The Terroir of Aubergines with N.S. Nuseibeh
Photo: Catherine Ramsay
Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it.
This month: Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman by N.S. Nuseibeh.
Namesake is a collection of essays exploring what it means to be a young, secular Muslim woman today, told through the lens of stories of the author's ancestor, Nusaybah, the only woman warrior to have fought alongside the Prophet.
N. S. Nuseibeh is a British Palestinian writer and researcher, born and raised in East Jerusalem. In Namesake, she weaves her own experiences of anxiety, of racism, of joy, of illness, of cooking in shared houses, of aubergines, with the myths and legends told of her ancestor. All of this makes this a book that I think should be required reading for everyone.
Namesake is out now, published by Canongate. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.
This month, all the revenue I would normally get from Patreon, Apple Podcasts and Substack will be donated to mutual aid requests from Gazan people on Operation Olive Branch. If you would like to make your own donation, send me a screenshot and I'll comp you a subscription.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
Transcript after the embed
This transcript is auto-generated by Descript and may contain unintended errors.
[00:00:00] Lucy: This is Lecker I'm Lucy Dearlove. This month on the Lecker Book Club, Namesake, Reflections on a Warrior Woman, by N. S. Nuseibeh. Namesake is a collection of essays exploring what it means to be a young, secular Muslim woman today, told through the lens of stories of the author's ancestor, Nusaybah, the only woman warrior to have fought alongside the Prophet.
[00:00:29] N. S. Nuseibeh is a British Palestinian writer and researcher, born and raised in East Jerusalem. In Namesake, she weaves her own experiences of anxiety, of racism, of joy, of illness, of cooking in shared houses, of aubergines, with the myths and legends told of her ancestor. And this makes this a book that I think should be required reading for everyone.
[00:00:52] N: I write in the book that food is a way of making myself, and my Palestinian ness. It's literally palatable to people, and look, it's just a book about delicious things. Oh, surprise! Twists! There's some politics!
[00:01:07] Lucy: It was tricky to figure out exactly how to approach this interview, if I'm being completely honest.
[00:01:13] I really wanted to give N the space to talk about the book in its breadth and depth and beauty, because she deserves to celebrate this. It's an incredibly intelligently written and funny and stunning and triumphant piece of writing, which lays out the complex and often painful reality of existing as a Palestinian person in the world within the author's own lifetime, alongside the historical context.
[00:01:41] I also really wanted to talk to her about Palestinian food because that's something we've talked about together before, and her writing about it, her writing about aubergines, about Jerusalem breakfasts. They're stunning and mouth watering, and they are in this interview as well, so I was really pleased To be able to do that too.
[00:02:02] But before we start, I actually just want to address that the author herself begins namesake with a note that acknowledges that the book was written and finalized before the events that unfolded during and after the 7th of October, 2023. I'm just going to read you a slightly shortened version of that author's note to begin.
[00:02:23] I have no idea how long this war will last, whether Gaza will exist by the time of publication. There is no point writing down the number of children killed. That number will have been dwarfed by the time you read this. My intention with this book was to bring certain narratives, Muslim, Arab and Palestinian ones, into the cultural consciousness of those outside the Arab world.
[00:02:45] I wanted to write for others who know these same narratives well, and also to show those who don't how much we actually have in common. Look at me, I write in these essays. I'm not so different from you. And wouldn't you want freedom? It is clear to me now that this is futile. Instead, reader, whoever you are, I simply hope that whenever you open this book, you think of Gaza.
[00:03:17] Anna and I spoke via video call, and to begin I asked her to give an overview of Namesake, for those who haven't read it.
[00:03:25] N: So, the book is called Namesake, and it's a collection of essays that uses the figure of Nusaybah bint Ka'ab, who is this 7th century warrior woman in Arabia who, Apparently is my ancestor.
[00:03:41] Supposedly, they say. I don't know if I believe it, but I use this figure and the stories about her as a kind of way to explore a range of different subjects from anxiety to motherhood to language to, of course, food.
[00:04:00] Lucy: I mean, I think this kind of, like, grey area of Nisei, but as a figure sort of connected to your family is really interesting.
[00:04:07] Like, when I've talked to people about the book, I've said like, oh yeah, you know, she, she has this ancestor and they're like, oh god, that's amazing. So she's a real person and, and like, she's related to her. I'm like, ah! Because it's kind of not entirely clear, right? And, but that's also, I think, often the case with these stories.
[00:04:24] Like they're not always black and white.
[00:04:25] N: Yeah, I mean it's from so long ago, you know, like the 7th century is a long time and we do have Interestingly, like, quite a lot of records that suggest that she was a real person and that, like, our lineage does trace down from her. I don't know. I just, I, I just kind of don't believe it.
