OTTOLENGHI BEANS

By Maya Salem

At the blue lunch tables in my elementary school, I open my purple triangular lunch box, peeking at the meal I saw Baba zip inside that morning. A thin aluminum cylinder rests on the sweating ice pack. Pulling it out, my sensitive fingers jump at its cold exterior.

Peeling down the foil, I bite into the lebneh sandwich. Rolled in wheat or white pita bread, it may as well be a burrito to the untrained eye. It’s a mix of tart and cheesy, suspending crisp cucumbers and sprigs of mint in its center. The floury surface of the bread dusts my lips, and a spot of lebneh remains in the corners of my mouth.

It’s good, but I watch my classmates with their ziploc bags of white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with the crusts cut off. Lunchables with deconstructed sandwiches, circles of lunchmeat and blocks of cheese I’ve never touched. Slices of apples, gummies, and a juice box. Chocolate kisses for dessert.

My friends suggest a game of lava monster as we pack up our empty lunch boxes. As they collect their plastic waste, I ball up the aluminum foil. It lands in the trash with a thuck. The whistle blows, and kids with chocolate at the corners of their lips run out to the fields. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and follow, wishing for a similar sweet aftertaste.

Each Saturday that I’m abroad, I visit the farmer’s market. It’s on Haymarket, a road cobbled in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. It’s a humble strip of vendors that visit each week. I’m immediately drawn to the deep and rich colors of vegetables and fruits in crates; it almost takes a second for my eyes to adjust, the pure volume incomparable to the produce sections at Sainsbury’s.

From about halfway through the market, I can smell the familiar aroma of an olive oil fryer, and as I get closer, I see a falafel chef at work, shaping the pale ground chickpeas into mounds atop his metal apparatus. He dimples the top, to allow the falafel ball to separate from the tool, before plunging it into the oil. I approach slowly, looking at the shallow packages of hummus, babaganoush, and tabbouleh. The stacks of thin Lebanese pitas. Before I’m able to make a decision, he offers me a ball of falafel from the cooling rack.

I take it, savoring its warm interior in the cooling autumn air. It’s a familiar taste in the still-unfamiliar place.

Ahead of me, a waddling toddler reaches for some of the packages of bread on the table. A mother grabs his hands and releases his grip on the plastic bag. She looks up and down the table of food, scanning the names and colors in front of her.

“It’s Lebanese.” The falafel chef looks up, his hands still busy. “There’s hummus with chickpeas, babaganoush with aubergine…”

The mildly interested mother watches as her toddlers bumble over to the next stand. She nods her thanks and moves on with them, muttering something in Korean at her children. Today is not the day for trying a potentially new cuisine.

I ask for some hummus and pita. As he collects the order, I consider thanking him in Arabic. It would be intended as more of a symbolic nod, of knowing and acknowledging Lebanese ancestry. And as a justification for my American accent, which immediately alerts my displacement–sometimes a conversation starter, and other times a stereotype being silently fulfilled.

But perhaps saying shukran is me wanting to point to familiarity, of seeing and hearing and being seen. I’ve never felt compelled to do so in the U.S., though I see Baba do it all the time. If there is someone who looks or sounds remotely Arab, he will ask, and more often than not, they are Lebanese or Palestinian or Syrian, thus striking upwards of a half-hour long conversation, some laughs, a memorable story, and once, at a Moroccan restaurant in the south of Spain, the exchange of a business card.

The falafel chef hands me the device to tap my credit card. 

“Have a nice day!” He completes the transaction.

“Thanks,” I hesitate. “You too!”

Timidness has bested me. I try not to wince at my words and the inflection, which now sound discordantly American. Tucking away my food, I reluctantly walk away, looking back at the stand, where the falafel chef has moved on to another customer. I promise I’ll try again next week. 

At the red lunch tables under the spotted awning in my middle school, I pull out my brown paper sack.

Tired of the routine of refreezing ice packs and wiping out the grimy inside of a fabric lunchbox, I turn to a more wasteful routine. Single-use plastic bag with a bagel sandwich. A frozen capri sun that functions as my ice pack. A true rebel.

My circle of friends start to set out their elaborate lunches, most of them packed by their parents. Tiny containers of goldfish and dried fruit. A small rectangle for a sandwich or a vegetable. A side of hummus and carrots. Sometimes a fizzy fruit drink. I don’t know if they ever look at my lunches the same way I watch theirs.

One of them opens the small round of hummus and swirls a carrot stick inside.

“Oh, you’ve got hum-mis today? Can I have some?” one asks. They begin to share.

“Do you want some hum-mis, Maya?”

I shake my head, mouth full with a bite of bagel.

“Do you not like it? It’s just barbanzo beans.” She explains.

I dance around the word. “No no, I do. I just have it at home a lot. Like my dad really likes it.”

“Yeah, hum-mis is great!” she agrees.

I echo her quietly. “Hum-mis is great.”

I wince inside, wishing I didn’t succumb to the pressure. Wishing my word didn’t sound so foreign.

On a sunny day stroll from my flat, I pass a restaurant called Hummus. At a small table outside, two older ladies sit and chat, and as I briskly walk by, I see one of the ladies popping spoonful after spoonful of hummus from a bowl and into her mouth. 

