Chapter Two
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and…
FOOD
There is so much to say about Jordanian food. I am a picky eater and was NOT looking forward to eating unfamiliar food and I had visions of eating goats eyeballs disguised as meatballs. To my pleasant surprise, the food was really great! I really should knock off the wise cracks about their food, cuz if you really think about it, every culture has SOMETHING that outsiders would find universally disgusting. For example, while Middle Easterners may enjoy chewing on ram’s testicles, the Hispanics have their Menudo (spiced animal guts), the Scots have Haggis, and North Americans have oysters that look like cold snot and fruitcake you could build high rises with, to offer up as delicacies. And Jello Mold with carrots in it. Let’s not forget our own culinary mistakes.
Having said that, I found the food to be mostly very tasty and visually appealing. Until it came to the Green Slime Thing. Green Slime Thing. Ugh. We had been invited over to Huda’s house for the largest meal of the day, the midday meal, which is literally MID day, 3 pm. Dinner is never eaten before 9 or 10pm and unless you are going out to a restaurant, and is typically the lighter meal. I think they were trying to starve me into submission cuz The Sue can’t wait till 3 pm to eat, especially now that I am diabetic. So off we go, with my blood sugar low, that wasn’t meant to rhyme, I needed to eat, it was TIME! Most of the meal, looked fairly normal: rice, a meatloaf looking thing in a yoghurt type sauce, touboullah salad. Ok, we’re good. I load up on the things I thought palatable and was about to dig in, when I saw IT. Sitting in a crystal bowl right in front of me, was a green slimy mixture that looked like something that came from a Grade “B” Sci Fi flick. It appeared to be like a cold, pureed spinach, except when you picked up the ladle, strings of it went from the spoon to the bowl. YUCK! Not only was it cold, but it was cold and gelatinous, and that it was in a crystal bowl like a centerpiece, I knew I was expected to eat it.
There is something you must understand about the Jordanian food experience. Like in many cultures, food is offered as a gift to you. To not eat it, is to insult your host. In previous meals with the Hudhud family, I would take some of the chicken dish, the beef dish, the salad dish, the hummus, the grape leaf rolls, the rice, and I would eat until the point of being sick because I didn’t want to be rude. Then they would notice I didn’t take any of The Lamb. “What’s the matter, you don’t like The Lamb?” They would be say this in a hurt tone, while they load it up on my plate, daring me to say “no….” Rather than risk an international incident, I ate The Lamb.
Here is the food conumdrum: if you like the food, and you say so, they will automatically start loading more on to your plate, pleased as punch that they were able to make you happy with their offering. If you DON’T like the food, you can’t say so, so you must lie and express your delight over it, and endure the inevitable second and third helpings they thrust upon you.
Knowing all of this, I sat like a lamb to the slaughter, so to speak. It all happened in slow motion. The geriatric matriarch of the family, no doubt the author is this culinary travesty, came over to serve me personally. “You. Eat. Much good…” and with that she picked up the ladle and prepared to pour it all over my much needed mid day meal. Buoyed perhaps by my plummeting blood sugar levels, I said, “No, really, I have too much here as it is, but it all looks so delicious!!!!!!” Ignoring my not-so-disguised pleas for mercy, she dumped the ladle of Green Slime Thing all over my plate of rice and Arabic meatloaf. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes, but I thought, it could be worse. She could be offering me some of the mushy and cold left over grape leaf rolls at the end of the table. They looked like doggie turds and tasted horrible when they were fresh, so I had no interest in revisiting THAT. I decided to be a big girl and just suck up the Green Slime Thing and hope that I could scrape it off the top of my meal without detection.
I managed to get through the meal without gagging too much. I’ve developed food coping mechanisms that I employ at such times, which involve copious quantities of water, and only breathing through my nose. In dire situations, I may have to imagine Brad Pitt spoon feeding me mannah from heaven, but I usually get the food down somehow. Consuming this particular meal took every trick in my repertoire, but it wasn’t long before I had finished it. I was careful to not express an opinion about it, lest they load me up again, and I felt that I had navigated a mine field and emerged intact. Then she came at me again, this time with the rolled grape leaves/vinegar flavored doggie turds. Tears rolled down my cheeks as she enthusiastically loaded up my plate, exclaiming, “You. Eat. MUCH good…” I was crying cuz I knew I was going to have to drive a stake through her well intentioned heart.
That is where this tale ends. I couldn’t “eat”. It wasn’t “much good”, and when I think back, that was the last time they invited us into their homes. She glared at me as we left that afternoon, and didn’t heap upon me the blessings in Arabic as before. I am determined to make it up to her though, to mend the diplomatic fence if you will. As soon as I get back to the States, I’m going to send her a box of oysters and a fruitcake.
sue
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