Nearly every day when I return home from work, my darling wife asks me what I ate for lunch. The topics of food and bowel movements seem to dominate our discussions--probably the result of some residual caveman DNA that forced early humanoids to focus on the fundamentals of existence. But that's a topic for another blog. So my darling asks what I had for lunch. At my place of work, we have a nice tradition of eating lunch as a group. Our office assistant, Mohammad, either prepares a meal or picks up food from a local restaurant. We eat family style and discuss worldly issues--like the latest act to get kicked off "Arabs Got Talent" or which restaurant in Bethlehem serves the best falafel.
The conversations are more often in Arabic than English but as my language skills improve, I'm able to pick up more and more pieces of the conversation. And I must sound like a real genius as I burst out with eureka moments: "You're talking about chicken!" "You just said something about your car!" "Are you talking about a university or a mosque?" Every once in a while, someone explains to me in English a particularly important nugget of information, such as: "We're talking about whether Simpsons or Family Guy is a better cartoon. I personally like Tom & Jerry..." (Tom & Jerry is a frequent filler of downtime between shows on one of the popular channels here.)
As we catch up these and other critical issues, we eat kabob and pizza and sandwiches and vegetables and sometimes even Chinese stir fry. And nearly every day, we also have some kind of hummus to accompany pita bread. My coworkers (along with most other Palestinians, I assume) have different names for the different types of hummus. To me, it's all hummus--ground chick peas with olive oil, tahini, and usually lemon. But sometimes the hummus is spicy or has meat or pine nuts or bread crumbs or something else. I foolishly call it all hummus--my coworkers correct me, but their corrections fall on flat ears and I return to eating what I think of as hummus. I suppose they might feel the same way if I took them to a Milwaukee Brewer baseball game and cheered violently during the between-inning race between the hot dog, Vienna sausage, and bratwurst. They might be under the impression that three hot dogs racing, while it's clear to me that three very distinct food products are engaged in competitive sport.
So back to the daily inquiry by my darling regarding my noon meal. Nearly every day, I tell her that I ate hummus at lunch. If I were Palestinian, I would probably report a much wider variety of lunch options...but to me it's all hummus. And the hummus here is pretty darn good, no matter what it's called. If I can take liberty with Mr. Shakespeare's work: "What's in a name? That which we call hummus by any other name would taste as good." According to Wikipedia:
"The word comes from Arabic: حمّص ḥimmaṣ 'chickpeas'. Like some other Arabic loanwords and names, Romanized spellings of the word in English can be inconsistent. Among the common spellings for this word as transliterated into English are hummus, houmous, hommos and hoummos. The spelling humus is generally avoided in English as it is a homonym of humus (organic matter in soil), though this is the usual Turkish spelling. The Arabic name of the prepared spread is حمّص بطحينة (ḥimmaṣ bi ṭaḥīna) which means chickpeas with tahini."
There's another alternative spelling that should probably be avoided - although sometimes it's good to keep us all on our toes. As did someone I know who recently copied me on an email informing me and others that he recently spent the day in meetings with an important dignitary before touring historic sites and then enjoying "homos" and falafel in the Nativity Square. Talk about indulgence! (Or unfortunate transliteration...)
The conversations are more often in Arabic than English but as my language skills improve, I'm able to pick up more and more pieces of the conversation. And I must sound like a real genius as I burst out with eureka moments: "You're talking about chicken!" "You just said something about your car!" "Are you talking about a university or a mosque?" Every once in a while, someone explains to me in English a particularly important nugget of information, such as: "We're talking about whether Simpsons or Family Guy is a better cartoon. I personally like Tom & Jerry..." (Tom & Jerry is a frequent filler of downtime between shows on one of the popular channels here.)
As we catch up these and other critical issues, we eat kabob and pizza and sandwiches and vegetables and sometimes even Chinese stir fry. And nearly every day, we also have some kind of hummus to accompany pita bread. My coworkers (along with most other Palestinians, I assume) have different names for the different types of hummus. To me, it's all hummus--ground chick peas with olive oil, tahini, and usually lemon. But sometimes the hummus is spicy or has meat or pine nuts or bread crumbs or something else. I foolishly call it all hummus--my coworkers correct me, but their corrections fall on flat ears and I return to eating what I think of as hummus. I suppose they might feel the same way if I took them to a Milwaukee Brewer baseball game and cheered violently during the between-inning race between the hot dog, Vienna sausage, and bratwurst. They might be under the impression that three hot dogs racing, while it's clear to me that three very distinct food products are engaged in competitive sport.
So back to the daily inquiry by my darling regarding my noon meal. Nearly every day, I tell her that I ate hummus at lunch. If I were Palestinian, I would probably report a much wider variety of lunch options...but to me it's all hummus. And the hummus here is pretty darn good, no matter what it's called. If I can take liberty with Mr. Shakespeare's work: "What's in a name? That which we call hummus by any other name would taste as good." According to Wikipedia:
"The word comes from Arabic: حمّص ḥimmaṣ 'chickpeas'. Like some other Arabic loanwords and names, Romanized spellings of the word in English can be inconsistent. Among the common spellings for this word as transliterated into English are hummus, houmous, hommos and hoummos. The spelling humus is generally avoided in English as it is a homonym of humus (organic matter in soil), though this is the usual Turkish spelling. The Arabic name of the prepared spread is حمّص بطحينة (ḥimmaṣ bi ṭaḥīna) which means chickpeas with tahini."
There's another alternative spelling that should probably be avoided - although sometimes it's good to keep us all on our toes. As did someone I know who recently copied me on an email informing me and others that he recently spent the day in meetings with an important dignitary before touring historic sites and then enjoying "homos" and falafel in the Nativity Square. Talk about indulgence! (Or unfortunate transliteration...)
Ha! Homos and falafel.
ReplyDeleteMy Sudanese friend told me that hummus = chickpeas. He's so smart.
And wait a cotton pickin minute! You DID read A bridge to Terebithia, didn't you? Because we thought it was a cool title, so like Tabitha. Or am I making this up?
I want to play bunny ears.
Entertaining post, Mlark. I am so jealous of your daily consumption of delicious hummus of all varieties.
ReplyDelete