The flat strip of green that runs along the south side of Shibam, between the city wall and the desert proper, is the agricultural heart of the oasis: date palms, vegetable plots, and small stands of fodder grass, all watered by a network of channels fed from wells and from the rare flash floods of the wadi. Without the palm groves there would be no walled city — every brick of every tower was made from the wadi's silt, baked in the wadi's sun, and roofed with the wadi's palm trunks.
A walk through the groves is the easiest way to escape the heat of the open streets. Tracks run between the trees, men work in pairs to clear the irrigation channels of sand, and from the shade you can look back at the towers of Shibam framed in palm fronds. The dates here are sold across southern Arabia; the local zahdi variety is large, dark, and very sweet, traditionally eaten with bowls of laban (curdled milk) at breakfast.