In 1998 I went to Jerusalem again, now with a summer job as an intern for a wire service. During my first two visits I had rarely ventured into Jewish West Jerusalem; now I would live there. The Muslim quarter of the Old City had always felt like a tidier extension of the Arab world, so this was my first real introduction to Israel. It was the first time I was surrounded by Hebrew and Jewish Israelis. In West Jerusalem the white stone buildings seemed to glow at night, and outside of the Orthodox neighbourhoods the girls wore tank tops.
On my first day at work my boss introduced me to another intern, Sarah, an ambitious photographer.
‘You from the States?’ she asked.
‘Yeah. No. I mean –’
‘Where’d ya go to college?’ she asked, cracking gum.
‘University of Washington,’ I said.
‘Jews-U?’
I stared.
‘Jews-U? Wash-U?’
I still couldn’t make out what she was talking about.
‘Washington University?’
‘University of Washington. In Seattle. U-dub.’
‘Ohhhhhh. I thought you meant Washington University in St Louis. Never mind. That’s what people call it. Are you Jewish?’
‘No.’
‘Right, see, I assumed you were Jewish. Anyway. I went to Penn. We should get a drink.’
I agreed.
Sarah and I rented a breezy ground-floor apartment in the neighbourhood of Rechavia. Together, we took the bus every day to the well-fortified JMC, the Jerusalem Media Centre, where nearly every foreign news organisation had its offices. Almost everyone else in my bureau was either Jewish or Arab. Some were from Jerusalem, while others had come from elsewhere to work – Jordan, Egypt, England, the United States. Underlying their nonpartisan professionalism, they all had a visceral reason for being here that I lacked. I felt a slight envy.
My first reporting assignment was on Jerusalem Day, which celebrated Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. My editor asked me to do a man-in-the-street story, and I thought immediately of Damascus Gate. When I got there the steps were strangely deserted. So was the plaza just inside. On Khan al-Zeit, men were heaving their bags of spices and buckets of olives back into their stores, rolling up their polyester carpets and stowing them away. They were padlocking the metal grates across their storefronts and retreating into nearby doorways. Plastic bags skittered along in the dry breeze.
I approached an old man who was standing on the lopsided stone steps leading up to his door. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said; il-nakba, the disaster. He was locking up and lying low. ‘Go in peace,’ he said, before his grate clanged shut. When I made it back up to the western part of the city, an old man told me proudly how he had fought in the war, how he had helped take Jerusalem. ‘The first thing we did was pray at the wall,’ he said.
In a way, every story was like that first one. A quote from one side and a quote from the other. There was nothing, it seemed, that could be covered without reference to the conflict – not a film festival, a crime story or the gay pride parade in Tel Aviv. The conflict sold the stories to the outside world. At first I thought my understanding would grow, and that by the end of the summer I would have gained some key insight. Like the many outsiders who had tried to broker peace, I thought that something other than a permanent state of war would eventually make sense. I thought it was just a question of missing knowledge, and now I was acquiring knowledge every day.
And yet things did not start to make sense. Every fact was countered by another fact. I drilled back through time, as though penetrating layers of sediment. There was yesterday, when an Israeli bulldozer demolished an Arab home; then last year, when the Arab family had squatted on the property; then 1967, when the Israelis had taken the property in a defensive war; and on back to 1948, when the Arabs had fled their Jerusalem homes. Then there were the British and the French, who everyone said had messed things up in the first place. And on and on it went, to the Bible, to millennia ago, when God had granted the land to the Israelites. If you had a stake in things, maybe one narrative or the other eventually started to make sense. If you came in with an equivocal view, things remained irresolute.
We travel in the hope of bonding with new places. To get that feeling of belonging, we side with the locals. We pay attention to their hopes and dreams. We try to imagine ourselves in their place. We listen to their music, try on their clothes, eat their food. In return for our sympathy and respect, we ask them to love us back. This longing for connection is the traveller’s neediness. Connection, though, requires bias. I had come without one, and the way I spent my time made it difficult to get one. I pinged back and forth every day between enemy lines. They didn’t look like enemy lines; there were no check points, and I could walk between the two sides, but as I did, the language and dress changed, the things people thought and said changed, and suddenly I found myself in a new country.
