What’s In A Name?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: I wrote this in Cairo, but we’re currently in Tunis, Tunisia, where the weather is nasty and stray dogs are a problem. Princess is getting grumpy.
What’s In a Name?
The first time we visited this part of the world, I stumbled over the nomenclature. Is it the Middle East? I had read somewhere that Arab World is more acceptable, so I tried that. The part around the Eastern Mediterranean—Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria—is the Levant, but Americans don’t generally know or use that word. Egypt is definitely North Africa. There are the Gulf states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE), but is Oman a Gulf state? And if so, what about Yemen? Iran is definitely on the Persian Gulf (duh!), but it’s not technically Arab—it’s Persia. Persians are not Arabs. And what about Turkey? It has its own unique background and ethnicity and relationship to this part of the world.
Is it the Islamic world? Sure, but there are plenty of Christians here—Coptic, Orthodox of various hues, Druze, Maronites. It is, after all, where Christianity came from. Likewise, it’s where Judaism came from (again, duh!), so there are small Jewish populations scattered around the region, in addition to the almost seven million Jewish Israelis. Besides, what about all the Muslims in the rest of the world? There are 231 million Muslims in Indonesia alone. But they are definitely not what I mean when I say Middle East, or Arab World.
But not to worry! I have solved this little linguistic conundrum.
I give you: the Tahini Zone.
It’s a geographic area, a culture, a language, a cuisine, a mindset that is its own unique thing.
The first time we visited the Tahini Zone, back in 2017, we started in Jordan, with a two-week road trip, followed by two weeks in the capital, Amman. When we were planning our two week stay in the city, I began by perusing the Airbnb listings. Something jumped out at me—every apartment I looked at had what seemed like an excessive amount of seating. The living room would have four couches, arranged in a square around the room, or half a dozen recliners. I didn’t understand it, and began flipping through the listings, just counting chairs. I finally announced that there was something definitely weird about the Airbnbs in that city, and we’d have to stay in a hotel. So we booked a little place that was highly recommended by the New York Times (which proved to be one of the more memorable hotels of our travels, and not necessarily for good reasons, but that’s another story for another day).
Before we even arrived in Amman, we were at a tiny guest house—more of a homestay, really—in the north of the country. That was where I had an enlightening conversation with the owner, Mr. Murshed, that gave me my first real insight into the culture. We were talking about the importance of family and connection and socializing—being together. I asked how introverts felt about the all-the-time togetherness. He just shrugged. ‘We don’t really have those.’
Now, I’m not going to unpack that sentence here and now. But as an introvert myself, I found it an enormously insightful comment. Suddenly all those couches and recliners made sense.
When we got to Saudi Arabia last month, and our hotel in Medina had a huge lounge full of couches on every floor, I didn’t think twice about it. Of course there’s a living room on every floor—of course guests want to hang out in large groups and drink tea and smoke shisha. That’s how life is lived here.
And just to bring us back around to The Tahini Zone, mezze starts to make more sense in this context, as well. Hummus is for sharing. It’s dip, right? Dips are fun food.* Dips invite you to linger, lounge, chat, have another little shmear. I think I’ve mentioned before that our favorite restaurant in Beirut was a place called Em Sherif, where you don’t even order. Dozens of small bowls appear on your table, and you nosh and gab and share, and it’s as much about the place, the moment, the people, as the food. You leave completely sated, stuffed full of tahini and connection and happiness.
Tahini, like socializing, is a fact of life here. I’m writing this in Egypt; this morning at breakfast, I drizzled tahini over my ful (mashed fava beans, kind of like refried beans), along with olive oil and chile powder. Then I drizzled more tahini over a wedge of feteer (puff pastry), along with honey. Tahini appears at every meal, drizzled, mixed, poured, and dipped.
And then there’s halvah—sesame seeds and sugar ground into a firm paste—which is my Kryptonite. Or crack.
But I digress.
At a Starbucks in Dubai last month, the day after we arrived from Thailand, I waited a long time for my mocha, growing slightly impatient. The man in front of me had ordered seven drinks for his table, and my pitiful little order of two mochas had to wait. Coffee, tea, and shisha, like dips and couches, speak to the sociability of this part of the world. Have a seat—tell me about your day. Or as we’d say in the South— y’all come set for a spell.
That sociability is one of the things I enjoy about this part of the world—that and the tahini.
*Have you seen Only Murders in the Building? I hereby nominate it for Best Use of Dips as Plot Point.
From my writer’s notebook:
There is a museum here in Tunis—the Bardo Museum—that I hear is wonderful. It’s actually my spouse (who basically hates museums) who tells me this, because he visited it about ten years ago. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to. The president has disbanded parliament and suspended the constitution. The museum is located on the grounds of the parliament building, and in his effort to prevent parliament from sneaking in against his wishes, the entire property is inaccessible.
Art is always entangled with politics, and as far as I can tell, has been so throughout history. Sometimes the entanglement is coincidental and inconvenient, sometimes it is deliberate and malign.
Take care,
Lisa
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