I slow my pace, discreetly trying to catch another glimpse. Sure enough, she has a small bowl of hummus in front of her and a spoon protruding from it. No bread in sight. Though slightly concerned, I continued walking, wondering if she has an allergy to gluten or something.

On my walk back, the lunch hour has ended, so I peek into the quieted restaurant. There’s a Lebanese flag sewn into a tapestry on the wall. Scanning the menu, I notice several of Baba’s favorite dishes, so I excitedly text my parents, telling them the news. They encourage me to ask if the owner is also Lebanese. I say that I’ll try, willing my shyness to go away.

I approach the counter and order in my best accent.

“A houmous and cauliflower wrap, please.”

The owner promptly turns around and starts making the wrap. I scan the glass display case, seeing if there’s anything else I can use to spark a conversation. My eyes land upon a display of mahmoul, butter cookies, usually with a filling or nutty layering. Perfect.

“How much are the mahmoul?” I reach into the back of my throat to pronounce the letter.

“What?” He turns around, confused.

I point to the cookies and try again. “The mahh-moul?”

“Ah, the mahmoul?” He realizes. “Two pounds. There’s a date one and a pistachio one.”

“Oh, okay, thank you.” Two pounds is a lot for a little cookie, but I order one anyway, for the sake of conversation.

“Tekle arabee?” He asks as he wraps up a cookie for me.

I can’t tell if he heard my pronunciation or studied me. Returning to the wrap preparation, he turns his back to me, but tilts his ear in my direction, waiting for my response.

“Uhh” I hesitate, though I should have been prepared all this time to speak. “Naam? Lakn shwai.”

He says something else, but it’s too quick for me to react to.

I respond again, “Shwai shwai.” There’s a pause, which I feel the need to explain with, “My dad is from Lebanon.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize I could have spoken them in Arabic, but English had arrived sooner.

The conversation continues, and I feel as though I’m retreating further and further from the till, overwhelmed by his fluidity and speed of Arabic. Every time I feel like I understand something in Arabic, I nod and respond in English. But, it turns out I heard the wrong thing. 

He asks about the sun in California, which I recognize. I respond: Naam, it’s much more than here.

He asks again, slower, in Arabic and English, explaining he was actually asking if I like Sunny California.

By the time I understand in English, I cannot translate back to Arabic. I sheepishly say: I miss it.

Near the end of our conversation, I feel inclined to explain my incompetence and lack of fluency, so I tell him the truth.

“I also learned Spanish in high school, so sometimes I get them mixed up, and I start thinking in Spanish when people talk to me in Arabic.”

“Ah si, a mí también. Pero, español es mucho más fácil.”

I’m not sure that I can hide the shock on my face. All I can ask is, “what other languages do you know?”

Apparently French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic.

He finally hands me my wrap and cookie.

“Shukran, ma salami” I barely make out as I open the door.

I don’t think Baba has experienced this divide of language and being perceived; at least, he’s never talked about it. Maybe by the time he arrived in this country, he wasn’t concerned with his perception, or explaining himself to another person. He was surrounded by other Lebanese students. He put his head down, studying and working to capitalize on the opportunity he’d been given.

Or maybe he doesn’t remember, because when everything about him was different, the little things were little.

These words and foods are not only normal. They’re mundane, just another category of words to experiment with. They don’t require explanation.

The words lose their universality, and they become the softened wood panels on the floor of the kitchen and the fabric of the re-upholstered dining room chairs. Za’atar is the savory scent of Saturday morning. Fattoush, the minty and lemony side salad to Sunday nights.

I feel like I require explanation. For why I pronounce hummus as hummus. And tread so lightly when talking about any given Lebanese dish, because I’ll need to describe each part of it, from the flavors to the name of the cheese to the seasoning. That the sumac I put on top of my open-faced cheese pie is not from the deadly plant. (I don’t actually know where it’s from, but it’s definitely not poisonous.)

Meanwhile, Baba fondly remembers (and still stands by) his decision to pair together watermelon and hummus one afternoon in Boston, when that’s all he had in his fridge. Refreshing. He’s the real cultural crossover, dipping pita bread into guacamole and tortilla chips into hummus.

Weeks pass at the farmer’s market, and due to one obstacle or another, I don’t get the chance to perform my Arabic nod at the Lebanese food stall. My final Saturday in Scotland arrives, and I walk down to the market, knowing I cannot purchase anything as I leave in a few days. 

Rehearsing my Arabic and my story in English, I make my way to the stall. I want to thank them for their food and its impact on my time in Scotland, seeing them each weekend. But as I round the bend and get a glimpse at the white-tableclothed stand, I don’t see my falafel friend. I wander around for a few minutes, poking around the nearby stands, believing he must be grabbing more ingredients from his truck. But he doesn’t return.

As I walk back to my flat, empty-handed, I think about visiting the Hummus restaurant again. I don’t know what for, though. I cannot carry any more of an Arabic conversation now than I could during my first visit.

