Tag: Writing

What “Come from Away” Means

(photo by M. A. AlAwaid)

Someone recently commented that I named this website after the musical, Come from Away, which is based on what happened when 38 planes were diverted to Gander, Newoundland on 9/11.

I love that musical, especially the song “Me and the Sky,” but that’s not where the title comes from. I first heard “come from away” more than 50 years ago in the British Virgin Islands. The term was used by people in the BVI to refer to those who were not from the islands. When I was young, my parents lived in Puerto Rico and bought a piece of land on one of the islands, so my family was referred to as “come from away.”

When I decided to start my website, I used that term as a way to say ‘non-local’ as I was writing about Oman, but I am not Omani.

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions

Ethnography – Finding the Middle Ground, part 1 of Discussing Photographs

Ethnography – Staying Calm

Ethnographic Work and Pop Songs, updated

 

Water Bottles, Work Boots, Doors and Tribes

(photo by M. A. Al Awaid)

Even after two years in the States, I have a lot of ‘muscle memory’ from living in Oman. I still dislike shaking hands and I can’t seem to stop offering people bottles of water. If you show up at my office, I am going to ask if you would like some water. And I feel it keenly that the hot water situation is not figured out sufficiently for me to ask if you would like tea.

One of the many, many wonderful aspects of living in Oman was the constant offering of tea. Many people know this as a kind of joke or marketing ploy but I loved it. When going rug shopping, of course a cup of hot sweet tea makes the bargaining more fun, more like a social interaction. I had lovely conversations drinking tea with the men who worked at my favorite rug shop next to Muttrah Souq.

However, now when I ask people if they want water, I usually get a ‘deer in headlights’ look and a quick refusal. Americans don’t have time, but also I sometimes feel that there is a layer of ‘I don’t want to be indebted.’ If you give me something, what might I have to do in the future?

The people who usually accept are my favorite Americans: blue collar workers. If I am struggling with an armful of papers, it is most often the person in work boots who will open the door, make a joke, hold the elevator or give me a quick smile of understanding. Even before I moved to Oman, I felt an affinity for these people who move, in a fashion, through tribal patterns.

To me “tribal patterns” means an understanding that none of us have everything we need to make it through the day, so what you have at hand to offer other people, you offer. And what you need, you ask for (implicitly or explicitly). Between neighbors in Oman, there is no counting, e.g., “I received this so I must give that is return.” In some cases I know, the neighbors with less financial security received food almost every day and never reciprocated. Some men never brought food to picnic dinners and this was never mentioned – everyone was glad they came, showing up with or without some snacks made no difference.

Often I have found that blue-collar workers in the Boston area live within the same framework. I feel like there are invisible webs of connections with me handing out bottles of water to carpenters, construction workers, movers and delivery people and me getting repaid by different sets of carpenters, construction workers, movers and delivery people holding doors open for me.

I recently attended a lecture by a scholar who, in the midst of a larger discussion, pointed out the problems inherent in “tribalism,” which they defined loosely as groups who unthinkingly follow a particular creed. After the talk, I wrote an e-mail to the scholar, saying:

I am sure you have debated this endlessly, but I do want to make a pointed objection to the use of “tribes” as negative given that I have studied tribes on the Arabian Peninsula for over 15 years.

The answer was rather like the Grinch patting Cindy-Lou Who on the head. The scholar stated that while tribalism “is a problem, but there is nothing wrong with being a member of a tribe.”

Further, they wrote, “in the broader sense of the word, as I use it, we are all members of tribes. In any case, I hope it was clear that I do not use the term pejoratively.”

You can’t claim “this is what I want the word to mean” while ignoring how it is used in everyday life. As an academic in a position of power, you should define your terms carefully and be sure to acknowledge the background, main-stream usage, other points of view and mis-use of your terms.

“Tribe” has been used for centuries to not only describe but dismiss/ disrespect groups of non-Western peoples as being part of “non-evolved” cultures. Tribalism/ tribal/ tribe are used almost exclusively as negative terms within the USA/ EU/ UK. If someone has a “tribe-mentality” the connotation is that they cannot think objectively or rationally. It is not a word that can be pulled out from its cluster of negative connotations when referring to human behavior.

