The Language of Baklava Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  Foreword

  ONE - Raising an Arab Father in America

  TWO - Hot Lunch

  THREE - Native Foods

  FOUR - A House and a Yard

  FIVE - Madama Butterfly

  SIX - Mixed Grill in the Snow

  SEVEN - Magloubeh and the Great Diplomat

  EIGHT - Country Life

  NINE - Runaway

  TEN - Stories, Stories

  ELEVEN - Immigrants’ Kids

  TWELVE - Restaurant of Our Dreams

  THIRTEEN - The Language of Baklava

  FOURTEEN - Bad American Girl

  FIFTEEN - Food and Art

  SIXTEEN - Candy and Lebeneh

  SEVENTEEN - A New World

  EIGHTEEN - The Best Cook in the Family

  NINETEEN - House of Crying

  TWENTY - Once upon a Time

  TWENTY-ONE - Just a Taste

  TWENTY-TWO - Beyond the Land of Duty-Free

  TWENTY-THREE - HTML

  TWENTY-FOUR - The First Meal

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  ALSO BY DIANA ABU-JABER

  Copyright Page

  PRAISE FOR DIANA ABU-JABER’S The Language of Baklava

  “Hauntingly beautiful. . . . Vivid characters abound. . . . [A] beguiling and wistful Arab-American memoir [that] offers a poignant glimpse of the immigrant’s dueling nostalgias. . . . Abu-Jaber holds us with the trademark sensuousness of her language [and takes] us on a journey not only of the senses, but of the heart.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “Charming. . . . Affecting. . . . Fascinating.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “A real treat. Serving up yummy recipes . . . as side dishes to vivid stories of Jordanian life. . . . Full of amusing memories and savory descriptions of smells and tastes.” —Condé Nast Traveler

  “I recommend The Language of Baklava to anyone who eats. Whether Diana Abu-Jaber is Jordi-American or Ameri-Jordanian, she is the Ambassador of Big Heartedness. . . . The prose will knock you flatter than pita bread.”

  —Patricia Volk, author of Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family

  “A marvelous tale of immigrants, food and family.”

  —New York Post

  “Diana Abu-Jaber revels in the stories her father told her while she was growing up, which centered on cooking and eating but ‘turned out to be about something much larger: grace, difference, faith, love’—the same qualities that inform this passionate memoir.”

  —Elle

  “Memorable. . . . Hysterically funny. . . . Quite simply a delight. Like an artist who paints in vivid colors, the author has a gift for descriptive language, dialogue and characterization. . . . Sometimes her language approaches a kind of divine poetry that one rolls on one’s tongue and reads again and again.” —San Diego News

  “Riveting.” —Ms. Magazine

  “Abu-Jaber’s memoir-with-recipes reads like the best of novels. Certainly ‘Bud’—her father—ranks as one of the most charming, funny, maddening and heartbreaking characters in contemporary literature. . . . So funny and intelligent and sensuous, it begs the distinction between reading and devouring.”

  —Michelle Huneven, author of Jamesland

  “Appealing. . . . A sensory fantasia. . . . [Abu-Jaber] has succeeded in transforming what could be a clichéd immigrant-family saga into a poignant and often funny coming-of-age story—and enticing me into the kitchen.” —Noelle Howey, Saveur

  “An intensely intimate story . . . [with] many laugh-out-loud moments. . . . The gustatorial prism through which Abu-Jaber offers her life story makes even the most ordinary events into visceral experiences.” — Syracuse New Times

  “[If you] liked Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone you’ll love [The Language of Baklava]. . . . Wise and funny.” —Northwest Palate

  “A joy to behold. In vibrant and moving and piercing recollections, each one rendered with love and care, we get a glimpse into what it truly means to be a family, and what it means as well to be an American. Not to mention the recipes are to die for. . . . This is a book I won’t forget. Period.” —Bret Lott, author of Jewel

  DIANA ABU-JABER

  The Language of Baklava

  Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor. Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami. Her website is www.dianaabujaber.com.

