A Moveable Feast

by Lonely Planet

  ‘You must add a lot of sugar and let it all settle to the bottom before you pour,’ said the man sitting at the other table. He took the sugar bowl from his table and brought it, along with his own cup of coffee, to mine, and helped himself to a seat. ‘You must be patient,’ he told me. ‘Life is slow in the desert.’ He dropped seemingly countless cubes of sugar into the finjan, then took hold of the handle and swirled it slowly in his hand, mixing the sugar, coffee and spices gently together. ‘Now we let it sit for a few minutes.’

  ‘We?’

  He laughed. ‘My name is Nasr.’

  He was extremely good looking in that Omar Sharif way. His eyes were so dark that even the whites were a light shade of brown. His hair was wavy, grey at the edges, and even though it was still morning I could see he’d soon be ready for another shave.

  I offered my hand, then pulled it away in case he wasn’t allowed to touch a woman in public. He was a bit startled and must have thought I was an idiot.

  ‘You are American?’ he asked, gallantly pretending not to have noticed my quick hand trick.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. American by way of Tel Aviv, where I had been living for the last year and a half, but that was not a detail worth mentioning right now. I had arrived yesterday evening after a long day’s bus ride along the Mediterranean coast, past the Israeli towns of Ashdod and Ashkelon, past the very dreary and creepy Gaza Strip, through the Suez Canal, then west into Cairo.

  ‘Please,’ Nasr said, gesturing widely to the plates of food on the table, ‘eat. Don’t let me bother you.’

  ‘This isn’t mine; I didn’t order it. And, besides, it’s too hot out to eat.’

  I looked over at Nasr. He wasn’t even sweating.

  ‘I think you have never eaten an Egyptian breakfast before,’ he said. ‘Am I right?’ He didn’t need an answer. ‘I will help you. I will tell you what everything is, then you taste it and tell me if you like it, all right?’ He took a deep whiff from the finjan, then poured us both another cup.

  I wondered how many women this man had charmed, literally, out of their pants.

  This was not the first time I had been given a tour of a meal; I had been hit on by Nasr’s Israeli (and French and Italian) counterparts, men just as eager to strut around and puff out their tail feathers, men just as macho and just as handsome. But so what? If it made them happy, then who was I to say no? Who was I to deny this man the pleasure of explaining it all to me and why on earth would I deny myself the pleasure of watching him do so?

  I liked being in this part of the world; it was refreshing to be in a place where the culture’s ideal shape for a woman was the one I had. In the Middle East, you don’t have to look like Barbie to find clothes that fit or men that look. The men here aren’t looking for Barbie. Unless, of course, she puts out.

  ‘I think you recognise this, yes?’ He was pointing to a slightly cracked clay bowl.

  I decided to sit back and let Nasr take my hand and be my guide, to journey through this breakfast and see it through his eyes.

  The bowl Nasr was pointing to held a chopped salad loaded with fresh tomatoes, onions and cucumbers, and sprinkled with oregano, thyme, sesame seeds and salt. The whole thing was dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

  ‘This is za’atar,’ he explained, indicating the mixture of dried herbs on the top. ‘My father is Egyptian, my mother is from Lebanon. In Lebanon, the people believe that za’atar makes the mind alert and the body strong. For this reason, the children eat za’atar for breakfast before an important exam. I was not a very good student so my mother thought it was a good idea for me to eat it every morning, even when there was no exam.’

  ‘Did it work?’ I asked.

  He grinned and patted his chest. ‘As you can see.’ His teeth were straight and even and the whiteness of them was almost, well, blinding in that dark face of his. He wore the smile well.

  He heaped a large serving of salad onto my plate and leaned back in his chair to watch me eat.

  The salad was stunning, a mixture of tangy, oily, salty and herby. It tasted like summer, the vegetables ripened on the vine by the desert sun.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ I said and held out my plate. ‘More, please.’

  But he ignored my plea. ‘You have to leave room for the other food.’