[And it is worth thinking about how the negative connotation of tribal = sheep-like behavior is transmuted to positive when it is used as an adjective for a purchasable item, e.g. tribal jewelry.]

A further part of the scholar’s answer was: “I would say that tribalism is a human universal, present to varying degrees in all cultures and built into the way humans think and feel, but not insurmountable.”

“Not insurmountable”? Insurmounting tribes is an objective only if you are thinking of “tribal” as negative, e.g. backwards, hide-bound and incapable of independent thought.

Obviously, that’s not how I think of tribes, either in the established sense (e.g., tribes in Dhofare) or the more casual sense (e.g., construction workers in Cambridge). I think of tribes as groups of people who support each other and, to come back to the point about offering bottles of water, do not shy away from interdependency.

Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions

Marriage and Peace/ Marriage and Joy in Dhofar

‘Little c’ Culture: Flooded Roads and Cheese Triangles

New essay: “Kâf is for Karavan” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

“The Arabic Alphabet” website (written by Michael Beard, illustrated by Houman Mortazavi) – http://alifbatourguide.com/

Kâf is for Karavan – https://alifbatourguide.com/the-arabic-alphabet/kaf/

excerpt

âf’s Phoenician predecessor, also a K sound, was Kaph, one of the letters whose name has a meaning: the hollow of the hand, the palm. The word (kaff) survived in Arabic and the usual companion languages. In Persian poetry a glass of wine is traditionally held in the kaff. The constellation we know as Andromeda was once called in Arabic The Hand decorated with Henna, Al-Kaff al-khad͎îb, الکفّ الخضیب. (Khad͎ab is one of two words for henna, the other being the more recognizable h͎innâ’.) A kaffa is the pan of a scale or balance. The dual form of the word, kiffatân, is our constellation Libra.

A kalb is a dog; Al-kalb al-asghar is Canis Minor. (Canis major is Al-Kalb al-akbar.) The constellation we call (misleadingly) Crater (Latin for bowl or cup) is Al-Ka’s, the bowl or goblet. The etymological origin of Kochab, the second brightest star in the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor), is contested, but if it’s an unimaginative origin (always a possibility), it may come from kawkab. (A kawkab is a star.)

Kâf is pronounced like our K, and it has a shape which seems to show a distant family relation to it. The straight line of ک , rising slightly rightward from the top of the upright, called in Arabic the ra’s (head), in Persian the sarkesh (the line “pulled” – keshideh – upward), looks familiar to us. (It gives us two thirds of our three-stroke letter K.) Looking at the various shapes it takes in Nabataean, I’m puzzled how it gets there.

That nearly horizontal extension, the line that gives it its personality, rising at various possible angles, is present when ک appears at the beginning of a word, or the middle. One is taught to draw the upright, its mast, as a simple, erect vertical line, but in practice the upright is more frequently folded down to the left, or even bent over horizontal, parallel to the base line, as if it were the first step in making a paper clip. If it’s followed by an upright (Alif or Lam), it may be a complete circle.

At the end of a word, Arabic Kâf loses the horizontal, the sa’r, and becomes ك , something like backwards L, simply an upright rising from a slightly curved extension with a long foot running along the base line. Then you add a little mark like a miniature 2 (which resembles a Hamza), floating above the base. Persian script is different. Its terminal Kâf loses the little Hamza shape and retains the spar. The Persian adaptation is said to have a practical use—to distinguish Kâf (ك ) from Lam (ل) when writing rapidly. In both cases terminal Kâf sits solidly on the line.

Arabic Kâf (like Fâ) can have a meaning on its own: as a one-letter word in Arabic, attached to its neighbor like a prefix, it means “like” or “as.” It’s also popular as a suffix. At the end of an Arabic word it marks the second person possessive: –k is “your” (-kum in the plural). Thus Salâm ‘alayk or Salâm ‘alaykum. Kâfplays an even more nearly ubiquitous role in Turkish in the infinitive suffix (ending in –mek or –mak). In Persian, –ak is a diminutive suffix, as in cheshmak, چشمک, a wink (from cheshm, “eye) or bâdbâdak, بادبادک, a kite (from bâd, “wind”).

