Coming Home

Traveling long distances is a surprisingly emotional experience. It could have something to do with jet lag or culture shock, or maybe it’s just the sheer amount of time you spend in the air.

But I’ve come to enjoy these long stretches of time when there’s nothing to do but think about the distance I’m traveling. It’s difficult to understand, like, really understand that some things that were just a memory earlier in the day are about to materialize.

Beirut

The familiar lights of Mt. Lebanon come into view and I’m about to land in Rafic Hariri International Airport. Soon I’ll be in a taxi on the airport highway and then there I am, opening my front door and my boyfriend is there but my cat is too angry to greet me. And after a night’s sleep punctuated with the sounds of construction, I am awake and wandering down to the bakery for a kishik and cheese manouche.*

Such a beautiful thing, a kishik and cheese, warm and fat from the furn. It’s something I can never find in New York and perhaps the thing I miss the most when I leave Lebanon.**

Kishik belongs in the umami ranks of miso and parmesan. It’s tangy with that mysterious punch without being overwhelming. And unlike a good blue cheese, you can eat a lot at once.

Then there are the plates of hindbeh and kibbeh nayyeh. The unending halloum and inevitable mesheweh. Fried arnabeet, mutabal shamandar. Tiny assafir, eaten in one bite. Jars of makdous and olives, oh the olives – and the olive oil too.

But then, almost at once, the magic wears off and I find myself missing the things that are hard to find, things from my other home. I miss Chinese American takeout. I miss a good piece of pork.

New York

I leave Lebanon reminding myself that that I’ll soon be sitting in front of a pile of spare ribs and noodles from Empire Szechuan Noodle House.

Oooh the pork, I’ll remember as I poke through my tray of dry chicken in goop. There are tissues apologetically stuffed into my beverage cup because flying is always so unreasonably sad.

The pork spare ribs that come in an aluminum-lined bag, I’ll imagine. The sauce covers your hand when you reach in for another, but it doesn’t matter. Pure happiness.

And it is happiness. At home, again, only this time with different family and different cats, sitting around the table with lots of good wine and lots of good stories.

Over the next few days I go for the things I kind of had in Lebanon but are subtly different in New York. While Beirut suffers no lack of rotisserie chicken, biting into a thigh from Latino’s Bar and Grill in Washington Heights always tells me I’m home. The meat is just a bit juicier, the skin more flavorful, and the pickled onions provide that perfect accompanying kick.

I also find myself missing what New York calls Middle Eastern food while I’m away, which is really a pan-Arab American jumble with Jewish, Turkish, Iranian and South Asian influences. When I go back to the US, I always try to get some hard rice with lemony chicken and a cucumber tomato salad on the side. Or even better, some Halal cart mystery meat smothered in all of the sauces.

Home

There’s no way to know what makes a place home until you leave it all behind. I think that’s how the adage goes. But what’s surprising is discovering that your home has nothing to do with a place, but a person or a memory. Or a meal. A snack. The smell of something cooking.

Eventually, even traveling becomes a version of home. The last time I went to New York, I realized that I’d been gone for too long. It was still home, but somehow warped. The rhythm was awkward, I was way too excited to go out, and I had no work-related responsibilities. I felt like a blister on the city, a native annoyance filled with something foreign.

Beirut though. I could live here for a thousand years and I would still be having the same conversations. Where are you from?  What do you do? How long have you been here? As much as I hate this, it’s something you have to get out of the way when you meet people. And my life in Beirut has been a revolving door of new people. After a few years it can get to be a lot, living in a perpetual outsider’s loop.

I have my rhythm here and my memories there. I’m no exception in this regard, although I’m exceptionally lucky that I can go back and forth with relative ease. Home is complicated by passports, by nationalism, by identity, by race. I’m lucky that leaving has always been a choice, not a necessity.

And I choose to navigate these familiar-yet-foreign terrains using taste and smell. The right combination of vegetables and spices sautéing in a pan will send me to fall, when my mother is making red beans and rice. Or the smoky smell of charcoal and meat will carry me to  Beirut, when my roommates and I are hosting our first BBQ of the summer.

With this in mind, The Yellow Lunch Box is launching a series called Coming Home, where we explore the tastes, smells, and textures in which people seek refuge. Because even people who don’t really care about food will, for the most part, still hold on to something, be it an iconic national dish, a kind of candy, or something as simple as leftover pizza.

Join us on our first adventure home next week.

*Lebanese kishik (or kishk depending on where you’re from), is essentially sun dried yogurt and finely ground bulgur, which can be used to make soup or mixed with onions, tomato paste, some oil and other things as a Lebanese flatbread topping (a manouche).

**If you know where I can get kishik in New York please, please let me know, I would forever be in your debt. I literally had a dream about buying kishik in Brooklyn last night.