In June, on the outskirts of Damascus, apricots are everywhere, but the season is short – lasting no more than a week or two. This is maybe why, when Levantines want to give a promise they won’t keep, they use the expression ‘fel mishmash’, which literally means ‘in the apricot season’, because it comes and goes.
With its fleeting presence, the apricot season brings much life and activity. It is as if the whole region becomes obsessed with converting the fruit into something more lasting – either jam or qamar al-din, a dried sticky apricot leather. It can be made at home, but mostly happens on an industrial scale. To make qamar al-din, apricots are washed in water, then sterilised and softened with sulphur steam. The resulting mash is loaded into a peeler to get rid of the rind and seeds. Afterwards, sugar syrup is added to the mushy orange paste through continuous stirring and filtering. This is followed by drying the paste in the open air, where it is spread on wooden boards called dfoof.
The casting happens in the early morning before sunrise, so the paste does not thicken with the heat. On boards smeared with olive oil, the paste rests under the sun for four or five days. The drying space is usually divided into equal squares on boards in rows. Two carts roam between these rows, one full of paste being emptied onto the boards, and the other full of dried qamar al-din that has been carefully peeled off them. The peels are transferred to a covered area where they are cut, wrapped and stored.
During the drying season the orchards are filled with wooden boards as far as the eye can see, some a damp wood colour, others screaming in bright orange. Viewed from rooftops, the scene resembles a short-lived city, which stays until everything is wrapped into orange slabs and stacked at the entrances of the factories. Lined up vertically, the boards are left leaning on each other, exhausted from work and tanned by the sun.