Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War Read online

  “Her book is full of more insight and joy than anything else I have read on Iraq. . . . Ciezadlo is a wonderful traveling companion. Her observations are delightful—witty, intelligent and nonjudgmental.”—The Washington Post Book World

  “Her writing about food is both evocative and loving; this is a woman who clearly enjoys a meal. . . . A glass of Iraqi tea, under Ciezadlo’s gaze, is a thing of beauty.”—The Associated Press

  IN THE FALL OF 2003, AS IRAQ DESCENDED INTO CIVIL WAR, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. For the next six years, she lived in Baghdad and Beirut, where she dodged bullets during sectarian street battles, chronicled the Arab world’s first peaceful revolution, and watched Hezbollah commandos invade her Beirut neighborhood. Throughout all of it, she broke bread with Sunnis and Shiites, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her story of the hunger for food and friendship during wartime—a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body.

  In lush, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to uncover a vibrant Middle East most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a young Kurdish woman whose world shrinks under occupation to her own kitchen walls; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city’s legendary cafés; and the unforgettable Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo’s sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes (included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food). From dinner in downtown Beirut to underground book clubs in Baghdad, Day of Honey is a profound exploration of everyday survival—a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.

  “Ciezadlo’s lovely, natural language succeeds where news reports often fail: She leads us to care.”—The Oregonian

  MOHAMAD BAZZI

  ANNIA CIEZADLO has written about culture, politics, and the Middle East for The New Republic, The Nation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Time, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs. Annia lives with her husband in New York.

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  Praise for

  Day of Honey

  “Her book is among the least political, and most intimate and valuable, to have come out of the Iraq war. . . . A carefully researched tour through the history of Middle Eastern food . . . filled with adrenalized scenes from war zones, scenes of narrow escapes and clandestine phone calls and frightening cultural misunderstandings. Ciezadlo is completely hilarious on the topic of trying to please her demanding new Lebanese in-laws. These things wouldn’t matter much, though, if her sentences didn’t make such a sensual, smart, wired-up sound on the page. Holding Day of Honey I was reminded of the way that, with a book of poems, you can very often flip through it for five minutes and know if you’re going to like it; you get something akin to a contact high. . . . Ciezadlo is the kind of thinker who listens as well as she writes. . . . Readers will feel lucky to find her.”

  —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

  “Her book is full of more insight and joy than anything else I have read on Iraq. . . . Ciezadlo is a wonderful traveling companion. Her observations are delightful—witty, intelligent and nonjudgmental. Skirting the politics, hotel food and headline-grabbing violence, she spills the secrets of this region so rich in history as if they were spices from a burlap sack. Her writing is at times so moving that you want to cry for countries destroyed, but she writes with such wisdom that you don’t fret over the future of these 4,000-year-old civilizations. It’s a shame that the hundreds of journalists, aid workers and pundits who dominate the discussion of Iraq and Lebanon rarely stop to delight in the countries’ beauty.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “In her extraordinary debut, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, Annia Ciezadlo turns food into a language, a set of signs and connections, that helps tie together a complex moving memoir of the Middle East. She interweaves her private story with portraits of memorable individuals she comes to know along the way, and with the shattering public events in Baghdad and Beirut. She does so with grace and skill, without falling into sentimentality or simple generalizations.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Ciezadlo’s memoir is, fortunately, fascinating. And touching. Plus alternately depressing (because of the seemingly endless, senseless sectarian deaths in Iraq and Lebanon) and laugh-out-loud funny (because of the self-deprecation, not to mention the vivid portraits of unique characters such as her mother-in-law). . . . ‘Voice’ is difficult to define precisely, but writers (and plenty of readers) know it when they see it. Ciezadlo’s voice is marvelous.”

  —The Christian Science Monitor

  “With Day of Honey, Ciezadlo’s lovely, natural language succeeds where news reports often fail: She leads us to care. . . . “Day of Honey” is a delicious first book (and the recipes at its end only make it more so). May it not be Ciezadlo’s last.”

  —The Oregonian

  “A strange mix of sensuous writing about food, evocative firsthand reports of living life during wartime (in Iraq and Beirut), and the stresses of adapting to a new family and culture. Ciezadlo’s work feels both dizzying and strangely grounded. And it makes you hungry.”

  —The Nation

  “Equal parts history of the Middle East, tale of cross-cultural marriage, and riveting account of life as a civilian reporter in two war zones . . . Day of Honey is first and foremost a paean to the powers of food, recipes included. . . . A passionate argument for the idea that whether it’s your mother-in-law or a military enemy, meeting over a meal eases differences, and that knowing the world means dining in it.”

