On Food, and Carrying Sorrow, and Carrying Regret, but Mostly on Food

Disappearing, disappearing almost completely, almost without a trace, it happens slowly, piece by piece, it does take time.

I married young, I was twenty-three, freshly arrived from a country he had hardly heard of, apart from the war that had just gone into a brief hiatus, only to burst out again a couple of years later.

I was not a refugee, I was the first one from my country to receive a full year’s scholarship from his country’s government after the war, to study his language and his culture. So, no sad refugee story here, I did come as a student, but I also came from a country that had suddenly fallen down a rabbit hole, that I couldn’t navigate through or refer back to anymore. Also, I was the first one to emigrate, after me, lots of my friends did, most of my friends live abroad now, but I was the first one, no one to give me council, no one to show me a way.

Back in my old country, I was a respected amateur cook in making. I had been around the kitchen since I had to stand on a stool to be able to reach the stove top, and although I also did cook, baking was my forte. I’d have old, accomplished housewives feeling my cheese rolls, giving me small appreciative nods and mumbling something in the vicinity of them “being as soft as a soul.” When old, accomplished housewives go out of their way to praise your cooking they’re really condescending, only so that you know. Soft mumbling, small mods and quick conspiratorial glances are when you know you nailed it.

But there was this one particular thing I was the queen of: Pita. It is simple food, but it’s excellent, as only profoundly simple food can be.

I started making pita with my mom when I was six, maybe even earlier, and by the age of eleven-twelve making it for my family, often weekly, was my job. And saying I was teaming with pride being shown such trust doesn’t even start describing it! I’d go to the green market on Saturday mornings, on my own, all grown up and important, I’d buy the filo dough at my regular filo dough guy’s (“Kore kod Bore”), his were always fresh made early that morning, he’d count the thin sheets of dough and roll them first in a thin greased paper, and then in a kind of industrial aluminium foil with packaging of fruit juice printed on it. Then I’d buy the eggs at “my” peasant women’s stand, if she was there, and if not, I’d dance around the whole egg part of the market, and decide who looked like a peasant most likely to have fresh eggs. And then, there was the cheese, oh, the green market cheese, that was the best part of the Saturday morning shopping! I’d sample all, all, the cheeses at the cheese area, I’d feel so grown up and knowledgeable, I’d taste and discuss cheeses with the cheesemongers, we’d nod to each other in that particular “we who know our way around the cheese” way, not unlike the conspiratorial nods I already shared with the housewives.

I’d buy a piece of riper (we’d say older) white cheese, slightly dry and crumbling and with a stingier aroma, sometimes made of sheep milk, if I was feeling adventurous, and then I’d buy a whole lot more of young cheese, snow-white and soft, with mild taste and flaky texture. And then I’d combine it the with eggs and other ingredients, going back and forth, trying to get to that right consistency, because, you see, there is no recipe for pita. That’s a kind of food your grandma teaches you how to make, using the measurements such as “take a handful of this, and a pinch of that, and a good piece of”, which drove my mother crazy, but the older I get, the more fond I am of this type of recipes.

So, anyhow, there’s no recipe for pita. You have to make it many times in order the get that know-how. And I had gotten mine before I became a teenager, no wonder I was so proud of it.

So I move to this far away country, I get married. And I make him a pita. Getting hold of filo dough was a bugger. No freshly made “Kore kod Bore”, but I found some frozen, Turkish, or Greek, of serviceable quality. No such luck with cheese, the only white cheese in the entire kingdom was a single brand of “Feta”, in Turkish packaging, which did raise my hopes, I thought “Turkey is not that far away from Greece, they should know how to — …” until I saw, printed in tiny letters, that it was Danish made, oh, god, why. But, sure, it was white cheese, and applying all of my aggregated know-how in balancing it with thick Turkish yogurt (also Danish made, why?) I kind of managed the right consistency, and made a decent pita, even for my high standards.

“This is great,” he said, “But where’s the rest of it? This is, like, the boiled potatoes, right? So, the rest is missing, like, where’s the rest of the dinner? Ha ha! Just kidding.” I said nothing much. I made it again some time later, and perhaps once again a couple of years later, and he made the exact same joke every time. Ha ha, just kidding.

So I just stopped, I never made it again. In the coming years I slowly stopped cooking the food I used to make, and even suggesting what to cook. I made food, of course, we had to eat, but it was his type of food, pre-dressed parts of chicken in an aluminum form with rice and broccoli, pre-made fish bolls in white sauce, with potatoes. Fish soup from a bag, tomato soup, too, just add water.

