I‘m afraid this is another memory of how I have been a captive of my sweet tooth from as early as I can remember.  For all its noise and chaos, Beirut has always been a temptress to those who are weak when it comes to syrupy, sugary indulgence. I remember just as the war was starting in the mid 1970s, my hardworking and hard-pressed parents used to deposit my sister and me during the school holidays with my formidable grandma […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture

I was born in the Arab world, but I knew almost nothing of it as I was growing up.  Aside from Beirut and the Bekaa valley, I hardly knew anything of my own tiny sliver of that world in Lebanon.  As I’ve mentioned before, I had the misfortune and privilege of living right smack in the middle of history.  My vantage point was from our sixth floor apartment in Ras Beirut, looking down one way towards the sea and the other […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture

  I am that boat drugged by the sound of the waves   in the darkened bay   The night is more immense than I remember your eyes   purple after you dived   We stayed on at the st george long after everyone left   it was a kind of bet   Long snakelike days glistening on concrete by the pool   no shadows at all   Above us lost worlds stretched in plumes of fuel and smoke   […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture

Little birds come in different shapes and sizes.  There are the ones my uncles used to catch and roast in the Bekaa.  Or those my brother still hunts from time to time in north Lebanon in an area he describes as a kind of Shangri La — a valley that no one goes to, that has been preserved from the random half-finished buildings that now blight so much of Lebanon.  The reason for its pristine beauty?  It’s where drug lords […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture

Again, it is almost dusk.  Here in England, it comes late — well after nine in the evening.  So, it’s been a long day for anyone fasting, although mercifully cool for now.  Iftar — the breaking of the fast — is only a short time away.  There is not the abrupt sunset of the Middle East where you free fall from burning daylight to total darkness within a few minutes.  But the anticipation is similar.  I visit many of my […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture