9781422277478

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The Middle Eastern Family Table

by M a ri R i c h

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The African Family Table The Chinese Family Table The Greek Family Table The Indian Family Table The Italian Family Table The Japanese Family Table The Mexican Family Table

The Middle Eastern Family Table The Native American Family Table The SouthAmerican Family Table The Thai Family Table

C onnecting C ultures T hrough F ami ly and F oo d

The Middle Eastern Family Table

By Mari Rich

MASON CREST

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

© 2019 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-4041-0 Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4222-4049-6 EBook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7747-8

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rich, Mari, author. Title: The Middle Eastern family table / by Mari Rich. Other titles: Connecting cultures through family and food. Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, 2018. | Series: Connecting cultures through family and food | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017058186| ISBN 9781422240496 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422277478 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Food habits--Middle East--Juvenile literature. | Cooking, Middle Eastern--Juvenile literature. | Middle Easterners--Food--Juvenile literature. | Middle East--Social life and customs--Juvenile literature. | Middle East--Emigration and immigration--Juvenile literature. | United States--Emigration and immigration--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC GT2853.M628 R53 2018 | DDC 394.1/20956--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc. gov/2017058186

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Introduction............................................................................................. 6 1. Getting Here. ...........................................10 APPETIZERS............................................................................18 2. Settling In................................................22 FIRST COURSE...................................................................... 32 3. Connecting..............................................36 SECOND COURSE...................................................................44 4. Reaching Back........................................46 DESSERT.................................................................................56 Find Out More......................................................................................62 Series Glossary of Key Terms..........................................................63 Index/Author........................................................................................ 64 Contents

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Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented here. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together addi- tional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

Introduction

W hen people talk about the Middle East, they are not referring to a single country. The MiddleEast isaregionthat stretches fromAfrica in thewest to theArabi- anGulf in the east. It containsmore than 20 nations, including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Pal- estine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. You might think everyone in the Middle East is Muslim, but in fact, theregionishome topeopleof awide variety of faiths, including Chris- tians, Jews, andDruze (members of an independent religionestablished in the 11th century). Middle Easterners have immi- grated to the United States since the late 19th century, and in the last

fewdecades, their numbers have in- creased greatly. In 1970 there were about 200,000 Middle Eastern im- migrants in the United States, but today, there are about 1.5 million, according tosomeestimates.Califor- nia, Virginia, Texas, Michigan, and New York are among the US states withfast-growingnumbersof people from the Middle East. People from the region have also settled in large numbers in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. People move from the Middle East for a number of reasons. Some are seeking greater educational and economic opportunities andabetter life. Some are escaping persecution, violence, and strife in their native countries.Beginningin2015,refugees trying to escape crises in places like

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Introduction

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

AfghanistanandSyriahave contrib- uted to what humanitarian groups called a massive shift of humani- ty unlike any ever seen before. (Of course, the flow is not just one way; therearemanywhohaveimmigrated to theMiddleEast. In 1948, when the Jewish nation of Israel was estab- lished, people came fromall over the world to live there. Many of these were Eastern European Jews who had survived theHolocaust and saw

a chance to rebuild their lives. Jews fromother countries still immigrate to Israel, in a process that is called making aliyah , which translates as “elevation” or “going up.”) Like all people from around the worldwho set out tofindnewhomes, for whatever reason, Middle East- erners bringwith them the families they loveandthe traditions thatbind them together. Many of those tradi- tions, as we will see, involve eating

Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia, was founded in 1733 by Jewish immigrants from Europe.

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Introduction

certainmeals.Althoughavarietyof countries make up the Middle East, most have favorite foods and flavors incommon, including sesame seeds, figs and dates, yogurt, honey, olives and olive oil, chickpeas (also known asgarbanzobeans intheWest),mint, andpitabread.Certaincooking tech- niques(likeplacingmeatsonskewers tobegrilled) arepopular throughout the entire region, too. Thanks to Middle Eastern im- migrants, some of those foods and flavors have become mainstays in American cuisine in recent years.

For example, you’ve probably seena wholesectionof your supermarket’s refrigerator casedevoted to contain- ersof hummus, aMiddleEasterndip madeof chickpeas.Maybe thebread aisle features packages of pita for making sandwiches or individual pizzas. Middle Easterners don’t just in- troducedeliciousnewfoodstoforeign markets. They help make the coun- tries where theymovemore diverse and interesting places.

