Syria’s War Jolts a Beloved Tradition: Gathering Desert Truffles

Devastation left by conflict stymies the search, once a cherished custom, for a delicacy of the desert

Seven years into Syria’s war, the country’s truffle fields have become battlefields.

Even as bombs fell and fighting raged elsewhere in the country, Syria’s seasonal hunt for desert truffles weathered the first few years of the conflict largely undisturbed. As they had for generations, Syrian families would spend days foraging in the country’s eastern desert for the delicacies to eat or to sell.

But...