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How to eat well while living under siege

For the people of Gaza, the simple act of making their daily meal is both a challenge and a symbol of resilience

This piece is from 1843, our sister magazine of ideas, lifestyle and culture. It was published in the August/September 2019 issue. 

A BLURRY IMAGE of tiny morsels of falafel – mid-fry – flashes up on my phone, accompanied by a text apologising for the quality of the photo. “Did you get it?” asks Wafaa Saad, a mother of six, from Gaza City. “The connection is weak. The electricity keeps going in and out.” Two symmetrical plates of falafel, delectable fritters formed from chickpeas, fresh dill, chillies and coriander, are surrounded by olives, pickled peppers, shatta, a local chilli-pepper paste, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. “Dinner!”

Most pictures that come out of Gaza are of the devastation wreaked by Israeli bombardment and the grinding poverty of life under Israel’s and Egypt’s blockade of the territory. The 360 square-kilometre sliver of land, wedged between the Sinai Peninsula and Israel, is crowded with 2m people, most of whom don’t consider Gaza their ancestral home. Around 80% are refugees from other parts of Palestinian territories. The small photo of falafel is a reminder that, even in desperate circumstances, people need to eat.

Gaza’s cuisine is part of the culinary continuum of the Levant. It has much in common with nearby Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, but it now exists in a gastronomical bubble, cut off from all its neighbours.

In 1976 my parents left Gaza for Kuwait, where I was born. We returned to Gaza only for hot summers. Today, visiting from my home in America is impossible. Food is one of the few ways in which my Gazan roots continue to play out. In my suburban kitchen in Maryland I cook the food of my parents’ birthplace and taste our heritage.

In Gaza you can eat your way through the riches of Palestinian history: kishik is a fermented wheat and dairy stew once made in Beit Tima, a Palestinian-Arab village depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and other farming communities. Richly spiced shrimp is from Jaffa. Lamb is roasted long and slow as the nomadic Naqab Bedouin have cooked it for centuries. The blisteringly hot tomato and dill salad is from Gaza itself.

Today half of Gaza’s population live in poverty and two-thirds either can’t afford or don’t have access to nutritious food in sufficient quantities. More than half are unemployed. To cope, local women say they buy cheap foods in small quantities, often with borrowed money, and cook it over firewood. Saad sends me a photo of her fridge: it is mostly empty, the few items on the shelves melting or rotting because of power outages.

Saad’s husband is employed by the Palestinian National Authority, the body that has governed Gaza since 1994, and works in public health. His salary has been cut but because he has a job his family receives no food aid. They live pay cheque to pay cheque, yet Saad considers her family (pictured above) is among the lucky ones. She plans the rare costly dish ingredient by ingredient, she says. This week she has makhshi koosa in her sights: fried magda squash stuffed with spiced ground beef and pine-nuts in a fresh tomato sauce. She will buy the vegetables, then wait until she has the money to buy a little beef. “Maybe Friday...”

For Saad, thinking about and planning her family’s favourite dishes is a form of escapism. Her husband loves fatteh, poached and stuffed chicken served on top of cinnamon-flecked rice and saj, buttery griddle bread, with a dressing of smashed green chilli peppers, garlic and lemon juice, as well as maqlooba, literally “upside-down”: a layered, spiced rice dish with chicken and aubergines, cooked then dramatically flipped onto a tray. She makes them once or twice a year at most. Gaza sits on the coast but fish is a rarity: the good fish goes to restaurants for journalists, aid workers and Gaza’s elite.

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