Category: Syria

Think Positive

First, the second episode of my podcast is up–check it at Cooking in Real Time. Don’t worry–the first episode was really short, so you can still claim you got in on the ground floor. It’s like having the second issue of McSweeney’s.

Then: Can I just ask all of you out there in blogland to concentrate very hard for a few minutes and imagine my passport arriving via Priority Mail first thing tomorrow morning?

Because, as I’ve mentioned, I’m leaving for Spain on Tuesday. And I do not have my passport in hand. I’m sweatin’.

I sent it off to the Syrian embassy in DC for a visa back in mid-February. I did this way ahead because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to get it after I got back from Spain.

Funny to think back now, and remember how I did briefly look into getting a second passport–which they dole out for cases just like this. “Eesh, so expensive,” I thought then, “and I’ve got plennnnty of time!”

Somehow, though, the initial sharpness and efficiency of the Syrians (I’m not even being sarcastic here, people–I’ve gotten my visa from them very promptly in the past) devolved into this nail-biting situation in which my passport allegedly went in the mail just on Wednesday. Ack! All because I admitted I was a writer on my application, so someone helpfully took the initiative to get me a journalist visa. (Let this be a lesson–I don’t like to lie, but normally I write it more sloppily, so people can misread it as ‘waiter.’)

The passport is in a stamped, self-addressed Priority Mail envelope. No tracking number, though, because I couldn’t figure out the logistics to do that in advance. So the uncertainty is now driving me insane. If it doesn’t show up tomorrow…do I panic and shell out mad $$$ for an appointment at the hellmouth they call the US Passport Agency on Hudson Street? (Don’t make me go back there! I saw someone go insane and start screaming and pounding the plexiglas window–and it was an employee!)

Or do I white-knuckle it and just trust it will absolutely arrive Tuesday morning? My flight leaves at 5.30pm from La Guardia.

So, um, a little imaging, please, on my behalf? Imagine my passport, sitting there in its envelope over at the post office on 21st Street, in a soft glow of white light, just waiting to go on the truck in a few short hours. Honest, I will be delighted to be awoken by the doorbell!

Summer Trip: The Food

About the time I was eating the most amazing mussels in the world, on the beach in Greece, I realized I should cut a teensy bit of slack to all those lazy food writers who overuse the phrase “a revelation” to describe whatever they’re eating. (I loathe this, for the record.)

I’m not saying the hand of God reached down and chucked me under the chin while I was eating, but I did have a moment of “a-ha” that was close to revelatory.

The next thought I had was: Maybe American food writers use “a revelation” so often because Americans have such awful food. In a cosmopolitan place like NYC, you can eat duck confit, medium-rare pork chops, assorted artisanal cheeses, and fresh veggies of all kinds, but very often you’re just eating a flawless simulacrum of the real thing…and probably paying a lot for it.

I use the prefix “art” to describe this, as in “an art pork chop.” Not at all to disparage the field of art or the process or art-making, but a food item that resembles food in every way but flavor may as well be an object placed on a plinth and lit with halogen bulbs. Then people can come peer at it and call it “cunning” in their critical reviews.

Because our food production system is so fucked up, and our palates so stunted by a relative lack of food tradition and our demand for cheap over tasty, we Americans eat art food all the time–and a lot of the time we don’t even know it.

It’s not till you eat a mussel that is briny and sexy like an oyster, but also sweet like a scallop, and sitting in a gorgeous translucent green shell that you realize exactly why people like mussels so much. It’s not till you eat a green fig off the tree that you realize what all the hype is about. And of course there’s always the “real tomato” issue.

So part of the problem I have with food writers having “revelations” all over the damn place is that they’re just showing exactly how little experience they have eating good food. If you’re having a revelation in print over some duck confit, it means you haven’t eaten good duck confit before. And shouldn’t that be just the barest qualification for getting paid to write about food?

Also, of course, food writers are always getting rapturous about their meals in France. Every food magazine every month has something about France–even Saveur, which is the most worldly of mags, and I admire them for it, still does the fallback “X region in France is amazing” story every couple of months.

I know France is great and all, but again, food writers are just revealing how un-stamped their passports are if all they’ve got to talk about is the charming village market and the authoritative French woman who prepares a revelatory lunch with her strong, assured hands.

Anyway, what I ate on my trip, which was soooo much more adventurous, and for which I was a million times better informed than even the most highly paid professionals:

1) Those motherf***ing mussels. We went back and had them a second time, and they weren’t as good–maybe they’d been overcooked, maybe they were not as fresh. It was good to know at least that Greeks in Eressos weren’t sitting around smugly eating mussels behind our backs every day.

2) Quick salt-cured sardines. Also in Greece, from a nice old lady in the village of Andissa. They were plump and succulent. A little obscene, like if you really did bite off your husband’s nice plump lip and ate it.

