Jasmine and Fire (18 page)

We follow as he zips through the hallways, outpacing the streams of men with briefcases who jostle past each other on their way into one of the many identical-looking doors. He opens the door to the room where we need to go, says a few words to the guy manning that office, and leaves. I wonder if he’s just expedited the routine; maybe since our family’s history in Aley dates back so many generations, he’s asked the guy in charge to deal with our papers quickly and send us on our way. Josette and I grab seats on the faded blue sofa and stare at the Lebanese tourism posters on the wall. We then proceed to sit there for an hour and a half, watching various people walk in, ask a question, light a cigarette, leave, or sit down, and like us stare at the walls as the clock ticks on. After what seems an eternity, the mustachioed man in charge of that room turns his attention to us and hands me the forms I need. I fill out my name, address, family members’ names, and so on. He waves us on our way.

From there we walk with our forms to yet another office, in an awkwardly laid-out strip mall around the block, with the oxymoronic name Royal General Services Mall. In a claustrophobic little room, we find a tiny, reed-thin man sitting with a stack of papers on his desk and a huge leatherbound book. A number of people are ahead of us in line, and we watch the man slowly handwrite people’s names and information as they walk up to his desk to give him their filled-out forms. There’s not a computer in sight; incredible. We sit in that office for another hour, until finally the man looks up, summons us over, and slowly handwrites my name into the giant book. Very slowly, the black ink swooping up and dropping back down with every letter: … n … o … u … r. Done!

Nope, one more stop: this time at an office where I have to get my fingerprints taken for the ID card. I stand in front of the fingerprinting machine, my palms facing down, fingers pressing hard onto the glass surface. One try, and we wait a few minutes as the guy in charge of that office squints at the prints as they come out of the machine. No go. Two tries, three tries, and finally he’s satisfied that the fingerprints came through clearly. Okay, we’re finished. The whole expedition, door to door (to door to door to door), took six hours. Nearly all day.

My reward
for the Aley trip comes a few days later—but not the ID card, way too soon for that. It comes in the form of a fantastically soothing Thanksgiving feast. Turkey may not have earned honorary Lebanese citizenship quite the way escalope and fries have, but it might be on its way; I’ve been noticing lots of turkeys at supermarkets this past week, and I’ve found myself eyeing them with more anticipation than usual.

On Thanksgiving Thursday, I get dressed up in a caramel-brown dress and gold flats and walk through the Hamra streets, just a few blocks over to Bushra and Ziad’s. It’s twilight, and some of the boutiques, bookstores, and assorted other shops are closing for the night, their aluminum shutters rattling down, while others are staying open late, for the after-work shoppers who stream back home to the neighborhood as the sun sets. The restaurants and bars are already filling up, and the early-evening sidewalks are crawling with Thanksgiving-oblivious crowds.

I arrive to find a full living room, packed with a crowd that includes Ziad’s sister and my parents’ friend Umayma, who cooked that wonderful Ramadan iftar dinner back in September, here with her Palestinian-Jordanian husband, Nasser. I also spot my parents’ old classmates George and Katia (my friend Zeina’s parents); and a friend of Bushra’s named Leila, who heads a department at AUB and who I’d heard mentioned might want to give me some editing work.

Bushra’s melodic, Syrian-accented voice soon rings out,
“Yalla, tfaddalo.”
Come, help yourselves to the table. Dinner is served. On the buffet: an enormous golden-skinned turkey, resting on an antique silver platter; two pans of sweet potatoes topped with browned, melting marshmallows; rice with vermicelli noodles and pistachios, Bushra’s spin on a stuffing; a saucer of traditional turkey gravy; and cranberry sauce in a blue bowl. I also spy something not normally present on a Thanksgiving spread:
harrak osb’oo
, a dish made with lentils, onions, tamarind, and cilantro, a Syrian classic and a Bushra specialty. There are also kibbeh meatballs, a lemony eggplant salad called
raheb
, and assorted savory mini-pies stuffed with wild greens or spiced beef or cheese.
I go easy on the turkey, choosing the thinnest, reddest piece I can find, and for old times’ sake, I help myself to a big scoop of the candied sweet potatoes and a dollop of cranberry sauce. But what I’m really entranced with is the harrak osb’oo, a nuanced but earthy dish with pleasing sweet-and-sour notes. I need to get Bushra to teach me how to make this. I go back for seconds of it, and then thirds, and then force myself to put my fork down, though Bushra looks at my plate and says,
“Shoo? Maakalti shi!”
What’s this! You didn’t eat anything! You’ll hear this from a Lebanese host even if you’ve just single-handedly consumed an entire turkey.

For dessert, Bushra serves
mhallaya
, a milky and slightly sour, cheese-based custard sprinkled with orange-blossom nectar and crushed pistachios, which is also Syrian originally and rarely seen in Lebanon. It’s like the perfect marriage of a creamy rice pudding and a delicate panna cotta, with a subtle tang. Bushra also sets out two large pans of her signature apricot phyllo cake, similar to baklava in its layers of flaky dough hiding a sweet filling, but this chunky apricot version, made with fruit she bought the other day in Damascus—the famous Damascene apricots—is her own invention.

I get home at almost midnight, extremely stuffed but in a brighter mood than I’ve felt in days during this gray, increasingly chilly month. I’ve just spent one of the most joyous Thanksgivings in memory, in a cheerful group of old family friends reminiscing about Thanksgivings spent in years past with their grown-up kids in the States. The next night I get an e-mail from Richard about how he’s been spending his holiday break in Boston so far: shopping for pants with his brother Jeff, a bassist in a band, and watching the Celtics, and eating oysters and chowder. He tells me the oysters made him remember a night when the two of us stopped in
at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central during my October visit: “perfect happiness,” he called it. I remember how that felt, sitting next to him at the old New York bar, picking out a couple dozen oysters from the East and West coasts, slurping them straight up or with just squirts of lemon, then walking through Bryant Park together in the late evening.

