{"product_id":"the-language-of-baklava-isbn-9781400077762","title":"The Language of Baklava","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiana Abu-Jaber’s vibrant, humorous memoir weaves together delicious food memories that illuminate the two cultures of her childhood—American and Jordanian. Here are stories of being raised by a food-obsessed Jordanian father and tales of Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts and goat stew feasts under Bedouin tents in the desert. These sensuously evoked repasts, complete with recipes, paint a loving and complex portrait of Diana’s impractical, displaced immigrant father who, like many an immigrant before him, cooked to remember the place he came from and to pass that connection on to his children. \u003ci\u003eThe Language of Baklava\u003c\/i\u003e irresistibly invites us to sit down at the table with Diana’s family, sharing unforgettable meals that turn out to be as much about “grace, difference, faith, love” as they are about food.\u003c\/p\u003e\"A culinary memoir that's as delectable for its stories as for its accompanying recipes.  . . . Rich, dense, and flavorful\" —\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\"Wonderful, touching and  funny. . . . Honest and precise. . . . Abu-Jaber explores [her cultural] duality  with a generous spirit and clear-eyed vision. . . . A lush and lyrical memoir.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe  Miami Herald\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\"Incredibly powerful. . . . The world described is so strange and sumptuous,  the characters so large and comedic, and the descriptions of the food so enveloping  and mouthwatering that you want to climb into this world and make it your own.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe  Oregonian\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Exquisite. . . . With humor and grace, the author explores timeless topics  of love, cultural adjustments and what being rootless means. . . . [Abu-Jaber] takes  us on an insightful journey. . .we ought not to miss.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\"Truly  charming. . . . A fascinating memoir of confused exile, great food, and home truths.\" —\u003ci\u003eO, The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003eDiana Abu-Jaber is the author of four novels, including \u003ci\u003eCrescent\u003c\/i\u003e, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor; and \u003ci\u003eArabian Jazz,\u003c\/i\u003e which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN\/Faulkner Award; as well as two memoirs. She teaches at Portland State University and divides her time between Portland and Miami. www.dianaabujaber.comONE    Raising an Arab Father in America    It's a murky, primordial sort of memory: a cavelike place, bright flickering  lights, watery, dim echoes, sudden splashes of sounds, and--hulking and  prehistoric--TV cameras zooming in on wheeled platforms. A grown man in a  vampire costume clutching a microphone to his chest is making his way  through rows of sugar-frenzied, laugh-crazed kids. He attempts to make small  talk with the children through a set of plastic fangs. \"Hello there, Bobby  Smith!\" He chortles and tousles a head. \"How are you, Debbie Anderson!\" I'm  sitting in a television studio in a row full of cousins and sisters, not  entirely sure how I got here--this was my aunt Peggy's idea. She'd watched  The Baron DeMone Show for years and finally decided to send away for studio  tickets.    He stalks closer and closer: I can see tiny seeds of sweat sparkling along  his widow's peak. He squints at our oversize name tags: \"Farouq, Ibtissam,  Jaipur, Matussem . . .\" I see his mouth working as he walks up our row of  beaming, black-eyed kids. Eventually he gets to me. \"Diana!\" he cries with  evident relief, then crashes into my last name. But apparently once this man  starts going, he must see the thing through. He squints, trying to sound it  out: \"Ub-abb-yuh-yoo-jojee-buh-ha-ree-rah . . .\" This guy's a scream! I  can't stop laughing. What an idiot! I've got green eyes and pale skin, so  evidently he feels I must speak English, unlike the rest of the row. He  squats beside me, holds the big mike in my face, and says, \"Now, Diana, tell  me, what kind of a last name is that?\"    This guy slays me! I can barely stop laughing enough to blast, \"English, you  silly!\" into his microphone.    He jumps, my magnified voice a yowl through the studio, then starts  laughing, too, and now we're both laughing, but at two different  jokes--which must happen quite a bit on children's programming. He nods  approvingly; they love me and my exotic entourage--later we'll be flooded  with candy, passes, and invitations to return to the show. But at the  moment, as the Baron stands to leave, I realize I'm not quite done with him  yet. I grab him by the back of his black rayon cape and announce on national  television, \"I'm hungry!\"         I'm six and I'm in charge; the sisters are just getting around to being  born. Bud, my father, carries me slung over one shoulder when he cooks; he  calls me his sack of potatoes. Mom protests, pointing out safety issues, but  Bud says it's good for me, that it'll help me acclimate to onion fumes. I  love the way his shoulder jumps and his whole back shakes as he tosses a  panful of chopped tomatoes over the flames while the teeth rattle in my  head.    My father is a sweet, clueless immigrant--practically still a boy. He keeps  getting fooled. He saw TV for the first time when his boat stopped in Italy  en route to Ellis Island. It was flickering in a hotel lobby. On the screen  he saw a lady in a pretty blue dress singing to a cat dressed in a tuxedo.  \"Look at that,\" he marveled to his brother. \"They've got a whole theater  inside that box!\" After he'd been in America a couple of months, a  door-to-door salesman convinced him to spend three weeks of pay on a TV that  didn't have any working parts. He told Bud it needed some time to \"warm up.\"  Bud hopefully switched it on and off for weeks before an American friend  visited and explained that this TV would never be warm.    Bud learns English not from books, but from soaking in the language of work,  of the shops and restaurants after he arrives in this country. I don't know  where he learns how to hail strangers, but whenever my father needs  directions--which is frequently--he flags down men and women alike with the  same greeting: \"Hey, bud!\" I grow up thinking of all Americans as Bud--and  even though my father's name is Ghassan Saleh Abu-Jaber, he becomes the  original Bud.    I learn early: We are Arab at home and American in the streets. The streets  are where Bud speaks English in a loud voice, swaggers, wears hard-soled  shoes. Sometimes he slips and haggles with the clerk at Sears over the price  of ties. He'll ask me in Arabic if I think the man is a big moron or just a  little idiot. After considering my assessment, he'll formulate the  appropriate bid--perhaps grudgingly offer to pay the price on the tag--minus  two dollars! Plus an extra tie! Usually the clerk looks befuddled or calls  for a manager, but every now and then, Bud'll find one who turns sharp-eyed  and pleased, who throws out an unauthorized counteroffer--extra tie, but  full price! Their voices flash in the flat mall light.    On Saturdays Bud is in the kitchen. The old houses along our elm-lined  streets seem to sigh, screen doors ease open, the air sweetens, and the sky  leans back on one elbow. First my father will make breakfast. After that,  any one of a number of miraculous things can happen:    Go to Diplomat-Uncle Jack's house and have stuffed grape leaves.    Go to Professor-Uncle Hal's house and have kibbeh.    Go to Businessman-Uncle Danny's house and have stuffed squash.    Go to Crazy-Uncle Frankie's house and have roasted leg of lamb.    Go to Fair Haven Beach with everyone and have shish kabob.    Those aren't their real names: Uncle Hal is really Uncle Hilal, Jack is  actually named Jaffer, Danny is Hamdan, and Frankie is short for Qadir. They  are the uncles who, along with my father, came to America. Somehow, after  they bought their new winter coats at Robert Hall in downtown Syracuse and  changed the part in their hair, they all seemed to have new American names  as well. Almost everyone I know has two names--one from Before and one from  After. Even I have two names--for some reason, Bud calls me Ya Ba, which  means \"Little Daddy,\" but this name seems to belong between the two of us.    I love to be in the kitchen and watch my strong father at work in his  undershirt, baggy shorts, and sandals. He's singing along with the radio and  not getting a single word right. But what he lacks in accuracy he makes up  for in gusto and verve. He slides a whole side of lamb out of the  refrigerator, hoists it up for me and my friend Merilee to admire, and says,  \"Here he is! Here's Marvin.\" Bud likes to name all big cuts of meat--usually  Tom, Dick, Harry, or Marvin. I stand close beside him, four feet high in  flip-flops, bony shoulders poking through the crossed straps of my sundress,  plastic heart-shaped sunglasses propped on my head, and watch as he centers  the meat on his chopping block and whomps his cleaver down. My friend  Merilee, with her freckles and straw yellow pigtails, shrieks and clatters  out the back door. I happily tote the bloody kabobs from the block to the  marinade of garlic, rosemary, vinegar, and olive oil. Bud tells me that  someday I will make a fantastic butcher.    Next, Bud pushes the big, glistening chunks of beef and onion and tomato  onto skewers. The skewers are iron, with round hoops at one end and cruel,  three-sided points on the other, so heavy that once they're threaded with  meat, I can carry only one at a time to the refrigerator.    Shish kabob means that there will be coolers and ice chests, blankets and  salads, pita bread, iced tea, salty braided cheese, hummus, maybe a visit to  Rudy's stand, where they dip the scoops of ice cream into a kind of  chocolate that hardens into a shell. Maybe our mother will bring frozen  pound cake, because who wants to bake anything in this heat?    There will also be sisters and cousins and aunties and uncles and even more  cousins, because there's no telling who's just \"comeover,\" meaning come over  from the old country. You never know when suddenly a second cousin you  haven't seen in years will be standing in the living room, asking for a  little cup of coffee. They'll be hungry because everyone who \"comesover\" is  hungry: for home, for family, for the old smells and touches and tastes. If  we're not at the park, sometimes these cousins and noncousins and friends  and strangers will drop by the house. Coincidentally, they always come at  dinner-time. Always at the moment we turn on the stove.    Bud says that today we children need to be extra pleasant, polite, and cute.  Today Cousin Sami (Samir) will be with us. He is newly arrived, twenty years  old, sensitive, and willowy as a deer. He walks tentatively in this new  country, looking around himself as if about to break into flight; his eyes  glisten, eternally on the verge of tears. I overhear Bud telling Mom that he  doesn't know if Sami will \"make it.