I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to write a blog post/essay about reading the books of Diana Abu-Jaber. My first attempt was in 2016 when I wrote a note on my phone as a prompt for future writing.
6-4-16. My zataar story:
My daughter brought some back from trip but I couldn't figure how to use it until I read this in Language of Baklava and became a tad obsessed. "My favorite breakfast is no longer pancakes, but bread doused with oil and Zataar."
Every now and then I've returned to my story and tried again to explain myself but I just couldn't figure out a way to explain my reaction to her writing. I know people post book opinions all the time, but I've felt so inadequate to the task. I'm not a professional writer or book reviewer and my reactions are very personal. But here I am during the COVID19 pandemic, trying again. Because writing during self-isolation in a pandemic is what everyone is doing. No?
Here in 2020, as I try again, I can't remember in what order I read the books and I don't remember if I asked my daughter Elena to bring me zataar (or za'atar, or zaatar) specifically, or if I said to bring me "some spices" from the spice market in Nazareth she was so excited to tell me about. Or maybe I didn't even make a request. Maybe she spontaneously brought back spices because then she could have an excuse for buying them. At the time she didn't know if she would ever make it back to that shop in that market.
But I'm pretty sure I had mentioned Abu-Jaber's books to Elena sometime after I met Diana in 2012. I suppose if I had known I would try to write "my zataar story" I would have taken better notes. It all goes back to the 2012 Gaithersburg Book Festival author reception. Mike and I offered her a ride back to her hotel after the reception. I had no knowledge of her or her books and I wasn't able to attend her presentation the next day because I was introducing another author during the same time slot. Diana's book Birds of Paradise was out in paperback and that was her topic. I remember she seemed a little anxious to be away from her young daughter and wasn't sure she wanted to hang around the festival after her talk. She was anxious to get back home.
At some point I started following her on Facebook and Twitter. I checked out her books from the library and then I bought them because I wanted to have them on my bookshelf. Of course, I do this with a few authors, so I didn't think it was weird or consider myself obsessed. It's her two memoirs that stick with me:
The Language of Baklava from 2015, source of the zataar quote;
and her 2016 Life Without a Recipe.
I love her beautiful writing whether in fiction or memoir. I also know I relate to her stories because members of her family and her fictional characters remind me so much of my relatives – the Greek ones – even if I didn’t really know many of my Greeks all that well and mostly only have memory glimpses of them. Reading about Diana’s family and about her fictional characters in her other books, allows me to imagine what some of my family must have been like.
Her stories help me understand my ancestors and I think, also, why my father was willing to move our little family 2000 miles away from the Greeks in Chicago when I was two. He loved his family with a Greek passion and loyalty. I think he knew he was losing an unsurpassed support network. But I think he knew how smothering they could be. Did moving us reflect a bit of his own Greek immigration story? His own father moved his little family across an ocean when my father was five and a half. Immigration and family moving stories are always a complex mix of economic and self-preservation opportunity so who knows. (Says the person who gradually moved her family west to east. California-Tennessee-Missouri-Maryland.)
After Dad moved us from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1955, we did visit Chicago, but infrequently. It was expensive to take a family with three, then four, then five children from California to Chicago just to visit. I think we made the trip less than half a dozen times before I was an adult. As an adult, there were visits for cousins’ weddings and a few that I made by myself, and a few I made with my own family. The grandparents and cousins rarely visited us in California. None of these visits were enough to create as many memories as I would have if we had lived closer, but I have at least a handful of very strong images and stories. Many of them involve sitting around my aunt's dining room table in the northern Chicago suburbs. It's not so much that anyone was cooking as in Abu-Jaber's stories, but there was always food. And there was always talking about food.
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| 1974. Aunt Jen. Uncle John |
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| Still at Aunt Jen's table in 2006, though she died in 2002 |
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| Me in blue with cousins at Aunt Jen's table in 2009 |
My four siblings made trips to Greece while in college. I didn't get there until 1988 when my father figured out a way for many of us to go together. I don't know why he decided we should all go to Greece after my cousin's Chicago wedding. I believe it was related to his scary cardiac "events" after 1984 and some need of his. So I guess he figured we'd all be together in Chicago for the wedding; why not keep going all the way to Greece? We would sort of tag along on Michelle's honeymoon. Who wouldn't want to spend her honeymoon with her siblings and cousins and their children? Of course we went and brought our two daughters Jennifer and Amelia. We spent most of our time on the Peloponnese. We visited my father's maternal relatives in my grandmother's village, Episkopi; and my grandfather's village Kerasitsa which was my father's birthplace. The two villages are immediately adjacent. In 2009 Mike and I returned to meet Elena at the end of her study abroad semester. We took her to visit the relatives too. I suppose all journey's to a father's birth village in the "old country" are bound to be epic. Ours were.
For me, on both of my visits, it was the sight of the mountains. I understood why my grandmother Stella cried at the sight of the Southern California mountains when she visited us in 1962. It was seeing the legendary house in Kerasitsa, on the corner, with the plaque identifying it as the family house. And it was the food and eating food with relatives who knew my father, particularly in 2009. I think that he expected to die closer to 1988 than in 1998 when he died from a stroke. I'm so glad I was able to go with him in 1988.
