HUTCHINSON – For Gene Zaid, Arum palaestinum is more than a beautiful plant with dark green foliage and deep purple petals.
People have used the plant, also known as black calla lily, as medicine in the Middle East since the ninth century B.C. Zaid said he watched his family and his community use the plant to treat different illnesses while growing up in Palestine.
Its chemical makeup was synthesized to create what he hopes will be his pharmaceutical company’s first cancer-fighting agent, GZ17-6.02
“I live in America, but I still have a connection to Palestine because I’m raising that plant,” Zaid said.
He raises 50,000 of the Middle Eastern plants in Sterling. Each one is potted and neatly arranged in rows across six climate-controlled greenhouses.
The plant connects him to his life when he was called Najib – a Palestinian boy who spent most of his time studying under an olive tree in the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
He would stay there as long as the sun stayed in the sky. If he was hungry, he would shoot a bird with a slingshot and roast it over a fire.
He had no choice. There was no food at home. The only light in the two-bedroom home he shared with his parents and seven siblings was a kerosene lamp that he rarely got custody over.
Zaid changed his name to Gene in 1994 after living in the United States for some time where people struggled to say Najib. Even after decades of living in America, Zaid said he still remembers it all.
“There is not one day that passes by that I don’t think about home and Palestine,” he said. “There is not one day. I always think about it – where I walked, where I studied, where I went to school.”
Zaid was born in a Palestinian refugee camp called Jalazone in 1951. Like thousands of Palestinians, his family was forced out of its home and into refugee camps during the creation of Israel in 1948.
Zaid’s time at Jalazone was short. After his dad landed a janitorial job with the Department of Agriculture, his family moved to Jerusalem.
They survived on rations of flour from the United Nations and lived in a home without running water or electricity. But, as a child, Zaid said he loved life in Jerusalem.
“When you are a young kid, you are not getting enough food, you are cold in the winter time, you're not dressed properly, or you go to school barefoot sometimes,” Zaid said. “But you always felt rich somehow because you thought the whole world was the same as you are.”
As he grew up, Zaid said he started to understand the reality of his family’s financial situation.
“My mom was a wonderful lady, very kind, very loving, very attentive, and my dad was also very hard working,” Zaid said. “But, both of them were heartbroken. There was no joy in life there.”
The harder life was, the harder Zaid said he worked.
“My dad advised me, ‘If you study hard and you get a high education, the world will need you.” And so I kept that in mind… and I studied hard.’”
Life got harder in 1967. The ongoing Arab-Israeli war flared up again. Within five days, Israel defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and occupied more of Palestine, including the West Bank.
“It was pretty ugly,” he said. “They would shoot anybody.”
After the war, Zaid was intent on leaving Palestine to pursue higher education in the United States. He attended Hesston College and Kansas Wesleyan University for undergrad before getting his doctorate in chemistry from Wichita State University.
Zaid was a full-time student, but he also worked multiple jobs to pay for tuition.
“I was a busboy. I was a dishwasher. I was a cleaner… in the science building and the library. I did whatever it took.”
Decades later, his life is completely different from his childhood. Genzada Pharmaceuticals is Zaid’s second company, and he has collected over 70 U.S. patents throughout his career.
No matter how much his life has changed, Zaid said there is one thing about him that will always stay the same.
“I never give up. Failure to me is not an option. When I was a kid and even as an adult at 73, I don’t give up. I just keep working,” he said. “I think it's in our DNA – it's who we are as Palestinians.”
He sees that same resilience in the Arum palaestinum plants he raises. The Palestinian plant can survive in drought and adjust to different types of soil.
“I think maybe that’s why they call it Arum palaestinum… because you’re not going to kill us.”