[00:04:46] I don't know why I don't believe it. There's, I just, I'm just like, nah. She sounds too cool to be real.
[00:04:54] Lucy: I mean, that is true. That is true. So. Is she a figure that you were just aware of from, basically from the beginning?
[00:05:02] N: From your beginning? Yeah, yeah, so I always knew that she was supposedly our ancestor, that she was a warrior woman, that she like lost a hand or an arm during battle.
[00:05:14] Importantly for me, uh, that Her descendants were promised a place in heaven, so, you know, I always felt really chill about the afterlife as a result. Right. Yeah, so she was always kind of there, but I didn't really know that much about her. I had to do lots of research for the book and kind of try and find little snippets of stories.
[00:05:37] There isn't really that much written about her, but what I could find I sort of tried to use to then make up a kind of, you know, More a three dimensional picture of a person.
[00:05:48] Lucy: And you write in the book that you felt like writing about Ms. Saber would be less controversial. When you're writing about Palestine and about Jerusalem specifically, do you, did you still feel like that was the case when you started writing or after you finished writing?
[00:06:05] Or was there a point where you realised that it wasn't less controversial?
[00:06:09] N: I don't know. When I first started writing, Thought of the idea of somehow kind of using this figure in. In a book somehow, I guess it was, it was about five, six years. I mean, it was quite a while ago, and it was at a point in kind of the British consciousness when I think people were starting to you know, feel a bit more positively or a bit more curious maybe about Islam in general.
[00:06:38] Sort of there was a book called It's Not About the Burqa that came out that did quite well. Like people were starting, non Muslims were starting to be like, Oh yeah, maybe it's not that bad. Let's, let's, let's make it cool. Let's, let's, Let's, you know, let's cut into it. Let's look at this. And also at a time when sort of lots of Greek goddesses, Roman mythology was being sort of reinterpreted and looked at from like a feminist point of view.
[00:07:05] So between those two things, I thought, oh yeah, this, this warrior woman, ancestor of mine will just. I mean that, that, it seems like people might be interested in her, but I guess as I wrote the book and as I did more research and as I found that I couldn't really extricate this character from questions about Palestinian ness and Arab ness and Muslim feminism, it sort of I ended up not being able to avoid the controversial.
[00:07:37] I mean, I wanted, I think I had a clear intention when I set out to write the essays that I would sort of talk about a Muslim Arab experience, maybe a British experience, but I would avoid the subject of Palestine. I didn't really want to write about Jerusalem or about being Palestinian. You know, I wanted it to be like less personal, less revealing, less specific.
[00:08:00] I didn't want to get Yeah, I didn't want to get anybody's back up because I'm like very deeply ingrained people pleaser. So it's just like, you know, just, Oh, I'll just write about something that's like nice and inoffensive. But I just found that like I couldn't.
[00:08:19] Lucy: That's also a horrible way to bear that like you feel like you have to do that.
[00:08:23] N: Yep. Yep. But I mean, as the last six months have shown, being Palestinian is not something that. is considered vanilla in the world. Like it's not an apolitical thing. And I thought that I could, I thought that I could kind of just put it to the side and, you know, be a kind of more general person and have more generalities to connect with people over, but you know, I, even in writing about food, like I couldn't avoid talking about.
[00:09:02] Jerusalem about being Palestinian. Like it just, it kept coming back in. Like I. I found I just couldn't be honest. Yeah, without talking about this, like, very fundamental aspect of myself, which is that I am Palestinian and I was brought up in Jerusalem. And that's where my family is. And, you know, if you're talking about, like, ancestry and if you're talking about all sorts of like all the questions that I thought were more general ended up being so general.
[00:09:33] Stupidly specific.
[00:09:36] Lucy: Yes. Yeah. But I guess that that is really interesting, isn't it? Like what does it mean to write about ancestry without the present? Like I can completely see how you thought it was possible, but also that it very firmly was not. So yeah, that's kind of a really fascinating concern. Um, well I should probably get into the food because this is of course a food podcast and you know, the reason why I wanted to talk to you aside from the fact that it's a truly amazing book is that food is so.
[00:10:02] present. It's so present. Like when you very kindly sent me a proof copy of the book and you wrote a little note in it saying, Oh, the first chapter is about aubergines and it is. So can you tell us why you started with aubergines?
[00:10:15] N: Yeah, I guess. So I write in the book that food is a way of making myself and my Palestinian ness.
[00:10:24] literally palatable to people, and um, I think that's probably why I wanted to start the book with that essay. I felt like I could draw readers in, like, look, it's just a book about delicious things. Oh, surprise, twist, there's some politics. Yeah. And I guess I also, I found it a particularly interesting story about my, my ancestor.