Kâf words in Persian often suggest the tiny and cute: kudak, کودک an infant, kuchek, کوچک, small, and kuchelu, کوچولو, smaller still. Kam, کم, is “a little,” or “not enough.” But Kâf is also for kabîr, “great,” which we are likely to know from the comparative form, akbar (as in Al-kalb al-Akbar). The comparative also has a feminine form, kubrâ’, which to English ears seems a little startling when we hear it as a woman’s name.

 

New essay: “The Control F Word” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

(photo by M. A. AlAwaid)

“The Arabic Alphabet” website (written by Michael Beard, illustrated by Houman Mortazavi) – http://alifbatourguide.com/

The Control F Word – https://alifbatourguide.com/the-arabic-alphabet/ghazal/

excerpt:

The Control F Word

Fâ is one of the easy ones: a little circle drawn clockwise, resting, or balancing, on the base line, slightly pointed at the bottom. There is a dot above the circle. (In Morocco you may find the dot underneath.) That’s what you’ll see in the middle of a word. The minimal shape, circle plus dot, gets a little showier at the end or the beginning. At the beginning, raised above the base line, it looks as if the circle were lifted up on a stick, balloon style (فـ). At the end of the word, the line continues on to the left (ف), and forms something like that familiar shallow pan shape one sees in a terminal Ba, Ta, or Tha.

As for the sound, it’s also easy— for us at least. I’m told there are quite a few languages that don’t have it. Old Persian was one. (F words came into Persian gradually — via loans from, I am told, Elamite and Median– which gradually got accepted as one of the family.) Phoenician didn’t have an F either, but it had a P which over time took on an F sound.

The neighborly relation between P and F is pretty well known (i.e. that speakers of Arabic have F, but not the P sound). Thus the complication of loan words from Persian into Arabic: famously, if the word has a P in Persian, it becomes either B or F in Arabic. Often enough those words got reborrowed into Persian again, F words keeping the F. Textbook examples: Persian pîl, elephant, became Arabic fîl, and kept the F when it crossed back into Persian. More famously, Persian Pars became Arabic Fars; Persian Ispahân became Persian Esfahân. Old Persian pairidaeza (a term you would see in the Avesta), garden or for paradise, drifted west to Greek and Latin (and English – our “paradise”), keeping the P sound. (In the Septuagint translation of the Bible, the Greek equivalent, παράδεισος, is used as the name of the Garden of Eden.) As an Arabic loan word, it became al-firdus ,الفردوس, a Qur’ânic word usually translated “paradise.”

V vs W

In Arabic, ف can have a meaning on its own. A simple ف is the word fa-. It attaches to the next word and works as a grammatical connective. The dictionary says “then, thus, and so, however, because, therefore.” It’s a universal joint of Arabic syntax. Sometimes it seems as common as “and.” It may feel something like English “so.” (Sometimes it’s “so” in that contemporary English use which means “a statement follows.”) I always assumed that this use of the word ف had something to do with the letter which resembles it, و, Waw, which has a similar meaning when it stands alone, wa, meaning “and.” I have it on good authority that this similarity of meanings between ف and و , F and W, is a coincidence.

But if we want to find a relationship between F and V, in Arabic, there is a visual one. It results from the absence of V sound from Arabic: loan words with a V sometimes get their own letter. Many years ago, in a store in the Kerman bazaar, I saw a container with the label اُڤالتین (Ouvâltîn). It was pretty clearly an Ovaltine container, and that ڤ with three dots was clearly there to represent a V (a voiced F). You knew from those three dots that it wasn’t a domestic product, Persian having no trouble with the V sound (their و), so that, in Persian, ڤ isn’t of any particular use. The three-dot ڤ – I found out later– is rare in Arabic too. (The only other example I’ve seen is ڤيتنام for Vietnam) but it shows up regularly to represent a V sound in Sorani Kurdish and Swahili. You can see the logic of the shape: ڤ is another case where the triple dots are devised to thicken the sound of another letter (as with ت to ث –T to TH– or س to ش — S to SH). There is variant of ڤ, written ڥ , which plays the same role of representing the V sound in Tunisia and Algeria, though for some reason it doesn’t look as thick. (This is probably just me.) Today Arabic containers of Ovaltine simply write اُفالتین with a Fa, no doubt on the assumption that customers are likely to know English and understand it on their own. Three dots no longer useful, casualties of education.

