If you clicked on the link in the Nov. 21, 2015 post, This is the World I Want to Live In you
would have read about a young woman who helped an Arabic speaking older woman
when her flight was delayed. As she
reached out and became friends with this woman, spoke with the woman’s sons,
and got her own dad to speak to the woman, they became friends. When the airline started to hand out juice,
the old woman pulled out mamool cookies that she was taking to her son and
shared them with the people sitting nearby.
Soon they all had icing sugar on their fingers and chins and were all
laughing. “This is the world I want to
live in. The shared world,” the young
woman writes. I emailed this link to a few friends and one of them delighted
with the story, emailed me back a whole page of recipes for these cookies.
My partner and I were having friends over to celebrate
the winter solstice and I had asked people to bring a story to tell since
that’s what people have done in the dark days of winter for a long time. When my kids were growing up we celebrated
every winter festival we could – Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanza,
and Chinese New Year by eating traditional foods for those celebrations. I have started to do this with my grandson as
well. Making potato latkes for Hanukkah
is now a tradition. So in light of the
Syrian refugees arriving in Canada I decided to make these Middle Eastern
cookies. I learned from the newspaper
that they are called Ka’ak in Syria.
I checked out the recipes my friend had sent and found
that I would have to search out rose water, orange blossom water and semolina
flour. Three stores in Midland left me
empty handed but a Food Basics in Barrie had a Middle Eastern section that
supplied me with the necessary ingredients.
It was actually really interesting to carefully go through all the
international aisles and see what amazing things you can buy.
I don’t really enjoy baking the way some people do but I
was motivated by the idea of making mamool cookies. The dough contains semolina flour, butter,
rose water and boiling water. The
stuffing for the inside is ground walnuts, orange blossom water, cinnamon,
sugar and dates. I bent the finished
cookies into crescent shapes and marked them with fork marks. I sprinkled icing sugar on them while still
hot just as the recipe called for.
I had no idea if they were authentic tasting. I kind of had to wing it. I wished I had an older experienced person to
teach me how to make them. Perhaps I
will meet someone from this area of the world and ask them how they make
them. I recently discussed potato latke
recipes with a Jewish woman who later brought me a traditional jelly doughnut
because it was Hanukkah. Food crosses
all borders. And so does music.
A children’s choir in Ottawa chose in January of this
year to sing a traditional Arabic song that welcomes Mohammed back from Mecca
to Medina in their December concert. Every
year the French school choir chooses a culture to honor and this year they
chose this Arabic welcoming song which coincidentally was sung just as the
first Syrian refugees started to arrive in Canada under the new government’s
open door initiatives. Looking at all
those young singing faces that reflect the immigration and diversity which is
Canada cut through the nonsense of hate talk and fear.
(Check it out on youtube and see how you feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
But back to the cookies.
At our Winter Solstice celebration we had a roaring fire outside and the
first story told was about fire and how the wood ashes from this fire would be
placed around the apple tree to keep it healthy. Another story was told about a miracle baby
joining a young family. And then the
high winds and icy air drove us inside.
I recently learned that people in Denmark are among the
happiest people in the world. They have
long dark winters and have the concept of hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) which means
cozy. They love to gather with good
friends, food and candlelight during the winter. So, learning from the Danes, this is what we
did and listened to each other tell stories while watching the candles
flicker.
Canadian author Thomas King in the 2003 Massey Lectures
entitled The Truth About Stories says
that “stories are all that we are.” We
choose which stories to tell and which ones not to tell, he says. So I was fascinated to hear what people had
chosen to tell.
That evening we heard stories of babysitting in the bush
of Northern Ontario when the oil stove died, of going into the woods to get moss
and plants for Christmas decoration, of riding in a horse drawn sleigh through
the streets of Montreal as a kid, a fairy tale about a girl who travels to
touch the stars, Thomas King’s Coyote
Solstice in which the forest animals go to the mall, funny stories about
roosters and pigs who all had names, the sensitive description of water and sky
written by a spouse now gone but much loved, stories about the past when food
was brought to the house by vendors, stories about past solstice lantern lit
walks to the woods to leave edible treats for the forest birds and stories that
were remembered after hearing someone else’s story.
How luxurious it felt, to sit and listen to each one
speak without fear of interruption. And
we also ate warm stew from the wonder pot and bannock. And when it was time for dessert, I told the
story of the mamool cookies and then passed them around the circle for each
person to take, just like in the story – we entered the shared world.
And one last poem by Kathryn Edgecombe was read aloud:
“Paint me a picture with your words/ Make the world a better
place/ For small children and old women…”
Food and music cross all borders and so can stories. Thomas King says, “If you want to change
society, change the stories we tell.”
We went back outside into the dark night, fire roaring
like the wind and lit sparklers and a Chinese lantern that flew madly – lights
in the darkness. Huddled together around
the fire, warmed by our time together, our hygge, we said our goodbyes and went
back to our lives knowing we were part of the shared world. Well, that’s the story I choose to tell.
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