[00:10:45] The, the one that, that Aubergine's chapter draws on is about this Nusayba woman making a meal for the prophet and then fasting. And it just seemed like a really interesting way into looking at her as a more sort of three dimensional character.
[00:11:04] Lucy: And so, can you, and please correct my pronunciation on this dish, but can you tell me about Betinjan Batiri, and why this dish, which maybe you can also explain to us what it is, why does it feel like such an impossible one to recreate?
[00:11:18] N: Yeah, oh my god, Betinjan Batiri is It's like my favorite dish ever. It's a beautiful blend of meat and spices and tomatoes and this like perfect small deliciously sweet type of aubergine that comes from this village in the West Bank called Batyr. And I guess it feels like home. feels in some ways, at least impossible to recreate because I don't have access to these special aubergines unless I'm in Palestine, but also to local sort of Palestinian produce more widely.
[00:11:51] You know,
[00:11:52] Lucy: that's a really interesting thing, isn't it? With food culture, like there's so much of it, you know, it's, it's great that people are sort of interested in, you know, In, in recipes from elsewhere and cooking them, but actually like so much of it is about place and provenance that it's kind of hard to do that and I think it's a, it was a really important point that I think maybe just hadn't occurred to me about many things, many recipes that I might read that actually I can't eat the version that this person is talking about and that's important.
[00:12:17] N: Yeah, it's so interesting because, you know, like, I feel like we realized the connection between. Like the specific soil and it's produce when it comes to things like wine, like, you know, that certain grapes will Right!
[00:12:30] Lucy: That's so true! The idea of Exactly! And
[00:12:34] N: we're, and we're so, you know, like people who are wealthy, not me, will pay a premium for like wine.
[00:12:39] Grapes, wine that come from particular grapes in particular areas and that, you know, that because they can taste the earth through the wine or whatever, that's what they say. And it's absolutely the same thing when it comes to other food, I think, you know, things like aubergines will also have the terroir in their, I don't know, in their essence and, and the kind of the, the way they're grown and they're, The, like, organisms that they are.
[00:13:06] Yeah, it's so strange that we don't think about the connection between, like, food and place or produce and soil in that way when it comes to, um, When it comes to sort of more general foods, I guess we've just gotten so used to things being globalized and everything being like available in plastic wrapped packets and Sainsbury's from all over the world.
[00:13:28] Lucy: Yeah. I think that it made me think about how kind of anonymized varieties of fruit and vegetables that are like, you know, we. I would go to the supermarket or the grocer or whatever and I would buy an aubergine, but I don't know what the name of that variety is, you know, I might be able to get like a smaller one from a different shop, but whatever, but yeah, it, the specificity is so often missing and it's, what is so important because it's nice to build a relationship with people.
[00:13:53] Yeah, that actually leads me on to something else I wanted to, to ask, to ask you about. So in the book you talk about food as a way to hold on to and pass on culture. And for example, you talk about the dish again, I'm so sorry, my Arabic is not, is not, is not there. The dish Mujadara is both something historic, so you describe it as a 13th century recipe and it's also very contemporary, something your sister in law might cook on weeknights because it's cheap, it's easy, it's delicious.
[00:14:21] Yeah. It's delicious. I found this really interesting and really moving, actually. And I think this kind of connects to what we were just talking about. As an English person whose food culture does not feel historic, whose food culture feels very borrowed, stolen, you know, from the colonial past that we have.
[00:14:38] Yeah, I have sort of ended up maybe feeling slightly rootless when it comes to my food culture. And I guess I'm really interested in your experience as a Palestinian person who has spent a long time in the UK studying. I, did you feel, well, I think I know the answer, this is quite a leading question because I think I know the answer to this because you do touch on it in the book, but did you feel a tension in those two very different experiences and cultures when you came to the UK?
[00:15:04] N: Yeah, I mean, I do think the food and eating culture is really important. different outside the Arab world. I mean, I grew up with everyone wanting to feed me constantly with food being this sort of casual, but communal thing. And it's, it is much more individualized in the UK. I mean, you have to have like dinner parties.
[00:15:24] If you want a communal eating experience, people don't just share food as a given. So I. I guess I, over the years, I've learned to kind of individualize my cooking a bit. Yeah, I remember listening actually to an episode of Lecker a while ago where you interviewed uh, Fliss Freeborn about her student cookbook and her saying everyone would go around to hers all the time for meals because she'd cook, but in my experience it was actually quite hard people getting people to want to sit and share food with me.
[00:15:52] Like, maybe it reflects badly on my university cooking. That seems so
[00:15:55] Lucy: wild. No, but I, I, yeah, I know what you mean. I think there's sometimes like this weird over politeness where, I mean, you, you kind of tell a story in the book where you do make dinner for your flatmates and they ask you how much they owe you, which, I mean, like, I can completely understand how that happened because I guess I have been in situations where somebody does ask people to chip in, but when you lay it out in that way, I mean, that's like, So alien to what your experience was as somebody that just shares food as this kind of like cultural communal experience.