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| My father, Angelo. His sister Jen. 1988. At the "old house" in Episkopi. |
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| The Peloponnese mountains as we headed back to Athens from the villages. 2009 |
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| The house in Kerasitsa where my father was born. The street sign identifies it as the Street of the Americans |
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| My dad, standing, in the yard at the house in Episkopi. His cousin Sotirios, seated on left. |
To be clear, I'm already a bit of the family historian so I didn't need Diana Abu-Jaber to prompt me. I've recorded my life in scrapbooks, on my calendars and in journals since I was 12 or so. In recent years, I wrote about my parents in World War 2, my grandfathers in World War 1, the family recipes, and a history of my Greek grandparents that I finally completed in 2019 for my siblings and cousins. I started my World War 2 site way back in 2007 (first using Apple's iWeb, then Wordpress and now Weebly); my personal blog (where you are reading this, using Google's Blogspot now Blogger) began with my 2009 trip to Greece; and my family recipe blog began in January 2016 (also on Weebly). I've included bits and pieces of my own memories in all of these attempts at family history. However, there are some memories that I haven't figured out a way to let filter in or out.
1958. I'm five. We're in Chicago. Happen upon my grandmother, chopping onions in her cellar food prep space. Tears streaming. She tells me it's ok it's just the onions. Years later I understand.
1963. I'm 10. We visit Chicago because my grandmother Stella (Stavroula) is dying. Greek Easter dinner in Aunt Jen's basement.
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| Grandparents Sam and Stella at the head of the table(s) for Greek Easter in 1963 |
1965 - 1973. My parents' dinner table after we moved to San Diego during our teen and young adult years. It wasn't so much the food, because my Irish-German-American mother was not a great cook and she mostly tried to keep us out of her kitchen. But apparently she loved to host gatherings around her tables. It was the "conversation" around the table that was memorable. Vietnam. Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Richard Nixon. And then there's my Japanese mother-in-law who was a great cook and taught me how to make spaghetti and sukiyaki. When you add in my Mexican-American father-in-law, my own kids embody the great American Melting Pot. But I digress.
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| At the dining room table. Me on far left. Siblings and Dad at the head of the table. |
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| Mom at the head of the table with her aunts and her mother on far right |
1974. I'm 21. My grandfather Sam (Sotirios) died. At the restaurant after the funeral, one of my father's relatives comes up to us, pointing her finger at each. "Angelo? Angelo? Angelo? Angelo? Angelo?" We nod. Yes. Yes, we are all his.
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| Dad with one of his relatives at the restaurant after his father's funeral |
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I guess it makes sense that I love Diana Abu-Jaber's stories about her Jordanian relatives and her various Middle Eastern and Arab American fictional characters. I met Diana briefly eight years ago; I follow her on social media; I’ve read her books. I’ve recommended them to others and then I have trouble finding words to explain to friends why they should read her books.
What it comes to is when Diana Abu-Jaber writes, she tells us how she learned to live her life while she learned how to cook and bake and write; and then how to continue to write after becoming a mother. In her life, she's had one set of lessons and recipes from her maternal grandmother Grace. Another set of lessons and recipes from her father Bud. So many rules and lessons and recipes from school, work, husbands, family. Different strokes from different folk.
I'm so grateful that I happened to meet Diana and offer her a ride in 2012. I want to thank her for reminding me to find my memories. But I also feel like I want to warn her that no matter how much she thinks she understands the lessons of her Jordanian father Bud and her German-American maternal grandmother Grace, I'm pretty sure her understanding of them will change again and again.
As an older-than-her woman and as a mother & grandmother myself I'm wondering if perhaps there are even more valuable lessons in her mother’s journey? The one who may have felt she was just along for the ride. But all those years, there was her mother, Pat, daughter of Grace, soaking it all in until her time was right and she started painting her life. Again. As she had done some years before, then packed away, and then started painting again after her husband Gus died.
I think Pat may have all the answers and maybe some secret ingredients. But of course I would think that. I'm the mother of adult daughters and I would like to think they've learned a few things from me. I hope they haven't felt too restricted by my lessons and recipes.
And, the truth is, I absolutely know why I wrote down that quote from The Language of Baklava. It's because, as true friends can attest, breakfast is my favorite meal. Sometimes I like to pretend I'm a Hobbit so I can have "second breakfast." And of course, there's my next favorite meal. Breakfast for Dinner.
"My favorite breakfast is no longer pancakes,
but bread doused with oil and Zataar."
I'm grateful to Diana Abu-Jaber. And I'm grateful to my daughter Elena for bringing me some zaatar all the way from Israel.
Go get yourself some zaatar. Some good bread. Some good oil.
Read The Language of Baklava. Read Life Without a Recipe.
Find your memories!
Find your secret ingredients!
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| Zaatar from Elena. Nazareth 2015. Zaatar is a mix of sesame seeds, thyme, and sumac. Exact recipe can vary from region to region |
Books by Diana Abu-Jaber
1994 Arabian Jazz
2003 Crescent
2005 The Language of Baklava
2007 Origin
2011 Birds of Paradise
2016 Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family
2020 Silverworld (March 2020. A middle grade fantasy.)
