Skip to content

The strait of humus

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/24/gaza-blockade-israel-banned-items

 

By Hassen Lorgat 

 

First, they stole the land.
Then they denied us our right to feel the breeze of the sea
And darkened our open skies.
As they set in motion the slow pressure cooker of death,
Now they have closed in to colonise our kitchen.

The taste in my mouth turns bitter
At the ongoing theft of the people’s dishes—
The hummus, the falafel, and musakhan.
The theft they now call Israeli dishes.

The patterns of theft have been long engraved.
So now they will sell the garb of the Palestinian villages—
The long hand-embroidered dress, the thobe,
Which tells the tales of the different villages marked as tatreez.
The olive trees, and what endures.

Even the untamed herbs—
The akub and za’atar—are not spared their lusty lips.

They do this whilst the people are under siege:
The occupied and embargoed,
The curtailed spices denied by their law to enter Gaza—
The law against the “dual use” imports of spices like coriander, chicks, and donkeys.
—Not forgetting diapers.

They now love shakshuka and za’atar-based foods
Whilst hating the originators of the recipe.

O starving people of Gaza,
O thirsty ones from Gaza—
Why do they try to take the smell of your liberatory food?
Do they believe that you are what you eat?

They took our homes but wanted to become us?
They tried to turn our lives upside down.
But the maqluba—cooked in one united pot,
Which only the genuine cook can turn—
As our friend Rifka swears:
“The maqluba refuses to bend or turn to the usurpers!”

Every day we read how those settlers battle the steady olive trees,
Dying to kill and maim it as they did those who cared for it.
But now they have met their match:
The strait of humus.
They shall never pass.

And the mothers who bang their pots and pans
fight to win the land, the sea, and the air—
yet starvation of the Palestinian nation continues.
Still the gluttons envy the food we eat.

No pasarán.
Our plates are not for them…
This is their strait of humus.

 

 

Hassen Lorgat
Latest posts by Hassen Lorgat (see all)