[00:16:26] Yeah. That must've been so such a wild moment. I
[00:16:29] N: mean, and it, and I think people, especially at university, I mean, once you get older, there's more of a, maybe more of a relaxation around food, but in a kind of university environment, which is the one that I've been in for most of the time that I've been in the UK, there's like, you know, People want to, if they're socializing, they want to play drinking games and drunkenly get like chips and gravy or whatever.
[00:16:54] They don't really, you know, they don't really do the kind of excessive food that's part of that kind of food culture and it's partly, you know.
[00:17:07] Lucy: They do other things to excess, but not that. Exactly, and you
[00:17:10] N: know, maybe it's partly a budget thing, but also people will spend that money on alcohol. So I don't think it is necessarily, it's just You know, it's kind of, what do you see as a kind of social lubricant or as a good time?
[00:17:24] And I don't feel like the people that I've interacted with in Britain see food as a social lubricant. They see alcohol as a social lubricant. It completely changes the sort of dynamics around eating together.
[00:17:36] Lucy: That's such a like fascinating comparison, isn't it? Because I think it also, it makes so much sense when you consider like the, like the sort of cultural conversation in England about like elitism, you know, like if you, if you buy a coffee or, I mean, I feel like this is the example I always come back to because I find it so ridiculous.
[00:17:53] But like, if you buy a coffee, you're like a liberal metropolitan elite. And it's like this idea that people can't just have access to or desire nice food. Yeah. of any form, because it's, it's, it's seen as being out of touch or like having ideas above your station. Yeah, it is, it is so fascinating. Well, just to, just to ask you one final thing about the Overdunes chapter, at the end of it, you imagine yourself sharing food and cooking for Zeba.
[00:18:18] Tell us about the dish that you tried to recreate for her and the kind of process of that. Cause I think it sounds like there's not a lot of information about it and you kind of. Yeah, so
[00:18:29] N: it's called Thurid or Tharid. And honestly, yeah, it was a very gross dish that I made solely for the purposes of research.
[00:18:38] Uh, there are modern versions of it that I'm sure are amazing. It's quite popular in Saudi Arabia as a dish, but I wanted to stick to the recipe that I found that was supposedly appropriate for the time. So, you know, like. 680 AD, a long time ago, and it involved, it involved unseasoned meat boiled in water with like whole onions and chickpeas.
[00:19:03] And stale flatbread sprinkled with sugar. And then, and then that whole like mixture was poured on top of the flatbread. It was really unappealing. It was, I mean, maybe, maybe it was a particularly bad recipe. Maybe I did something wrong. I did not enjoy it. I did, I could not imagine anybody, even Naseiba, enjoying it.
[00:19:25] Like, it was It was very gritty and tasteless. Not what you want, not what you want.
[00:19:36] Lucy: Because, yeah, my next question that I'd prepared for this was, do you think you were being too hard on yourself in the way that she might have reacted to this? Okay, that's Because I kind of, I'm listening to the ingredients, I'm like, you could put some salt in there and it would probably be fine, but no.
[00:19:51] N: I think, I think it was partly the sugar on the flatbread. The flatbread was stale and I used, I used non, like, you know, like the Sainsbury's. Naan that you can get in like the packet. So I just left that out for a couple of days. Which is,
[00:20:07] Lucy: that's pretty stale anyway.
[00:20:08] N: It's pretty stale anyway and it left it out for longer so it was really very tasteless.
[00:20:13] And then the sugar that I put on top just didn't really dissolve when I added the stew element. So there was sort of this uh, surprising and unpleasant, yeah, kind of texture to the, again, quite stale. And unappealing bread. So, no, I, I am glad that I live in a world where that's not my everyday food, I have to say.
[00:20:41] One of the things about looking back at history and then looking now. Yeah. Exactly.
[00:20:47] Lucy: Yeah. Did it, did it make you feel closer to her as a figure?
[00:20:51] N: I think it did, actually, because I really struggle. I mean, ironically, for someone who chose to this as a topic to write about, but I really struggle to picture history at all, like I find it really, I always get like hung up on like small details like, but how, how are they using the loo?
[00:21:08] Like what, what does that look like? Oh my God, it's the biggest question, right?
[00:21:13] Lucy: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:21:13] N: exactly. So I find it really, really hard to imagine what it, what it would have been like for anybody in the past. And I guess, yeah, like cooking and trying to use the, this recipe that supposedly, you know, was from that time did make me feel a little bit more connected than I might have done otherwise.
