An Interview with the Writer about his Latest Book

Kitchen Arabic

Mar 11, 2023

Fern: A lot of interviews start with setting. Meeting the Famous Person in a coffee shop. And with a description of what Famous Person looks like. What he/she orders. But you’re downstairs painting in the basement. And I’m upstairs in the tv room. So I’ll ask: what are you wearing?

Joe: Nothing that you’d let me walk out of the house in. I’m working on a painting now so I have on my old, stained painting apron. And under that an old, stained hoodie. And under that an old, thread-bare t-shirt. And a gray stocking cap on my head. It’s a little chilly down here today.

Fern: I know. Heat rises. It’s fine on the second floor. What are you painting?

Joe: The same thing I’ve been painting for the last four weeks. A street scene with apartment buildings. You’ve seen it when you come down to the basement to do the wash.

Fern: What are you calling this new one?

Joe: “Tree of Heaven.” Also known as ailanthus altissima, it’s a weedy volunteer tree that most people see as a nuisance. I remember being surprised to find trees of heaven all the way away in Istanbul, rising amid the ancient ruins. In my painting this tree is little more than a sapling, poking its way out of the alley between two of the buildings. Only barely enough to justify the title.

Fern: Speaking of titles, it was exciting just the other day when we opened the box of complimentary copies and saw the book for the first time.

Okay, now I’ll ask the question all writers are asked in an interview . . . It’s an annoying question from someone who has not read your book, as is often the case with interviewers. I got pretty good at giving a succinct response.

“Tell me what’s your book about?”

Joe: I’ve also been asked that question about previous books, but I never got good at the succinct response. Until now. Kitchen Arabic is both a cookbook of my family’s recipes and a memoir of our early years in America.

Fern: Where would the library shelve such a book? Under memoir? Under cookbook?

Joe: Maybe in both places?

Fern: You learned to cook from your mother, yes?

Joe: Yes, but not the way you might expect, not me as a toddler, holding on to a corner of her apron and paying careful attention as she measured out the burghul. No, I was raised in a traditional Lebanese household, so I wasn’t expected to do anything around the house. Kind of a Lebanese prince, actually. I never even made myself a sandwich.

Fern: Did your mother write down the recipes for you when you were older?

Joe: No, Mom didn’t write. My parents were both essentially illiterate in English. I learned cooking when I had to, after I was in my twenties and teaching at a college seven hundred miles away from my hometown. As homesickness set in, I began to hunger for the dishes of my growing up. I missed the familiar aromas and flavors.

After I left home, I ordered a cookbook put together by the Ladies Auxiliary of Saint Elias Syrian Orthodox Church. I began by using some of those recipes as a basis to build or correct the final products so that they tasted like my mother’s.

Every weekend I tried out a new dish. Before going grocery shopping I’d call my mother and read her one of the recipes and she would adjust it, saying, for instance, “No, we don’t use garlic in that, we use lemon,” and I would scratch out garlic and write in lemon.

Fern: You liked cooking, and so you got good at it?

Joe: Well, I might have liked eating more. But yes, I did enjoy the process of cooking. And over time—a lot of time—I did get good at it. Eventually I even began to teach Mediterranean cuisine at a kitchen store called Cook’s Emporium here in Ames, where I demoed dishes for over twenty-five years. And at those demos I’d tell a family story or two while waiting for the onions to brown. In fact, it was the audiences at those cooking demonstrations who suggested that I not only write a cookbook sharing my recipes but also to be sure and include the family stories. Voila, Kitchen Arabic!

Fern: I really like the sound of that: Kitchen Arabic.

Joe: There’s another meaning to Kitchen Arabic. It’s actually a term that has been used since those great migrations of the early twentieth century first brought Arabic speaking immigrants to America. A kind of nickname for the language many of us Arabic speakers ended up with after the process of Americanization had had its way with us. It’s the patois that resulted as the English we learned at school and work melded into the Arabic we spoke at home.

Fern: How do you mean, melded?

Joe: All right, let’s say two Arab-Americans are talking on the phone in Arabic, okay? One of them hesitates, can’t think of the word she wants, but instead of further breaking the rhythm of the conversation, she substitutes the English word for what she wants to say, and gives it an Arabic ending and pronunciation. Here’s the example I use in the book: Drive the car to the store, in proper Arabic, is Sooq il siara al mahal. But what comes out in Kitchen Arabic is Darrif il cahr al stahr. Not English, not Arabic—Kitchen Arabic.

Fern: I see, but why Kitchen?

Joe: Because immigrant children first speak the language of their mother. And in my generation, the mutbakh, or kitchen, was the one place we’d go to find our mother, snapping peas, waiting for the dough to rise, ironing our clothes, sitting with a glass of tea at the table. That’s where my mother always was: in the kitchen.

Fern: You didn’t speak English until you were -- what – five or six or years old? Yet you don’t speak with any accent at all. How come?

Joe: I read somewhere that people who learn to speak a new language before age ten will not develop an accent. I do remember having an accent and being teased for it by kids in the neighborhood. By the time my brother and sister and I were in elementary school, we’d lost our accents.

Fern: You are a slow, deliberate writer, Joe. And you were working on this book for a long time. Do you want to talk about that a little?

Joe: Whether it’s painting, or writing, or cooking, or teaching, I’ve always learned by doing the thing itself. Making the mistakes, correcting the mistakes, learning. Working that way, it’s a wonder I get anything done.

Another thing. Writing involves making a lot of decisions and more often than not, these decisions must be made alone. I feel lucky to happen to live with another writer who reads what I write and gives me gentle suggestions. She’s such a help, in fact, she even wrote the previous sentence. I totally agree with it, of course!

Now, can I come upstairs for lunch?

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