  There was a tin bowl with designs hammered into it filled with large brown eggs. As I sat there with Nasr, it occurred to me that in all of my ‘worldly experience’, I had never actually eaten a brown egg. I had seen them, of course, here and there, but I had never tasted one. I was pleased that these were brown; they would only add to the unfolding mystery of the morning.

  Nasr picked one up and rolled it in his hand.

  ‘How do you know if this egg is raw or cooked?’ he asked. He tossed it higher and higher in the air, catching it easily each time. He leaned towards me. ‘Here, I will show you a trick. Watch. All you have to do is spin the egg. If it spins tight and fast, then it is cooked. If it spins like a drunken camel, then it is raw.’ He offered me the egg. ‘Here, you try.’

  I smiled. ‘Or we can do it the old-fashioned way,’ I said. I took the egg and tapped it not-so-gently on the table. ‘We’re in luck; it’s cooked.’ I started to pick the pieces of shell off the egg and was startled to find that the egg itself was not brown. I was confused and disappointed; I was expecting something more colourful, more interesting, something less … white.

  ‘How come the egg’s not brown?’ I asked him, possibly a bit too accusingly.

  He picked up another egg and held it in front of my face. ‘But it is brown.’

  ‘No, I mean on the inside. I thought it would be brown on the inside.’

  ‘All eggs are white on the inside. At least, that is how it is in Egypt. I don’t know what colour your eggs are in America.’

  I felt like I was about to start rambling, but I went on anyway. ‘Then why are they brown on the outside?’

  ‘Why are they brown? Because they come from brown chickens. If you want white eggs, you have to have white chickens. But only on the outside are they different, on the inside they are always the same.’

  Was that true? About the eggs and the chickens? How come I didn’t know this? And did that mean it was true about brown cows giving chocolate milk? I had grown up in a small town and a lot of my friends and classmates had lived on farms, but I had never noticed whether there were any brown chickens around. The first boy I ever kissed, Robert P., lived on a big farm in the field behind my house, but kissing him was the closest I ever came to becoming a farmer’s wife.

  If what Nasr had said about chickens was true, I thought, then there must have been only white ones where I lived. Which, in retrospect, pretty much summed up the town as a whole. My family had added the only bit of ethnic flavour to the place, and my house had been a popular gathering spot – the food was so much better. Thanks to us, there were people in that hick town who had actually tasted matzo balls and gefilte fish. (But they had returned the favour: it was at their houses that I ate ham and cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise on that soft kind of white bread that you could roll into little balls.)

  Nasr held an egg in his hand and looked directly into my eyes. ‘They are like people, eh?’

  ‘You mean different on the outside but alike on the inside?’ It was so clichéd that it had to be true.

  He continued looking at me, then abruptly looked away, but not before I noticed that even with skin as dark as Nasr’s, a blush will show through.

  ‘We’re not done with our breakfast tour,’ he said, recovering from his serious moment. I smiled and sat back and wondered what other treasures this man would reveal.

  ‘Here. This. Do you know what this is?’ He was pointing to a plate of flat doughy bread.

  ‘Pita,’ I answered.

  Ah, pita. Delicious, hot pita, fresh from the oven. Small crumbs of guilt began to gather in my stomach. It was Passover, the commemoration of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and part of our t
radition is that we do not eat bread during this holiday. I had made a reverse exodus: I had left Israel and come to Egypt, but only for a week. I figured it would not be a very gracious-guest-like-thing to mention to him that, at this exact moment, all over the world, my people were celebrating their freedom from slavery at the hands of his people. And I certainly wasn’t about to start talking about the ten plagues that were set upon the Egyptians, or how the Red Sea parted, but only for the Jews. It would just be rude.

  What the hell. I reached for the pita, but Nasr pulled it back and shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He pulled a plateful of thick creamy beige paste towards him. It was topped with a swirl of a lighter paste and that was topped with another swirl of thick amber-coloured olive oil. Scattered over it all were pine nuts. I knew what it was, but I wanted to hear him tell me. He did not disappoint.