[00:21:32] It's sort of, I could imagine being someone who was eating this and thinking, Huh, this is my, yeah, this is what it's supposed to taste like. And this is what my food daily looks like. And it kind of gave me an insight that way, I suppose.
[00:21:50] Lucy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You talk a lot in the book about position, the idea of positionality.
[00:21:57] And, I, you know, I sort of understood that to mean, like, the context in which the writer is expressing themselves and how it's important to understand that to sort of take what we need from that. I'm interested in your views on that around food or cooking. Like, do you think positionality is important when we talk about those things?
[00:22:16] N: Yeah, absolutely. I think so because in food, as in other culture, there's the risk of appropriation, of, you know, using and benefiting from the culture of more. So I do think it's important to be sort of mindful of that if we can be. But I also, I really liked what, um, Ania said about this, Ania von Bremsen on one of your earlier episodes about cutting the bullshit and just saying, this is racial injustice, you know, rather than talking about appropriation.
[00:22:46] Like, I just thought that was so true, you know, like in the case of Palestinian food, for instance, there's definitely something that sort of is painful for me when foreigners referred to a cucumber and tomato salad as an Israeli salad rather than a Palestinian salad, because. To me, it's obvious that that's a Palestinian salad that has been appropriated
[00:23:05] Lucy: by
[00:23:05] N: Israeli culture.
[00:23:06] Or, you know. Something like Sabra Hummus, which is, you know, sold all over the UK. You see it on shelves
[00:23:12] Lucy: in supermarkets,
[00:23:14] N: owned by a huge Israeli company. And again, it's like, they're profiting from a Palestinian or from an Arab dish, from an Arab way of making hummus, you know, and that's what appropriation is.
[00:23:25] But then again, as Anya said, it's just, it boils down to racial injustice. So that's the important part. The appropriation part is like, Yes, that's an offshoot of it, but the racial injustice is at the core. At the same time, I don't want to come across as like, weirdly like, purist about food. Like, I think there's something really beautiful that happens with food.
[00:23:47] That kind of, I don't know, migratory alchemy that happens when, you know, people take local ingredients, um, to make versions of foreign dishes or the other way around, you know, like, um, I learned a lot and I've incorporated a lot into my own cooking from like various flatmates that I've had who've been, whether British, but like also Italian or Pakistani.
[00:24:11] And, you know, they've shown me different ways of like, of thinking about food and ingredients. And then I've taken those ways of thinking about food ingredients and applied them to Palestinian dishes that I know well. So there's also something, you know, lovely that happens with that mixing. It's just the appropriation is the profiting off of it, which I think is, you know, the racial injustice part, as Anya said.
[00:24:34] Lucy: Yeah, I think that's, that's such a really beautiful way of looking at it. I love that migratory alchemy. That's such a wonderful way of Like expressing that kind of like sharing of cultural ideas and practices and, and yeah, because that's, that's it, isn't it? It's like, it is about, yeah, profiting of one person over another rather than, yeah, sharing.
[00:24:52] Yeah, this possibly links into this, um, you describe yourself in the book as feeling too British in Jerusalem and too Palestinian in England. Do you think food has helped you navigate that kind of duality?
[00:25:04] N: I think it contributes to feeling the duality rather than managing it or navigating it like I think of, you know, whenever I'm ill, for instance, and I'm in the UK, all I want are, you know, my home foods that are good for illness, that Palestinians think are good for illness, like toasted pita bread and labaneh is like what you have when you're ill.
[00:25:25] And so, That's what I think of as wanting when I'm ill or sort of different teas, like Maramilla, which is made from this like wild sage that crows in the hills and in the Palestinian hills. And you can't really get that. Like I tried making sage tea with just normal sage in, in the UK. And it's just not the same.
[00:25:43] It doesn't have the magical properties. Um, yes, exactly. And so, especially in those moments where I like, I'm craving something that I know is. what my body would want for its nourishment or for its recovery for health or something. And, you know, my, like my British friends or whatever will look at me and be like, why that?
[00:26:09] Why not a Lemsip? Like have some Pepto Bismol for God's sake. Yeah, exactly. Everyone has their things, but it, it makes me feel more foreign and more Palestinian when in those moments, like the things that I know. The other people, if they were Palestinian would also suggest they're inexplicable for my, for my British friends.
[00:26:34] And, and likewise, I mean, you know, it goes to the way as well. Like when I'm in Jerusalem and I'm suddenly got like massive craving for like raspberries or something that you can't really get in Jerusalem. And, and again, it's sort of difficult to explain why, why you miss something or why something feels.
[00:26:55] It's a specific desire, you know, I want raspberries, not the local clementines or whatever. Why, why do I want, you know, but it's something to do with, I think, the fact that they evoke a particular place. It's not just that you want the flavor, it's that they, you know, Transport you
[00:27:13] Lucy: and it's, it's often I think about not being able to have it at that particular moment, right?
