Family Outing

Again Saturday I spent the morning with my aunt in the kitchen. This time she let me peel garlic. She was preparing lunch-- Armenian sausage sliced in the bottom of a pan, layered with sliced tomatoes, ground white pepper (I was allowed to grind that too) and sliced green peppers, baked in the oven.

I asked her a few questions about growing up. My mom and my uncle back home had both wanted to know how many people lived in the household, she said 21! 2 parents, 10 kids, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, 2 kids from an aunt with no husband and 3 servants. She said her father loved having people around in the house, family and neighbors alike, and her mother was a very kind woman to allow so many people to live in their house. I asked her if she learned to cook from her mother, and she said yes, but only Lebanese food. But she also likes to cook international foods, which she learned from her 'encyclopedia.' My grandmother, on the other hand, only cooked Lebanese food, which she learned from her mother, though my aunt wasn't clear about if her mother was actually a remarkable cook or not. Judging from the skills of her daughters (Sr Agnes included, our house-favorite dish in CT is 'Sr Agnes chicken': grilled with garlic and olive oil and more garlic; also I remember Tante Therese's cooking from visiting her in Brazil) she must have been.

I also asked her (as per requested by my mom) if she cooked food from Senegal, where she lived for 19 years while her husband worked as a doctor there. She said, cous cous. That's all I got. But more on Senegal-- all four of her children were born there, and they only chose to move back when Josyan, the eldest, was 17 and needed to 'go to school and get married.' It was either France or Lebanon and they returned to Lebanon, where every 4 years they had returned to visit family. I asked her a little about my grandmother, if she had any stories or memories about her, since she died a few months after my parents were married, and she said when they were young, the three oldest girls, Sr Agnes, Nagibe and my grandmother Marie, were always together. Then my grandmother moved to NY to marry my grandfather, Frank/Fathallah (when she was in her 20s) and after the wedding they didn't see each other for 20 years, because my grandmother lived in NY and her sister lived in Senegal. She said it was very difficult the first time they saw each other, because "I look for my sister, but I don't find her." She said it was like her sister was a different person, or maybe that she herself had changed-- and of course after 20 years of living in different countries both had changed. But after "4, 5 hours of conversation, there was no problem, I find my sister."

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A neighbor stopped by for coffee, and my aunt called a friend of hers from Damascus to ask advice about hiring a taxi for me, since I realized this week that I cannot go with the family friend as he is going Tuesday and I need to be there Monday. We also called the family in Damascus and I spoke a little to the mother, Leila, who doesn't speak much English (probably a good thing) but sounded very sweet and my aunt spoke to her in Arabic to get the full address of the house. I also talked to her older son who spoke English very well and gave me a few more details for when I arrive.

Josyan and Eli came by to visit, offering the idea of going out to dinner and a movie (Valkyrie) that night with all of us; it was Eli's idea to take me out on my last weekend in Beirut. I hadn't been out anywhere with my aunt and I liked the idea of going out with the whole family, though I probably wouldn't have seen the movie otherwise. Chantal had been out all day so when she returned around 7 we left for the theater. Seating in Lebanese theaters is assigned so when I was sent ahead to buy tickets (they cost about $7) I tried to find 6 seats together as Michel was joining us. The movie was intense but everybody loved it, my aunt Nagibe included. I asked her if she liked violent action movies and she said yes "c'est magnifique!" We went to a pizza restaurant on the top floor of the mall where the cinema is (the largest mall in Beirut, packed with families and teenagers on a Saturday night) and each person ordered their own thin-crust platter-sized pizza, of which I could finish half. Not too bad though, when I think about other countries' attempts to recreate pizza (I think the weirdest was in Japan with corn and shrimp), particularly since the restaurant tried to stay faithful to the Napolitan theme.

We were home by 1230, pizza boxes in hand, and I gladly went to bed. I probably could have still met up with Diana and her friends, but sleep is good too.