Harvest begins in the springtime. May brings the yellow heads on the grain, and it must be gathered or soon the summer will be ended and the harvest past.[24] The grain on the hills is a few weeks later than that in the valleys and plains. A little donkey coming in from the hill terraces with a back-load of sheaves looks very porcupiny. The reaper grasps the stalks of wheat or barley with one hand and cuts a long straw with the sickle in the other hand. If he is hungry he starts a little fire and holds some of the wheat heads over it until well parched, and then, rubbing off the husks between his palms, he has a feast of the _new corn of the land_. Thus treated, new wheat is called _frîky_ (rubbed).
During the time of ripening wheat one may see in the fields, close to the ground, the heavy green leaves and yellow, shiny apples of the mandrake.[25] The natives say that if one eats the seeds of the fruit they will make him crazy. The pulp has a pleasant, sweetish flavor and an agreeable smell.[26]
The only dreadful wind in Palestine is the east wind,[27] because it blows from the inland desert and brings excessive heat. The Arabic word for _east_ is _sherḳ_, and so for east wind the Arab says _Sherḳ-îyeh_. From this we get, by corruption, our word sirocco (or sherokkoh), which has come to mean simply a hot, enervating blast from any direction. To the Arab it is that wearing east wind whose coming can be felt in the early morning before a breath of air seems stirring. There is a certain chemical effect on the nervous system of those who are particularly sensitive to the blighting touch of the Sherḳîyeh. Sometimes this wind goes away suddenly after a short day, but almost always its coming means that it will run three days at least, and often more. There is a similar wind in Egypt known to residents of Cairo as the Khumsûn (fifty), from the likelihood that it will remain fifty days. Such an unbroken period of hot winds must be exceedingly rare in Palestine, though in the early autumn of 1902 there was an almost continuous Sherḳîyeh for five weeks. The east wind of winter is usually as disagreeably cold as its relative in summer is hot and suffocating. The only good thing that I ever knew the summer sirocco to do was to cure quickly the raisin grapes spread on the ground in September.
