The rural Sudanese desert environment in which the narrator of "A Handful of Dates" lives is full of date-palm trees. The date palm (phoenix dactylifera) is a fruit-bearing perennial tree native to the 'Fertile Crescent' region (modern-day Iraq). Widely cultivated in desert regions of northern Africa, central Asia, and the Middle East, the date palm produces clusters of dates. For thousands of years, the sweet edible fruit has been a staple in the diets of people living in the region where the date palm originates. Today, an estimated 8.5 million metric tons of dates are produced annually.
Date palms will begin producing fruits after five years of growth, and can grow to over twenty meters tall. Amid long green palm fronds, the trees will fruit several large clusters of golden dates. Often sold dried, the date is a stone fruit, meaning at its center is a hard single-seed core around which the fruit's flesh grows. Because of its high sugar content and sweet taste, dates are often used in baking. The date received its name from the Greek word for "finger" (dáktulos) because of the fruit's resemblance to a human finger.
