Life is an Egyptian movie. When I went to ‘yeshiva’, we would go once every few weeks to spend the Sabbath at our parents’ house.
When I went to ‘yeshiva’, we would go once every few weeks to spend the Sabbath at our parents’ house where, on a Friday evening when a baby boy was born to someone from the community, the men would meet together after the Shabbath dinner to sing songs, drink, and eat “arbes” – chickpeas cooked in water and seasoned with lots of salt and pepper. Those songs that we sang still sound in my ears.
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I later left it all behind, and found my place in Paris.
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In Paris I met a Palestinian chef, we drank so much, and she told me her memories of her grandmother in Hebron, of how her family had to flee to Jordan, and about recipes of pigeons in sumac. We dreamed of creating a book someday, about the Hebronite kitchen.
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I told her about the “arbes” and all those stories from the ‘yeshiva’, and sitting there at Café Bonaparte, she showed me a video on her mobile of an Egyptian movie with the exact same ritual, where a baby boy is greeted with chickpeas and pulses. Arabic music played in full volume in this Parisian café, and everyone around us was a little ill at ease, but we laughed and were amazed to realize that we used to watch the same Egyptian movies once, on Friday afternoons, at exactly the same time, on the same channel, each of us in a completely different place. Today we are in the same place.
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On the Hummus Route / a utopian journey between cities, people and dreams.
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Join our ride on this futuristic voyage.