  —Bookforum

  “Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey was a rich, delicious portrait of a war-ravaged Middle East, including Baghdad and Beirut, that was so visceral that when I finished, I felt covered with dust, hungry and with a deeper understanding of this culture and part of the world that until now had been elusive and confusing.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Ciezadlo observes daily life and documents her experiences in two war zones (Baghdad and Beirut) with extraordinary insight and skill. . . . Ciezadlo paints memorable portraits of shopkeepers, journalists, poets, women’s rights activists, restaurant owners, and the ways they cope. . . . When Ciezadlo describes meals, I am both hungry and drunk on her words. . . . The best books transport us to worlds outside our experience, making them both real and comprehensible. Unequivocally, this is one of those books.”

  —The Austin Chronicle

  “It’s been a long time since I have enjoyed any nonfiction as much as I did Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey.. . . Ciezadlo’s determination to know intimately the cuisine of wherever she’s staying lends the book both its organization and richness. . . . Ciezadlo is a splendid narrator, warm and funny. . . . Cooking and eating are everyday comforts, and with any luck, a source of fellowship; Day of Honey was a beautiful reminder that this doesn’t change even in the midst of war.”

  —Slate

  “Her fast-paced, graceful writing weaves politics into discussions of literature and cuisine to bring insight into the long history of cultural mix and transition in the Middle East, reminding us that even as war persists, our humanity helps to preserve our civilization, and our food binds our communities and our families . . . . A highly recommended personal perspective on political and cultural aspects of the war-riven Middle East.”

  —Library Journal />
  “Capped off with a collection of mouthwatering recipes, many from Ciezadlo’s larger-than-life mother-in-law, Day of Honey turns thoughts on food into provocative food for thought.”

  —BookPage

  “[A] vividly written memoir . . . Like any successful travelogue writer, [Ciezadlo] fills her pages with luminous, funny, and stirring portraits of the places and people she came across in her time abroad. But there is also, always, her passion for food, and through it, she parses the many conundrums she faced in her wanderings, such as the struggle to define identity, ethnic and personal, and the challenge of maintaining social continuity in wartime. The capstone to all her thoughtful ruminations is a mouthwatering final chapter collecting many of the dishes she describes earlier in the book. She does this all in writing that is forthright and evocative, and she reminds us that the best memoirs are kaleidoscopes that blend an author’s life and larger truths to make a sparkling whole.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “A lucid memoir of life in the war-torn Middle East. . . . Through immersion in food and cooking, Ciezadlo grounded herself amid widespread instability while gaining special insight into a people forced to endure years of bloody conflict. . . . This ambitious and multilayered book is as much a feast for the mind as for the heart.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Annia Ciezadlo’s Day of Honey is a gorgeous, mouthwateringly written book that convincingly demonstrates why, even with bombs going off all over the place, you gotta eat.”

  —Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

  “A riveting, insightful, and moving story of a spirited people in wartime horror told with affection and humor. Food plays a part in the telling—unraveling layers of culture, history and civilization, revealing codes of behavior and feelings of identity and making the book a banquet to be savored.”

  —Claudia Roden, author of The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

  “A warm, hilarious, terrifying, thrilling, insanely smart debut book that gets deep inside of you and lets you see the Middle East—and the world—through profoundly humanitarian eyes. And if that weren’t enough, there’s also a phenomenal chapter’s worth of recipes. Buy this important book. Now.”

  —James Oseland, editor in chief, Saveur

  “Annia Ciezadlo combines ‘mouthwatering’ and the Middle East in this beautifully crafted memoir. She adds a new perspective to the region and leavens the stories of lives caught up in the tragedies of war, including her own, with recipes for understanding. She is a gifted writer and a perceptive analyst. Ciezadlo’s portraits are unforgettable.”

  —Deborah Amos, author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East and correspondent for National Public Radio

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  Copyright © 2011 by Annia Ciezadlo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Free Press trade paperback edition February 2012

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  The retellings of the Gilgamesh tales on pages 69–70 and 150–151 draw on both the Standard Version and the Old Babylonian tablets. Excerpts from The Epic of Gilgamesh translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs. Copyright © 1985, 1989 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.

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  Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ciezadlo, Annia.

  Day of honey : a memoir of food, love, and war /

  Annia Ciezadlo.—1st Free Press hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Ciezadlo, Annia. 2. Journalists—Iraq—Baghdad. 3. Journalists—Lebanon—Beirut. 4. Journalists—United States—Biography. 5. Baghdad (Iraq)—Social life and customs. 6. Beirut (Lebanon)—Social life and customs. 7. Food—Social aspects—Iraq—Baghdad. 8. Food—Social aspects—Lebanon—Beirut. 9. Iraq War, 2003—Social aspects. I. Title.