The one thing that didn’t change was the food. Falafel sandwiches with hummus were served in both halves of the city. Oranges, eggplants and olive oil were consumed. Mint and tomatoes were chopped into salads, and meat was slaughtered as specified in the holy books.
I befriended Ben, a television producer who worked across the hall from my bureau. He was short and black-haired, the son of Moroccan Jews, Israeli-born and US-raised. He had grown up in the Northwest and, like me, had attended the University of Washington. We talked about professors we had in common, and I felt a connection to him through our shared background. He was an American who knew my grey-green home turf. He was an Arab. He was a Jew. The first time we went out he ordered me lemonade with mint.
Ben called at midday and said he wanted to show me the shuk, the Jewish market. He led me into the Mahane Yehuda, a sprawling web of tightly packed alleys and stalls. I had poked around its edges but had never been into its heart. Now he took my hand and guided me in, past hawkers shouting, ‘B’shekel, b’shekel, b’shekel,’ over mounds of vegetables.
Leading me from a wide alley into a maze of narrower lanes roofed with tarpaulins, we entered an unsigned restaurant, ducking under a low door into a cramped, white-tiled room that was packed with men. Some wore Orthodox black-and-whites; others were brown-skinned and rough like tradesmen, with stubble and dirty clothes. The heat, the close quarters and the absence of women made it feel Arab to me, recognisably Middle Eastern. We sat next to a wall, facing each other across a long table that quickly filled with diners. They trapped us into place. Ben ordered for both of us, and a man with a dish towel over his shoulder delivered bowls of hot savoury soup filled with vegetables and balls of dough. I asked what we were eating. ‘Matzo kleis,’ Ben said. I felt like I had penetrated an unknown place, and was grateful to him for taking me there.
A few weeks later Ben invited me to a dinner party at his home. It was a Friday, and I had seen Israelis buying and giving flowers on the evening before their Sabbath. On my way I stopped at the shuk and bought a bouquet, thinking I would emulate the custom. Ben’s apartment was in Nachlaot, an older part of the city where the white rock buildings had aged to shiny yellow. The homes there were divided by footpaths, stairs and the occasional bridge, like a drawing by MC Escher. When I handed Ben the flowers, he blushed. I suddenly felt insecure about my attempt at cultural assimilation, and wondered if I had committed a gaffe.
Ben had also invited an Australian who worked for the United Jewish Congress and an Irishwoman who was doing her PhD in Bible studies. Lily spent her days poring over fragile texts. She knew more about ancient history than any of us, more than anyone she was likely to meet. That was how she had made a place for herself here in Jerusalem. Journalists are voyeurs; Lily had a real reason for being here.
Ben served hearts of palm, eggplant and lamb with rice. After dinner his other guests left and I stayed. He poured glasses of arak and we sat on his balcony. The strong liquorice liquid was overwhelming at first, then tasted smoother with every sip. A scratchy old tape of Oum Kalsoum, the
beloved Egyptian singer, was playing.
Ben asked me if I was involved with someone, and I said I had a boyfriend in New York. I asked him the same question back.
Ben said he had had a girlfriend until recently, but that she had moved back to the States and they had broken up. ‘Long distance is tough,’ I said, but he said that wasn’t it.
‘What was?’
‘We had …’ he paused, ‘religious differences.’
‘She’s not Jewish?’
‘No, she is.’
I felt my comprehension beginning to drift.
‘Rebecca is studying music,’ he said. ‘She has a beautiful singing voice. In our religion there’s a person who sings liturgical passages in synagogue, called a cantor. Rebecca is in training to become a cantor.’
‘So?’
‘So in the Orthodox faith, which is mine, women can’t be cantors. Rebecca was raised in what is known as Reform Judaism.’ He bit off the last two words with distaste. ‘She would probably make a very good cantor.’
‘So – you broke up with her because she’s not Jewish enough?’
