…aren’t written by theologians or missiologists.  They’re cookbooks.  Hospitality is a central part of our ministry and hospitality almost always involves food.  In our five years of working with refugees, this has been an adventure.  It has actually changed the way we eat, and thus it’s not an exaggeration to say the way we live (we now have a diverse selection of dried beans and lentils, buy 15 kilo bags of rice, and cook from scratch more often than not).  There are things in our pantry that I probably would not have recognised in my early twenties.  Noomi Basra?  Ful medames?  I wouldn’t be without them now.

But back to the cookbooks.  They’re wonderful tools when it comes to hosting refugee friends from the Middle East.  Not so much for the reason of cooking food that they are more used to.  Rather, these books open a window better understanding of their culture.

Two of my current favourites are considered ‘classics’ in Middle Eastern cookery:  A New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden (1985) and Middle Eastern Cookery by Arto Der Haroutunian (1982).  Interestingly, both of these books are much more than a collection of recipes.  They describe culture and customs associated with food and include many proverbs and folk stories.  It’s clear that food and cooking in Middle Eastern cultures is not a peripheral activity, but a central event around which the rest of life revolves.  As Roden observes, “The activities of cooking and eating reflect many subtly intricate facets of the Middle Eastern character and way of life.  They are intensely social activities, while the dishes hold within them centuries of local culture art and tradition.” 

Claudia Roden’s book is wonderful.  The recipes we’ve tried thus far have been tasty, but it’s Roden’s anthropological insights that make her book so illuminating.  I would actually suggest the “Introduction to the New Addition” as required reading for anybody working or hoping to work in the Middle East.  It’s one of the most lucid, respectful, and accurate descriptions of hospitality customs that I’ve come across.  She even manages to describe how traditional customs can exist, even when seemingly “Western” norms have been partially adopted, “Actions and words reveal an attachment to ancient tradition.  At buffet dinner parties in our house, for example, the guests stood far away from the table and had to be urged and pressed to eat.  Although the mechanics of the European table, the knife and fork, and the table napkin, hand been adopted, the hold Middle Eastern manners and rules of bienséance remained.”

 

Arto Der Haroutunian’s book is more broad, as far as the food is concerned – he includes recipies stretching out to Azerbaijan.  In stark contrast to Roden’s careful observation, Haroutunian’s cultural commentary is more opinionated, humorous, politically incorrect, as well as prone to hyperbole.  It is worth keeping in mind that he writes as an Armenian whose family carried the memories of the 1915 Armenian Genocide.  In writing about the importance of burghul wheat for Armenians, he tells the following story, “For generations my people hidden in mountain ravines and caves lived on tzavar [burghul] and a little rice, when available, while the barbarian hordes [Seljuks and Mongols] ravaged our biblical land, destroying churches, castles, burring villages, everything, everything! that lay in their way.  But we survived thanks to the God given goodness of those tiny grains that possessed the waters of the seas, the rays of the sun and all the goodness of life.  Blessed is the Lord, blessed be the life giving grains of tzavar and rice.” 

Interestingly, both of these books are written by people who are from minorities in the Middle East.  Roden is a Sephardic Jew and Haroutunian an Armenian Christian.  If Roden is correct when she says, “Cooking in the Middle East is deeply traditional and non-intellectual – an inherited art… Its virtues are loyalty and respect for custom and tradition, reflected in the unwavering attachment to the dishes of the past,”  it probably took these people who are at once cultural insiders and outsiders to decode this culinary tradition and make it accessible to those of us who come new to age old culinary tradition.

Another cookbook worth a look is Taking Tea in the Medina by Julie Le Clerc.  Her book is possibly a bit more adapted to the Western palate than the two already mentioned, but the recipes are simple, tasty, and the photography of the Middle East is worth the cost alone.  It’s a beautiful book that would grace any coffee table; and ours, if we had one.

The great thing about sharing food is that it’s a chance for us to learn from our refugee friends, who know so much more about cooking rice than we do.  When refugees are in such a needy position, this turns the tables and they have the dignity of being able to give, not only receive.  We, in turn, can impart our great knowledge of potatoes (why some mash and others end up like a block of soap when boiled).  It seems like such a basic thing, but mutual sharing of hospitality – I believe – is deeply spiritual.

Christine Pohl who writes extensively on the theology of hospitality describes it better than I could in the follow quotes from her book Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition :

“Although we often think of hospitality as a tame and pleasant practice, Christian hospitality has always had a subversive, countercultural dimension… Especially when the larger society disregards or dishonors certain persons, small acts of respect and welcome are potent far beyond themselves. They point to a different system of valuing and an alternate model of relationships…People view hospitality as quaint and tame partly because they do not understand the power of recognition. When a person who is not valued by society is received by a socially respected person or group as a human being with dignity and worth, small transformations occur…Many persons who are not valued by the larger community are essentially invisible to it. When people are socially invisible, their needs and concerns are not acknowledged and no one even notices the injustices they suffer. Hospitality can begin a journey toward visibility and respect.”

“I believe that hospitality…means to give of yourself…(in) other types of services you can give of your talents or…skills or…resources…The tasks aren’t what hospitality is about, hospitality is giving of yourself.; If hospitality involves sharing your life and sharing in the lives of others, guests/strangers are not first defined by their need.  Lives and resources are much more complexly intertwined, and roles are much less predictable.”

Food for thought… (forgive the pun).