[00:27:18] Like it's so easy when you're in the place where it's available to like state that craving immediately. And we're sort of quite used to a world where that's possible within certain contexts. So then, yeah, like I can imagine that is extremely amplified when, and also by the kind of alienation experienced by people not understanding why this is so necessary.
[00:27:37] Yeah,
[00:27:38] N: exactly. Exactly.
[00:27:40] Lucy: You mentioned this already in the context of Nusaybah preparing a meal for the Prophet Muhammad and her fasting, but it felt important for me to ask you about the presence of fasting in the book because obviously that is something that is so, so related to food. That sounds like an incredibly basic way to put it.
[00:27:59] But yeah, you talk about your grandmother fasting, it comes up in the stories about Nusaybah. Yeah, how did it feel when you read about Nusaybah fasting and feeding others? Like, because you talk in the book about not necessarily really fasting yourself. Like, that not being part of your identity as a Muslim woman.
[00:28:20] Like, how did it feel to kind of read that about her?
[00:28:23] N: I mean, I have fasted. I did fast sometimes as a kid and occasionally for a few days as an adult. But, I guess In looking at that particular story of Naseba and the Prophet and the sort of making food, but then feeding him, standing aside, fasting herself, I guess what intrigued me about it is that it felt, it felt incongruous somehow, it felt uncomfortable somehow, that this like no fucks given warrior would be doing something that's so associated with like the domestic, so associated with the feminine.
[00:29:03] And it started sort of getting me thinking about the self negation aspects of fasting and the fact that sort of eating and appetite have kind of been eyed with suspicion when it comes to women, you know, women are meant to be like small and not take up too much space. It's sort of transgressive almost for a woman to have a large and showy appetite.
[00:29:27] And. You know, and, and, like, even that is only really acceptable if the woman herself is very small. Like, how dare you be a large woman who has a showy appetite? You know, like, you're not meant to take up that kind of space. In thinking about, like, fasting and feeding, and food more generally, it just, it, that particular story kind of, highlighted a lot of complexities around it and a lot of contradictions, you know, that, that like feeding can be such a wonderful, like it was, we were talking about before this sort of warmth and community and love and, you know, all sorts of good things.
[00:30:09] And then also an, like incredibly gendered thing where, you know, It's very domestic and if you're a woman who's feeding then you know you're very normative somehow and if you're also feeding and not eating yourself then that makes you kind of doubly normative because then you're doing the domestic labor but you're not partaking in it and you're, you know, Um, you know, and you're keeping small, you're taking up even less space by not eating.
[00:30:37] That story and the kind of fasting element of it kind of opened up all of that to me. And um, that's what I tried to explore in the essay.
[00:30:45] Lucy: Yeah. Cause I mean, I should reiterate that this, this book is, has some wonderful sort of food stories in it, but it is about so much to do with food. Um, and you know, another example is, uh, where you talk about the presence of the veil, you know, the, um, Muslim women who wear the burqa Um, like that idea of that as privacy was so fascinating to me, like the idea of that being about like control, like controlling your environment as a woman, because the external side of your environment, you know, the external side of your environment.
[00:31:15] Is so sort of uncontrollable, like people coming and going all the time. Like, yeah, I guess the, the sort of a connection to that. It's hard to, again, maybe it's coming back to you making this dish that you found disgusting. Like, it's just really hard to understand the context of history and we should be really careful about applying our own understanding to it.
[00:31:33] Right. And I think there's so many ideas around food of like subservience and like. And I think, you know, in, in the UK, like I just think there's so much racism against Arab women in that context. Like there's just so many assumptions made of Arab women and Muslim women, you know, specifically that it's really, really important to understand.
[00:31:56] Yeah. Or not understand because you might not, but appreciate that there might be differences from your own experience is I guess what I'm trying to get at in
[00:32:03] N: that. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And as you say, there's, it's so. Interesting looking at the past and comparing it to the present because we're so likely to kind of superimpose our own understandings and our own you know, the weight of 1200 years of patriarchy onto the cooking of the dish when actually, you know, it's not, not necessarily the way that dish would have been cooked at the time.
[00:32:28] Lucy: Yeah.
[00:32:29] N: But it, it does also allow us to, I think, look at our norms more expansively. If we don't just look at them with sort of the gaze of right now, if we look at things in relation to history and look at it. look at things from the point of view of long ago, as well as with our sort of present day knowledge of all of the woke things that we all know.
[00:32:54] Lucy: Right. There's this amazing detail around the food that you eat with your family, like particularly when you're at home in Jerusalem, you know, it was just really, you talk about, um, is it kayaks? The bread that you're talking about, is that how you pronounce it? Cake and hummus and falafel and you and your mother boil white cheese and you make salad.
