Molokhia

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There is something about Friday evenings: the anticipation of weekend treats -or retreats-, the excitement of  the upcoming 60+ hours of free time, the joy of vegging out before the TV without worrying about tomorrow’s alarm clock… or maybe it’s just the collective zeitgeist of people feeling relieved they won’t have to think about work for a while.

Whatever the reason, Friday evenings are good. And happy.

Enjoying Friday happiness, this Wild Traveler exited the elevator to his apartment, looking forward to uninterrupted time with his maps. The smell came upon him out of nowhere: molokhia. Sweet, garlic-y, warm, the smell of the delicious egyptian soup crawled into his nostrils, tingling memories long forgotten:
a big, chaotic family gathering over a table filled with pitas, felafels and finely chopped tomatoes with parsley. Familiar faces speaking in tongues. The muted hot sound of the samovar boiling fouls.  The dear, somewhat cacophonic, melody of greek, french, egyptian and english spoken in the same sentence. The huge colourful ring in different colours, on different old people’s fingers. The same names uttered in different variations, coming from old people’s lips. A middle class greek house, the most improbable of settings for such a multi-ethnic, upper class gathering.

And the smell of garlic and kusbara coming out of hot soup plates filled with a warm, slimy, delicious molokhia.

Molokhia, the prized dish, the humble soup, the excuse for the family to gather around a table. Molokhia, the dark, leafy green that signified that somebody had just came back from home, bringing the latest news, inviting the rest to brush against him, hoping to catch a glimpse of home as others catch a cold. Molokhia, the trigger of memories, the signal to story telling, the gate to another reality, the window to a past both magical and funny. As the plates hover above the heads, decades of family and world history become interwoven, sprinkled with bursts of laughter, sighs, the occasional tear and even more food.

The house is gone; it’s been a while. As the old people died, their rings passed to those surviving, all ending in one person’s drawer. Molokhia is easier to find, fresh, no less, in Athens arab stores and fresh produce markets. And now it crawled into the Wild Traveler’s back yard, in the pot on the stove in the kitchen of the apartment across the light-well of the Wild Traveler’s apartment. To remind him of the memories of the memories of people and homes long gone.

And to wet his appetite for a trip to Egypt.