Untitled by Penelope Hammam

                           In my family, food maintains the only connection back to our roots across the globe in Lebanon. When my sisters and I were little, my dad tried to teach us Arabic in order to maintain a connection back to Lebanon, but the only words that stuck with me are wahid, aithnayn, and thalatha (one, two, and three). It did not help that when my dad tried to speak Arabic, the four of us would respond “stop speaking Spanish to me”. When I was three, I would not have known the difference in sounds between the two languages, but now, I know how to speak Spanish, and Arabic could not sound more foreign to me.

                              The taste and smell of Labneh and Zaatar are burned into my brain. Labneh and Zaatar will forever be what I crave when I arrive in Heathrow airport to my cousins’ smiling faces. After I discovered the Zaatar in the dining hall at Hotchkiss, I was so excited that I found a little taste of home I could cook for myself here. I waited until the next day the dining hall put out pita, scoured every inch of the dining hall for olive oil, and mixed it with the zaatar. I asked my friends to try it, hoping they would want to share this little piece of home with me. They immediately responded to my zaatar with a look of disgust on their faces while saying “Absolutely not.  That looks like vomit”. Crushed. They could have said “no thanks”, instead they decided to insult my culture. They decided to insult the food that most reminded me of home and the people I love. They decided to insult my family. They carelessly decided to insult who I am, without even taking a bite.

                      Being the child of a foreigner means blending the flavor of two cultures together. It means that at times, the closest link back to your home country is the flavor on a tongue or the smell of the food cooking. Culture never fades when the same foods continue to be eaten, it lives on in its taste long after the person making it leaves.