know, and in 2017 they published an article in Current Biology announcing that the elusive wild date palm had finally been discovered.
Gros-Balthazard 和她的团队对这些树的基因组进行了测序，发现它们比我们所知的棕榈树更加多样化，2017 年，他们在《当代生物学》上发表了一篇文章，宣布终于发现了难以捉摸的野生枣椰树。
The wild palms are not just a curiosity.
野生棕榈树不仅仅是一种好奇心。
The world is warming and the population is growing, so a tree that likes the heat and produces durable fruit with a wide range of uses has a lot to offer.
世界正在变暖，人口在增长，所以一棵喜欢炎热、结出耐久果实、用途广泛的树可以提供很多帮助。
But to survive, even venerable domesticated palms will need to adapt new characteristics, such as the ability to deal better with drought.
但为了生存，即使是古老的驯化棕榈树也需要适应新的特征，例如更好地应对干旱的能力。
Many useful traits have been lost during thousands of years of breeding, but they may well be found again in the more varied genomes of wild palms, which have been getting by on their own for millennia—in desert wadis, without irrigation.
许多有用的性状在数千年的繁殖过程中已经丢失，但它们很可能在野生棕榈树的更多样化的基因组中再次被发现，这些野生棕榈树已经在没有灌溉的沙漠河谷中独立生存了数千年。
“It’s because you’re diverse that you can adapt,” Gros-Balthazard said.
“正是因为你是多元化的，所以你才能适应，”格罗斯-巴尔萨扎德说。
“What’s coming is climate change, increasing drought and water salinity, everything that is threatening the date palm population right now.
“即将到来的是气候变化、干旱和水盐度的增加，所有这些都正在威胁着枣椰树的数量。
The wild date palms might carry some interesting adaptations, and these could be bred with cultivated date palms to create the date palms of the future.”
野生枣椰树可能会带来一些有趣的适应性，这些可以与栽培枣椰树一起培育，从而创造出未来的枣椰树。”
It’s impossible to say what this part of the world will look like in the centuries to come, or what sort of people will be bustling around at ground level, eating, quarrelling and telling each other stories.
我们无法预测未来几个世纪里世界的这一部分会是什么样子，也无法预测什么样的人会在地面上忙碌、吃饭、争吵、互相讲故事。
But it’s safe to say that whoever they are, somewhere nearby will be a stand of these trees, traveling gracefully through space and time without moving an inch.
但可以肯定地说，无论他们是谁，附近的某个地方都会有这些树，优雅地穿越时空，一动不动。
The Jerusalem-based journalist Matti Friedman is the author, most recently, of Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai .
耶路撒冷记者马蒂·弗里德曼最近出版了《谁被火烧：西奈半岛的伦纳德·科恩》一书。
Yadid Levy is a photographer based in Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires.
Yadid Levy 是一位居住在特拉维夫和布宜诺斯艾利斯的摄影师。
His photographs have appeared in several publications, including Time and Vanity Fair .
他的照片出现在包括《时代》杂志和《名利场》在内的多家出版物上。