Elisabeth Rowland //
I used to view those who formed online friendships with incredulity. I did not understand how you could truly connect with somebody you’d never met in person. Now I find myself daydreaming about what it will be like when I finally meet Arwa, my Arabic tutor and now one of my closest friends, who lives in the Gaza Strip. We speak every day, and many evenings end with me repeatedly assuring her that I am not tired as I start to nod off on video calls.
When we speak, I am often reminded of the dialogue in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, set during the Italian occupation of Kefalonia in WWII
After the war, I’ll speak to the children in Greek, and you can speak to them in Italian, so they’ll grow up bilingual. After the war, I’m going to write a concerto, and I’ll dedicate it to you. After the war, I’m going to train to be a doctor, and I don’t care if they don’t let women in; I’m still going to do it.
And so on.
Gaza has seen countless ‘after the wars’. People’s plans for what they will do when Israel stops its aggression, when Palestinians can live and move freely, contemplating an end to the fragmentation of their land and their people. For the 70,000 Palestinians murdered by Israel since October 2023, the 2100 in Summer 2014 or the 1400 in December 2008, such musings were futile.
We talk a lot about what we will do and how much we will talk when we meet. Sitting face to face, sharing coffee, without fighting internet and electricity blackouts. For now, we seek experiences that we can share despite our separation. We create playlists for each other and describe each part of our days in minute detail. There is no beautiful flower, cloud-that-looks-like-something-else, or Palestinian mural that goes unshared.
We also connect through food.
Perhaps it is trite to say that when separated from people or places you love, connection and comfort are found in food. Recently, at a Georgian friend’s, making khinkali with her and her daughter, she told me she had only started cooking traditional food after moving to Sweden. I ate Polish food on my Polish friend’s birthday, and she sent me a takeaway voucher for mine so we could eat together over the phone. My mother’s excitement that she, Arwa, and I often eat the same thing for breakfast was palpable, prompting an Instagram post of yoghurt and fruit captioned ‘international breakfast’ and tagged #friendship, #hope and #freepalestine.
On Arwa’s birthday, I visited Hiba in London’s Palestine House. I had Palestinian coffee and baklava. After finishing my exams, I visited Akub in London, owned by Bethlehem-born chef Fadi Kattan. I still have the list of what we ordered, based on Arwa’s recommendations from the menu: fatteh, zibdiyyeh, beitinjan bil tahinia, fava bean foul and dagga ghazzawieh.
Food serves as a locus for political discussion. As a site not only of connection, but also of struggle and oppression, it serves as a springboard for understanding life in the strip. When we first met, I was reluctant to speak about food and avoided drinking water during our classes. We began to speak about food in the context of language learning, one of the first phrases I learned was baHeb gaHwe- ‘I like coffee’. Chatting first about our shared love for coffee, we gradually spoke more about food and drink, grounded in day-to-day reality. Over the last 10 months, she has shared pictures of food, whose exorbitant prices are caused by the blockade. She also told me about how the brother of her friend was shot dead as he queued for aid, one of over 2600 Palestinians murdered whilst they tried to secure sustenance for their families.
As women around the world have done since time immemorial, my mother, Arwa, and I share recipes with one another. When geography, finances or even a genocidal occupation prevent people from being together, sharing recipes allows for a visceral exchange. Connecting through taste, smell, sight, touch and even sound, the only thing distinguishing your experience from somebody else’s is the distance- and perhaps your ability to precisely replicate their mum’s cooking. As a small act of homage to Palestinian culture, I cooked Arwa’s favourite dish, musakhan; chicken seasoned heavily with sumac and served over taboon bread. I invited 4 of my closest friends, Mia from Ireland, Ayshan from Azerbaijan, Inka from Poland and Veronika from Ukraine to eat Palestinian food under the instructions of Arwa, from Gaza, cooked by me, from Wales.
I could not find pomegranate molasses, and used tunnbröd instead, but otherwise it pretty much went according to plan. The evening was full of people who were not there. Inka was logged in for a shift on a reproductive healthcare textline, supporting women in the US, and we performed a version of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” for Mia, since it was Valentine’s Day and her boyfriend lives in Belgium. Naturally, that was the best way we could express love on his behalf.
Using food in activism enables immersive pedagogy. The ingredients used provide a springboard for discussing the impact of occupation on agriculture and land ownership, while sharing recipes is an entry point to understanding family histories. Elaine Mei Lien Prate, who uses food-as-method in statelessness research, highlights the value of the intertwining of subject and object, in which food is the object of knowledge. Mira Bamieh, founder of the Palestinian Hosting Society, shares Palestinian food and recipes as a live art piece, encouraging engagement in activism by ‘eliciting embodied responses’ and emphasising the positive power of food.
The meal I cooked for my friends and the dishes served in London cannot be separated from the reality faced by Palestinians. In this issue, Arwa has written about how her relationship with food has been reshaped by the genocide. On the day that I went to Akub, Gaza was being starved, and famine was setting in. The impact on Gazans’ access to food was once again palpable as the US and Israel ramped up their imperialist warmongering in the middle of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world find solidarity and community not only in fasting, but in nightly Iftar feasts. At the time of writing, it has been over two months since Arwa and her family had access to clean water.
I end this reflection with a call to action; not only to boycott Israeli foods and to contest appropriation, but to explore, cook and share Palestinian recipes. Take time to read about the ingredients. If there is a story attached to the recipe, share it when you share the food. In reaffirming the Palestinian Origins of the dish, you not only deepen appreciation for the dimensions of Palestinian struggle but also resist cultural erasure, a feature of genocide, and can encourage others to do the same.
Cooking musakkhan helped me feel more connected to Arwa, but I still often picture the exact moment we will meet. In an airport, I think. Maybe Heathrow- please not Stansted. I am blessed with many soulmates, many of whom I connect with so serendipitously that I find myself sincerely thanking the universe. To have found a woman in such different circumstances, and so far from me, with whom I share so much has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. I was recently in Malta, and it was strange that there was only the Mediterranean between us; we joked about her sending me some of the ka’k she had made for Eid on a paper boat. For now, we remain separated by land, occupation and bureaucracy, but also sitting side by side in the Olive trees ‘Lis’ and ‘Arwa’ in my mum’s garden. I will continue to find my friend in flowers, sunsets and food until I am able to find her in a crowd.