Amena Makes Mahshi

Amena is holding and carefully examining a green vegetable.  She has learned that, here, it is called ‘zucchini’ or ‘courgette’.  She brings it to her nose, sniffs a couple of times, then replaces it in the tray.  She picks up another.  It is important to get this right.

This time, as well as looking and sniffing, she listens.  She taps this second zucchini in a couple of places and, satisfied, puts it in the wire-framed basket at her ankles.  She chooses another from the tray and repeats her sensory inspections.

She has cooked mahshi before, but not like this.

Once she has a dozen or so zucchini in her basket she turns her attention to the other trays and boxes skirting the outside of the shop.  She has been pleased to discover that, in this part of the city at least, there are plenty of places selling foods she finds familiar.  After all she has been through, she needs the familiar.

She picks up a great bundle of parsley, and another of coriander, and places them into separate brown paper bags, each time taking a deep lungful of the emerald aroma.  She chooses some fat plum tomatoes and some large purple onions.  These, too, go into brown paper bags before joining the zucchini in the wire basket.

Inside, the shopkeeper has a kind face.  He is Persian.  He asks her in English if she would like some help and she says yes, she would.  She has only been here a few months so she is pleased to be able to make herself understood.  She needs some spices: peppercorns, allspice berries, cinnamon, paprika.  Her grandmother used to use cardamom and cumin and saffron too.

The shopkeeper shows her a tin that he says contains ras el hanout.  Her reading is not quite good enough yet, but her sense of smell works perfectly: her face bursts into light and she nods vigorously when he opens the lid.

Suddenly, though, her face falls.  She wonders what her mother would say.  Amena thinks that her mother would disapprove.  Amena thinks that she ought to prepare the spices properly, one by one, in the proportions she saw her mother and her grandmother use.

She cannot, of course, ask her mother.  Her mother is still in Syria.  Only Amena and her sister Ranim are in London.

The shopkeeper sees this happening on her face.  He has been here many years now but he understands it vividly.  He makes a noise that is part chuckle, part moue and part cough but which is entirely reassuring and feels like an arm around her shoulder.  She looks thirteen or fourteen but she is only eleven.  He has seen the contents of her basket and he knows what she is planning.  He turns and selects a tube of tomato paste, turns back and holds it for her review.  He raises his eyebrows in enquiry, and smiles, and she smiles and then laughs.

She accepts the ras el hanout but he recommends as well some whole peppercorns and some paprika.  He also – and with a wise wink – offers her a small handful of turmeric root.

“Lamb?” she asks.

She has thought hard about this.  There are all sorts of ways of making mahshi, but the most obvious difference is between mahshi that has meat in it and mahshi that does not.  In her first few months in this new country she has learned that meat is complicated.  Some people eat it, and some do not; and some people eat some kinds of animal but not other kinds; and some people will only eat animals if they have been killed in a particular way, and others do not seem to mind.

Amena really likes the lamb mahshi that her mother makes but, given why she is cooking, she has decided to make just half the mahshi with lamb and the other half without.

“Of course,” the kindly Persian shopkeeper says, guiding her towards the counter at the back of the store.  ‘Halal’ is one of the words she has learned to pronounce well in English.

It is not long before she has all that she needs, including the rice.  At the till the shopkeeper carefully places everything from the wire basket onto the counter before asking her for the wicker bag she brought with her.  He weighs things, taps prices into the machine, then puts all the heaviest items at the bottom of her wicker bag and the lightest at the top.  Last to go in are the herbs.

He lifts the bag, assessing its weight.  He looks quizzically at her and invites her to test it herself.  Only when he sees that she can comfortably carry it does he look at the till and tell her the total.

She has a small red leather purse. Inside, there are two folded notes that she has been given by her foster mother Michelle.  Michelle and her husband have been looking after Amena and Ranim since December.  Amena thinks they are kind and gentle and is glad that she and her sister are being looked after by such nice people.  Michelle and Ranim are at home, waiting for Amena to return with the shopping.

Amena is good with numbers – she used to go to the market in Aleppo, once upon a time, to buy fruits and vegetables for the family – and she has quickly figured out how the money here works.  She hands both notes to the shopkeeper, examines the change when he puts it into her hand, then says thank you and goodbye in a clear voice.

***

Her teacher, Mrs Thompson, had explained that, once a year, the school organises a special feast.  All the children in the school are invited to the feast, and so too are all their families.  Everyone is asked to prepare a meal that they will share with the other families.

It is a school that seems to Amena very like her old school in some ways, and very different in others.  There are classes and lessons and children and teachers and playtime and learning and homework.  On the other hand, and even though the school is small, the pupils and families come from many different places rather than just one.  In her class alone there are children from Somalia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon.

Mrs Thompson explains that, often, people do not know very much about other countries.  Often they do not know what a country is really like and they think that it is nothing but war and famine, or it is a place where people dress strangely and have curious customs, or it is a place where bad things happen to ordinary people.  Often – Mrs Thompson continues – people’s misunderstandings can make it hard for everyone to get along with one another.

Amena is pleased that she understands all that Mrs Thompson says. And she is very keen that people should get along with one another.

Even if we do not speak each other’s language, Mrs Thompson goes on, we can easily find out how much we have in common.  That is what the feast is for.  The school feast is an occasion when we can all be together, and share what we have in common.  Everyone is invited to prepare some food from their home country, or the part of the world where they or their family originally came from.    The feast happens in the school playground, on a sunny Saturday in spring.

“What would you like to bring to the feast?” Mrs Thompson asks the class. Amena instantly knows the answer to this question.

