This article is excerpted from my book Wisdom of the Senses. The Chapter is called "The Appreciative Powers of Taste".
Taste is first and foremost a gustatory experience of great pleasure through which people nourish their bodies three times a day, not to mention the inevitable daytime snacks and midnight forays to the refrigerator. While the other senses could be called solitary senses because they are essentially appreciated on their own, either through the direct vision of seeing the sublime wonders of nature, the intimate experience of listening to rhythms and the appreciation of the harmonies emitted by every physical thing, or the unique experience of smell that introduces the essence of a thing through the chemical molecules in the air, the art of tasting is usually done in communion with others and therefore could be called the social sense. People generally feel uncomfortable dining alone, and dining alone in a restaurant can actually be a painful or embarrassing experience, singling a person out in some unexpected manner since people are not expected to eat alone, much less in a restaurant. We eat with family or friends; business meetings often take place over lunch; weddings always find their culmination in a feast with treasured guests; Irish wakes are notorious for the amounts of food and drink consumed in tribute to the dead, as if in celebration of the life that has now completed itself and passed away. Every culture uses food as a sign of friendship, approval, or commemoration. In Arab and Islamic countries, the celebration of food as a sign and complement to hospitality is a well known aspect of the Islamic culture. I have been invited into Egyptian, Emiratee and Palestinian households and plied with every manner of food from kusheri, an exotic and layered combination of rice, lentils and pasta, topped off with a thick tomato sauce and sprinkled with pan-fried onions, to stuffed pigeons, considered not only a delicacy, but also a special offering to the expectant guest who can savor the succulent pieces of meat as they fall away from the tiny, fragile bones.
At the turn of the millennium and most notably before the iconic date that now defines the ambiance of our time, 9/11, I found myself in a small Pathan village not far from the infamous Khyber Pass in an area that prides itself on hospitality to the guest and considers the satisfaction of the guest to be a point of honor as well as the basic etiquette of good manners. We arose early for the ritual prayer before the sunrise, just after the emergence of the first light of dawn, called in Arabic the dawn prayer (al-salat al-fajr). Once the prayer was over, we sat down on carpets and cushions strewn across the floor for an elaborate breakfast spread that included eggs mixed with tomato and spices and fried in olive oil, the famous and oily paratha, to help scoop up the spicy eggs, fresh mango juice served as a milk shake, homemade yoghurt and laban mixed with raw honey, together with a plateful of meat and potatoes swimming in a thick curry sauce. We ate this delectable fare to our heart’s content before the hour struck six in the morning.
Several hours later, we were on our way to visit some people in a neighboring village and we were no sooner ensconced in the sitting room next to the inner courtyard, that curiously housed a buffalo, several goals, and a flock of chickens and geese when we were served an additional spread of fresh fruits and biscuits washed down with white tea or tea with milk. By ten o’clock that morning, we were led yet again into another inner courtyard that effectively blocked the noise and dust of the village street outside in the public domain. This courtyard was graced by an elegant peacock and a variety of other birds in small wooden cages singing their hearts out, together with the traditional buffalo contentedly chewing on heaps of grass, its dark skin hanging down from its ample torso like an elegant shawl. I was led into one of the inner chambers off the courtyard and was immediately struck by the elegant, leather-bound books all embossed with titles of gold lettering that lined heavy wooden bookshelves along the back and sides of the room. Many of the books were either Qurans or books of Tafsir, which are commentaries and ancient manuscripts on the Quran, the sacred traditions or Hadith of the Prophet of Islam. Once again, after elaborate ritualized greetings and bear hugs, we sat ourselves cross-legged on the floor bedecked with beautifully hand-woven tribal carpets. I am always struck when in the company of these tribal people by the ease with which they sit around together in silence without uttering a word, once the ritual pleasantries have been accomplished. One has the impression of calm patience, that there will be time enough to say what one has to say without the inconvenience of being rushed into words that could be inappropriate, misunderstood or offensive. Silence is a luxury these people can afford without being embarrassed by the absence of words; in fact, it is considered a virtue to the extent that one should speak only when one has something of value to say.