\" Mom blows a filament of hair out of her  face; she's twenty-six years old and tall, but she doesn't have much more  meat on her than I do. Her reading glasses are smart and serious. I can tell  that she's thinking, What is it with these sensitive, crazy men?    We pack up the family and drive the road to the north, over tiny wooden  bridges, past taverns with names like Three Rivers Inn and gurgling minute  creeks, up to Fair Haven Beach on Lake Ontario, thirty miles from Syracuse.  After we arrive and roll along behind people walking to their car in order  to secure the best parking spot, it will take an even longer time to unpack  the trunk and find the exact picnic tables and get out the bags and coolers  and cousins and sisters. We cover several tables with red-checked  tablecloths, paper plates, plastic containers full of everything. Bud piles  briquettes into three different grills, and Uncle Hal adds more and more  lighter fluid--usually while it's burning--so the flame roars right up at  him in a fabulous arc. I draw in the rich chemical aroma: Barbecues are the  smell of lighter fluid, dark and delicious as the aroma of gasoline.    Another car pulls up and there is Cousin Sami unfolding from Uncle Danny's  Volkswagen. Sami holds out his hands as if testing the gravity on this new  planet. He looks as if he might topple over at any moment. I adore him. Big,  hearty Businessman-Uncle Danny, who's looking after him because his  full-time father, Rich-Uncle Jimmy, lives in Jordan, laughs and calls him \"a  poet.\" I know immediately that's what I want to be, too, and I say this to  my father as he's carrying a platter full of shish kabob. He looks unhappy  at this news, but then Uncle Hal shouts, \"Oh yes, there's a lot of money in  that,\" and the adults laugh for inexplicable reasons and then forget about  me.    The cousins--except for Sami--and sisters and I run in the frothy surf along  Fair Haven's pebble beach. The water is electrically cold, threaded with  mysteriously warm currents. We go in up to our necks and the waves lift us  off our feet. We can do just this, standing in ice water and bobbing, for  hours. A game for lunatics. We don't ever want to come in, even when our  mother and one of the aunties wade out and says, \"Your lips are purple, time  to come in.\" First we make Mom demonstrate her ability to float in the water  so that her shoulders submerge and her pink toes bob up and she looks as if  she's sitting in a recliner. This, I assume, is a talent innate to all  Americans. We all try, and our chicken-bone bodies just sink. Dad and his  too many brothers don't even own bathing suits.    There's a commotion on shore. My father and the uncles are shouting and  waving their arms: Shish kabob is ready! Uncle Hal is ferrying the sizzling  skewers--we call them sheeshes--to a big platter on the table. Bud is  turning more of them on the fire.    The shish kabob comes like an emergency. It sizzles at the table, and Uncle  Hal pushes the chunks of meat off the skewers with a piece of pita bread.  They all go to one central plate. He says, \"This piece is for you and this  one for you.\" It's best to wait for the second sheesh because for some  reason the meat on the first always looks scrawny and shriveled and smells  of uncooked lighter fluid. But there's no time to wait! You have to eat the  lamb when it's hot enough to burn your fingers and scald your tongue.    \"Eat it now,\" Uncle Hal says. \"It's good right this second.\"    This is one of the secrets of shish kabob: how quickly it dries and hardens  on the skewer. Not like a roast leg of lamb or breasts of chicken that fall  off the bone when you cook them long and ruthlessly enough. Shish kabob is  fierce. It comes charred and crusty outside and pink, almost wet red inside,  richly redolent, in its special way, of marrow and pepper. It sizzles in  your mouth and tastes faintly of the earth.    In the midst of all this drama and pageantry, however, I notice that Sami  hasn't left his perch on the far end of the most distant picnic bench. His  eyes are glowing as he watches us with both curiosity and aloofness. I pluck  a morsel from the plate and run to him while it burns my fingertips. To my  mind, this is the best way to show love--to offer food from your own hand.  But he only closes his eyes and shakes his head dolefully.    Because I am six, I am typically the one being fed--I've never tried to feed  anyone from my own hand like this before. But I've never had a cousin like  this before. Usually my older Jordanian cousins arrive resplendent in  polyester bell-bottom slacks--this being the late sixties--tall and  strapping and hungry for America. With big mustaches, huge laughs, wild  eyes, and big--very big--plans. Not Sami, though. Earlier that morning, Bud  talked about it on the phone with one of his brothers. Sami didn't even want  to come to America. In our family, we assume that everyone is simply dying  to come here. It's like a law of nature: Grow up, go to America. I learn  from sitting at the kitchen table, helping Bud poke kabobs onto skewers  while he talks on the phone, that Uncle Jimmy sent Sami to America to \"cure  him\" of something or other. When I ask Bud later what Uncle Jimmy wants to  cure him of, he thinks about his answer for a while before he decides to  say, \"Of being a poet.\"","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303365464293,"sku":"NP9781400077762","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400077762.jpg?v=1767740105","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-language-of-baklava-isbn-9781400077762","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}