What you do with that bitterness determines what kind of person you become. You can carry it around with you, even in a peaceful place. Or you can agree to put it aside, even in a city at war.
Munir, in the middle of an uncharacteristically topical discussion of religion and politics, once reached out and picked up a wineglass.
“Look at this glass,” he said, holding it up so we could admire its slender neck, its fragile bud. “It takes a lot to make it. And yet it takes very little to break it. You can break it in an instant.”
It didn’t seem like much at the time—a bit of drinking wisdom. But now I never drink wine without looking at the delicate curve of the glass and thinking, yes, you can break it in an instant. And yet here it is, whole and full of wine.
Months later, in the spring, I was talking on the phone with Roaa. I was still in New York. She was in Colorado. She had a husband now, and a daughter, and the three of them had traveled all the way from Baghdad to Sulaymaniya, in Iraqi Kurdistan, then to Turkey, and finally to a semi-furnished apartment in America suburbia.
The last time I had seen Roaa, in 2004, the sectarian violence in Iraq seemed pervasive. But it was just getting started. By 2006, the country was in the grip of a raging civil war. During this chaos, she finally fell in love. Being Roaa, she didn’t do it the easy way: he was an Arab, she was a Kurd. Many families refused to accept such a match, but theirs did, and they had a beautiful baby daughter named Rania.
In 2008, Roaa’s husband started getting death threats: anonymous references to “un-Islamic” behavior like drinking beer (so much for the ancient Sumerians). The threats came edged with detailed allusions to who he was, who his friends were, and where he lived. So Roaa and her husband joined the diaspora—almost three million refugees inside Iraq’s borders, and 1.5 million more in cities of neighboring countries: a mass migration that will forever change the Middle East and the rest of our interconnected world. She and her husband applied to the United States refugee resettlement program, and after a series of interviews, they were accepted. Now here she was in the suburbs of Denver. She had always wanted to see the world.
We talked about cell phones and Facebook, which had helped us stay in touch, about jobs and paperwork and whether they should move to New York or try to make a go of it in Colorado, where they did not know a soul. They had no telephone or Internet yet, no car, no jobs, and very little money.
“Well,” she said, and laughed, as if suddenly remembering that she had seen much worse. And then she said fiercely: “We will make ourselves settle down.”
Things in Iraq would improve, slowly. Shahbandar Café was bombed by Islamic militants in March 2007, and rebuilt in 2009. Abu Nuwas Street was refurbished, and the masquf restaurants reopened. In neighborhoods where Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army had once ruled the streets, people wrote graffiti that said: WE ARE COMING WITH THE ARMY OF UMM MAHDI—the Baghdadi nickname for a fawal, an old woman who sells foul on the street. (Mocking political leaders with legumes was not a new phenomenon: In 2003, Abu Rifaat had showed me a graffito that said NO HAKIM, NO CHALABI, I JUST WANT BEER AND LABLABI—comparing both religious and secular politicians, unfavorably, to beer and chickpea soup.)
Salaam the Communist had to leave his neighborhood for three years, while Sunni insurgents tried to turn it into an Islamic mini-state. He returned in 2009 and was astounded to see liquor stores: whisky bottles lined up, right there in the windows, a thing that would have earned the shopkeeper an execution just a year earlier. He called a friend and said: “Now I feel safe, because I see liquor stores.” But then a series of bombings would rip through markets and cafés and ice cream shops, the war would reassert itself, and the cautious tide of civilization would retreat once more. Youm aasl, youm basl—day of honey, day of onions.
In Beirut, the gunmen disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Hezbollah dismantled its tents from downtown, there was a parliamentary election, and a new government that included all the factions. Yet you could still smell the hate simmering just below the surface. The political parties kept it on a low flame, but they could bring it back up to a boil whenever they wanted. You can break it in an instant.