3) Pigeon in Cairo. I’ve already mentioned it, but that was truly, truly delectable. (And not a single bite of birdshot–there’s an urban legend in the city that all the pigeon comes from the shooting club, and friend-of-a-friend broke a tooth on birdshot once.) The pigeon gets stuffed with rice or freekeh (cracked green wheat), then it gets simmered for a while to cook the stuffing, and then it gets plopped down in a searing hot pan, to crisp up the skin. The broth from the simmering is served on the side in a mug, and it’s incredibly peppery and delicious. I would drink just the broth, but the resto has a policy that you also must order pigeon–but once you do, it’s all-you-can-drink broth.

4) Malta plums in Turkey. Not that these were the world’s most delicious fruit–just that I’d never had them before, and they were sweet and fascinating. They’re the color of apricots and have big, slippery seeds in the center, and they’re outrageously sticky. In the same day, I also got to sample some fresh chickpeas. Cool-looking, but enh.

5) Olive-oil-stewed sea beans, served cold, at Ciya in Istanbul. Every time, this restaurant has something delightful. They were still a little crispy-bouncy in texture, and the sort of salty you know comes from the inside rather than being added in the kitchen. (Incidentally, this is why Mediterranean fish are so delicious, claimed the fish grill man at our resto in Eressos.)

6) Ayran in Syria and Turkey. I’ve had it a lot before, but it’s always remarkable just how thirst-quenching salty, watered-down yogurt can be.

7) The world’s sweetest yogurt in Ayvalik, Turkey. We were eating a basic little lunch while waiting for the ferry, and I saw the guys at the next table had big plates of homemade yogurt. We got some for ourselves, and it was dairy-product heaven–light, not heavy like Greek strained stuff, and sweet-sour, and with a nice crusty layer of cream on top. Costa in Greece insisted it was because the Turks put sugar in everything–or at least used grape must to start the souring process. Which is interesting on its own. (On a separate dairy-product topic, I saw rennet for sale in a grocery store in Ayvalik–made by the major milk producer, and in a little bottle, right there next to the premade cheese. Great that there’s an assumption your average shopper would make cheese at home.)

8) Everything in Syria.

9) Apricots right off the tree in Greece, and even a few cherries. The local cherries (some we actually paid for, from the fruit stand) were exactly the sort of thing that make people say “a revelation.” They just kept tasting and tasting and tasting and tasting.

10) Best. Beans. Ever. in Istanbul. Fittingly, the name of the restaurant was ‘bean.’ At first, we ordered only one serving, and the waiter looked nervous. After I’d had a couple spoonfuls of Peter’s, and ordered my own, he looked relieved. Order and balance were restored. These beans were perfectly tender, just so they gave a bit when you bit into them, but held their shape. And they were swimming in this tomato-ish sauce that can only be described as pure umami. I have no idea what the magic ingredient was, but it did make me realize I hadn’t eaten pork in many, many weeks. Because that kind of tastiness I associate with pork bits, and here, they’d managed to get it by other means.

11) Assorted other things: kalkan (turbot) in Istanbul, baklava in Istanbul, borek in Istanbul, ice cream in Istanbul. Oh, and did I mention the man selling sardines, who had a beautiful silvery pile, but also a bucket of live ones, and periodically he’d grab a live one and throw it down on top of the silvery mound, where it would jump and thrash, as if to say, “These fish are soooo fresh…” Maybe a little sadistic, but a genius sales technique (right up there with the bra vendors I saw on the street in Cairo, tossing the biggest bras up in the air like pizza dough).

**For the record, Peter and I decided we’re against Turkey getting into the EU. Sure, some people might be a little less poor, or something. But it will inevitably make food worse, as produce-starved northerners demand Turkey’s farms yield bigger and more stuff. Currently, tomatoes are sweeter and cucumbers are crispier than anywhere but Syria, and I don’t want that to get fucked up by greenhouses. (Egypt, incidentally, has started using greenhouses–retarded, considering the one thing Egypt doesn’t lack is sun and dry weather. The tomatoes now suck.) Also, Turkey is already perfectly functional in other respects: you can drink the water, and you can even buy train tickets online. They don’t need the damn EU.

That is all. Must go eat breakfast/lunch. Probably no revelations to be had, alas.

On Head Scarves and Anti-Americanism

Just to answer the two most frequent questions I got before leaving for my trip:

1) Was I going/would I have to wear a head scarf?

No. None of the countries I’m visiting have any laws requiring it, and I tend to think tourists who adopt this look when traveling anywhere but Iran and Saudi are a little dopey for doing so. First of all, their scarf-wrapping skills are inevitably bad, and they look all lumpy. And they are probably not Muslim, so not required to. Cairo is a giant city with a global outlook, and the fashion on the street is more cool urban than frumpy babushka.

That said, wow, there are a lot more women wearing the hijab (head scarf) now, and even quite a few wearing the full black niqab, and even a couple doing that spooky thing where they put the sheer black veil entirely over their faces, so they look like ghosts. I’d say the split ten years ago was maybe 60/40 covered to uncovered, and now it’s more like 90/10.