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Getting Here

“W ewere respected professionalswhenwe lived inEgypt,”AhmedMaloof explains. “I taught high school, and my wife, Salwa, was a school counselor. Although things are very different for us here in New York, we don’t

Words to Understand Arab a member of the Arabic-speaking people displaced persecution, or natural disaster emissary a person sent on a special mission literate able to read and write

forced to leave home, generally because of war,

Ottoman Empire an empire created by Turkish tribes that lasted more than 600 years. At its peak, it controlled large portions of the Middle East, including what is now Syria, Israel, and Egypt, as well as most of southeastern Europe and other places. peddler a person who sells goods from a mobile site, such as a cart or truck persecution criticism, danger, or threats made against a person due to their religious or ethnic background

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The Middle East is filled with different countries and cultures, but most people who emigrate from there share a desire to take advantage of new opportunities.

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

regret coming for even one minute.” Although Ahmed and Salwa had important jobs in their native land, between the two of them they earned the equivalent of about $60 each month. That was not nearly enough to raise their children, Hassan and Rana, and the new baby that was on the way back in 1995. That year, Ahmed read in an Egyptian newspaper that the United States was holding a lottery. Winners would get a green card, a document that allows people from other countries to move to America to live and work legally. To his surprise, he won, and he excitedly (but nervously) made plans to travel to New York, where a distant cousin owned a street cart and sold quick, inexpensive lunches. It was hardwork, and his cousin was always looking for reliable help. Ahmedwas worried about leaving his children and his pregnant wife, but he realized that this was the best chance he had to give his growing family a better life, so he set off. Following in Others’ Footsteps T hefirst significantwave of MiddleEastern immigrants beganarriving in America in the late 19th century. As Ahmed would do more than a hundred years later, many came for the chance to earn more money and increase their standard of living. Some, however, came to escape religious persecution in the Ottoman Empire . Their identification cards and passports had been issued by the Ottomans, and confused US immigration officialsusedtheterms“Turks,”“Armenians,”and“Syrians”interchangeably. Most of these immigrants were single young men who practiced Christianity and didn’t speak much English. Many dreamed of earning money in the United States and then returning home to find brides from

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Getting Here

The Very Earliest Settlers

Although immigrants from the Middle East did not begin to arrive in the United States in any large numbers until the late 19th century, there are historical accounts of some arriving earlier. In the mid-18th century, a royal emissary was sent from the region to explore the possi- bilities of establishing a Muslim presence in the New World. He was shipwrecked off the coast of Ocracoke Island, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He established a village there, and to- day a few Arabian horses, descendants of those he had traveled with, still roam the island. In the mid-19th century, Hadj Ali, a Christian from Lebanon, came to America to work on the

Camel Driver Experiment, a US Army project to establish a transportation route across the desert between Texas and California. The Americans pro- nounced his name “Hi Jolly,” and he is still referred to in some history books that way and on this Arizona monument.

their own culture. Like other immigrant groups, a percentage of these Middle Easterners found that working as peddlers enabled them to earn a living and savemoney. They often sold embroidered linens and religious items they imported fromtheir native lands. Married peddlers sometimes sold baked goods and candiesmade by theirwives. (Ahmed points out that food carts like the one owned by his cousin have a lot in common with the peddlers’ carts fromthat era, even though themodern version is equipped with a griddle, refrigerator, and other conveniences.)

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C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

Over time, this first wave of immigrants set enough money aside to start businesses. Often thesewere food related. Christine SahadiWhelan’s family owns the iconicMiddleEasterngrocery store Sahadi’s indowntown Brooklyn (see below). She explains, “Immigrants do what they know. In the case of my grandfather and his uncle, who came here from Lebanon, they knew food. Even today, if someone immigrates as an engineer or doctor, there are so many hoops to jump through in order to get licensed, it’s just much easier to open a food business.”

AnAmerican Classic fromLebanon

In 1895, Abrahim Sahadi, a Lebanese immigrant, opened A. Sahadi and Company in downtown Manhattan, where he sold groceries to the many families emigrating from the Ottoman Empire, which was then in decline. He imported foods and spices they would be familiar with and that they might miss from their homelands, like

lentils, chickpeas, sumac, and grape leaves. In 1919, his nephew Wade came to the United States to join the business, and the store supported dozens of members of his extended family as they arrived in the city. In 1941, Wade, an opinionated man who regularly squabbled with his uncle over business decisions, struck out on his own, taking a supply of the stock on the shelves as his fair share and using them to open the Manhattan Sahadi Importing Company, just a block away from Abrahim’s store. He ultimately moved operations to Brooklyn, where the store became a beloved neighborhood institution, now run by his grandchildren Christine and Ron. The store is considered such an example of immigrant success and local character that it was named an American Classic by the James Beard Foundation.