Requiem for a Sandwich

I just realized that I will never again have the world's best sandwich.

You may or not know this, but mom often made her own mayonnaise, ketchup, bread, yogurt, jam, ice cream, and (pay attention, this is important:) her own pickled lemons. She didn't do this out of thriftiness, but because her products were always so much better than anything else out there, and because she was an unabashed show-off. Too bad we, her children, paid so little attention to her culinary wizardry. In that regard, at least, we were spoiled rotten.

Mom's pickled lemons were sublime. I don't know the recipe, but I do know that she used plenty of safflower and nigella sativa seed (habbet el-Baraka), and that they were always covered with a thick layer of extra virgin olive oil to protect the pickles. After she prepared each gallon jar, she would set it aside in a dark corner to metamorphose. By the time some inquisitive soul (usually me) found them, they might have been there for a year. By then, the lemons were so soft you could literally spread them with a butter knife. Oh man, they were good! They had no pickle sting or sharp edge, just a full and sophisticated flavor, and rich, layered, aftertastes that came in waves.

My favorite sandwich in the world is two slabs of mom's home-made bread, a layer of the best Danish butter, a hot hard-boiled egg (with the yolks slightly runny), and a layer of her pickled lemons.

Alas.

Linda Oldham, Street Fighter

Many moons ago, in what must have been 1992 or so, my mother, her Danish friend Marianne Blegvad, Aziza, Osman, Sarah, my friend Ahmed Sami, and I, were walking down the narrow street we lived on, when a crazy fool of a man in his fifties zoomed past us at breakneck speed. As he drove past us, he hit Aziza, who fell screaming to the ground.

Then he turned around, looked, and laughed.

This was far too much for my hot-blooded 22-year-old self. Blood boiling, I launched myself after the man’s car. As it turned out, the man lived just two buildings away from us and was on his way home, so it was easy enough for me to catch up with him. I had him half outside the car window, slapping him back and forth, when what seemed like the entire neighborhood’s population of young men showed up to defend the man, who it later transpired, was an Egyptian army general who had helped all the neighbors’ boys out of mandatory military service. Soon, I was looking at an angry mob of young men who only knew that the foreigner boy was beating up their esteemed benefactor.

I managed to hold off the mob just enough to get them up the stairs to mom’s house (where I intended to run inside and shut the door) from which Aziza’s screaming was emanating. At this point, the man’s son grabbed the scruff of my neck and began dragging me backwards down the stairs. I punched him as hard as I could, right in the eye.

And all hell broke loose.

For several minutes, I held my own quite well against what mom swears were more than thirty people. I bloodied enough noses and lips that a significant number of the participants lost interest or otherwise backed off. The fight was so loud that it attracted the attention of the chief of the local police station, who actually came to see what was going on. When he was told that this was a fight between a US citizen and an Egyptian army general, he decided that he wanted no part of it, and that he would wait until the matter was brought to him (discretion is the better part of valor; this could easily have turned into an international incident, right in his lap).

Ten minutes later, I had reduced the number of combatants considerably. I swear to you that I was holding my own, if not quite winning. I was heroic. I was bold. I was intrepid and strong. I stood alone against the hordes, giving far better than I received…

…until mom came out and won the fight for me.

Mom, you see, had, in her inimitable way, mobilized the women of the entire building. They came—landlady, friends, neighbors, servants, and all—with hoses and pots of water. They then proceeded to spray, douse, drench, and soak all the men. The men, who had stoically taken all the abuse I could mete out, were unable to handle the handful of angry women with their pots of water. Incidentally, I stayed dry as a bone.

They ran, screaming, like little girls.

That day, I learned a couple of things: 1) I could hold my own against 30 angry men; and 2) mom had more courage than any twenty people I know. That woman was so brave that she actually carried a pot of water into a mess of angry, swearing, bloodied Middle Eastern men who felt that they were defending their honor. She threw the water in their faces. She told them to get the hell out of her yard. She stood her ground. And she won.

I gained a new esteem for myself that day, but it is nothing compared to the humility I felt as a result of the inestimably higher respect I gained for my mother, my hero.

Incidentally, Aziza was (mostly) ok. She suffered a twisted ankle, a few bruises, and a wounded dignity.

I Have No Idea...

...but my guess is that this was taken when mom was getting bored with Nadir practicing photography on her.