But no matter how powerful the aftertaste of hate, you don’t remember it as vividly as you do the other things. When I thought of Baghdad, I thought of the way people there treasured books; their sense of humor, of history, the way someone would always bring up the Epic of Gilgamesh. The old-fashioned cafés. The smell of masquf. The way everyone was constantly breaking into poetry, or relating the same stories they had been telling since before the Abbasids. When I thought of Beirut, I did not remember the gunmen, or our neighbors checking identity cards, or the Hezbollah men hunkered in tents like Ibn Khaldun’s Bedouin hordes. I remembered the smell of lamb being grilled by the neighbors on Sundays, mixed with the fragrance of roasting coffee and cardamom from the shop downstairs. The screech of roosters echoing off concrete, the cry of Kaaaaaa-eek! from the old man selling kaak. I imagined the moment during Ramadan, just before iftar, when the streets were suddenly empty, the neighborhood perfectly silent and still, as all of Hamra held its breath and waited for the muezzin’s voice to break the fast. I remembered watching the fortuneteller predict the next year’s events on New Year’s Eve on Lebanese TV, followed by a young woman forecasting the weather in a black leather bustier. I pictured the fattoush at Baromètre, a pyramid of red and green, and it occurred to me that if I walked into Baromètre at that very moment I would probably see someone I knew.
I did not miss the bombs. But I did miss my friends, and the way we would all call each other after a bombing to make sure everyone was all right. I missed the way Umm Adnan or Abu Ibrahim recited recipes when I bought khubaizeh or wild fennel; the bored teenaged cashier at my local supermarket in New York was perfectly nice, but she did not do that when I bought a plastic bag of prewashed spinach.
There was no point to staying in Baghdad or even Beirut. No point to being there simply because our friends could not or would not leave—no use, as Mohamad would point out, to staying in a war zone out of loyalty to friends who have no choice but to remain. But there is something to be said for memory, and for raising what small flag you can, even a tattered one, against forgetting.
Whenever I missed Beirut or Baghdad, I would head to a farmers’ market. I would find something familiar, or something unfamiliar, and I would make something out of it. I would call friends (the ones who weren’t “booked”) and invite them to dinner.
Food alone cannot make peace. It is part of war, like everything else. We can break bread with our neighbors one day and kill them the next. Food is just an excuse—an opportunity to get to know your neighbors. When you share it with others, it becomes something more.
I spread the dried green mlukhieh out on the table. I picked through the leaves, throwing away the brown ones and snapping off the stems. It looked and smelled like tea. I made it exactly the way Umm Hassane had instructed, and it was terrible.
“Umm Hassane,” I shouted, the next time we called her. “The mlukhieh. How do you cook it when it’s dried?”
“You boil it!”
“Yes, but do you boil the leaves separately first, before you put in the chicken?”
“Of course!” (Her standard response for any step she has forgotten to tell you about.)
“For how long?”
“Until it’s done!”
She seized any opportunity to point out the impossibility of making tabeekh in America. The butchers in America would not be able to grind the meat finely enough. The tomatoes would not taste right. The mlukhieh was not really mlukhieh. This was her way of saying that she missed us, and of trying to bring us back to Beirut. But when we called to tell her we were coming for a visit, she snorted, as if she’d believe it when she saw us.
Cara was right: we will never find that feeling of belonging. I will not find it in a store, or a city, or even a farmer’s market, because it is not something you find but somet
hing you make. I will plant a garden, read a book. I will have coffee with my neighbors. I will cook dinner with my friends. I will not wait to make an appointment. I will call Georges in Cleveland or Roaa in Denver or Adessa in Beirut. I will call my mother and ask what she is eating. I will buy a sandwich and eat it on the street, remembering to marvel at the fact that the sidewalks here are for people, not cars, like in Beirut.
When I walk down the streets of New York, there will be moments when I happen to make eye contact with a guy just as he is wrapping his mouth around a hot dog or a burrito or a falafel, and he will look up with a sudden, almost doglike look of shame, because his mouth is full and he is eating in public, and that is an American’s standard response to being caught communing with our food. And without thinking, I will start to say sahtain. I will think, for the millionth time, that it’s a crime we don’t have such a word in English, that we do eat in public here, but we do not really celebrate it quite like they do around the Mediterranean. So I will say it anyway, even though the guy will probably think I’m crazy: Sahtain! Eat, for God’s sake!
Acknowledgments
THE HARDEST PART of acknowledging others is how they refuse to behave. Translators become friends (and vice versa). Sources metamorphose into mentors. A manuscript reader is also a sharer of culinary secrets. I tried to organize them for the sake of space, but many of the people I thank below transcend categories.
Some of those who were most helpful to me cannot be thanked by name, for their safety and that of their loved ones. They know who they are and how much I owe them.