[00:33:15] Could you just tell us a bit about the food that you've grown up with and still kind of eat in Jerusalem and what you and your family eat there? I'd just really love to know more about that.
[00:33:25] N: I can absolutely talk about that. It's my favorite thing to talk about. Right. Breakfasts are a big deal in Palestinian culture.
[00:33:34] It's a very, and it's a very Jerusalem thing, specifically Jerusalem thing to have kaj.
[00:33:38] Lucy: Okay.
[00:33:39] N: Because yeah, like Palestinians from outside of Jerusalem will travel to Jerusalem specifically for the kaj, which as I said, is this sort of oblong sesame coated bread. And it's like crusty on the outside and fluffy and light and slightly soft.
[00:33:53] It's sweet on the inside. It's very nice. And there are stalls that sell it all over East Jerusalem. And usually they'll throw in a little, like, baggie of za'atar rolled up in a little bit of newspaper. Like, very, very excessively salty za'atar, but it's perfect for Like just putting on this slightly sweet bread because it cuts it really nicely.
[00:34:13] And then, yeah, obviously we'll have that with like, as you said, hummus, which everyone in the UK now knows what hummus is, so I
[00:34:20] Lucy: don't need to explain it. And I imagine the versions that we have access to here are maybe not quite what you're used
[00:34:26] N: to. Yeah, no, I mean, the lovely thing is that people will just make it like there are certain restaurants, or they're not Properly restaurants.
[00:34:34] They're like specifically for hummus and falafel and food. They're sort of specifically breakfast places, I guess. And they'll have like these huge vats of hummus and ful, which is, um, similar to hummus in that it's a type of dip, but it's made from beans rather than chickpeas. And they'll like scoop these beans.
[00:34:58] These things out and put them on these like little plastic plates, but then they'll put like fresh chickpeas or fresh beans on top fresh coriander Um olive oil. I mean they'll like they'll they'll make it. It feels like a fresh tasty I don't know. It doesn't feel pre packaged and sanitized, if that makes sense.
[00:35:20] Lucy: Yes, that does make sense.
[00:35:21] N: If you get it from a supermarket. Yeah, but that's all breakfast. And there are other meals that are sort of equally mouth watering. Like one of my favorites is waratoeli, which is stuffed vine leaves. And it's different from like the Greek kind that you often find in Tesco or Sainsbury's, which are sort of, They're like cold and lemony.
[00:35:41] Our vine leaves are cooked, are hot, served hot. And they're cooked with like meats, lamb usually, and tomato and garlic. And they're served, yeah, they're served hot with like stuffed courgettes as well often. Absolutely mouth watering. So good. Um, yeah, we love stuffing vegetables with rice and meat. Like that's, there's a lot of that.
[00:36:04] What's not to love,
[00:36:05] Lucy: yeah. Haha. Haha. You mention in the book several of you sort of use examples and you quote from a lot of people so as well as this like sort of amazing historical research you have, there's so many contemporary sources in the book, it feels so present, you know, and I just wondered if you would be able to mention a few of your favourites that you talk about, you mentioned Spanish.
[00:36:26] specifically some Palestinian writers who write about food. And I'd just love to hear those from you and just share a bit about why you love them.
[00:36:33] N: Yeah, sure. I would highly recommend that everyone go out and get Sami Tamimi's Palestine cookbook because it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's full of great recipes.
[00:36:43] He's got even like lots of bread recipes that are really amazing, including a recipe for cake. I tried, I did try to make it myself in London and it did not turn out very well, but I don't blame the recipe. That's again, my own cooking, clearly. I, uh, also would recommend Laila al Haddad, uh, she wrote a book called The Gaza Kitchen, which is also really beautiful and she herself is Palestinian who grew up in the diaspora, but she did spend time in Gaza around 2010, I think.
[00:37:16] And she collected stories and recipes from the locals there. And it's like one of the few sort of cookbooks about Gazan food that's in English. So I really recommend. Yeah, I really recommend having a look at that. Gaza. I've never had the opportunity to go to Gaza, but I have family members there. And my, um, and my immediate family has also been there and talked about how good Gazan food is.
[00:37:41] They have like a big, like, Focus on fish because they're obviously on the coast. So they have like some really nice dishes and who else? Oh yeah. And I would highly recommend also following Hamada Shakura, who is a Palestinian food blogger, who's currently in Dafa and he's incredible, you know, like most people in Gaza, he's like, he's lost an inconceivable amount of, um, Well, just everything, you know, his home and livelihood and family and displaced several times, et cetera.