In Spanish, fulano means something like “so-and-so,” “someone or other,” as in “Fulano, Mengano, Zutano y Perengano,” which I think means something like “Tom Dick and Harry.” The origin is the Arabic word fulân, فلان (falan in Turkish, folân in Persian), where it has the same range of meanings – from an innocent “some random person,” to something more pointed, “that so-and-so,” or even “that bastard.” There is a fragment of a lost poem by the 8th-century Arab satirist Jarîrî, literary insult comic, directed at someone who is too much of a nobody to name.

وَقُلْ لِفُلَانٍ إِنْ تَجَرَّأَ مَرَّةً

سَتَعْرِفُ مَنْ يَبْقَى وَمَنْ يَتَحَوَّلُ

[Tell that nobody (that fulân ) if he tries it again (“it” not specified),

he’ll learn who holds his ground and who runs away.]

New essay: “’Ayn is for Arab” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

New Essay: “Ṭâ Is For Talisman” on The Arabic Alphabet website

New essay: “Sîn is for Zenith” on the Arabic alphabet website

New essay: “’Ghayn is for Ghazal” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

I am happy to announce that my book ‘Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman’ has been published

I am happy to announce that my book ‘Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman’ has been published by Anthem Press, available here

My interview about the book is available here

My essay about marraige and peace is available here

Table of Contents

Preface – Second Wives

Introduction

Dhofar

Discussion of References

Definitions

Husband, Wife and Marriage

Family

Household

Status

My Positionality

My Background

Limitations

Data Collection

Learning from Teaching

Female Friends and Informants

Working with the “Research Guys”

Men, Trust, Cars and Cats

Men and Self-Control: The Story of Z

Relationships Before Marriage

Marriage – Main Understandings

Age and Marriage

Example Marriage

Choosing a Spouse

Finding a Bride within the Family

Finding a Bride not within the Family

Finding a Husband

Asking to Marry

“Fighting”/ “Convincing” To Marry or Not Marry

Deciding to Marry

Engagement

Getting the Room Ready

Wedding Announcements, Invitations and Photos

Wedding Announcements and Invitations

Wedding Photos – General

Wedding Photos – Women

Wedding Photos – Men

Wedding Parties

When the Wedding is Called Off, Postponed or Changed

Wedding Parties – Men

Wedding Parties – Women at a Hall

Wedding Parties – Women at Home

After the Wedding

Creating a Marital Relationship

A Wife’s Work

A Husband’s Work

Meals

Cars and Hotels

Being Content in Marriage

Not Being Content in Marriage

Gross Misconduct – Extra-marital Sex and Alcohol

Marriage and Placement

Men and Placement

Women and Placement

End of a Marriage

After Divorce or Death of a Spouse

Second Wives/ Co-wives

Children

Pregnancy

Birth and Naming

Female Genital Mutilation

Differences/ Distinctions – Which Culture Does Marriage Better?

Family Time

Who Has Free Time (and When)

Health

Coda

References

(photo by Onaiza Shaikh)

Reflections on Ethnographic Research in Dhofar Oman

Reflections/ Research on Teaching Cultural Studies and Literature

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Getting it Wrong

Practicalities: Managing a Short Research Trip to the Arabian Peninsula

Essay published: What a Frog in Boiling Water Knows: Oman, Before and After

I am happy to announce that my chapter “What a Frog in Boiling Water Knows: Oman, Before and After” has been published in Emanations 12. Brookline, MA: International Authors, 2026: 304-311. link to book

excerpt

At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts I like ‘Woman and Flowers’ by Alma-Tadema, one of my favorite painters, but the painting I love most is ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ by Luc Olivier Merson, such a quiet, graceful scene.

I bought a membership to the museum and within a month I was back. I paid a visit to the Egyptian section, then ventured further out, into the American and impressionists exhibits. Two weeks later, I spent another morning walking around without a map. It was nice to come across Paul Revere’s silverwork and the painting of flowers exhibit, but the only places I really wanted to be was in front of Merson’s painting or anything Middle Eastern from before 1500 CE.