Memories of that night are rushing back as I read his e-mail. I’m thinking about how being with Richard, our time together, can feel like perfect happiness. I don’t know what the rest of the year will bring for us, but right now this feeling is good; it’s enough.

Before the week is out, I luck into two more Thanksgiving invites, both for the Sunday after the actual holiday: one from Zeina, and one from my Boston-expat friends Curtis and Diana. I say yes to both and get ready for a marathon day of nonstop eating.

Zeina gets nostalgic at times for the years she and Marwan spent living in New York, and today she’s cooked up a beautiful, gorgeously browned turkey, which she serves, in a nice twist, with Lebanese sides—a dish of fresh okra braised in garlic and olive oil and called
bamieh bi zeit
, along with baba ghanoush, and mini savory pies topped with a wonderfully tart spread made with fermented yogurt, called
kishk
. Sitting around the table is a small, intimate group: her parents, George and Katia, Marwan, their four-year-old daughter, and the in-laws. We finish off with knafeh, the syrupy sweet-cheese dessert I love. A cup of Arabic coffee later, and a relaxed lounging session in the living room, and I’m off, whispering apologies for having to dash out so soon, but leaving the family in a mellow post-Thanksgiving trance.

At Curtis and Diana’s a half hour later, I meet a few more friends of theirs, and we all sprawl out in the breezy dining room, the balcony windows open to the cool November air. I eat a
bit less this time, limiting myself to one thin piece of a buttery, cheese-filled quiche and a bowl of richly sweet and spicy pumpkin soup—an autumn favorite here, thanks to the seasonal pumpkin bounty. I find myself chatting with James again, the only other person there who hasn’t arrived with spouse and kids in tow. But today I’m not so worried about what meeting a cute single guy could mean for my romantic life.

I’m thinking about Richard’s oyster note from yesterday. I’m crazy about that guy. I want another night like that, lots more of them.

DECEMBER

It’s
early December, and the streets around me in Ras Beirut are decorated with Christmas trees, along with leftover signs welcoming pilgrims from around the world for the Muslim Eid Al Adha holiday last month. Ashura, another Muslim holiday, is also happening in December. The entire month is riddled with events for both major religions in Lebanon, and so a slew of days off for businesses, government offices, and schools.

For me, this month is shaping up as a sequel to November’s eating spree. My relatives and friends in Lebanon will be celebrating various holidays and ceremonies in December, in ways ranging from the faithful to the secular, all with one denominator common to most celebrations everywhere: food.

I’ve always looked forward to December, despite the last-minute gift-shopping stress and the wear and tear of a monthlong social and gastrointestinal marathon. Christmas for me still brings memories of gleefully unpacking the ceiling-high plastic tree from its enormous flat box in our Beirut apartment, setting up the manger scene with clay figurines of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the Three Kings, and sprinkling the entire tableau with baby-powder “snow.” Then, stuffed on our holiday dinner of lamb or ham roast and a big meze spread, off we’d go to the annual pageant at the Protestant church nearby, where we’d sing carols loudly, merrily, and in my case crashingly off-key. In those days, there was nothing like screaming along to loud organ music for an hour to take your mind off the war raging outside.

This year I’m not bothering with a Christmas tree since I’m in the apartment alone, but I do decide to plant some wheat seeds, a tradition in Lebanon to celebrate December 3, Saint Barbara Day—for the third-century saint revered by the Eastern Orthodox Church. When I was growing up here, we’d plant the seeds on a plate spread with wet cotton balls, and after two weeks or so, when the seeds had sprouted and grown to a few inches tall, my mother would repurpose the plants as grass for the nativity scene.

On this breezy, light-sweater December morning—the weather went up by a few degrees again yesterday, a warm front—I make coffee, sit on the balcony, and organize what my days will look like over the coming weeks: the work deadlines, gift shopping, and get-togethers. I’m especially looking forward to Christmas week, when my cousin Mona and her fiancé, Jia-Ching, arrive in Beirut from California to get married here. Then I’ll be off to spend Christmas Day with my family in Houston.

I’m one of the few people among my friends in the States who doesn’t find December hugely stressful and dispiriting. But in my own way, this year I’m channeling some of my American friends’ angst. Even though the holidays, in all their rushing-around nuttiness, bring back happy memories, this year the religious and political realities—and obstacles—of life in the Middle East are weighing more heavily on my mind.

In America, practicing or ignoring religion is a mostly personal choice. In Lebanon and the Middle East generally, it’s much more complicated. Intermarriage is still a big deal. It’s becoming more common now but remains a hassle, and in traditional circles it’s as taboo as ever. Some of my Christian relatives in Lebanon married Muslims but had to go outside the country to do it, since there are no legal interreligious marital procedures in Lebanon, although Lebanon does recognize mixed marriages if they take place outside the country.

My cousin Mona is the granddaughter of one of my mother’s relatives, a Protestant who in the 1950s braved scandal and married an Iraqi Muslim. She had to face down plenty of disapproval at the time, but things haven’t changed so dramatically since then. During her Ph.D. work at Berkeley, Mona met Jia-Ching, a handsome Taiwanese-American grad student, and they fell in love and got engaged. Her family adores him, but in order for the two to get married in Lebanon, where virtually all of Mona’s relatives live, he’s converting to Islam; there’s no pressure from her family, but it’s less of a headache all around. I’ve known other couples who have had to decide whether one of them will convert, or whether they’d have to just give up on the idea of marrying in Lebanon.