  ‘This is hummus,’ he informed me. ‘It’s made of chickpeas and sesame – very healthy.’

  Nasr ripped off a piece of pita and used it to stir the pastes and oil and pine nuts together, then scooped up a large dollop and handed it to me.

  I held it over the plate so it wouldn’t drip onto my clothes.

  He served himself a healthy dose, then went on. ‘On top is tahini, sesame paste, and on top of that is olive oil, from right here.’ He swept the air with his arm. ‘From Cairo.’

  Olive oil – the magic elixir. I could just imagine Nasr telling me about it: Olive oil goes back to the beginning of this land and its people. It is believed to grant youth and strength. Olive branches are the symbol of peace and the reward for battle. Resistant to strong outside forces, bending with the never-ending winds, the trees symbolise this region. Nothing can destroy them.

  Or something like that.

  But instead, he was telling me about the hummus. ‘It is the most important food in the Middle East,’ he said, ‘and one of the oldest, but not everyone knows how to make it just right.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘Of course.’ There was the grin – I could get used to that grin. He gestured to me to eat. I took a bite. I felt my eyes widen and I knew I must have looked like some American tourist who was tasting something for the first time that hadn’t come from McDonald’s, but I didn’t care.

  I had never thought of bread as a food that can melt in your mouth, but that’s exactly what this pita did. It was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted. The hummus was smooth and rich. I swallowed. Then I was punched by the after-kick. I gasped and my eyes began to water. I looked around frantically for the glass of water that had never arrived. I grabbed the finjan and poured myself a cup of what was left, which was pretty much nothing but sludge. I gulped it down anyway.

  And in that tiny second, not only did my sinuses get clear, everything got clear and the answer to the whole problem came to me: the whole problem of the Jews and the Arabs and why it is so hard for us to understand each other. It’s because we are like hummus – on the outside we are the same and on the inside we are the same (same dad, after all). But somewhere in between the outside and the inside, there is a thin layer where our spices got all mixed up into slightly different, distinct combinations – nothing really noticeable until you took a bite.

  In this case, garlic, cumin and not a small dash of cayenne.

  ‘So, you like it?’ he laughed.

  ‘I think I’m in love,’ I answered as soon as I had recovered. I reached over and ripped off another bite of pita and scooped it through the hummus, gathering pine nuts as I went. ‘Do you think this is fattening?’ I asked through a mouthful, then, ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Later I will take you to my home and you will taste my mother’s hummus. It is the best in Cairo. Maybe in all of Egypt.’

  Take me home to Mother? Yeah, right.

  ‘My wife has tried to learn, but it is never as good.’

  Ah, there’s a wife. Naturally.

  ‘You’re married?’ I asked, trying to sound more interested than disappointed.

  ‘Of course,’ he answered.

  Of course.

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Certainly.

  ‘I have five daughters.’

  Five daughters. Yikes.

  He said it with such pride that I thought the buttons on his shirt would burst. Then he put his hands in the air and added, ‘I’m just like that man in the story.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘The story about the man with five daughters. He is a Jew in Russia. He is always talking to God about his problems.’

  Fiddler on the Roof?! I was so startled, I inhaled my pita and started to cough. Alarmed, Nasr stood up and signalled frantically to the men inside the café. Good. Maybe they’d bring water. They all came running out on each other’s heels to see what kind of emergency was taking place. They had brought their cigarettes but had otherwise come empty-handed. Like magic, people in neighbouring shops, shopkeepers and customers and passers-by, began to appear. Everyone was speaking at once. Arguments broke out. There was a lot of shouting and arm flinging. Fingers were being wagged. One man’s suggestion was shouted down by another, whose own suggestion was then dismissed by somebody else. The crowd grew as more and more concerned citizens joined in the excitement. They stood face to face and shook their heads at each other, and when one pointed emphatically down the street, another pointed just as emphatically up the street. When a man pointed to the right, a woman pointed to the left. Whatever they were arguing about, they seemed to be having a good time.