Walking into a room in the Ancient Egyptian section that I hadn’t seen before, I suddenly understood why the museum brought me such serenity. The cases were full of small, wooden boats full of men in white sarongs. Oh, I realized, they look like the research guys.

Most of the Omani men I did ethnographic research with are full- or part-time fishermen. And they wear a wazar, a piece of fabric wrapped around their waists that falls to their knees which is often plain white cotton or white with a light checkered or striped pattern.

And the man in the painting ‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ sleeps as the research guys sleep when they are camping, directly on sand next to a fire with a blanket underneath and a blanket over which is pulled up to cover the face. For everyone else, the man in the painting is Joseph; for me, it’s one of 15 different men who I was friends with, went fishing with, had hundreds of picnics with, asked questions of and who I miss terribly.

My grief is much smaller than most people who have been displaced by wars and hatred. Relatives co-signed my lease so I have a place to stay; my mom helps me get through a Boston winter by gifting flannel sheets and sweaters. But I stand in front of that painting and cry as it seems to hold all the harmony that I have lost.

Then, as so often happens, the book I needed to understand how I felt appeared at the right time. Amidst the postcards and scarves in the museum shop, I saw ‘All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me’ by Patrick Bringley. Although my favorite museum is the Frick, I also love the Met and the cover mentioned something about grief, so I thought it would be interesting.

I read it in one morning, crying all the way through. What Bringley gets so right is how a loss, even when you know it’s coming and you have a pretty good idea how much it is going to hurt, stops the forward motion of your life. His book isn’t ‘feel-good’ or & ‘how to’; after his brother died, Bringley walked away from his career and became a security guard at the Met for ten years.

Marriage and Peace/ Marriage and Joy in Dhofar

Houseways: ‘Homespaces’ Away from Home

Living Expat, A Remembrance of Happier Times on the Arabian Peninsula

Team Thesiger: ‘Arabian Sands’, ‘The Worst Journey in the World’, ‘The Snow Leopard’ and ‘Into Thin Air

 

Screenshot

Two Views of Corfu: Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell and Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals

Handout from discussion at Boston Athenaeum, April 25th

When Should You Arrive at Your Ithaca? Thinking about Cavafy, Gerald Durrell, Lawrence Durrell and Corfu (Boston Athenaeum, April 25, 10am)

Lawrence Durrell – https://lawrencedurrell.org/wp_durrell/

known for fiction: Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea) and The Avignon Quintet (Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, Quinx)

  • light humor: The Best of Antrobus, Esprit de Corps
  • travel writing: Prospero’s Cell (Corfu), Reflections on a Marine Venus (Rhodes), Bitter Lemons (Cyprus), Caesar’s Vast Ghost (Provence), Spirit of Place (collection of travel writing)
  • biography: Larry: A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912-1945; Lawrence Durrell: A Biography by Ian S. MacNiven
  • if you like his fiction, maybe try: The English Patient
  • if you like his light humor, maybe try: Hotel Splendide, La Bonne Table, Bemelmans
  • if you like his travel writing, maybe try: Provence, F. M. Ford; The Station, Robert Bryon

Gerald Durrell – https://www.durrell.org/visit-jersey-zoo/

known for autobiographical books set on Corfu in his childhood: My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives; The Garden of the Gods

  • animal collecting/ creating a zoo: Three Singles to Adventure. A Zoo in my Luggage, The Bafut Beagles, The Whispering Land, The Aye-Aye and I, Menagerie Manor
  • animal/ nature conservation: The Ark’s Anniversary, Amateur Naturalist
  • autobiography: Myself and Other Animals
  • biography: Gerald Durrell: The Authorised Biography by Douglas Botting
  • if you like amusing adventures, maybe try: Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide; A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Other texts

  • Whatever Happened to Margo? Margo tells HER side of the story!
  • Dining with the Durrells: Stories and Recipes from the Cookery Archive of Mrs Louisa Durrell – mom’s recipes!
  • The Durrell-Miller Letters: 1935-1980

Marriage and Peace – essay published

“Yemen with Yul,” travel essay published

Team Thesiger: ‘Arabian Sands’, ‘The Worst Journey in the World’, ‘The Snow Leopard’ and ‘Into Thin Air’

Marriage and Peace – essay published

I am happy to announce that my essay on ‘Marriage and Peace’ has just been published. The photographs were taken by Onazia Shaikh. 