***

Amena is in the kitchen with Ranim and Michelle.  Amena is unloading the paper bags onto the little table in the centre of the room.  Ranim is peering into the bags and Amena snaps at her in Arabic; Michelle is concerned that Ranim will squash the tomatoes and asks her in English to be careful; Ranim snaps back at Amena, who in turn asks Michelle to find a plate for the lamb in a sentence that is half English and half Arabic.  They are all far too excited and although there are only three of them the kitchen seems full.

Amena remembers that this is what is used to be like in her mother’s kitchen, and in her grandmother’s too.  Now, she realises, she is in charge, so she finds jobs for both Ranim and Michelle.  Ranim, who is nine, is asked to wash the vegetables; while Michelle, who is thirty seven, is asked to find a saucepan, two frying pans and two baking trays for the oven.  Amena finds the sieve and begins rinsing the rice: once, twice, three times, like she was taught.

Soon enough the rice is on the hob and Amena invites Ranim to slice the tomatoes and Michelle to chop the onions.  Amena herself chops garlic and removes the minced lamb from its waxed paper wrapping and begins to prepare the spices.  As she chops and grates, an air of productive calm replaces the atmosphere of noisy excitement.  Ranim finishes washing vegetables and Amena asks her to deal with the turmeric.  Michelle finds a reason to leave the room for a little while.

One of the frying pans is for the meat, the other is strictly for vegetables.  With the onions and garlic simmering in both, Amena tosses a handful of spices into each and the intoxicating smells punch firmly into the kitchen.  Ranim gets cross and is suddenly snarling at Amena in Arabic, just as Michelle returns to the kitchen.  Amena is now shouting and Ranim is shouting and Michelle is momentarily uncertain and Ranim storms from the room.  Amena glares after her and then at Michelle.  Michelle, too, leaves the room, and the space is entirely Amena’s.

The sounds and smells and colours have blurred the edges of the kitchen.  Amena tries to focus on the minced lamb, placing it bit by bit into the frying pan with the onion and the garlic and the spices.  The smell of the fat lifts her even further away and the noises from the street no longer come from London but from Syria.  She tosses the sliced tomatoes into the other frying pan and checks the rice and stirs the lamb and turns to the zucchini.

This is the part she learned first and is the job that was always hers.  She has permission to use Michelle’s sharpest knife and she begins working fluently, slicing away the ends, carving and scooping the flesh to create the wells.

She is looking down, concentrating, and her hands are no longer her own.  She sees her mother’s hands.  She sees her grandmother’s hands.  Her eyes blur and she loses sight of the hands.  It is too difficult, she has to stop, it is impossible, she cannot see.  She cannot see, she feels it, her shoulders slump, a cry escapes her throat and her head falls forward.

She feels Michelle’s arm across her back, a gentle rubbing across her shoulders, and through the mist of tears as she raises her gaze she sees Michelle’s other hand stirring the meat.

Nothing is said.

In a few more moments Amena is ready to resume, and she slices and carves and scoops her way through the remaining zucchini with a growing verve.  She drizzles the oil and grinds the salt and dusts the surface of each one with that mix of ras el hanout and other spices that seems now to be just the right mix.

Ranim is back in the room and she is in charge of the vegetarian frying pan.  Amena adds some more tomato paste, and a scattering of further spices, and then the freshly-drained rice.  Ranim continues to mix.  Michelle is chopping all the fresh herbs, as Amena requested, and it is not long before both frying pans are ready.  Amena hurls handfuls of the chopped herbs into each pan as they are removed from the heat.

Amena begins ladling the mixture into the scooped-out zucchini.  Half of them, for the meat sauce, are in one baking tray; half are in the other.  Amena shoos away the offers of help and interference from Michelle and Ranim: she is working with great precision and attention and she does not want anyone else making a mess of things.  Her fingers and her mother’s fingers and her grandmother’s fingers all seem to be working in concert now.

A strange sensation runs down her spine as she stands back from the baking trays to examine her work.  It is a sort of cold shudder, only hot, and it tickles, but doesn’t.  She gazes at the mahshi.  They are almost perfect.  After the briefest of pauses, she drizzles a little more oil and sprinkles a few more herbs across the baking trays.

“There,” she says, in English.  “Ready.”  Michelle takes this as the signal, opens the oven door and pops both trays in.

***

The school playground is transformed.  Dozens of trestle tables have been set up and they are all dressed with wonderful white table cloths.  There seem to be hundreds of people milling everywhere.  There is chatter and laughter and more smiling than Amena can remember seeing in a long, long time.  She has on a pair of oven gloves and is carrying one of the two baking trays.  Michelle carries the other and Ranim has a bag full of paper plates and napkins and all three are following Mrs Thompson towards the trestle table near the top of the netball court.  There is a hotplate on the table and Mrs Thompson points to the electric cables that snake along the ground and explains that the caretaker has done his best to make sure all the cables are secure but do please be careful.

And then Mrs Thompson is gone and the three of them are setting up their stall and Amena comes to a halt because her throat is dry and swollen and her hands do not seem to be working properly and it is all a terrible, terrible idea and she wants to go home but she cannot go home and her knees are not working either and – and Michelle’s face looms into view and her smile is bright and reassuring and her hands are squeezing Amena’s forearms and there is an announcement over the loudspeaker that the feast is about to begin and Amena looks down at the ground and stares at her toes and Michelle has removed the foil from the top of the baking trays and Amena is gazing at her own hands and they are her hands they are her hands they are her hands and she stiffens her back and she straightens her neck and she raises her head.

Amena gazes steadily forward.  “It’s called mahshi,” she says.