Za’atar in the Garden

Aarbaniyee, Lebanon, 2012

We make our way up the narrow mountain road in a cab filled with cigarette smoke. Arabic songs sneak in between radio static as Joseph talks of a civil war that ended twenty-two years ago. The way his voice tightens and his English becomes more reckless it seems more like twenty-two days.

“That’s where a good friend died,” My guide points to a patch of grass as we pass a roadside shrine to the Blessed Mary. “He died inside my arms, habibi.” He shakes his head and doesn’t even slow down as he takes the corner. My stomach turns with the motion of the car. The large breakfast I consumed sits heavy in my belly, threatening to come back up. Not yet please, I implore silently. The tear-shaped uvula at the back of my throat still stings from yesterday’s purge.

I am here in my parent’s country on assignment. I pitched a piece to my editor on nouvelle Arab cuisine in Beirut. She was reluctant, but I was persistent, desperate. I needed an escape, and she thought the piece had potential. Things were tense at work. I hated my job at the magazine, but it wasn’t waitressing and there was health insurance. But I was a tire stuck in mud—spinning fast but getting nowhere. Things were also tense with Anthony. My personal trainer fiancé was boot-camp intense about diet; food was my albatross. My body was a brown, sandstorm of flesh that bit and stung his cage-gray eyes. It overwhelmed him with its miles of desert, and he got lost in it chasing a mirage of beauty that could never exist with an appetite like mine. I knew this because I spent my teen years on a quest for the same illusion.

Now I am in the slopes of Mount Lebanon, parallel to the Mediterranean coast. The sound of cicadas and church bells and the wheezing engine of Joseph’s old jalopy fill the pine and salt scented air. Below us, the city of Beirut breathes traffic in and out as a tapestry of bullet holes decorates sporadic buildings throughout the capital. Compromised infrastructure collapses in the historic city on a regular basis, vestiges of the fifteen-year war between Christians and Muslims. We are driving toward a village called Aarbaniyee, nestled among groves of cedar trees. Here, all that falls are pine cones softly from cedars. And hearts when they remember or discover.

I can’t pull my thoughts from the shrine even as it fades from view: in the long blades of grass a wooden cross, a picture, framed, of Mary, several lit candles in glass holders, and a fresh bouquet of white calla lilies. Calla lilies like centerpieces on tables in Italian restaurants whose food I’ve reviewed. Calla lilies like centerpieces on tables in the Italian restaurant where Anthony proposed. That night I ate an entire basket of soft rolls soaked in melted butter. I remember thinking of the calla lilies as I vomited them up later in the evening. I was down five pounds. Anthony told me I looked beautiful in my tight black lace dress.

My corpulent chaperone turns the conversation from history to food. “Your belly must be crying by now!” he says. The chanting of the Sisters of St. Charbel’s echoes through the open window as Joseph calls someone from his cell phone. He has no idea how much my belly weeps or the civil war that rages inside me, I think as the cabbie talks in loud, fast Arabic.

“I’ve told my son Marwan to prepare lunch for us,” Joseph tells me as we pass by an old man collecting pine cones on the side of the road.

While I’m visiting Lebanon, Joseph refers to himself as my “father”. As the brother of a member of my Maronite parish back home, Joseph ensures that I have all I need—from rides to and from my hotel in Beirut’s Hamara district, to a translator on my culinary tour of the city.

“I’m famished.” I smile as he turns up the radio. In reality, I ate too much for breakfast. In addition to the thick, white, creamy labneh and fruit, I binged half a plate of pastries—honey drenched baklawa and rich knafeh. And I haven’t purged yet today.

We drive up the dirt road and pass under a canopy of overhanging lemon trees. Joseph’s home is a small, stucco structure. The scent of familiar spices—rich, tangy, sweet—greets me as I walk with Joseph through a tiled entryway filled with houseplants and into a cramped kitchen. A man in a white linen shirt and pants stirs something bubbling in one pot, moves another pot from the burner to a trivet, and sprinkles a dusting of herbs atop another dish, orchestrating a culinary ensemble. And he works without an apron –like an acrobat without a net.

“Habibi, this is Evie. She is visiting us from America.”

Marwan looks up from the stove at me for a rushed but friendly greeting. Apparently knowing better than to disturb his son at work, Joseph moves quickly to leave the kitchen. We pass through the space littered with vegetable skins, dirty dishes, and cream colored walls and cabinets, all bare except for the crucifix hanging beside the window.