El-Hagg Mahmoud

One day in 2000, mom took me through the back streets of Khan El-Khalili in Cairo to the hidden but well-stocked edifice of a man who goes by the pious name of "El Hagg Mahmoud." The name indicates that the man is a good Muslim who had performed the Hajj, or the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. It is one of the peculiarities of Cairean life that the local population found it not the least bit odd that the self-proclaimed pious man should specialize in providing belly-dance costumes and related whimsical accoutrements to the highest class of belly dancer and painted lady in Egypt, which is what he did. El Hagg Mahmoud, in fact, was a purveyor of beaded scarves (a la Shakira, who is rumored [mostly by me] to buy her garments from him), veils, harem pants, candelabra hats (ask me), and, of course, belly dance costumes, to a wide variety of clientèle, from dance troupes to belly dancers, and from well-heeled tourists to elite members of the demimonde.

Mom, of course, loved the place; she had been a customer for years to the four-storey store. "It is true," she told me, "that you can buy the same items from other stores at half the price, but nowhere else do you have the chance to meet such interesting people."

That's mom for you, in a nutshell.

Christmas in September

This is the story of Ragia's first Christmas celebration as Mrs. Jake Lester and, indeed, at all.

In the year 2000, mom was in Egypt for work, and she had brought Sarah with her. While she was there, Ragia and I got married, and both Mom and Sarah attended our wedding, but that is another story.

For the duration of mom's project, mom and Sarah stayed at the Flamenco Hotel in Zamalek, which was always her favorite hotel. When we asked them to stay with us for a few days after the project was over, mom readily accepted, and Sarah and mom came to stay with us for a few days--perhaps as much as a week. While staying with us, mom and Sarah waxed sentimental about the fact that Ragia, Farah and I would not be able to join them for Christmas that year. So they decided that we would have a special one-time-only early Christmas celebration.

To this end, mom and Sarah went shopping for food and gifts, and they returned to create a feast. Mom made a special lamb pot pie with a flaky crust that both Ragia and I can still almost taste, so sublime was it. After we ate, mom brought out her famous cookies, and then she and Sarah presented us with fantastic gifts that were, as usual, ones that only mom would think to give. Sarah, always the artist, performed her gift-wrapping wizardry on them, making them larger than life and twice as beautiful. Mom gave me a beautiful brass stained glass lantern, Farah got a fancy bead bracelet, and Ragia was given a gorgeous handwoven Indian tie-died scarf. Unapologetic sentimental idiots all, there was not a dry eye in the house.

This was, no doubt, the most memorable Christmas Ragia, Farah and I ever celebrated, or ever will, despite the fact that there was no tree, no Christmas music, and that the date was in mid-September!

Merry Christmas, mom. Merry Christmas, Sarah. Merry Christmas, everybody.

God Bless Us, Everyone.

The author is currently busy celebrating Christmas, remembering mom, opening presents, listening to mom's copy of Amahl and the Night Visitors, and generally wishing we were all together this year.

If you are bored with this entry, sit tight, for tomorrow Ragia and I will tell you about Mom's Christmas in September.

Merry Christmas, Eid, Festivus, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or other Holiday.

Exceptional Linda

Here is a photograph of mom at her most elegant. Of course, mom was always a very elegant woman, just as she was a marvelous cook (Sylvia's stories notwithstanding). She was also an exceptional woman, both in the sense that she was exceptional as a human being, and in that she had exceptions to every one of her own rules.

For example, everything that Linda wore was very stylish and tasteful, from cashmere to raw silk, except for her jeans, which were always horridly and obviously cheap and looked as if they had come from rummage sales (which, in all likelihood, they had).

As a cook, she was sublime, her duck was (eventually) out of this world, and she showed an unparalleled mastery of turkey. But I shudder to think about the chicken. Really. Ask Sarah, Aziza, or Osman.

Burning the Duck

This is the first time I have passed 24 hours without posting (but not by much). My excuse is that I am sick and exhausted. I am posting this at 3:00 a.m.

This is another of Sylvia's marvelous stories that are not only very good in that they are very funny and strongly evocative, but very well written also.

Sylvia says:

Then, there was the night she set the duck on fire. We spent our first Christmas away from our childhood homes in New York and she wanted to do something festive. With no parents to stop us, we had already opened our Christmas presents from our families at least a week earlier. So she bought a duck, and invited a few others over for Christmas dinner. We did not, however, have a pan to cook the duck in. Ever enterprising, she took a sheet of cardboard and wrapped it in aluminum foil, placed the duck on it, and put it in the oven. In case you don’t know, as we didn’t, ducks are very fatty, and the fat pours off during roasting. The duck fat quickly caught fire, as did the cardboard and the duck.

We were miraculously able to extinguish the fire, but apparently, there was a lot of whooping. A little boy in the neighborhood whom Linge had befriended, heard our shouting, and began scaling the wall outside to look in our window to see whether we were alright. A policeman walking by, saw the little boy, and hauled him down. When the boy gave him his explanation, the officer brought him to our apartment to verify whether the boy was telling the truth. She confirmed it, and later began dating the police officer. The police officer introduced her to a giant, but that’s another story.