Nathaniel WhittemoreEssay 2 – October 14, 2005

In writing, the flavor and texture of food are often reconstructed butnever truly remembered. The act of eating is simply too banal to mean muchon its own. It requires moments of association to become more thanperfunctory. Meals are acts of creation. They are remembered because shesaid yes, because the Pyramids flickered in candle light to the left, becausethey are the setting for the end, the beginning, or both. The “meal” givescontext and content to the routine of existence. Our claim to cuisine is ourmastery over necessity. If eating is surviving, to dine is to live. The ghosts of meals past are never cheeseburgers, lobsters, or borsch. They are new loverscaught in furtive glances and grandfathers talking about Ted Williams onelast time.My memory of my time in Palestine begins and ends with meals. Inbetween, there was food but never the moments of enlightenment or self-realization that make eating memorable. The feeling of the food on mytongue and the tingling of my taste-buds are long since forgotten. When itcomes to the middle, I mostly remember the martyrs.We arrived in Tul Karem, Palestine at dusk. It was light enough to readthe Al-Aqsa Brigade grafitti but dark enough to see the glow of far-off

sheesha

embers as men gathered to discuss the events of the day. AlthoughAlex and I were moving on our own, we had caught a ride that day with agroup of International Solidarity Movement volunteers. They were there tolearn about forming human shields and yelling at Israeli Defense Force

soldiers. Most of them were young and American and bursting with ideologyand passion. The best of them were already a bit skeptical of their own role inthis big confused place. We hopped out at the Windows for Peace center andthanked them for the ride.Windows for Peace is an organization run jointly by Israeli andPalestinian women, dedicated to providing creative and artistic outlets forPalestinian children in refugee camps like the one found in Tul Karem. Wehad come to talk to them about volunteerism and youth reconciliation in thismost volatile of political climates. It was part of a bigger trip that would takeus everywhere from Serbia and Bosnia to Egypt and Palestine to Uganda andRwanda.We were greeted at the Center with the rich smiles of volunteers andthe rich smells of

shwarma.

In Palestine, shwarma is ground lamb and beef,slow-roasted all afternoon with parsley and onions. The meat is wrapped in

aiyeesh

, the bread whose name means, literally, “life.” Cabbage and pickledvegetables are added and finally tahini sauce is dribbled over the wholeconcoction before it’s wrapped up and stuffed into a double layer plastic bag.It is a Chipotle Burrito and a Jimmy John’s Gargantuan wrapped into one. Nomouth is big enough to take it on, and when the sauce starts to leak downyour cheek, you find yourself less embarrassed than worried that you mightlose a bit.As we tucked in, I couldn’t help drifting from our conversation to thinkabout how the dishes compared to other Arab food I’d eaten. Lebanon isalmost as famous for its food as it is for its women. Ask anyone fromAlexandria to Damascus where to go for the best fava beans and they’ll tell

you Beirut. Jordan’s national dish is a broiled lamb head on top of rice andcream sauce. In Aleppo the steamy sweet cardamom drink Sahleb warms upany November night, and if you know where to go in Cairo, you can find freshMango juice for just one Egyptian pound – a little less than an average stickof gum in America.But Palestine is the hidden gem of the Arab culinary world. They dospice better than the Egyptians and toppings better than the Jordanians.Unlike the Lebanese, they’re not afraid to dip into the food gutter and fry upsome falafel, even when the company’s refined.Despite this, it’s not a country well-known for its food. It might be thatwhen we think of reputable cuisine, we think in terms of elegance. Ourpalettes jump immediately to dainty banquets and salmon mousses. There isnothing so frilly about Palestinian food. It is French fries stuffed in pitas andvarious meats on various sticks. It’s well cooked beef, always cut close to thebone. Then again, it might just be that our discourse of Palestine has no roomfor a culinary dimension. Imagine the New York Times Sunday magazineheadline...“Of Shwarma and Suicide Bombs…”But then, for me, that’s why that first shwarma was so good. Withoutever knowing exactly why, I’ve been hooked on this place since I first readabout the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 7

grade. My interest had manifesteditself in projects, papers, course work, and finally, in Fall 2004, study abroadin the region itself. During that semester, I traveled to Cairo, Beirut, Tripoli,Aleppo, Damascus, Petra, Wadi Rum, and Alexandria. I climbed Mt. Sinai inthe middle of the night to watch the sun rise and slept in the desert under the