[00:38:13] But he, um, went viral a little while ago for the meals that he was making from aid packages in Gaza. And he just, he just makes these incredible, like little videos on TikTok and stuff. And, um, yeah, he, again, just a beautiful, uh, beautiful insight into what's going on in Gaza, but through a foodie perspective.
[00:38:35] Yeah. Yeah. And he's pretty funny as well. I mean, amazingly, they're, they're see, like, they keep, people keep their humor and their warmth and their humanity, despite being dehumanized. And yeah, there's some really, he, like one of his most recent videos, he makes like a giant tub of, um, rice pudding or like the Arabic version Bahari.
[00:38:57] And it's just, it's, Like, there's something beautiful about seeing that. I
[00:39:02] Lucy: don't know
[00:39:02] N: what it is, but really appealing. Yeah, wonderful. Exactly. Yeah, I would highly recommend those people. And, um, in terms of sort of less food focused, but other people. People that incorporate food into their writing. Hala Alyan is a beautiful novelist who also has very rich descriptions of food in her writing.
[00:39:26] And again, as someone interesting to follow and to read.
[00:39:31] Lucy: Yeah, great. And, and I guess just to kind of, to finish up, you know, we've obviously, um, like, it's, it's impossible not to touch on what's happening in Gaza at the moment. And I guess I just wanted to ask you, what does it mean to look at figures like Nusayba in this particular environment?
[00:39:50] Like, has the resonance towards, you know, the resonance of her changed view or become more significant or anything like that? Like, yeah, what does it mean to kind of celebrate this incredibly historic culture at a time when so much of a, you know, of a culture is being destroyed, I guess is my question.
[00:40:08] N: Yeah, it's a, it's a good question. Um, I guess one honest answer would be that I really haven't thought about her very much because yeah. Reality of living through this, um, this genocide has been sort of overwhelming and it's kind of put things like Historical figures kind of on the back burner. But also, I guess it's made me think, I mean, the, the kind of experiences that people in Gaza in the West Bank all over Palestinians are going through Palestinian women, they are just They're surviving so much, they're incredibly powerful and strong, and, you know, so, so much more powerful and strong than I am.
[00:40:58] And, you know, here I am writing about this, like, historical figure who was brave a few times in battle, but she wasn't actually subject to, you know, aerial bombardment 24 7. She didn't have her. Entire home, you know, destroyed in a matter of minutes. I think actually in a lot of ways, the people that are living today are much braver and much more interesting than she was.
[00:41:29] Um, I mean, like I feel a bit silly really for having drawn her for inspiration, but, um, but also maybe, I don't know, it's, it's nice, or I think maybe it's important at a time when So much of Palestinian culture and as well as Palestinian life is being demonized or erased or, um, or yeah, vilified in some way and, um, and denied.
[00:42:06] I think it's. It's good, nice to have stories about the past that we hold on to, you know, I think that that is important in the same way that it's important to hold on to, um, you know, our food, our different types of food, our dishes. Yeah, actually I wanted to say there's this really interesting project based partly out of this village that I mentioned earlier, Batir, where they make the beautiful aubergines.
[00:42:36] I don't know if you've come across it. It's called the Palestinian Heritage Seed Library. Have you heard of it? I have heard of it. Oh, it's fantastic. It's really cool. It was founded by a Palestinian woman called Vivian Sansour, and what it does is work on preserving and promoting heritage and threatened seed varieties and traditional Palestinian farming practices and the stories and identities that are sort of associated with them.
[00:43:02] So like, Sun Tzu finds like key seed varieties like these things like I remember I saw pictures of these incredible carrots that were huge, like giant carrots and food crops that were sort of threatened with extinction and she works to actively preserve their bioculture and recuperate the local landscape.
[00:43:20] Yeah, this project was started in like 2016 but But I mean, it's, it's the same, it's sort of a similar idea, like I'm trying to do it with a story, but she's doing it much more practically and importantly with food. And you know, it's again, this idea of like the past and this, our heritage and land and stories, all of it being kind of connected and important to preserve.
[00:43:42] Lecker
[00:43:43] Lucy: is hosted and produced by me, Lucy Dearlove. Thanks to my guest N. S. Nozaba. Namesake is out now. Published by Canongate. I was really honoured to speak to End for this episode, and while I understand what she means about practical acts being a priority at the moment, it's just also so important to preserve Palestinian stories and culture, and she does this so beautifully in Namesake.
[00:44:19] This month I'll be donating the money I usually get from Patreon and Substack to requests for aid listed on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet. If you'd like to sign up as a paid subscriber this month, all of that, aside from the fees the platforms take, will go to mutual aid. If you'd like to make your own donation after listening to this episode, if you send me a screenshot, I'll comp you a subscription to Substack.
[00:44:42] Music is by Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back soon.