Having amassed an educated guess of 10,000 or so meals (give or take) with my siblings throughout the duration of our respective lives, the most culturally shocking, or more genteelly put, culturally dilating of the myriad clambakes were explicitly those consumed abroad in northeastern Africa.
My virgin passport, became the beholder of a freshly licked Egyptian Visa stamp upon entry into the once ancient pharaonic sovereign state. My knowledge of Arabic had proven to be linguistically inadequate when immersed in “real life” situations following an inevitably meaningless conversation with an Egyptian National Railways conductor concerning the whereabouts of the 10:00 PM sleeper to Aswan. An elderly Brit divulged that the train was running 10 minutes late and would be there shortly, provided other locomotive interruptions were absent. I assessed the kung fu grip I had on the straps of my backpack was causing an early onset of rheumatoid arthritis within the joints of my 18 year old digits. Easing up on my belongings, I scrounged around for a few Egyptian pounds in what I preferred to call my waist belt security pouch carryall, oftentimes known as a fanny pack back in the U S of A.
Boasting a dismal 1 inch of rainfall that year, Cairo had already feverishly parched my throat, at 10 in the evening nonetheless. A vender holding his own on the platform had a variety of drinks that all looked suspiciously delicious, reminiscent of Japanese candy, however I stuck with what I knew. Unfortunately all I seemed to know was the all too familiar late 1950’s Kraft invention notably known as Tang which mysteriously disappeared from most American grocer and country market shelves sometime in the mid 90’s, I now knew the whereabouts of the elusive Tang. Biting the bullet, I purchased several packets of the old wives tale dishwasher detergent doppelgänging as a thirst quencher to mix with a larger container of water, the bottled variety, of which a liter or so remained.
After giving my transparent blue Nalgene bottle a vigorous shake to mix up the citrus powder infused H2O, I inspected its contents to find plenty of Tang particles hadn’t dissolved and were settling near the bottom like yeast in an aged cream stout or sediments in a poorly decanted pinot. After a few wafts my nose detected tannins of crap and notes of funk, sure enough my first sip tasted like someone had sprayed California Orange Air Freshener directly in my mouth. The Tang was decanted, needless to say, from my water bottle to another large container; Earth. My train had arrived by this time and was duly boarded by the platform of patrons awaiting its arrival. Aswan and Nubia were a mere 13 hours from Cairo by way of the southbound iron horse caravan filled with onlookers of the desert, some trying to catch a few winks, while others and myself attempt to fathom oceans of sand by light of the nearly full moon.
A few days after my arrival in Aswan, my sister Elizabeth, with whom I was staying, mentioned that we would be dining with a Nubian woman by the name of Zuba. One of many Nubian women my sister had been working with for the past several years, Zuba spoke not a word of English and had invited us to her home for afternoon conversation followed by an authentic Nubian meal in the evening prepared solely by Zuba herself. Elizabeth would surely be my translator having studied Arabic for nearly 8 years now, as well as the Nubian dialect for nearly half of those.
Zuba’s home resided outside of Aswan on the eastern shore of the Nile within one of the remaining Nubian providences. On the quick fairy boat trip across the river, I reminisced about my list of “things to do while I’m in Egypt” that I had drawn up a week before the adventure began. “Try as many different foods as possible” was near the top of the list, I didn’t have it with me to denote its precise enumeration, but it was definitely within the top 3, to my recollection. Elizabeth had dined with Zuba on several occasions and knew the menu wasn’t too verbose.
“And what is Zuba preparing for our grand exotic feast?”
“Molokhiyya, aish shamsi, and fool. Rice, I bet.”
“Molokawhat? Rice? Ok. Rice. Awesome.”
“Haha, Molokhiyya. It’s cut up molokhiyya leaves boiled in chicken stock with a sauce composed of lots of garlic and ground coriander fried in oil, added to the soup with some lemon juice. Tomatoes maybe. You’ll see.”
“Well, I’m starving. And molokjambolaya... er... you know... sounds excellent.”
Zuba’s home was expansive, made of sun dried bricks, and had many open air areas in the hallways connecting the different portions of the abode, accompanied by a larger roofless courtyard area in the center. The word primitive was frequently on my mind, but always followed by fantasies of moving in, or building my own mud bricked home on the banks of the Nile. I was thoroughly compelled to drop out of college right then and there to study my own self loathing for life as it was previously known to me. My brain smoothly switched to passive misanthropic mode as it began discarding a society filled with 52 inch plasma televisions, cell phones, laptops, and e-commerce to gladly accept the humble hospitality of Zuba and her family, whom offered me the warmest of welcomes with an amiability that knew no bounds.
Elizabeth and I sat on the floor of Zuba’s “dining room,” a smaller offshoot of the courtyard, with earth flooring and personal art and leather work hanging on two of the three walls. Dinner was just as my sister predicted. Molokhiyya, aish shamsi, fool -- which was mashed fava beans with garlic, cumin, and oil -- and rice. Aish shamsi’s literal translation was “sun bread.” Resembling 2 inch flat pita loaves, the aish shamsi is left to rise in the sun before baking in Zuba’s handmade mud brick oven. I tried some of the sun bread, first with no additions, and it was almost identical to a pita, although it was a bit more robust and fresh than something you would find at Whole Foods. I then ripped another hefty piece of shamsi from the loaf and went in for the kill, scooping a generous scoop of molokhiyya from the serving dish it was held up in. The excess slowly dripped from the torn bread with the consistency of snot from a bawling toddler’s nose. I could have used a sieve to separate the coarse molokhiyya leaves and garlic from the mucoid luggie broth they had been festering in. As my sister and Zuba got a kick out of the petrified look on my face, I decided to keep on keepin’ on and down the sucker. The slime nearly caused an abdominal evacuation, but I managed to keep it down. I deemed it was time to pursue a new avenue of nourishment. Sure, there was a McDonald’s in Luxor, but I didn’t cross the pond for a Big Mac.
No comments:
Post a Comment