Iraq is staging the comeback of the century, not with a boy band reunion, but with date palms. Once the world’s reigning champ of date production, the country saw its leafy crown slip after years of war and drought. Enter Labeeb Kashif Al-Gitta, co-founder of Nakhla, an agri-tech company with a green thumb and a mission. For a yearly subscription, Nakhla pampers your trees like they’re at a luxury spa, pruning, watering, and coaxing them into fruit-bearing glory.

By 2022, the team was already nurturing more than 14,000 trees, with plans to triple that number faster than you can say “sticky fingers.” Think of it as a dating app for trees: you sign up, and suddenly your old palm starts looking fruitful again. With dreams of reaching 50,000 trees, Nakhla is proving that Iraq’s palms, and spirit, still have plenty of life left. Sometimes the sweetest comebacks are literally dates.