‘That’s not the right way to put it,’ he said kindly. ‘Orthodox is not more Jewish than Reform. But if you mean did I break up with her because she’s not Orthodox, that’s more or less true.’ He sighed. ‘I guess I decided that I couldn’t marry her. And if she changed her faith to mine, she wouldn’t be able to become a cantor. Men and women don’t even sit together in my synagogue.’
Ben no longer seemed comfortingly familiar to me. But I coveted his sureness about his place in the world.
I took Hebrew classes at the YMCA, and noticed the cognates with Arabic. The two languages share mish-mish for apricot. Tamar and tamara, for date. Shuk and souk, for market. Shalom and salaam, for peace.
Reem, a photographer in my bureau, offered me her mother as an Arabic tutor and I started going to Mrs Kayyali’s house one or two evenings a week. It was in a part of the city I hadn’t visited before, a modern part of Arab East Jerusalem. West Jerusalem taxis wouldn’t go there, so I walked down to the taxi depot outside Damascus Gate. The house was on a steep road, and built of the same white Jerusalem stone as the rest of the city. Reem, who was in her late twenties and always wore jeans and a T-shirt, still lived there with her parents. Her sister and nieces lived next door. On the wall in Reem’s bedroom there was an enormous reproduction of a travel poster from the time of the British Mandate. It had a picture of a ship, with the words in big letters ‘Visit Palestine’.
I brought my Arabic textbooks and Mrs Kayyali sat with me on the couch, reading and talking, gently correcting me whenever I made a mistake. Every now and then she excused herself to pray. She often offered to feed me, and one night she served a dish called maqluba. The word meant upside-down. After cooking all the ingredients in a pot, you turned it over onto a plate. The dish was made of lamb, eggplant and rice, and she served it with yoghurt. The lamb was so soft it fell off the bone, the rice was velvety, the spices both familiar and strange. I took another helping, and Mrs Kayyali looked pleased.
‘How do you make it?’ I asked. She said she would show me, so I would be able to make it at home. We made a date.
Reem, who had no interest in cooking, brought me a note from her mother with all the ingredients. I needed eggplants, onions, lamb, butter and a list of spices: cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric and something called baharat. I looked forward to shopping, a comprehensible task with a comprehensible goal. Reem wrote down the names in English as well as Arabic, except for baharat, which was untranslatable.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s baharat,’ she said.
‘Where should I go?’
She raised an eyebrow at me.
‘Go to the spice market.’
I thought immediately of Damascus Gate. I took a bus from the office along Jaffa road, got out when the Old City was in sight, and walked down the hill, paralleling the city wall, to the familiar portal. It was crowded. I wove my way across the plaza and into the souk Khan al-Zeit, the market on the street of the oil merchants. For all the times I had walked by the spices, I had never bought any. I picked the store with the biggest rainbow, deep red and orange and green, and approached the vendor. He was skinny, smooth-skinned, and moustachioed. I began to go through my list.
‘What are you making?’ he asked, as though I were not a tourist, as though it were the most natural thing in the world that I should be cooking in my home. ‘Maqluba,’ I said. He gave an approving nod, and I felt like I had a reason to be there. He tied up each spice in a clear plastic bag. I sniffed the baharat; it was a mongrel mix. I thought I smelled nutmeg and black pepper.
I took my ingredients over to Mrs Kayyali’s on a Saturday afternoon and we began to cook. She spoke to me in Arabic seasoned with English, and I tried to take notes. We sliced the eggplant and sprinkled it with salt. We cut the lamb into cubes and sautéed it with onions. Her tidy, tiled kitchen filled with the rich carnivore smell of sizzling meat. We added the spices, and I watched the colours melt into liquid.
Now we heated olive oil in a pot and began to build our layers. First tomatoes, then a sprinkling of rice. Then the meat, the eggplant and more rice. We pressed down on every layer with a spatula, and each one mingled with its neighbours without giving up its essence. We added the lid to trap the heat, then retreated to the couch for an Arabic lesson. Family members drifted in and out, and we passed the late afternoon. When the dish was ready, and it had cooled, Mrs Kayyali took a platter and heaved the pot upside down. The layers were intact, with bright tomato on top.