When I showed up in Baghdad and Beirut as a freelancer new to war zone reporting, fellow journalists were generous with sources, satellite phones, accumulated wisdom, alcohol, and grilled meat. They included Chris Albritton, Jackson Allers, Anne Barnard, Nick Blanford, Kate Brooks, Andrew Lee Butters, Thanassis Cambanis, Charlie Crain, Babak Dehghanpisheh, Yochi Dreazen, Farnaz Fassihi, Kim Ghattas, Ben Gilbert, Christine Hauser, Betsy Hiel, Warzer Jaff, Larry Kaplow, Ashraf Khalil, Ibrahim Khayat, Rita Leistner, Joe Logan, Matt McAllester, Challiss McDonough, Andrew Mills, Diana Moukalled, Evan Osnos, Scott Peterson, Jim Rupert, Moises Saman, Kate Seelye, Anthony Shadid, Tina Susman, Letta Tayler, and Liz Sly.
In Baghdad, Betsy Pisik gave me a crash course on conflict reporting (“No one wants to read about sanitation,” she told me, “but everyone wants to read about babies”). Hazem Al-Amin and Maher Abi Samra supplied arak and occasional Arabic-to-French translation. Rebecca BouChebel brought the spirit of Beirut to war-torn Baghdad; Manal Omar and Hassan Fattah made it possible to laugh when there was every reason to cry. And the Institute for War & Peace Reporting created an island of civility, hospitality, and journalistic ethics in Baghdad, thanks to the remarkable people we met there, including Michael Howard, Salaam Jihad, Steve Negus, Hiwa Osman, Usama Redha, Maggy Zanger, and Hiwa’s immortal Thanksgiving turkey tandoori.
Amir Nayef Toma, the Virgil of Baghdad, showed me the beauty in the ordinary and extraordinary life of his city. He is a modern-day al-Jahiz and a true citizen of the world. Reem Kubba and her husband, Sadiq, regaled us with poetry in their beautiful home; Oday and Usama Rasheed, Ziad Turky, Basim al-Hajar, Basim Hamed, Faris Harram, and Nassire Ghadire talked about B.B. King, the songs of al-Qubanshi, The Exorcist, Three Kings, the Iraqi poet al-Jawahiri, and The Doors.
Alan King’s deep compassion for the people of Iraq, and his dedication to learning all he could about their history and religion, was an example to me. I thank him also for introducing us to Sheikh Hussein Ali al-Shaalan, from whom we learned so much, and Adnan al-Janabi, who inspired me to seek out books by Hanna Batatu, Ali al-Wardi, and Ibn Khaldun.
Special thanks to Dr. Salama al-Khafaji, Sheikh Fatih Kashif al-Ghitta, and Dr. Amal Kashif al-Ghitta. I hope it is clear from this book how much their friendship means to me. Beitkum aamra, sufrah aamra.
All of the superb editors I worked with at The Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic deserve my gratitude. But I owe a special debt to those crucial first editors—Josh Benson, Jeremy Kahn, and Jim Norton—who read and responded to pitches from an unknown freelancer in Iraq. Without them, I would never have had the good fortune of working with Franklin Foer, Richard Just, Joshua Kurlantzick, Adam Kushner, Kate Marsh, Amelia Newcomb, Clay Risen, and David Clark Scott. Adam Shatz and Roane Carey at The Nation pushed me to produce the kind of writing I didn’t think I could do. James Oseland, Georgia Freedman, and Dana Bowen at Saveur made food writing seem smart, down-to-earth, and ruthlessly cosmopolitan.
As a journalist, I had the privilege of talking to some of the most brilliant scholars, activists, and political analysts in the world. I owe an intellectual debt to Charles Adwan, Khalil Gebara, Timur Goksel, Nadim Houry, Samir Kassir, Isam al-Khafaji, Chibli Mallat, Jamil Mroue, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Paul Salem, Nadim Shehadi, Lokman Slim, Fawwaz Traboulsi, and Mai Yamani, who all shared their deep understanding of Middle Eastern history, politics, religions, culture, and civil society. Ahmad ElHusseini and Fouad Ajami dazzled me with their knowledge of Shiite history, politics, and theology over the course of a seven-hour lunch, one of Ahmad’s always unforgettable meals. Entifadh Qanbar revealed the secret sectarian life of Iraqi food. Rami Khouri and the Issam Fares Institute unlocked the doors to the American University of Beirut’s library by making me an affiliate scholar.
