...eat with your fingers

Among the Himony’s, and even elsewhere in al Khalil, I am somewhat of a celebrity. This is, of course, only because I am a foreigner (and not because I am a desperately humorous, relationally warm cultural changeling. Who? Me? Go on…). But, really. What this means is that I am always in the limelight, and my dear sirs and misses, that is quite stressful. Under the spot I am expected to talk, to understand, to eat, drink and be merry (for tomorrow we die), and to always wear my sixteen-dollar smile. But let’s be honest, sometimes I want to pout, mope and be gloomy (for tomorrow we wake up to the same damn goose, honking it’s beak-horn inches outside my window).

The party crowd

But there was a week I disappeared, though I cannot say I was pleased about it.

See, the seasons have changed and I find myself even cold sometimes. Yes, cold. The drama of it all gave me the flu, actually. Shukran, my dear Mother Nature, for lovely days of headaches, muscle pain and busy, exhausting dreams that stitched together ugly nights. Good thing I had Middle Earth, with her tales of dragons and great, big spiders and great, small hobbits, to have spent my many dreary hours in (while also dreaming of eating the goose that barked my sleep into exhaustion).

But finally the cold sweats passed, and now my skull is no longer host to a small war. I can look at this computer screen and type without my eyes turning into subwoofers. Yaaeeey…

Blurry but enthusiastic. Old and young dancing.

Fall brings more than influenza, though. It brings earwigs! Uhhh…And a wedding! Much betterrr… This wedding was quaint and not as big as the first one I went to. Something about that thing was epic; this was more modest. The dancing was fun, the crowd smaller, the event shorter. We ate our small meal at the end of the ruckus and let the next day happen.

I haven’t yet mentioned that the young man who got married is my Arab brother, Ibrahim. So this time I got to be a part of the three-day affair; I got to help. Day two came and I rose early to join my family in the preparations for the big lunch they were to provide. The large hall we were in, owned by the Himony family and used for events like these, needed a cleaning. The night before hundreds of men had sat in chairs drinking coffee, tamir (sweet date juice) and eating sweets after congratulating the groom and his family. Spilt liquids, candy-wrappers and cigarette butts carpeted the concrete. So we flooded, scrubbed and squeegee’d it, leaving it shiny and ready for tables and chairs, chairs, chairs.

Me dancing with a young Himony

But we finished early and had some time to sit and rest, though the kitchen crew was working hard to prepare the food (as they were doing when we arrived this morning). I took to cutting pita bread into fourths and then preparing plastic bowls for the hoards of men that began to arrive after morning prayers, around noon.

Here is the process from pot to plate: Oily, salty, unbearably tasty mass-roasted almonds get sprinkled into plastic bowls. These bowls get filled with rice from a pot the size of a small tub and flipped onto a plate. The bowl is removed and a beautiful almond-capped rice-mountain stands, awaiting a hunk of lamb meat. When they are married (till teeth do them part) they head to ever-flipping tables and chairs to be et by friends and family. When satisfied and gone, plates return to the kitchen, get cleared, washed and reused. After all, we are feeding upwards of two thousand people (did I forget to mention that? Well it’s true. 2000. Two-thousand). Did I also forget to mention that everything is done with fingers?

Preparing the meal

 UnSANitaryyy! (That’s meant to be sung)

I spent the morning in the kitchen jumping between tasks: putting almonds into bowls or being the rice man (so fun) or passing the rice man empty bowls. And all was done with really greasy hands.

After the men ate the women came, around two. There are fewer of them and its all a bit less-rushed. We were able to prep many of the plates before hand, and barely needed to prepare any more after that. Then I moved on to do the dishes. For like, six centuries.

Meanwhile, some ladies remained chatting in the dining room, though the men had long-since disappeared. There is a tradition here where the groom’s close friends take him home, strip him down to his skivvies, wash him and give him a good shave (earlier they partook in the tradition of feeding him with their fingers. Remember, lamb and rice. It was messy, but smiley). I would have enjoyed experiencing the groom-grooming, but there are many things that require better Arabic to anticipate, so I missed it while in the kitchen. I was present, however, for the rest of the evening, albeit dirty and splattered. A great host of Himony men went to the family of the bride’s neighborhood, and once again sat down and drank shockingly sweet coffee and, from what I can gather, exchanged blessings. Then the bride, Raghada, got into the car with Ibrahim and away we went, a honking, screeching parade, until we made it to a wedding hall.

This hall hosted the women who, with dresses and make-up I only hear tales about, watch each other dance and eat cake and sit and gab. Outside the hall, impromptu music would spring up, hearts warm with enthusiasm, and a circle would emerge in the center of a crowd. Dancing would spark, as would some sneaky fireworks, and Himony men would be hoisted onto shoulders and celebrated. In between these jolts of joviality we stood around, chatted, waited, or ran into the small store to buy a snack. Mostly, though, cigarettes were smoked.

I admit, I didn’t have the stamina to keep going, though. After leaving the shelter of the kitchen I had, once again, garnered altogether too much attention, and my brain was too tired to keep translating. I had been on my feet since that morning, about 10 hours earlier, and hadn’t had a chance to freshen up. Plus the twerps, as I affectionately call the boys who find it their duty to be parasites around me, were being extra twerpy (or maybe my fuse was just a bit shorter). Either way, I found someone to drive me home, and I was never happier to see it.

I was blessed to have been a part of the wedding-machine, to work with my hands, to do something half-way rigorous, and to be out of the limelight a bit more than usual (and not because of my health deciding to run off and dance with Hades for a week). But it is inescapable (the limelight, that is). I wasn’t unhappy, though, to have been left behind at lunch with the women. I poked my head out of the kitchen and was beckoned forward for hearty, breasty chuckles about my relation to the family. These women, with their splintered faces, smiled matronly at me while in the peripheral I saw the younger ones lean in to whisper to each other and giggle. I’m sure they were mentioning my blonde hair and great, Caucasian features. Well, probably not, but I was offered a Khalili wife again, and I thanked the women and said Insha’allah, and then remarked about how expensive weddings were, with shock in my eyes.

But the truth is I don’t want a Khalili wedding. Not now. Sometimes I’d rather just be in the kitchen with oily hands than out there in the limelight. The wonder of being a foreigner has its stresses.