I am led outside again. In the middle of a garden overwrought with lemon trees and bougainvillea in a panoply of bloom, a long, wooden table is set with bowls of olives and pistachios and plates of toasted pita. At the center, steam undulates from a silver coffee pot. Joseph instructs me to, “Sit, please, habibi.”

We sit and drink Turkish coffee in white demitasse cups as he asks questions about my life in America. Do you live with your father? How is the coffee? Does your family have a garden? After a few minutes, Marwan joins us with a plate of manousheh with za’atar. The crisped disk of bread, traditionally eaten at breakfast, has been lavished with spices. Joseph tells me that Marwan—tall, blue-eyed, dark haired with skin the golden color of wave-kissed sand—is a chef at an up-and-coming restaurant in Beirut. How serendipitous.

“Tell me Evie, have you had manousheh with za’atar yet?” Marwan asks as he takes a seat beside his father.

“Not here,” I answer, “but I’ve had it back home.” The toasted flatbread is zealous in its flavor. The ground dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, sumac, sesame seeds and salt blend in an unctuous way. He is wild with his spices, generous almost to the point of overbearing. Yet, just as my taste buds feel overwhelmed, the flavor pulls back, softened by the earnestness of the bread.

“And tell me, how does my za’atar compare with what you’ve had before?” He bites his lip to conceal a smile.

“Incomparable,” I eat the rest in a bite. “I have never really tasted it until this moment.”

Marwan reaches for the pot of coffee and pours himself a cup. He mentions a new nightclub I really must visit while I’m here, but I’m drifting towards memory to a time when my parents are still married, and Lebanese festivals at the church are a summer ritual. An August day steams like the coffee before me. It was the church’s annual Mahrajan. Anthony and I laughed at the way he choked on hookah smoke. He’d never tried narghile, flavored tobacco, before and couldn’t seem to master the art of inhaling. I told him I’d show him how it was done after I finished eating. He looked at me and asked, “You don’t think you’ve eaten enough?” He was handsome in his fitted T-shirt, blonde hair buzzed short for the summer, a life-sized ken doll with his all-American, boy-next-door good looks. The thick muscles in his neck tensed with his observation. “And I’m done trying to smoke this shit.”

“Of course. I don’t know why I’m still picking. I’m obviously full.” I pushed the paper plate with half a toasted pita away as if I didn’t want to lick the za’atar spices from the bread. I hadn’t even had dessert yet. But Anthony was right. He was a personal trainer. He knew about fitness and healthy eating.

“Where can I get a nice steak?” He looked at the pita on my plate as if it was contaminated, covered in a layer of crude oil instead of zaa’tar spices.

“We could go across the street to the diner?” I suggested.

“I guess that’ll work.” He got up from the long, picnic-style table. “And since you already ate, it’ll be a cheap date.” He laughed and threw his arm around my plump shoulders, tan and bare in a sleeveless dress.

Sitting across from me, Marwan laughs, and I’m back with him in the garden. Joseph has already consumed two plates of food before I try another bite. The late afternoon air smells of cigarette smoke and the resin of pine needles. I look across the yard where the backyard garden drops off and a valley below is filled with tiny, white-washed stucco houses and, in the distance, the blue of the Mediterranean. Marwan says he wants to attend culinary school in America. “You should,” I tell him, gesturing to the smoky eggplant babaganoush, grape leaves, and kibbeh. I put a perfect oval-shaped croquette of ground beef, minced onion, bulgur wheat, and pine nuts into my mouth. The allspice and cinnamon tease the beef and onion in a sweet, arousing meat flavor.

Joseph belches loudly. “So habibi, what is our plan for the rest of the day?” He asks as he leans back in his chair. “I have a fare into the city. You will come with? We can see more beautiful churches.”

“I’m quite happy here in this lovely garden.” I had no desire for more small stone chapels, ornate basilicas, or tombs of venerated priests and saints. I glance at Marwan, a gold crucifix hanging from the chain around his neck glints in the light like a star in a sky of dark chest hair. He is all the religion I need right now. How many nights did I lie awake staring at the wooden cross hanging next to my bed and praying for a flatter stomach, for smaller jeans, for boys to like me? I watch Marwan sip his coffee across the table. Nothing seems more worthwhile in this moment than this feast, in this garden, with this man. In this moment, even the inevitable purge seems insignificant.

“Please excuse me then.” Joseph stands. You must take very good care of our guest while I am gone, my son” He slaps Marwan on the back of the head.

“Of course.” He winks at me and rubs the place where is father slapped him.

A thousand butterflies take flight in my belly.

The Turkish coffee is replaced by licorice flavored liquor called arak. As Joseph leaves, Marwan pours some of the aggressive drink for the two of us. I continue to indulge in Marwan’s culinary offerings, and we drink arak and chain smoke as the sky assumes an inky shade.