Without the crutch of a bilingual and bicultural father or normalcy of surrounding Americans who are concerned with their own culture, I don’t know how I’m supposed to be perceived. How I’m supposed to represent myself. Baba and I are on opposite coasts of these two landmasses with an ocean in between. There’s no quietly pleading for help, nobody feeding me words to repeat. There’s no person beside me sharing my genetic makeup, offering an explanation. There’s only me flailing, my arms outstretched, grabbing onto empty water, and trying to swim upwards.

I recall one frigid morning during my last few weeks in Edinburgh. I’m standing at a bus stop at the city center. My hands are stuffed in my pockets, as I squint at the numbers on the approaching buses. An elderly woman stands very still next to me. She acknowledges me and I nod, smiling back at her. Somewhere behind me, a man shouts, his voice quickly lost to the bustling soundscape of the moving streets.

I hear another shout evolving into a yell. It sounds like someone is being harassed. I look around to observe the situation, my curiosity yearning to figure out at whom he is yelling. He’s staring directly at me.

“You Indian?” His eyes are wide, and his head is turning on its axis. “You Indian? You Indian?”

I slowly shake my head, wondering if I need to start planning my escape, if it was a mistake to turn around and make eye contact. Should I speak, let my ‘no’ echo in the midmorning air? He stares at me for one second longer. Once his evaluation is over and he seems satisfied, he pivots and walks away.

I inch back to looking at the street, avoiding the gaze of the few bystanders, my eyes glazing over the vehicles passing. I don’t remember the bus number I’m waiting for.

The old woman next to me breaks the silence, asking about some incoming bus. She has no teeth, which makes it very difficult to understand the specifics of her question, and there’s only so many times you can politely ask someone to repeat themselves. I point to the screen with the arriving bus numbers, hoping it helps.

After a few moments, she turns back to me and asks what the man was yelling about.

“He was asking me if I was Indian, I think?” 

She doesn’t reply. 

“What did you say?” she turns back, studying me. 

“I said, no. I don’t know if that’s the answer he wanted, but he left.” 

She nods, in what I assume is equal bafflement. 

The squeal and sigh of a bus arriving steals my attention, and I recognize the number. I climb up the stairs and take a seat on the second floor. As the bus pulls away, I look back at the stop, where the small old woman stands still. 

I can’t quite figure out how to feel. I pull out my phone to message a group chat of other exchange students, telling them what happened. They respond with “oh that sucks, sorry that happened.” That doesn’t seem to help either.

My dad later sums it up to “just what happens in the city.”

When I’m at home for the summers between college, I bask in the expanse of my parents’ kitchen. I open Instagram to re-discover the scrapbooked recipes I’ve saved during the school year, the ones with special ingredients or appliance requirements my apartment cannot afford. There’s one for Warm Ottolenghi Beans, which are described as being served across the Levant. I’m excited at the prospect of cooking something Baba may have forgotten from his childhood. The idea that I could re-introduce a food he may have been missing for fifty years quickly puts me to work.

Looking at the ingredients, I realize they resemble things my father refers to as ‘poor farmer meals,’ meaning basic flavors from fibrous and hearty legumes, to re-nourish after a long day in the fields. The simple combination of parsley, cannellini beans, garlic, and tahini all would have been available in his small town of Maaraboon.

I cook the dish with some homemade pita bread, and the house smells like herbs. I hear the garage door open and rush to meet Baba at the door, feeling the warmth of his sun-baked car wafting from the fabric of his button down. I drag him to the table of food I’ve set, waiting for him to recognize the dish in front of him. The summer’s setting sun hits the glass tabletop, surrounding the steaming foods with glittering light. I’m giddy at the idea of bringing him back to a childhood memory, of something his mom cooked for him. Maybe there’s even a story to go with it, too.

His face is blank, though.

“They’re ottolenghi beans!” I’m pretty animated, waiting for the smell or sight of it to take him back. Perhaps he’s still thinking about his day at work.

“Well they look very nice.” His polite composure suggests he has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Apparently they can be made with chickpeas or other white beans. Not just cannellini… don’t you recognize it?” I’m confused why I have to explain it; I thought he’d understand.

“Should I?” He cocks his head as he takes a bite.

“Well, I thought so. They’re served across the Levant, especially in farming communities.”

“What did you say the name was?”

“Ottolenghi or something. I thought it was the name of the bean.”

He rolls the name over in his mouth and comes up with nothing. He likes it, but has never had it. I look at the table I’ve excitedly set in front of us. The sun has set lower, and a dim filter covers the table, the dishes no longer basking in the glittering light. The beans look foreign, now a muddled mess of herby colors. The pile of freshly-made pitas deflates and their rustic homemade appearance now just looks misshapen.

We enjoy the meal, though there are no hidden memories or forgotten stories stirred up in the warm beans. A few days later, my mom asks me to send her the recipe, as she wants to add it to her rotation. As she re-formats and types it up, she digs into the origin of the dish and its name. And so we learn Yotam Ottolenghi is actually an Israeli-British chef, whose test kitchen highlights Mediterranean traditions, and who has dedicated the last few decades of his career publishing cookbooks about Middle Eastern cuisine, introducing it into people’s kitchens, apparently just like ours. The beans are named after him.