When in doubt, food is called in, and this was no exception. It was only ten in the morning, but already five hours since the early morning prayer, and this gathering was made historic by my presence: the foreign guest neutralizes all other obligations, social or otherwise. Piping platters of steaming hot food was soon brought in amid my feeble protests. There were heaping platters of fresh chicken legs and thighs that had been fried a golden brown in buffalo oil, a thick curry of meat and ladies-fingers spiced up with cloves and cardamom, and the traditional chapattis burnished tan, sitting on the platter like folded napkins, steaming hot and invitingly fresh. Amid futile protests, I delicately probed through the spicy curry for a succulent piece of meat and with a finger full of chapatti, I was able to rip off a golden brown wedge of meat from one of the freshly cut chicken thighs whose meat I took note was annoyingly chewy, but delectably juicy, unlike the dried out cardboard supermarket chickens that I had been fed all my life. This too was eventually washed down with steaming cups of hot milky tea.
Having besotted ourselves with food and drink, my friend Farman, the Pathan body guards and I wrapped ourselves up again in our woolen shawls to ward off the winter chill of the morning, made our way back out into the dusty street and climbed back into the waiting jeep. We were on our way to the fish market where we bought several kilos of river fish for the im-pending lunch. The group of Pathans were very excited about this, and one of them had in-vited us all back to his house for lunch. After the noontime prayer and having gulped down great drafts of freshly drawn well water from inside the inner courtyard of the house, we were all ensconced in a variety of supine attitudes on pillows and cushions strewn across hand-woven beds that were set out in the courtyard under the roof terrace to take advantage of the noonday winter sun. After much banter and talk among my Pathan friends as they rough-housed with each other in their beloved Pashtu language, fragments of which I was beginning to miraculously pick up: “Sit down, be patient, get out of the way, eat more,” was about the extent of my linguistic repertoire, but it inevitably produced gales of laugher and sustained mirth whenever I uttered one of their guttural commands. I also knew how to say the word for meat, and this too sent the other guests into a turmoil of mirth. Younger brothers brought out more piping hot steaming platters of bryiani rice and curry and a variety of Nan breads. Then the fish arrived as if in procession carried across the inner courtyard by a number of younger brothers, several platters of heaping fried fish encrusted to a crisp with flour and spices.
My oversized Pathan friends, made to seem larger than life by the great encompassing woolen shawls that they sat around wrapped in to ward off the winter chill of the day, dug their great gorilla paws into the rice, meat and fish with great aplomb as if they had never eaten before. I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, unsure whether I would be able to meet the moment and eat a sufficient amount of food to satisfy the strict protocol of the occasion. Hospitality after all is a two edged sword, the host plies the guest with unlimited amounts of food and drink, all delicacies to be sure, and by way of counterpoint, the guest is expected to eat his fill to the satisfaction of the onlookers; anything less than full coverage of all the platters is surely frowned upon. People on either side of me were offering me the choicest morsels of meat and fish. As for the rice bryiani on offer, laden with spices, I had to sift my way through the colorful ménage to make sure that I wouldn’t swallow a whole cardamom, a rough edged clove, or a piece of cinnamon bark. I can report that I was at the point of complete distraction and not concentrating properly on what I was eating, when my friend offered me a succulent piece of fish that I swallowed without fully chewing, much less investigating whether there might be an unwanted bone in the midst. Sure enough, I knew that I had problem as soon as I swallowed the bulky ball of rice and fish. A fish bone was stuck in my throat that felt like an old shoe. The story of my journey to a hospital in Peshawar where ultimately the offending bone was assiduously extracted from my aggravated throat has been related elsewhere , so I will refrain from going into the details of the mad car ride into the city, how my Pathan body-guards ran into the hospital and commandeered the emergency room to protect the “foreign guest” with their trusty Kalashnikovs and my subsequent relief, and the relief of my Pathan friends, when the offending bone was expertly removed by the doctor with a pair of pincers.
By the time we got back to my friend’s ancestral home, all the people in the village knew the story of my adventure and were reciting prayers of thanks and gratitude that there was a happy outcome to the tale. This of course called for afternoon tea with biscuits, dried fruits and every manner of nuts and chips spread out across a mat on the sitting room floor, with more visitors coming to welcome me upon my safe return to the village. Plans were already being made for the evening meal, and a great brouhaha was in progress down the garden path and across the street in the inner courtyard of the house of Farman’s uncle. He and his family had been planning this event for the entire week, and it was indeed the final night of my visit to the village. A live sheep had been slaughtered for the occasion and it was considered a great honor that this foreign guest would be coming to grace their household. Men from neighboring villages had been invited and were apparently gathering for the great evening repast that was about to take place. I found myself shaking under the folds of my woolen shawl, which I pulled around me now even tighter, partly because of the increasing cold that was creeping across the open courtyard and into the inner sanctum of the darkening rooms of the house where we were gathered, awaiting the signal to move in procession down to the house of Farman’s uncle who was waiting with his guests with great anticipation. And indeed I was partly quaking at the thought of having to eat yet another meal on top of the mountains of food that I had already consumed that day, not to mention the unwanted fish bone that was added to the mix.
