Home
Project IndexContact


It was on the left bank of the starved fields that Fayoumis crushed their first sample. The chromatogram which bled and unveiled a red band, DDT, an organochloride pesticide deposited by the British to stimulate cotton production. Across the transect of the canal, at the base of each of the three chromatograms appeared purple bands of magnesium sulphate and potassium chloride. The army’s chemical basins on the right bank had leached into the groundwater and across the canal. Further up the paper, a yellow and pink stain, radon and sulfur dioxide gases, unsure of their origins, they remained focused on the other colours, they knew other myths in the chemical network were unfolding elsewhere.


The army had promised that their chemical basins were contained on the right bank of the canal. But chemicals are not contained by colonial infrastructures, as their residues seeped into the groundwater, travelling and contaminating adjacent ecologies – steering them off course from traditional cycles of growth and succession. 


As their farms were flooded by the new cuts in the canal, they sculpted subtle topography to allow the water to irrigate the alfalfa and catalyse its phytoremediation. But over the next 5 generations, they had come to notice patterns. In areas of low drainage, where the heavy metals were accumulating, the alfalfa rows were dying quicker than they could plant them, as they were assimilating heavy metals at a faster rate than their own growth rate, unable to surmount the assimilative capacity to survive. And so, conserving their energy, they reframed their planting around patches where the alfalfa had reached maturity for generations, where the growth rate of the plant was faster than the rate of accumulation. Developing this new agricultural typology, they broke up concrete pieces from the canal’s debris to define these new plots. For the next 100 years, they continued to plant alfalfa until the residues of heavy metals had been mostly absorbed.In these newly defined remediative patches, they tried to plant a palm tree at its centre, a religious and cultural symbol of fertility, and indeed, in the year 2175, the first palm tree bloomed. And as the first palm survived, they planted another, and when it survived, they knew it was time. Back in the areas of low drainage, which had been abandoned for generations, they returned to plant once more- not only alfalfa, but burdock and mustard, as the order of topography which sculpted survival began to dissolve, the growth of the palm tree itself was forging a new chemical system.


As the palm bloomed, its roots expanded, and fronds created shadow. The base of the palm tree was elevated with soil, and in its shade, a small garden was planted, chamomile, coriander and raspberries protected from the solar radiation, as the evapotranspiration from the small plants kept the gardeners cool, and dates fruiting. Towards the end of the first palm’s lifecycle, 75 years later, one of the gardeners crushed a raspberry plant, the purple band of heavy metals had faded, replaced by stains of phosphorus and citric acid, hormones released by the palm’s roots absorbed by the garden’s plants. The palm, its garden, and its gardeners were working in an autopoietic loop, a self-sustaining equilibrium, as the debris became arranged more definitely to the shape the new gardens within the fields.






As water flooded their farms, they planted alfalfa in rows as a pioneer species, but when harvested and eaten, the crop made their cattle sick. The alfalfa was working a powerful hyperaccumulator, soaking up the heavy metals deposited in the soil and storing it in their fibres, and so they continued to plant it over generations, but refused to feed it to their animals. 


And so, when the army left, they began to disassemble the canal in pieces along its left bank, following the logic of its original construction, they worked across in segments. Their cuts allowed the water to flood their farms, polluted as it may be, the water was theirs once more.

 
Another century passed, as they continued to break down and rearrange the debris to frame the palms gardens. Around them, the crop planting began to blur once more into the sculpted drainage, as these adjacent systems found their rhythm in Al-Kawy Salem.



























©2037 Copyrights Etc.