Which doesn’t mean everyone is looking all modest and pious. Lordy, no. I haven’t seen so many tight clothes since Queens. And the care lavished on selecting the colors of scarves and the pinning and so on–straight off the pages of Hijab Fashion, and I am not making that magazine title up.

I’ve never been too bent out of shape about the hijab. It is not keeping women down–although it can be used to do so, along with a million other things. For the most part, it’s just another piece of clothing, and taking it off is not going to liberate anyone by itself. That’s not what women thought a generation ago, though–and it’s these older women, resolutely in polyester business suits and perfect coifs, that I don’t see much in Cairo anymore. The same backlash against overt feminism is happening in Egypt as is happening in the States–it’s just manifested differently. In the US, “I don’t consider myself a feminist” goes with midriff-baring tops and visible thong underwear; in Egypt, it goes with a bright-blue hijab tied to show off your earrings and a super-tight long-sleeve shirt and ankle-length skirt.

I’m sure there’s more to it, and every woman has a different reason/explanation/story (or none at all) for why they wear the hijab. It’s none of my business, really. I just appreciate the fashion parade.

(Though I do carry a scarf in my bag for wearing when I visit mosques, which is just polite.)

2) Don’t they hate Americans?

No. A lot of people really, really hate George Bush & Co., but they’re perfectly capable of distinguishing me from George Bush. No Texan accent, to start with.

There has been so much talk of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East that even I was starting to believe it might be true, even though I could not imagine someone in Egypt or Syria actually telling me they hated me because I was American. And it’s not like I believed it enough to start telling people I was Canadian or some crap.

Yes, I counted exactly two awkward silences following our admission of nationality–if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, these two guys were clearly thinking.

More often, though, we got smiles, thumbs-up, “Ahsan nass!” (The best people!), “Yankee doodle!” and even “Hotsy-totsy!” (Huh?) One Syrian security guard said, “George Bush!” with a thumbs-up (we told him he was nuts), and another guard said, “George Bush bad!” while smiling apologetically. People in the Middle East are smarter than the American press gives them credit for.

And they are still kinder than most Americans would ever be to visiting Middle Easterners. I feel especially ashamed about this last point, and I will be practicing my crazy hospitality skills on anyone who comes within range–brace yourselves.

Syria: On Human Kindness

When Peter and I went to Syria in 1999, we were bowled over by just how incredibly nice and kind people were. Unlike Egyptians, however, these people did not have a clutching, crazed fascination with us as foreigners, and so were also exceedingly polite. It was odd to be in a place that was more closed off from global culture and yet also more blase and cosmopolitan than Egyptians could ever be.

More concretely, it was disorienting for me to sit in a park, alone, for half an hour and have absolutely no one bother me. Well, finally a young kid approached me, and he very nervously, blinkingly asked, “D-d-do you have the t-t-time?” After that, he asked me if I was Russian (aka a prostitute), and scampered away in shame when I said no.

Fast-forward to Syria 2007: Mobile phones, Internet and satellite porn have arrived, but not much else has changed. People are still exceedingly nice. Legitimate businesspeople still offer you the very thing they’re selling for free, which makes no sense at all. People say “Welcome” and don’t use it as a preamble to papyrus vending. Basically, Peter and I walked around for a week on the verge of tears of joy–every time someone did something nice, we would grab each other and blink the moistness from our eyes. I thought often of my mother’s made-up Spanish phrase, “Mi corazon es gordo”; my heart did indeed feel fat with love for all human endeavor, whether that came in the form of directions given clearly or an especially tasty sandwich.

Before we knew it, we were tearing up over, say, the bike-shop owner sharing his lunch with us, the tamarind-juice seller asking us whether people drank tamarind in America then offering us our drinks for free, Koko the adorable tailor making Peter a perfect shirt, everyone who offered us water and Kleenex to wash our hands, the bike-shop owner giving us a box and packing tape, the guys at the post office telling us how to navigate the system instead of being the usual sullen bureaucrats, the guys at the restaurant giving us cheese and salad when they saw me eyeing their plate, the bike-shop owner telling us he would give us a bicycle when we had a baby…

I could go on. And we really liked the bike-shop owner. He should get a medal. He’s certainly the only person who’s ever made me think twice about not procreating.

I realize there are some slightly problematic issues with us fetishizing Syrians this way. Egyptians did many of the same nice things (some were even helpful at the post office!), as did Turks once we crossed the border, but I’m not bursting into tears over them–is it just because they’re not locked away in a pariah state? And it’s hard to ignore Syria’s questionable political situation, along with the kerjillion posters of Bashar al-Asad, the most un-dictator-looking dictator ever. (In fact, because he’s so dorky, I simply can’t believe he means anything but good. I’m rooting for him, but I’m afraid I’ll regret that I typed this one day.)

See, one free lunch and I’m an apologist for a dictatorship. Did I mention how you can drink the water and there’s no crime? Excuse me–I feel a little crying jag coming on.