  I suppose I should have been flattered to have been the centre of so much attention and I’m sure I would have been if anyone had bothered to notice me. For such a slow-moving country, they sure had forgotten about me quickly enough.

  Their voices got louder and began to drown out the ear-numbing noise of nearby Ramses Street. They became a surprisingly pleasant alternative to the incessant blaring of horns and screeching of gears as the buses and taxis that sped down that wide, wild boulevard swerved and changed lanes and just barely avoided pedestrians who took their lives into their hands trying to cross to the other side.

  There is no such thing as minding your own business in these passionate parts of the world. There are no words for ‘elevator silence’ in the Semitic languages. If you ask three people for advice, you will get four different opinions. Board a bus, ask the driver for directions, and by the time you reach your destination, every single passenger on the bus, from young schoolchildren to old grandmothers, will have piped up and given you different, ‘better’ directions to get you where you want to go. The warmth of the people is tangible; I have sat next to total strangers on a Friday-morning bus and found myself seated at their tables that same Friday evening sharing their home-cooked Sabbath dinners (and every single time, imagine that, there has been the host’s unmarried son or grandson or cousin or brother or uncle also in attendance. Such a coincidence …).

  If you are a shrinking violet, you will be trampled on. So, speak up, even if you have no idea what’s going on.

  Before too long the excitement started to wear off. The crowd began to wander back, talking and laughing, to their interrupted affairs. Nasr extracted his face from the face of an old man. The old man took hold of Nasr’s hand and pulled him close. Then he wrapped his other arm around Nasr and hugged him tightly.

  I had finished coughing and was fully recovered by the time Nasr returned to ‘our’ table. I asked him if he would mind bringing me a bottle of water. He went inside the café and returned a moment later with a full finjan instead. He was followed by the bossy old man who was carrying a large ceramic bowl overflowing with fruit and a small dish of oily green and black olives. He graciously put them on our table and began clearing some of the other dishes. I was no longer surprised by food appearing, unbidden, at my table, but I was surprised by the feeling of my never wanting this meal to end.

  ‘Shuchran,’ I told him. Thank you.

  The old man turned and smiled and pu
t his hands together like he was praying and bowed slightly. ‘Afwan.’

  ‘You speak Arabic?’ Nasr sounded impressed.

  ‘No. Just the basics. Please, thank you, excuse me.’

  Nasr looked at me with something like newfound respect, like perhaps I was not just a ‘typical’ American after all. Then he turned his attention to our dessert. The bowl was a dark cobalt blue, with a rough, unfinished surface. Figs, dates and grapes spilled over its rim. ‘These fruits,’ Nasr said, ‘are among the sacred species of the desert. My people have eaten these same fruits since ancient times.’ He put an olive into his mouth and spat the pit out onto his plate. The green olives were plump, the size of a thumbnail; the black ones were small and tightly wrinkled.

  I took a fig from the bowl. It was purple-skinned and splitting apart at the seams. I could see its red and seedy insides. There was a drop of milk at the stem; it had been freshly twisted from the branch, probably from a tree in the café proprietor’s own backyard. I brought it close to my face and inhaled. I filled my head with the smell of it. I tried to memorise the perfume of this fig. Nasr took it from my hand and when he split it easily in two, I shivered despite the heat. He handed me one half and put the other half into his mouth, eating the skin and the seeds, watching me. I bit into my half – the juice poured out and I laughed, suddenly shy, and wiped my chin. The seeds were tiny and they crunched softly as I chewed. Then he handed me a sticky brown date with an oblong pit that came out clean when I ate the fruit around it. The grapes were purple, so dark they looked almost black, and filled with seeds so big you could choke on them if you weren’t careful.

  I ate and ate.

  ‘So, tell me,’ he said in between an olive and a grape, ‘do you have any children?’

  I split open another fig and poked at the seeds with my fingers. ‘I’m not married.’