  PN4874.C5185A3 2011

  070.92—dc22

  [B] 2010019739

  ISBN 978-1-4165-8393-6

  ISBN 978-1-4165-8394-3 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-4165-8422-3 (eBook)

  For Mohamad

  Thank you for purchasing this Free Press eBook.

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  Contents

  Part I: New York

  Introduction The Siege

  Chapter 1: The Quiet Assassin

  Chapter 2: Afghanistanism

  Chapter 3: Bride of the World

  Chapter 4: Mjadara

  Part II: Honeymoon in Baghdad

  Chapter 5: The Benefits of Civilization

  Chapter 6: “Iraq Has No Cuisine”

  Chapter 7: Becoming Human

  Chapter 8: The Movement of Democratic Lovers

  Chapter 9: The Sumer Land

  Chapter 10: The Flavor of Freedom

  Chapter 11: Iftar Alone

  Chapter 12: Chicken Soup for the Iraqi Soul

  Chapter 13: The Devil’s Hijab

  Chapter 14: The Free One

  Chapter 15: Even a Strong Person Can Ask for Peace

  Part III: Beirut

  Chapter 16: Republic of Foul

  Chapter 17: The Green Revolution

  Chapter 18: Death in Beirut

  Chapter 19: The War of the Kitchen

  Chapter 20: The Operation

  Part IV: Eat, Pray, War

  Chapter 21: Fear and Shopping

  Chapter 22: Mighli

  Chapter 23: Cooking with Umm Hassane

  Chapter 24: Supper of Stones

  Part V: God, Nasrallah, and the Suburbs

  Chapter 25: There Are No Shiites in This Neighborhood

  Chapter 26: My Previous Experience in Warfare

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Recipes

  Glossary

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Reading Group Guide and Author Q&A

  “Day of honey, day of onions.”

  —Arabic proverb

  Much earlier in this century an Austrian journalist, Karl Kraus, pointed out that if you actually perceived the true reality behind the news you would run, screaming, into the streets. I have run screaming into the streets dozens of times but have always managed to return home in time for dinner.

  —Jim Harrison, The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

  PART I

  New York

  All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

  —Ronald Reagan

  Introduction

  The Siege

  HE WAS ONE of an endangered species: among the few white, native-born cab drivers left in New York. Meaty, middle-aged, face like a potato. A Donegal tweed driving cap. He pulled up beside me, drew down the window, and growled out of the corner of his mouth: “You wanna ride?”

  We rode in silence until we reached Atlantic Avenue. “You see this street?” he said, waving a massive hand at the windshield. “They’re all Arabs on this street.”

  He was right, more o
r less. The conquest began in the late 1800s, as the Ottoman Empire waned and the Mediterranean silk trade collapsed. Between 1899 and 1932, a little over 100,000 “Syrians”—in those days, a catchall term for practically anyone from the Levant, the French name for the eastern Mediterranean—emigrated to the New World. Many of them settled in New York. In 1933, the Arab-American newspaper Syrian World described Atlantic Avenue, with gently sarcastic pride, as “the principal habitat of the species Syrianica.”

  By 1998, the Atlantic Avenue strip was such a symbol of Arab-American identity that 20th Century Fox re-created it for a movie called The Siege. In the movie, Arab terrorists carry out a series of bombings in New York City, and the government imposes martial law and rounds up all the Arabs, guilty and innocent alike, into detention camps.

  “These Arabs, yeah,” the cabbie continued. “They come over here, they try to act normal. Try to act like you and me. Like they’re fitting in, ya know?”

  He barked out a laugh. “Turns out they’re al-Qaeda.”

  It was a relief when people said it openly. I could talk to this guy. He was an ethnic American, and he assumed I was one too. He was right: I’m a Polish-Greek-Scotch-Irish mutt from working-class Chicago. A product of stockyards and steel mills and secretarial schools. I could see where he was coming from. I came from there myself.

  But then again: the man I loved was named for Islam’s prophet. We had been seeing each other for about five months. I had thought of him as just another ethnic American, but now it was September 13, 2001, and suddenly nobody else seemed to see it that way. On September 11, the landlady had knocked on his door just before midnight. Mrs. Scanlon was an immigrant herself, from Ireland, and no doubt with terrorism-related memories of her own. In a high and quavering voice, she asked, “Mohamad, are you an Arab?”