  ALSO BY DIANA ABU-JABER

  Arabian Jazz

  Crescent

  FOR MY PARENTS,

  PAT AND GUS ABU-JABER

  Foreword

  My childhood was made up of stories—the memories and recollections of my father’s history and the storybook myths and legends that my mother brought me to read.

  The stories were often in some way about food, and the food always turned out to be about something much larger: grace, difference, faith, love. This book is a compilation of some of those family stories as it traces the ways we grew into ourselves. I believe the immigrant’s story is compelling to us because it is so consciously undertaken. The immigrant compresses time and space—starting out in one country and then very deliberately starting again, a little later, in another. It’s a sort of fantasy—to have the chance to re-create yourself. But it’s also a nightmare, because so much is lost.

  To me, the truth of stories lies not in their factual precision, but in their emotional core. Most of the events in this book are honed and altered in some fashion, to give them the curve of stories. Lives don’t usually correspond to narrative arcs, but all of these stories spring out of real people, memories, and joyously gathered and prepared meals.

  I offer my deepest gratitude to the friends and family I write about in these pages and give thanks to everyone who knows that each of us has a right to tell our stories, to be truthful to our own memories, no matter how flawed, private, embellished, idiosyncratic, or improved they may be. I also offer apologies to anyone whose experiences I may have shared and recorded here without asking permission. I offer up these memories in hopes that others will feel invited or inspired to conjure up and share their own. Memories give our lives their fullest shape, and eating together helps us to remember.

  ONE

  Raising an Arab Father in America

  It’s a murky, primordial sort of memory: a cavelike place, bright flickering lights, watery, dim echoes, sudden splashes of sounds, and—hulking and prehistoric—TV cameras zooming in on wheeled platforms. A grown man in a vampire costume clutching a microphone to his chest is making his way through rows of sugar-frenzied, laugh-crazed kids. He attempts to make small talk with the children through a set of plastic fangs. “Hello there, Bobby Smith!” He chortles and tousles a head. “How are you, Debbie Anderson!” I’m sitting in a television studio in a row full of cousins and sisters, not entirely sure how I got here—this was my aunt Peggy’s idea. She’d watched The Baron DeMone Show for years and finally decided to send away for studio tickets.

  He stalks closer and closer: I can see tiny seeds of sweat sparkling along his widow’s peak. He squints at our oversize name tags: “Farouq, Ibtissam, Jaipur, Matussem . . .” I see his mouth working as he walks up our row of beaming, black-eyed kids. Eventually he gets to me. “Diana!” he cries with evident relief, then crashes into my last name. But apparently once this man start
s going, he must see the thing through. He squints, trying to sound it out: “Ub-abb-yuh-yoo-jojee-buh-ha-ree-rah . . .” This guy’s a scream! I can’t stop laughing. What an idiot! I’ve got green eyes and pale skin, so evidently he feels I must speak English, unlike the rest of the row. He squats beside me, holds the big mike in my face, and says, “Now, Diana, tell me, what kind of a last name is that?”

  This guy slays me! I can barely stop laughing enough to blast, “ English, you silly!” into his microphone.

  He jumps, my magnified voice a yowl through the studio, then starts laughing, too, and now we’re both laughing, but at two different jokes—which must happen quite a bit on children’s programming. He nods approvingly; they love me and my exotic entourage—later we’ll be flooded with candy, passes, and invitations to return to the show. But at the moment, as the Baron stands to leave, I realize I’m not quite done with him yet. I grab him by the back of his black rayon cape and announce on national television, “I’m hungry!”

  I’m six and I’m in charge; the sisters are just getting around to being born. Bud, my father, carries me slung over one shoulder when he cooks; he calls me his sack of potatoes. Mom protests, pointing out safety issues, but Bud says it’s good for me, that it’ll help me acclimate to onion fumes. I love the way his shoulder jumps and his whole back shakes as he tosses a panful of chopped tomatoes over the flames while the teeth rattle in my head.