It is difficult to write about my book, Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman, given the current war in the Middle East. The anthropological study of people’s lives seems unimportant in the face of such terrors and tragedy. Also it’s hard to understand why such a peaceful country as Oman has been pulled into the war, given that for over 50 years its unofficial motto has been ‘Friend to All, Enemy to None’. Salalah, the city in southern Oman where I lived for 19 years, has been bombed twice.

Anthropology in war is a fraught undertaking; the Human Terrain project, the American government’s attempt to merge military logic with ethnography, did not work.

Anthropology is more along the lines of ballroom dancing. You need peace now, peace in the recent past and the expectation of peace in the future to get started; you also need a group of people who are willing to learn a new way of movement. I like the analogy because people who haven’t done ballroom dancing can dismiss it as frivolous but learning when to turn, when to cross, how to follow the music and how to move in clothes and shoes that are unfamiliar while making the right kind of small talk is excellent training to become an ethnographer.

And marriage is a peace-time activity; you need peace and food security to think of adding someone to the family and for people and goods to travel to the celebration. So my book is a peace-time book. It reflects my thinking about how Omanis in the southernmost region go about finding someone to spend their life with and how to create a peaceful life together. I cover how men and women decide to start looking for a partner and all the following steps, including the dissolution of a marriage and old age. I did most of my work with people from the hakli, or qara, group of tribes whose first language is a Modern South Arabian language called Gibali (Jebbali/Shahri /Shehret).

The full essay is here.

I am happy to announce that my new book is now available for pre-order: Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman

Living Expat, A Remembrance of Happier Times on the Arabian Peninsula

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: (Not) Asking Questions

Team Thesiger: ‘Arabian Sands’, ‘The Worst Journey in the World’, ‘The Snow Leopard’ and ‘Into Thin Air’

 

Cognitive Dissonance and Food Identification

originally published, July 12, 2019

The monsoon season (finally) started yesterday so, in celebration, I went for the first time to a small, cute shop which sells food made by a local woman. I had driven by and seen it but never gone in. With the drizzle coming down at a steady pace, I decided to have a small party, support women who are selling food, and, of course, continue my food research!

As I viewed the sandwiches, cooked food and cakes on display, I discussed the food in a mixture of Arabic and English with the expat man who was working. “Is this strawberry cake?” I asked, pointing to a cake with a pink layer of what looked like jam. He said yes. I repeated the question in Arabic to make sure, then moved on, “Is this cake with coffee flavor? Is this chicken? Is the chicken spicy or normal?” etc. I bought a selection of things, went home and produced them for my guests: this is non-spicy chicken, this is strawberry cake, this is coffee cake.

Wrong. All of it wrong. The chicken was fiery hot, it wasn’t strawberry and the brown cake was ‘Lotus’ flavored, not coffee. Sigh. Last week it was at KFC, I ordered 4 chicken strips and Dew with ice; I got someone else’s order and was told that the Dew, which had no ice, has “ice inside.” Sigh. In these kinds of example, it’s a mixture of linguistics and culture. I would not think of a ‘biscuit-flavored cake’; a white cake with medium brown frosting looks like ‘coffee’ to me. ‘Ice’ to me is cubes the size of cherry tomatoes, not that the soda is cold.

good morning - wood

Sometimes it is an issue of what you ask for is not what you get but sometimes it’s a visual and cultural problem, as in the photo above – I enlarged that photo several times, tilting my head, thinking “WHAT is that in the little bowl?” Finally I decided it was walnuts and date maamoul (dates with spices cooked into a paste, surrounded by a heavy sugar cookie dough and baked). I don’t think of  walnuts as breakfast food so I had to wait until my eyes could “see” them. Several times I have seen shallow bowls of dates and assumed it was pieces of meat and vice versa. One trick I learned is that if there is a coffee dallah (traditional Arabian coffee pot) it is dates; if there are cups of tea, it is probably meat. [Or in the above photo, the piece of wood doesn’t look like what I expect ‘camp fire wood’ to look like: it’s dark, full of holes, almost insubstantial looking. But from camping in the desert, I know this is typical of wood you can find or buy and it serves as a marker, “we are very far from town.”]