I’d put on makeup, he’d say, “Aw, you dolled up, ha ha, just kidding!”

I stopped wearing makeup, I started liking colour beige, and dressing accordingly.

Fifteen years later, our eldest daughter is in the first grade. Yes, I know, fifteen years is a long time. But disappearing, disappearing almost completely, almost without a trace, it happens slowly, piece by piece, it does take time. So, my daughter is in the first grade, and the school is having International Food Day. They phone us, immigrant parents, mothers, and ask us to make something from our country. The first year, I decline, I can’t cook, and besides, there isn’t anything special about the food from my country. But we do go there, we chat with moms, the kids run around, we taste food from Argentina to Japan via Eritrea, and have a blast of a time. So the next year, when they call me, I say I’ll do it, but I wreck my brain about what to cook. And I think, well, it’s such a relaxed atmosphere, the bar isn’t that high, I’ll make a pita, no matter how boring it might be. So I make one, and carry it over hot, it’s best eaten hot, I cut it in pieces and write what it is made of, and put a little flag of my country, and take a step back, trying to pretend it’s not mine, trying to see, discretely, how it is received. There were a couple of kids there, and then some more kids, and then some more, and then suddenly, an empty place on a long raw of tables burdened with food.

Right, I thought to myself.

So, I made it again the next year. This time a group of kids, and some parents, were waiting for me, giggling. I brought it, I put it down, they cleared it up. No lone empty space this time, we moved the food around and covered it. Had a blast of a time again.

A thought appeared in my head, a little seed of a thought, that the world according to him was not the only version of the world. That there may be others. That was a very small thought, it needed nourishment, so I started small, I started making pita for my girls, when we were alone. How they loved it! Then I started making it when their friends were around, they ate like little beasts. For my own friends, when I was alone, or when visiting them. For a long time, I made only pita, a dish I was proficient in before I was a teenager. But I slowly started remembering that I used to cook other stuff too, to bake, to make cakes. Remembering that I used to wear makeup, that used to write, that I used to make people laugh, and also, fuck beige.

It felt like a slow awakening, and it took a long time. Trying to remember yourself from before you disappeared, to reassemble your thoughts, reaching back through a fifteen years long mire, sodding, treacherous grounds, thick fogs rolling over them. You reach back to yourself, and you don’t know whether you’ll find anything there at all.

Eventually, I did find back to myself. I got divorced, I moved out. I have regained much of what I had lost. I started again talking, and laughing, and having own opinions. I’ve learned new things too, I’ve learned how to apologise without a ‘but’, how to receive compliments, and how to express love. I got in touch with old friends, I made new. I slowly built a little world for myself and my girls, a little life, after our measure, warm, snug, secure, friends and family, love and beauty, and food.

But every time I need to push myself, to reach out, to grow, I start at the kitchen. It’s a little, delimited place, a sand box model of life. Kitchen is my safe place, a place where I can try and fail, be boring and adventurous, be mediocre and excellent, where I can try out life.

And that life, sometimes it is scary, and challenging and, between us, terrifying, you look at it and you think “How am I ever going to get myself out of this? How on earth did I end up with this beast! Where the hack are its guts?”

And then you solve it, slowly and methodically, like a puzzle. The fish. And life, too. (The guts are right under the head, on the upper right side of the underside. I learned that the hard way)

Sometimes life slows down, you get all mushy and sentimental, you miss people, places, times, long gone, you miss your grandparents and the smell of the winter evenings and their wood-burning stove. Then you cook slow, simple, and rustic.

Sometimes you think “You know what, I don’t wanna cook, I just want to play! I want colours! I want textures! Shapes! I want it all! Now!”

And sometimes it’s not about life at all, it’s just about bread, as simple as that, you bake a bread because you want to feel its smell, you want to hear the hollow sound the warm crust makes when you gently tap on it.

And you tap on it, and you whisper to yourself, “Let it go, let it go, the sorrow, the regret, stop mourning the food you haven’t cooked, the people you haven’t loved enough, the stories you haven’t written, it’s such a heavy burden, let it go, now you’ve gotten it all back, all of it, and more, let it go…”

And sometimes I think I will manage it, that I will drop it like a heavy winter coat on a spring day, the burden of sorrow, the regret of the years lost, of the life half-lived.

And sometimes I think I never will.