  My father is a sweet, clueless immigrant—practically still a boy. He keeps getting fooled. He saw TV for the first time when his boat stopped in Italy en route to Ellis Island. It was flickering in a hotel lobby. On the screen he saw a lady in a pretty blue dress singing to a cat dressed in a tuxedo. “Look at that,” he marveled to his brother. “They’ve got a whole theater inside that box!” After he’d been in America a couple of months, a door-to-door salesman convinced him to spend three weeks of pay on a TV that didn’t have any working parts. He told Bud it needed some time to “warm up.” Bud hopefully switched it on and off for weeks before an American friend visited and explained that this TV would never be warm.

  Bud learns English not from books, but from soaking in the language of work, of the shops and restaurants after he arrives in this country. I don’t know where he learns how to hail strangers, but whenever my father needs directions—which is frequently—he flags down men and women alike with the same greeting: “Hey, bud!” I grow up thinking of all Americans as Bud—and even though my father’s name is Ghassan Saleh Abu-Jaber, he becomes the original Bud.

  I learn early: We are Arab at home and American in the streets. The streets are where Bud speaks English in a loud voice, swaggers, wears hard-soled shoes. Sometimes he slips and haggles with the clerk at Sears over the price of ties. He’ll ask me in Arabic if I think the man is a big moron or just a little idiot. After considering my assessment, he’ll formulate the appropriate bid—perhaps grudgingly offer to pay the price on the tag—minus two dollars! Plus an extra tie! Usually the clerk looks befuddled or calls for a manager, but every now and then, Bud’ll find one who turns sharp-eyed and pleased, who throws out an unauthorized counteroffer—extra tie, but full price! Their voices flash in the flat mall light.

  On Saturdays Bud is in the kitchen. The old houses along our elm-lined streets seem to sigh, screen doors ease open, the air sweetens, and the sky leans back on one elbow. First my father will make breakfast. After that, any one of a number of miraculous things can happen:

  Go to Diplomat-Uncle Jack’s house and have stuffed grape leaves.

  Go to Professor-Uncle Hal’s house and have kibbeh.

  Go to Businessman-Uncle Danny’s house and have stuffed squash.

  Go to Crazy-Uncle Frankie’s house and have roasted leg of lamb.

  Go to Fair Haven Beach with everyone and have shish kabob.

  Those aren’t their real names: Uncle Hal is really Uncle Hilal, Jack is actually named Jaffer, Danny is Hamdan, and Frankie is short for Qadir. They are the uncles who, along with my father, came to America. Somehow, after they bought their new winter coats at Robert Hall in downtown Syracuse and changed the part in their hair, they all seemed to have new American names as well. Almost everyone I know has two names—one from Before and one from After. Even I have two names—for some reason, Bud calls me Ya Ba, which means “Little Daddy,” but this name seems to belong between the two of us.

  I love to be in the kitchen and watch my strong father at work in his undershirt, baggy shorts, and sandals. He’s singing along with the radio and not getting a single word right. But what he lacks in accuracy he makes up for in gusto and verve. He slides a whole side of lamb out of the refrigerator, hoists it up for me and my friend Merilee to admire, and says, “Here he is! Here’s Marvin.” Bud likes to name all big cuts of meat—usually Tom, Dick, Harry, or Marvin. I stand close beside him, four feet high in flip-flops, bony shoulders poking through the crossed straps of my sundress, plastic heart-shaped sunglasses propped on my head, and watch as he centers the meat on his chopping block and whomps his cleaver down. My friend Merilee, with her freckles and straw yellow pigtails, shrieks and clatters out the back door. I happily tote the bloody kabobs from the block to the marinade of garlic, rosemary, vinegar, and olive oil. Bud tells me that someday I will make a fantastic butcher.

  Next, Bud pushes the big, glistening chunks of beef and onion and tomato onto skewers. The skewers are iron, with round hoops at one end and cruel, three-sided points on the other, so heavy that once they’re threaded with meat, I can carry only one at a time to the refrigerator.

  Shish kabob means that there will be coolers and ice chests, blankets and salads, pita bread, iced tea, salty braided cheese, hummus, maybe a visit to Rudy’s stand, where they dip the scoops of ice cream into a kind of chocolate that hardens into a shell. Maybe our mother will bring frozen pound cake, because who wants to bake anything in this heat?

