انا احبك AHBK

It took me a year to begin to grieve.

My last stop before returning home to quickly pack was to the specialty grocer to pick up another date and almond cake like the one I had shipped her at the holidays. She had raved about how delicious it was and how it reminded her of “back home.” From Portland, I would bring a taste of Bagdad to her in her hospital room in Kansas City.

I carried this rich and delightful treat as though it held the secret ingredients to bring her back from her devastating paralysis and restore her superhuman status. I took it straight to her hospital room and quickly understood the magical food that I brought would never touch her lips. She wouldn’t sip a dropper of coffee or water, let alone swallow a minuscule drop of chicken broth or applesauce.

We turned on the television, tuning in to her favorite, the food network. As we begged her to eat anything and everything from the cafeteria’s greek yogurt to freshly squeezed organically grown watermelon juice, we watched the cooking shows that had been the ambient background to most of her better days at home. As the stroke rendered her unable to speak, it was unclear if she could not or would not eat.

It took me a year to begin to grieve.

So we sat beside her, taking turns and breaks from imploring her to try to eat while the rest of us snacked on my cousin’s homemade hummus and watched Bobby Flay prepare mouthwatering bbq beef ribs.

As Farah hadn’t gone a few morning hours in 75+ years without coffee, we offered her espresso mixed with ensure, but she turned her head away. We ate her food. We ate roasted pistachios, continued to brainstorm possible foods she would eat and appealed to her to allow us to skim her mouth with just a taste of these foods.

We begged her to Eat. Her hospital room filled with so many foods, piled up on every surface, cluttering the otherwise sterile room. We distracted ourselves from the hopeful sight that she would consume anything, by watching the television anchored into the concrete wall opposite her bed. We camped out in her hospital room eating and pleading with her to let us feed her.

As my cousin shared at her memorial, Farah’s love language was food. She loved to feed us. She loved to see us devour the labor of days spent preparing for armies of people who turned out to be the handful of people in town at the time. She, spent, proud and serious about the business of feeding her people, her family cajoling us to“Eat! Eat!”

She had 2 sons, 6 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. While her two sons, my sister and my 2 nephews still lived in Kansas City, most of us were scattered West like tossed chicken feed. Whenever any of us were in town she let us know that she would prepare and host a proper family meal at her home. We all knew that cooking this elaborate meal took a toll on her, which often manifested in a poor disposition and a weak welcome as she rushed back into the kitchen to soldier to the finish of the meal. She would spend days in the kitchen making t’beet, a stuffed chicken and rice dish that was a traditional Iraqi Jewish Sabbath meal. She prepared fatayer a spinach or cheese hand pie made with light and crispy phyllo dough and a meat version kind of like an egg roll. She also made what we knew as potato chops which were like kniches, but far more delicious, often filled with pine nuts, beef and raisins. And her tabouli. It was the best I’ve ever had. She used Roma tomatos, Italian parsley, olive oil, lemon, salt and a small amount of bulgur. Most restaurants use too much bulgur.

Her sons enjoyed peeking under various lids of antique cookery and gleefully sneaking a bite before she was ready for the meal to be served. She would decry their looting into her labors by emphatically whining their names, “Sabah!,” “Sahran!” I believe I was witness to a routine that replayed from their youthful days in Iraq. And although she appeared annoyed and upset that they took the liberty of serving themselves before the table was set, I believe their early dips into the meal gave her joy, affirming her talents in the kitchen.

On one visit my then-husband, my father, sister and nephews crowded in around the cramped dining table for a much-anticipated feast. While she toiled in the kitchen her two African grey parrots entertained us with conversational banter that sounded as though there were three exaggerated grandmas in the house. Because of course, they spoke Grandma Farah’s broken English.

Grandma ordered us to sit down for dinner while she alone brought out plate, after plate of food. Some so heavy, the weight of them affected her posture. Our eyes grew large for who was going to eat all this food?!

There must have been an underlying tension that day. There usually was. As she sat down we remained silent except for the sounds of our steady consumption. And then my ex-husband said. “Did you hear that?” And we all knew better than acknowledge it. We all shook our heads no. And then it came again, one of the African grey parrots saying “Mama’s Crazy.” Silence followed with side looks and spoonfuls of seconds and thirds. And then again “mama’s crazy.” Tim said “there it is again. the bird said Mama’s crazy.” My grandmother looked up wide-eyed and said “what you talking about? who say mama crazy?!” Oh shit! He had no idea. Before we could collectively kick his legs under the table he said. “The bird. Did you hear it say ‘mama’s crazy?” And then it happened. She told us to get out of her home. My father tried pleading with her. And as the energy rose, the birds picked up on the frenzy and repeated the words with greater intensity and frequency, a chorus ushering us out. “Mama’s crazy! Mama’s crazy! Mama’s crazy!”

We literally ran out of her home, followed by cutlery flying out of her hands, falling short of reaching us. The sounds of her parrots replaced by her cursing in Arabic for teaching her birds such treasonous words.

As the stroke stole her ability to communicate and the reason she would not take any food or drink, we guessed, we strategized and plotted to get food into her still strong body.

Her hospital room was missing something, something personal, something warm. I asked if anyone would mind if I play some music and then played Oum Kalthoum and Sabah, the sultry sounds of these Middle Eastern songstresses. And there, in that cramped hospital room, with the music and the food and the arrival of my cousins, Farah finally brought us together as she always wanted us.

There would be no more fantastical stories of the magical realism of life “back home.” We would never get her recipes because she never wrote them down and she chased us out of the kitchen. We would never hear her say “Eat! Eat!” And we would never again hear her say Ahbk, Arabic for I love you.

We recorded her African gray parrots and played back for her the sound of her own voice, a squawking mimicry of our beloved matriarch. And even as I wonder if her birds hold our grandmother’s secrets and wish for them to be revealed, I know that it is up to us to share her stories, her food, her love.