There is another level of difficulties: seeing various food items and not understanding how they fit together. A friend remembers being in a grocery store with me when we were in grad school. As we came around the corner of an aisle and the end cap had: cans of tuna, cans of peas, cans of sliced mushrooms, egg noodles, salt and canned cream of mushroom soup. I looked at her and said how this combination of food was a culturally-bound signifier of middle-class American in middle America, an implied recipe without stated recipe. Everyone who saw that display would know that all these items should be bought and cooked together to create a tuna casserole. But someone from outside that culture would see a collection of disparate items. Such as the photo below: chips, processed cheese and bread. This might be read as “put cheese on bread and eat with chips.” But Omanis know, you open the bag a little then crush the chips. Put cheese on bread, sprinkle on chip fragments and then roll up into a tube.

Eating begins with the eyes and everyone sees food through their cultures, upbringing and experiences. Learning to see again, see new, and re-see is a long process that I am still in the middle of.

tea with chips

Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Cultural Understandings of Water and Food

Foodways: Thinking about Uses of Plastic Bags and Bottles in Dhofar

You Have Nothing to Fear from Sheep’s Eyes but Beware the Carrot Sweet: Researching Foodways in Southern Oman

Food Essays – Grocery Stores, Recipes, Expat Food and Littering

Book Discussion at the Boston Athenaeum: Two Views of Corfu, Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell

I will be leading a book discussion at the Boston Athenaeum: Two Views of Corfu, April 25 at 10 am

Join us for a discussion of two very different books which feature the same landscape and main characters. Most people know only one of the Durrell brothers, but each one has his own brilliance. Lawrence writes about the historical and literary landscape in an artistic and serious manner, while Gerald focuses on the local wildlife, a group which includes his older siblings. The juxtapositions between what each one thinks is important and noteworthy makes reading the books in tandem a delight. Gerald doesn’t deign to mention his brother’s wife; Lawrence ignores the fauna. Gerald has nothing to say about Greek myths; Lawrence pretends he is not with his family. Read one book or both and join a short visit to the gorgeous Greek island of Corfu. If the conversation leads to a wider discussion of Lawrence’s fiction (The Alexandria Quartet), Gerald’s impressive improvements in how zoos are designed and the Boston area’s best Greek restaurants, all the better.

Lawrence Durrell – known for fiction: Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea) and The Avignon Quintet (Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, Quinx)

  • light humor: The Best of Antrobus, Esprit de Corps
  • travel writing: Prospero’s Cell (Corfu), Reflections on a Marine Venus (Rhodes), Bitter Lemons (Cyprus), Spirit of Place (collection of travel writing)
  • children’s fiction: White Eagles Over Serbia
  • biography: Larry: A New Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1912-1945; Lawrence Durrell: A Biography by Ian S. MacNiven
  • if you like his fiction, maybe try: The English Patient
  • if you like his light humor, maybe try: Hotel Splendide, La Bonne Table, Bemelmans
  • if you like his travel writing, maybe try: Provence, F. M. Ford; The Station, Robert Bryon

Gerald Durrell – known for autobiographical books set on Corfu in his childhood: My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives; The Garden of the Gods

  • animal collecting/ creating a zoo: Three Singles to Adventure. A Zoo in my Luggage, The Bafut Beagles, The Whispering Land, The Aye-Aye and I, Menagerie Manor
  • animal/ nature conservation: The Ark’s Anniversary, Amateur Naturalist
  • children’s fiction: Rosy Is My Relative
  • autobiography: Myself and Other Animals
  • biography: Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting
  • visit: Jersey Zoo, https://www.durrell.org/visit-jersey-zoo/
  • if you like amusing adventures, maybe try: Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Other texts

  • Whatever Happened to Margo? Margo tells HER side of the story!
  • Dining with the Durrells: Stories and Recipes from the Cookery Archive of Mrs Louisa Durrell – mom’s recipes!
  • The Durrell-Miller Letters: 1935-1980

Back from Ubar or What to Read if You Insist on Staying Home

Cultural Refraction: Using Travel Writing, Anthropology and Fiction to Understand the Culture of Southern Arabia – 2009

Travel Writing

“Yemen with Yul,” travel essay published