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emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights

A plate of maftoul, a chicken and rice casserole.

My mother’s kitchen

Her ‘laboratory of joy’ unites our family despite genocide and displacement.
Young woman in white jacket and black hijab.
Esraa Elbanna
  • Gaza Strip
A plate of maqluba, a chicken and rice casserole.
Maftoul is a traditional and popular dish among Palestinians. Photo: Esra Albanna

 

 

A place full of colors and kitchen utensils that produce delicious miracles from the oven; magical galaxies that emerge from fermented dough and explode in your mouth; a party with music and singing — these are my memories of kitchens, the comfort zone of mothers who try to bring cheer to their children.

The kitchen is my mother’s laboratory of joy, where she is always prepared to experiment with taste and create magical discoveries of deliciousness using old family recipes and time-tested hands.

Preparing food is my mother’s way of bringing us together at one table despite preoccupations with our own lives. My mother’s recipes always enliven our family gatherings, especially lunch on Friday, a sacred day for us as a Palestinian family, as the weekend is reserved for schools, universities, and entrepreneurship.

My mother has a cooking ritual that I consider wizardly for the way she upholds traditional and popular recipes such as maftoul, musakhan, maqluba, and thyme manousheh. A sense of calm and enjoyment reigns in her kitchen when she makes oriental sweets such as kunafa, one of the most famous dessert dishes in Palestine. I always ask her about her culinary secrets, and she always answers with the same revelation: “The secret lies in loving what you do so that the result is perfect.”

When I was little, I loved watching my mother’s masterly resourcefulness and grace in the kitchen. She would hasten back and forth between countertops, gathering her ingredients from the fridge to the table, from the pantry to the table again, until she had laid down the foundation of her masterpieces.

She knew just long she had to knead the dough or butter the biscuits or decorate her mouth-watering cakes before she baked them in the oven. I watched with awe as the dough mixture puffed up like a balloon. Her timing was consistently impeccable and she always knew exactly when it was time to take her tray out of the oven to cool. I would wait patiently for a slice knowing that a sugar celebration was sure to ignite inside my mouth from the first bite. I relished not just the unforgettable taste but also watching my mother revel from the success of her cooking despite her challenges and fatigue.

Cooking when there is no kitchen

Since the war on the Gaza Strip, my mother’s comfort zone, her beloved kitchen, has turned into a place of angst and difficulty. With our displacement from our home in the north to Deir Al-Balah in the south, our living situation has deteriorated in unthinkable ways.

We now all share one room and there is no kitchen. There are no cooking utensils except for a teapot that my mother brought with her from our home and some simple tools that we were able to retrieve later.

My mother converted one of the corners of the room into what she now calls the kitchen. There, her once well-outfitted kitchen is replaced by a bare-bones corner with scarce provisions and the most primitive cooking utensils. She cooks in the open in a clay oven that my father made, while my brothers bring firewood to light a fire for her. She prepares meals with minimal and redundant resources, preparing us beans, peas, lentils, and other canned foods, whatever is available in the market.

A hand putting bread into a clay oven.
Esraa’s mother baking bread in clay oven. Photo: Esra Albanna

 

Despite the lack of variety in nourishment and the much-reduced number of meals she now prepares, she strives to restore the familiar warm atmosphere to what it was before. Sometimes, she surprises us by preparing some sweets or other foods whose ingredients have become available in the market when the crossing opens. In such a way, she keeps alive the memory of the appetizing taste of what we once ate before the war, and it helps us forget the dull dishes we have had to tolerate.

The ingredients may no longer be what they used to be, and the table is no longer rich with my mother’s artful dishes, but the flavors my mother creates still carry an undying hope. In every dish she prepares, there’s not just the taste of food, but the memory of the home we left behind, of the life we dream of returning to. The teapot that my mother used to prepare in the morning before we could go about our day, is now a reminder of how scattered we are and how abruptly our dreams were stolen from us.

My mother’s kitchen will always be a source of warmth amidst the darkness. Despite the harsh circumstances in which we live, my mother has not lost her ability to unite us around her table. She is rebuilding our broken dreams with every meal she prepares, bringing a sense of hope despite the circumstances surrounding us.

A table laden with food.
The dining table that brought us together, thanks to my mother. Photo: Esra Albanna

My mother’s rituals hold our family together

No mother wants to see her children’s academic and professional lives violently cut short because of an endless war. No mother wants to see an emptiness and idleness slowly infect the mind, interspersed with the physically tiring task of living without tasting a single joyous moment while waiting for the war to stop.

Home kitchens have become a pile of rubble in light of the destruction and continuous bombing of Gaza, the closure of the crossing, and the scarcity of aid and food supplies. This has created major psychological and physical challenges for every family member, not just mothers. Although many try to bring desperately bring joy to their children with their cooking, a short-lived smile may be the only reaction and quickly evaporates in light of hunger and chaos.

Though I wonder how long we will have to wait until we can once again gather around her table in peace, I see the future clearly. I know that we will return to our home, to our real kitchen, where my mother will cook again with the same love and comfort she once felt. Her recipes will remain a reflection of our resilience, and her rituals will hold our family together. They will always lay the foundation of our life after the war, a symbol of the family’s survival and continuity despite everything we have suffered. My mother’s kitchen will not just be a place for food, but a symbol of life, love, and the hope that unites us, against all odds.

Mentor: Samar Najia

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