Adventures in Oil

This week I found something very special in the archives. The photograph and title pictured above come at the head of a feature article written for Iraq Petroleum Magazine by my great grandfather William Subhiyah in 1955. Jiddu William was an English teacher in Iraq, and frequently contributed perspectives on culture to Iraq Petroleum and the Iraq Times during the 1950s.

The photo exhibits a table crowded with delicious dishes prepared by my great grandmother Salma Subhiyah, who sits at the center of the table. Her daughters Samira and Amira sit beside her, on the left side of the frame. The other two women at the table worked as live in help at the Subhiyah household.

Subhiyah’s article was written for ex-pats living in the Middle East, English-speaking Arabs, and company personnel of various nationalities living in London. By 1955 the Iraq Petroleum magazine had been in circulation for over four years. Through the monthly publication, the petroleum company stepped into the role of producing and disseminating knowledge about Arab culture to readers. The magazine featured regular original articles on archaeology, architecture and art in Iraq, focusing on the success stories of the Iraq Development Board’s modernization schemes in education, building, and agriculture.

What does it mean for a petroleum company to concern itself with the problem of cultural production? Although Iraq Petroleum was extremely well-circulated and popular in cities across the Middle East and in London, I find it remarkable that during the first four years of its publication, the editors had only bothered to include dinner party menus - in a regular column, called “For the Ladies” - that catered to the British palette; including recipes for jellies, cakes and sandwiches.

In fact, Subhiyah’s article was the first of its kind to appear in the magazine, broaching the subject of food in the Arab world. He wrote of Middle Eastern cuisine as a novel subject, in a time before it was established as an object of modern western knowledge. Today, we might take for granted that kabob stands are a dime a dozen in US and European cities and as many brands and varieties of hummus are on display in supermarkets as there are ice cream flavors.

Subhiyah begins his article by highlighting cultural differences between Arab and European customs of serving and eating food. He writes with a noted unapologetic tone, sense of pride and wit,

We always cook much more than we can consume at one meal. Even if we expect no guests, people may call unexpectedly while we are eating and, by our traditional laws of hospitality, we are required to ask them to partake of our food. To prove this, call at any Middle Eastern house about meal-time and see if you are not sincerely invited to the meal. Moreover, if you are invited to a luncheon or a dinner party, you can always take along one or two friends with you without having to warn your host beforehand.

He goes on to describe the food and atmospheres he encounters while traveling across the region, from city to city. With each stop on his journey - from Cairo, to Tripoli, and Aleppo - he reminds the reader that within Arab nation one discovers a diverse and rich range of culinary traditions and tastes. The author’s mobility should remind us of the mobility that was still possible in these early decades of the modern Middle East before borders were hardened and militarized. Subhiyah speaks of “nationalism” not in reference to differentiated “Iraqi” or “Lebanese “national cuisines or cultures, but in reference to the vision of a heterogenous yet unified Arab national identity, which is an idea that ruled the day. Today this is a concept that is difficult to imagine in what has become a deeply fragmented Middle East.

Among other things, reading Subhiyah’s article today raises interesting questions about how and when “Middle Eastern cuisine” was actually commodified into a mainstream fare in the U.S. and western Europe. As an example, he writes a mouthwatering description of food he is sure to try when visiting Beirut,

In Beirut I go as a self invited guest to any Tabbuli party that may be given at the time in Ras Beirut (Tabbuli is well-soaked Burghul mixed with chopped parsley, mint, onions and tomato, rubbed in lemon juice and olive oil, and eaten with scoops of vine, lettuce or cabbage leaves); I buy a box of Baqlawa Samadi or Bahsali (thin sheets of pastry with a layer of crushed nuts, cardamons and sugar in the middle, baked and drenched with syrup), Idine of Kibbi Bissiniyah and Hummus Bi Taheenah (Kibbi is a paste made of meat pounded in a mortar with crushed wheat, spread in a tray in two layers, with a layer of minced meat, pine kernels and onions in between, and baked after cutting in diamond shapes. Hummus is a thin paste made of boiled chick peas crushed with crushed sesame, garlic and lemon juice and decorated with parsley, slimmac and red pepper).

Taken in its context, we must realize that his explanatory descriptions point to the fact that quotidian supermarket “products” like baklavah and tabbouleh were veritably unheard of fifty years ago in cities like London and Paris - of course to all but Europe’s best-traveled colonial administrators and orientalists.

In lieu of a thorough historiography, like that presented in a 2007 exhibition at Yale on Middle Eastern & Islamic cuisine, I will briefly contextualize Subhiyah’s article with a condensed overview of how “Middle eastern cuisine” has been produced as an object of western knowledge over time. Historically, writing on eating and cooking customs in the Arab world falls into one of three broad categories: English translations of medieval Arabic texts, travelogues by Arab immigrants, and tutorial texts written by Arabs in English for western audiences.

The best examples of the first category are the many 20th century English editions of a manuscript written in the 10th century by a Baghdad native during the time of the Abbasid caliphate. The original author spent more than twenty years compiling his descriptions of the elite culture of food, drink, and table manners. Thanks to A.J Arberry’s 1939 translation, Kitab al-Tabikh or “A Baghdad Cookery Book” was the only Arabic Cookery book known to the English-speaking world at the time. In 2006, a new translation of the classic text was published.

The last category is a kind of writing tradition that likely began with articles like this one written by my great grandfather. By 1973 the English-speaking world had access to illustrated how-to recipe books like, The Arab World Cookbook: the Book of One Thousand and One Delights, a self-orientalized parade of “Arabian delicacies which are the only rival to the Chinese and French cuisines”. The commodification of Middle Eastern cuisine can be detected in a book like this which promises, “easy and simple recipes that make your neighbors and guests savor the aroma coming out from your kitchen.”

Perhaps bringing the tradition of food writing in my own family full-circle, this year my cousin Salma Abdelnour, a first-generation Lebanese-American living in New York, has started a mouthwatering food blog in which one of her most popular entries is a review of where to procure the best mana’eesh in Manhattan. Perhaps inevitably, I have also been blogging about the meals I have had the pleasure to indulge in while traveling over the past year. A deep appreciation of food and love of writing surely runs in my family; though I am now struck by how profoundly the world in which we write and the “Middle East” about which we write about has changed in these fifty-four years.

Image source: Subhiyah, William. 1955. A Gourmet in the Arab World. Iraq Petroleum 4(11): 24.