We all made our ablutions and said the sunset prayer on carpets spread out on the mud floor in the courtyard of the ancient house, built like a fortress in this dusty little village. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to eat anything more, and I went through the ritual greetings and salaams of the various guests who shook my hand and embraced me with great warmth and emotion, in addition to their mumbled salaams that is the traditional Islamic greeting. Many smiles were exchanged, and soon enough the room broke out into the traditional banter that I had come to expect from these social, friendly people. They were obviously excited by my presence, and my friend recounted tales to the invited guests of my background, my position and status at work, my many years as a Muslim, the many countries I had visited and the many books that I had written on Islam and other subjects. He embellished his tales with great exaggeration and verve, much to the delight of the onlookers who nodded approvingly. They all smiled graciously or laughed heartily; I could see their cold breath emerge as icy smoke into the frigid night air as I sat there myself chilled to the bone.
I sat there cross-legged and propped up on cushions, looking demure and exuding an air of agreeability, as though through a hint of a smile and a twinkle of an eye, I were attesting to the veracity of the tales my friend was recounting. Needless to say, I didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry and longed for the days of fasting when the Muslims go the entire day without food or drink until the call to prayer at the sunset. I was beginning to realize, in spite of my honored status as beloved foreign guest, the joys of hunger up against the miseries of fullness and satiation that comes with overeating. The Quran informs us: “Eat and drink, but do not be extravagant.” (7:31) Never again would I long for black forest cake or baked ziti. I had had my fill of food to last me a lifetime. Still, it wasn’t long before a plastic floor cloth was laid down across the sitting room carpet and heaping platters of hot food was spread across the floor. Secretly, I vowed never to eat again and promised myself to take up fasting as a permanent ritual, affording a deeper pleasure than any culinary dish could ever offer me again. Somehow, I got through the evening of celebration to the great hospitality of these Pathan people, who honor their guest in many ways, not the least of which by plying the unsuspecting guest with platters of food to their heart’s . . . content.
I enjoyed reading your detailed account of feasting in excess as an honored guest, and to honor your hosts. You buggered on despite having a fish bone lodged in your throat. I can relate to the aftermath of overeating by swearing off another morsel of food. Eating in excess blurs the lines of distinction between cultures.
I will begin with a note that your Bosnia River story was removed from the list when you posted this story on the same day. I have had the same problem posting segments of a short story on the same day. It's better to post each segment or each new story on individual, consecutive days to avoid them from being removed from the list of new stories.
I read with delight your story of culinary excess in the hands of your Pathan hosts. Based on what you wrote about your reputation, I can see why the village honored you so much as a great man from the mystical country of the United States. I experienced similar treatment from a family in Karachi for four days where the three sisters in the household all competed to provide me with a luxurious spread of food that I was expected to taste, if not heartily eat, to the watchful eyes of everyone at the table checking my judgment with every bite. Fortunately, like you found, the food was delightful and I enjoyed every bite to their admiring joy.
On a tour to the interior my host bought about 50 pounds of four kinds of fish that were exotic to me. That evening, I was served all four kinds of fish. Fortunately, being a fish eater from my youth where we had bread handy to force down any errant fish bones that caught in our throats, I managed to eat some of all those fish without having to be rushed to an emergency room like you, further endearing you to your hosts with your return that evening and invincibility. ;-)
I fully understand your difficulty enduring the cold. Even though I was there in January, Karachi was quite pleasant being near the coast and much further south, I never was cold.
In my novel, War's End, my protagonist, Ali, spends several chapters in the Tribal Territories. I only wish I had your experience before writing that portion of the novel. It would have enriched my descriptions of the people and the place immensely.
Exploring the impact of literary icon Flannery O'Connor's noted legacy on the cultural realities of modern-day America, the world, and a certain author.
Exploring the impact of literary icon Flannery O'Connor's noted legacy on the cultural realities of modern-day America, the world, and a certain author.