  There will also be sisters and cousins and aunties and uncles and even more cousins, because there’s no telling who’s just “comeover,” meaning come over from the old country. You never know when suddenly a second cousin you haven’t seen in years will be standing in the living room, asking for a little cup of coffee. They’ll be hungry because everyone who “comesover” is hungry: for home, for family, for the old smells and touches and tastes. If we’re not at the park, sometimes these cousins and noncousins and friends and strangers will drop by the house. Coincidentally, they always come at dinnertime. Always at the moment we turn on the stove.

  Bud says that today we children need to be extra pleasant, polite, and cute. Today Cousin Sami (Samir) will be with us. He is newly arrived, twenty years old, sensitive, and willowy as a deer. He walks tentatively in this new country, looking around himself as if about to break into flight; his eyes glisten, eternally on the verge of tears. I overhear Bud telling Mom that he doesn’t know if Sami will “make it.” Mom blows a filament of hair out of her face; she’s twenty-six years old and tall, but she doesn’t have much more meat on her than I do. Her reading glasses are smart and serious. I can tell that she’s thinking, What is it with these sensitive, crazy men?

  We pack up the family and drive the road to the north, over tiny wooden bridges, past taverns with names like Three Rivers Inn and gurgling minute creeks, up to Fair Haven Beach on Lake Ontario, thirty miles from Syracuse. After we arrive and roll along behind people walking to their car in order to secure the best parking spot, it will take an even longer time to unpack the trunk and find the exact picnic tables and get out the bags and coolers and cousins and sisters. We cover several tables with red-checked tablecloths, paper plates, plastic containers full of everything. Bud piles briquettes into three different grills, and Uncle Hal adds more and more lighter fluid— usually while it’s burning—so the flame roars right up at him in a fabulous arc. I draw in the rich chemical aroma: Barbecues are the smell of lighter fluid, dark and delicious as the aroma of gasoline.

  Another car pulls up and there is Cousin Sami unfolding from Uncle
Danny’s Volkswagen. Sami holds out his hands as if testing the gravity on this new planet. He looks as if he might topple over at any moment. I adore him. Big, hearty Businessman-Uncle Danny, who’s looking after him because his full-time father, Rich-Uncle Jimmy, lives in Jordan, laughs and calls him “a poet.” I know immediately that’s what I want to be, too, and I say this to my father as he’s carrying a platter full of shish kabob. He looks unhappy at this news, but then Uncle Hal shouts, “Oh yes, there’s a lot of money in that,” and the adults laugh for inexplicable reasons and then forget about me.

  The cousins—except for Sami—and sisters and I run in the frothy surf along Fair Haven’s pebble beach. The water is electrically cold, threaded with mysteriously warm currents. We go in up to our necks and the waves lift us off our feet. We can do just this, standing in ice water and bobbing, for hours. A game for lunatics. We don’t ever want to come in, even when our mother and one of the aunties wade out and says, “Your lips are purple, time to come in.” First we make Mom demonstrate her ability to float in the water so that her shoulders submerge and her pink toes bob up and she looks as if she’s sitting in a recliner. This, I assume, is a talent innate to all Americans. We all try, and our chicken-bone bodies just sink. Dad and his too many brothers don’t even own bathing suits.

  There’s a commotion on shore. My father and the uncles are shouting and waving their arms: Shish kabob is ready! Uncle Hal is ferrying the sizzling skewers—we call them sheeshes—to a big platter on the table. Bud is turning more of them on the fire.

  The shish kabob comes like an emergency. It sizzles at the table, and Uncle Hal pushes the chunks of meat off the skewers with a piece of pita bread. They all go to one central plate. He says, “This piece is for you and this one for you.” It’s best to wait for the second sheesh because for some reason the meat on the first always looks scrawny and shriveled and smells of uncooked lighter fluid. But there’s no time to wait! You have to eat the lamb when it’s hot enough to burn your fingers and scald your tongue.