Lizzie Collingham, Martin Jones, Nawal Nasrallah, and Dani Noble shared food scholarship and insights into the culinary history of the Middle East. Faleh Jabar and Sami Zubaida allowed me to bask in their generous, wide-ranging intellects and their memories of old Baghdad. Shadi Hamadeh of the Food Heritage Foundation introduced me to Aunty Salwa, the SNOB theory, and Wardeh’s orange-blossom lemonade. Rami Zurayk talked to me about food and farming and power, words that should always be put together.
Barbara Abdeni Massaad wrote the book (literally) on manoushi, as well as on mouneh. Her intrepid reporting informs this book, which her passion and endless curiosity inspired me to finish. Malek Batal and Beth Hunter also made an incalculable contribution to this book. Malek taught me culinary stories, proverbs, history, and how to scrub out my cast-iron skillet with coffee grounds. Beth shared her economic research and her cynical sense of humor. As if that wasn’t enough, they introduced me to Wassim Kays and Maha Nasrallah, who fed us pumpkin kibbeh and watermelon one perfect afternoon in Batloun.
To everyone who shared recipes and cooking secrets, much gratitude. Nelly Chemaly, Muna al-Dorr (better known as Umm Ali), Ali Fahs, Kamal Mouzawak, and everybody at Souk El Tayeb dispensed recipes and other forms of wisdom. Adessa Tawk showed up at my house with apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, olive oil, mouneh, and family recipes. Georges Naassan, his mother, and Katia (“Monique”) Medawar recited recipes over red wine at Bardo and Walimat; and Samar Awada taught me the secret to real tabbouleh. Bassam Badran (aka “The Foul King”) and Rawda Mroueh of Matbakh al-Beiti gave recipes from their restaurants. Siad Darwish, Ali Shamkhi, and all the other Iraqis I cooked with in Beirut (I can’t name them, but they know who they are) taught me the joy of Iraqi cooking. Eliane BouChebel, Wardeh Loghmaji, Leena Saidi, Malek Batal (again!) and Umm Nabil divulged mlukhieh secrets. And special thanks to Aunt Khadija, Aunt Nahla, and, as always, Umm Hassane.
“It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation,” Salman Rushdie once wrote; “I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.” Rayane Alamuddin, Bassam Moussa, Usama Redha, Leena Saidi, and one or two I cannot name opened up a world of connotations, double meanings, verbs and proverbs, poetry, and puns. I think they know how fortunate I was to have them as translators and friends. Hayat Shibl taught me how to say “thank you” four different ways; and Samar Awada, sometime tutor and always friend, taught me not to be afraid of written Arabic.
Sirene Harb and Bassem Mroue told us stories, jokes, and history over fattoush at Abu Hassan and Baromètre. Paula Khoury fed me vodka, cigarettes, and books. Rhonda Roumani showed me
around Damascus; Tania Mehanna always made us happy to come back to Lebanon; and Rym Ghazal, among other things, found a home for our beloved Shaitan. Jiro Ose and Julia Zajkowski got me the quietest apartment in Beirut; Ralph Schray and Riad Hanbali proved that landlords can also be gentlemen; and Rabih Dabbous rescued me from the Bukhala of Ras Beirut.
Bilal El Amine, Maha Issa, and Abdulrahman Zahzah of T-Marbouta, who turned their café into a refugee center, reminded me that the root of the word restaurant is restore. Maren Milligan shanghaied me to Baromètre and was my research guru. Romola Sanyal made the best butter chicken I’ve ever had. Munir Abdallah beat me at Scrabble, made magic with cardamom, and created Tango Night, where I met Adessa Tawk and Georges Naassan, whose friendship runs through every page of this book.
While finishing this book, I stayed at the very best writers’ colonies: my friends’ apartments. In New York, visiting Pamela Roberts was like getting locked in the library overnight (my secret goal in life). Victor Araman, the most glamorous college professor I know, played musical apartments with us. And we treasured our peaceful weeks in Les Payne’s gracious brownstone, and above Barbara and Gary Primosch’s backyard garden.
In Beirut, I got to watch Imma Vitelli read everything she could before heading off to a new assignment and leaving her apartment to me. Nahlah Ayed, a fearless reporter and a true friend, proved that you can be the hardest-working woman in television and still make a mean maqlubeh. And if I have a tribe, Nizar Ghanem and Sean Carothers Lee are part of it. I slept on their couch, raided their refrigerator and their bookshelves, and took advantage of their knowledge of everything worth knowing.
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