Marwan exhales a wisp of smoke. “Tell me, Evie, you are married, yes?”

I inhale deeply. “No.” It’s not a lie. Anthony and I live together. Engaged but not married.

“How can this be so? Such a beautiful woman unmarried?” His eyes are the color of the sea I could drown myself in.

I feel my cheeks redden. I’ve had quite a bit of arak. I take a generous helping of babaganoush. And then more manuosheh. Thoughts of purging have become crumbs on white porcelain plates.

We spend the evening this way—amid banter and bites and flavors that are as exotic as they are familiar. All the while his eyes darken like the color of the Mediterranean Sea at dusk. I know I should stop eating. Anthony would be disgusted. I’ve probably gained three pounds just sitting here, but this, I tell myself, is the food of my people. This is the Old Country I’ve longed to visit.

The alcohol stops burning my throat after the third glass. Anthony didn’t want me traveling to Lebanon alone. I explained that I wouldn’t be alone; I have family here. “If you’ve never met them, how are they family?” He asked the night before I left as we laid in bed still panting from particularly energetic sex. Anthony has never liked Lebanese food. He thinks our dishes—all of our dishes—are unpalatable. He likes me skinny and accepts the purging as a necessary evil, an inoculation against a dreadful virus. My Lebanese curves, my wide, child- bearing hips, as my mother called them, and large breasts are the Song of Solomon, ancestral, and in my DNA as much as my appetite for good food. But I fight the innate with my purging.

The first time was freshmen year of high school. I was shopping for jeans with my mother. She had asked what size the boot-cut Levis were that I was modeling in the fluorescent lights of the fitting room.

“An eight.”

“Oh dear Lord, Evie. You’re wearing an eight now? No wonder boys never call you. You better start watching what you eat.”

When we returned home, I binged an entire box of Oreo cookies. Later, the cold of the bathroom tile pressed against my knees as I hunched over the toilet bowl. The scratch of my finger nail against my uvula stayed with me long after the sour taste of vomit.

Marwan gets up and moves to my side of the table. Sitting beside me, he picks up a grape leaf from a glass bowl and brings it to my lips, as if this is something we do everyday.

I let the tightly wrapped, stuffed leaf linger before parting my lips. He rubs it gently against them and asks, “What is the difference between a writer and a chef? Are we not both artists? Creators, poets, love makers?”

I open my mouth to the taste of lemon, ground beef, rice. The flavor is like a first kiss unfamiliar and ardent.

My first kiss with Anthony was in the parking lot of a movie theatre. I had eaten an entire tub of popcorn. My lips, coated in salt and artificial butter, met his under the orange glare of a lamppost. “You’d be so hot if you just lost a few pounds. And I’m not usually attracted to Ethnic chicks.” Afterwards, I went home and vomited. I had eaten grape leaves for lunch that day. An astringent taste like spoiled milk lingered in my mouth. I hadn’t purged since high school.

Marwan puts his hand on mine. He continues as I chew deliberately. “Each dish I create is a story, a story experienced differently by each person who tastes it. Aren’t your words simply bites to be savored?”

Once I could savor a variety of dishes, American, Lebanese, other cuisines. Then Anthony came into my life with kisses like chemo, and my mouth became a pyre until all I could taste was ash. And vomit.

Anthony walked in on me retching once, holding onto the porcelain toilet bowl like rosary beads, head bowed as if in prayer. My hands shook as I wiped the dampness from my lips. He stood there, perfectly toned arms folded across his equally toned chest. His blonde hair seemed to glow as the light from the hallway illuminated him. Leaning against the doorway of the dark bathroom, he said, “I guess if you’re gonna insist on eating so much, you’ll have to make up for it some way.” He turned around to walk away before adding, “You know, Evie, it would probably be healthier to just cut back on the calories.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” I responded as the toilet flushed.

“Yes. You’re exactly right, Marwan.”

He runs his finger through the za’atar spices in a quick motion, like he’s tracing a line in the sand. He puts the tip of his pointer finger inside my mouth, and I taste spices on his skin. I lean towards Marwan.

“It warms my heart to see a woman who enjoys good food. The food of our people. It is a sign of a healthy soul.”

I smiled, kissed Marwan, and took another helping of pita.

Rebecca Dimyan is an award-winning writer whose nonfiction essays and short fiction have appeared in national and international print and online publications including Vox, Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, xoJane, The Mighty, 34th Parallel, and many others. She teaches writing at several colleges in Connecticut.