I took my spices home with me to Rechavia and at the end of a long week, I invited Ben and my roommate Sarah to eat with me. I began cooking in the afternoon in my tiled kitchen, windows open to the rustling trees. I’d always enjoyed the chemical logic of cooking, and thought of cookbooks as sorcerer’s manuals. I followed their instructions, and every time the trick more or less worked.
On this night, however, my layers collapsed – like the way, in Jerusalem, the Ottoman years had fallen in on the Crusader years, which had caved onto the Roman ruins below. Sarah and Ben assured me that the maqluba was delicious nonetheless, and I began to feel at home.
Couscous and Camaraderie
ANITA BRELAND
Anita Breland has lived and worked in several countries in Europe and Asia. A Mississippi native, she grew up in Texas and began her culinary adventures in Mexico. She has been a Fulbright lecturer in Romania, restored a 400-year-old house in Morocco and travelled solo in India, where she explored the cooking traditions of Kerala. She currently writes from Basel, Switzerland. An ardent believer in cultural immersion through food, Anita joins local cooks in their kitchens at every opportunity. Her writing was recognised by the 2009 Solas Awards, and she blogs about food and culture at http://anitasfeast.blogspot.com.
Seated cross-legged on a worn kilim pillow, Tante Tamou licked her right hand, first wrist to palm, then knuckle to fingertips. Afternoon sun slanted through the doorway behind her. She swept the platter with a practised move, and in self-absorbed satisfaction tongued her forearm almost to the elbow. Only when virtually every grain of couscous was gone did she allow Fouziya to pour water from a battered copper kettle to wash her hands.
‘It was a good couscous, eh!’ Tamou exclaimed to us through great-nephew Rachid. Accepting a towel, I nodded happily. Couscous steamed and tossed by hand before receiving a blessing of sauce was the centrepiece of the meal. For me, though, Tamou’s company was the feast.
Couscous is traditional Friday fare in Morocco, shared with family and friends after prayers at the mosque. The meal is one part couscous, with its meat and vegetables, and the rest, love – of family, food and companionship. Seeing Tamou exuberant in her pleasure with the meal she had orchestrated out of a gift basket from strangers was as heart-warming as it was unexpected.
It was week two of my home-kitchen travels in Morocco with Canadian caterer and cookbook author, Chef De
b. We’d seen women in Fez put in long hours to produce the many dishes with complex flavours that feature in Fassi cooking. Today’s visit to a home kitchen in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains contrasted sharply with our previous experiences.
We were introduced to Rachid in Agadir, and three days later he brought us to his ancestral home, a farm between Essaouira and Marrakesh. Fortified with café lattes and sugary pastries, we left Essaouira just after breakfast, a little worried about intruding upon Rachid’s relatives. We implored him to let his aunt know we were coming to see her. ‘I take care,’ he assured us.
We stopped in a dusty village to pick up supplies: two chickens killed and cleaned as we waited; and couscous, chosen by Rachid from the several types arrayed in sacks fronting a street-side stall. We bought November vegetables: potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions; pallid tomatoes; and for dessert, clementines from a truck parked beside the highway. Vibrantly orange, they were just coming into season.
In Fez, we’d been treated to prized family recipes and lavish spreads. We’d accompanied housewives and chefs into bustling souqs to select fish, lamb and seasonal vegetables. Rachid’s request that we bring all the food for the meal had been a hint that this cooking encounter might be something more elemental. The landscape we’d driven through provided another: arid plateaus, pocked with gullies, dotted with gnarled argan trees and little else. We saw no power poles, no other traffic along the rock-strewn track that ended at a squat mosque.
We parked beside the mosque and three women emerged from a walled compound on the far side of a field and ran towards us, dogs yapping about their heels. Rachid hurried to embrace his stick-wielding great-aunt and her teenaged granddaughters, and to calm the dogs. The women smiled and grasped our hands. ‘ A salaam alaikum. Peace be upon you.’ ‘Wa ‘alaikum as-salaam,’ we answered. ‘And to you, peace.’
A Moveable Feast Page 4