Zagoda Tirilye

”…I mean, you need to take life so seriously that, Even in your seventies, for example, you need to plant an olive tree, And it is not just simply for the kids, It is because you don’t believe in death, even though you are afraid of it, It is because the side of life tips the scale.” This is how Nazım Hikmet called out to each of us in his poem (On Living) written in 1947. We followed the advice of the master and chose living, and we planted 16,500 olive trees without waiting to be seventy.