Special Arrangements

We are eating roast chicken - the same bird that was suspected of harboring avian flu in my trunk the other day. It is an halal chicken, difficult to get in rural Vermont; I brought it back from the city to cook for our Muslim friends. The skin is crackly and brown with its coating of cumin and dried lemon and olive oil, and we eat it with cucumbers in yogurt, J.'s pilaf of rice, currants, parsley and vermicelli, and stir-fried carrots and zucchini.

Shirin is going back to Iran for Noruz, Iranian new year. "I am counting the days," she says, happily. Her whole extended family will meet in Tehran and travel north toward the Caspian, where they will all stay together in a house for two weeks. "It will be WONderful,"she says, her face radiant. "Have you decided yet whether to come?" she asks, turning toward her husband.

"That is a heavy dose of your family," he says, laughing. "I'm not sure I can take it. But it will depend on what's happening at work."

The main meal finishes and we bring tea and a plate of baklava. Shirin's gift tonight - she is constitutionally and culturally unable to come to a friend's house empty-handed - is a huge, heavy pomegranate, and I hand it back to her with a knife and a plate, and give several paper napkins to each of us to soak up the sticky pomegranate juice.

"Have you bought your tickets?" we ask.

"Yes," she says, as she expertly divides the pomegranate and cracks it open to reveal the dark red seeds; she is pleased and says, "Good anar!" before passing the plate around the table.

"I got a very good deal. But I was talking to the travel agent - she was a very nice woman - and I told her I needed to arrange for special meals on the airplane - it's such a long flight anyway. 'What kind of meals do you require?' she asked me. 'Islamic,' I said. So she went through the list and said, 'I'm sorry, I don't have Islamic here.'"

"So I asked her what she did have. 'Let's see', she said. 'All I have is vegetarian, diabetic, kosher, and Muslim.' So I told her Muslim would do."

Comments

[language hat]

Heh.

[Pica]

Heh too.

[Teju Cole]

Heh so three.

[MB]

4.

[leslee]

There's a scene I've heard clips of from the new Albert Brooks movie about Muslim comics where he says to his wife, "Your mother thinks that Muslim is a fabric!"

Heh.

[Rachel]

Your post has made me hungry! What wonderful food, what wonderful friends.

Also, that last line made me laugh!