Award Winning Short Story By Rosie Cohen

Ali’s Heritage Garden

One Man’s Efforts to Preserve Tradition Within a Popular World Heritage Site

...Two smiling sunbaked women dressed in embroidered headscarves and patterned pantaloons were standing over an oven carved into the rock. They were making gozleme, dough rolled very thin like a tortilla, and baked over a wood- burning fire. A picnic table was set with a Turkish breakfast: boiled eggs (gathered from the chickens strutting around); locally made yogurt and cheeses; tomatoes, cucumbers, olives cured with local spices and garlic all from Ali’s garden. I heard echoes of cooing in the once-barren complex of dovecotes. Ali had acquired 2,000 pigeons to produce organic fertilizer.

After breakfast, we hiked to harvest plump bunches of grapes. They were brought to another part of the garden where Ali had built a village house with a flat roof. In the past, I observed barefooted women pull up their pantaloons and dance on their rooftops stomping the grapes. We donned rubber boots, and while slipping and sliding on the rooftop, took turns crushing the grapes...