The attack on the World Trade Center prompted me to question many aspects of my life, including my conduct, manner of relating to others, the work I was doing, and even my habits and lifestyle choices. These self-doubts and inquiries, ethical and ontological in nature, imposed themselves on the minutiae of my day. Every decision was fraught with political implications and security considerations, including what and where I would eat for lunch. Casual pleasures hitherto simply chosen and easily enjoyed were now cast in murky suspicion. Whether I should eat falafels in a nearby Middle Eastern fast food joint, for instance, became politicized—a clash between the part of me that separates state and sandwich, and the other, which says you are what you eat—and you don’t want to eat anything that is even symbolically anti-American. I wondered whether enjoying a fat pita filled with deep-fried mashed chickpeas coated with yogurt and hot pepper sauce constituted an act of disloyalty or treason.
Such misgivings led me to a Turkish falafel restaurant in the village. It was a political compromise since I had previously patronized another middle-eastern take-out place that was now off-limits in my mind because of the Lebanon and Syria tourism posters on its walls. Turkey is an American ally so I believed that eating Turkish falafel would be more harmonious with American interests and values. This in itself was a huge step for me and it I needed to work through many issues to take it. For months after 9/11 I had lost my taste for falafels. They had fallen off my personal menu. Finally, I rationalized that what I ate for lunch bore no relation to recent events, and that eschewing one of my favorite lunch foods would only be caving in to terrorism.
But the copper plates engraved with Arabic inscriptions on the wall, that once lent authenticity to the décor, now looked portentous. Their exoticism and strangeness, which had once been such pleasant aids to digestion now hindered my appetite. I started to imagine if the counterman could have tainted my falafel, by spitting in it, for instance.
Patrons entered the restaurant, speaking a middle-eastern tongue. Heretofore, their presence at a falafel restaurant would have reassured me about the quality of fare. Now they made me feel not merely disloyal but endangered. Was it possible to eat the wrong sandwich in the wrong restaurant and disappear? I asked myself if I was taking too great a risk for of my favorite lunch foods, over and beyond the potential damage the deep-fried falafel would do to my cardiovascular system.
But it was not merely a sense of peril that changed the experience of eating the falafel in a middle-eastern restaurant. I had experienced danger when eating in deserted Italian restaurants with immaculate tablecloths, sepia photographs of mustached men, and no apparent business but that which I provided. The strangeness of the décor and language could not keep me away—they added to the flavor as much as the harissa on the table. What had changed was a quality unique to middle-eastern restaurants, a form of brotherhood among the patrons. In a falafel restaurant, you would typically find hungry people of many origins all coming together for hot, spicy food of good quality that is honest, nutritious and delicious. Felafel-eaters, shwarma-tics, baba ghanoushers, and chummus-enthusiasts consume with fervor and enthusiasm and end their meals feeling satisfied. That camaraderie had been lost. Now we were once again strangers, even belligerents, who happened to like the same food, like competing predators around a watering hole. Maybe our mutual enthusiasm for one food posed an ambiguity, an identity problem. Did my love of falafels reveal something subversive about me?
The same mistrust infiltrated other commonplace decisions. A fruit stand where I purchased cherries and bananas was now suspect. Was the vendor perhaps a Muslim who sympathized with terrorists? Did he tithe to their organizations to fund their conspiracies, or was this modest fruit-stand an elaborate front for enemies of the United States? Before, such thinking would have seemed paranoid and absurd—and completely anachronistic in a city like New York, predicated on immigration and diverse people. But the ambiguity of this form of terrorism, its banality, how it creeps into everyday places and mundane activities, and is practiced by apparently normal people in customary clothes, with such innocuous items as shopping bags, has made no second thought absolutely ridiculous.
When something is blown up and obliterated, its residue and dust hang in the atmosphere much longer than we know. The event lingers in our hearts for longer still. For many months I would pass Falafel King, my favorite falafel place on MacDougal Street and not go in. This little restaurant, as narrow as a straw, had the best food of its kind. The sandwiches, built by the equable, young counterman—built because the sandwiches were too large and complex to be merely made—were copious and wholesome, the pitas bulged with fresh, healthy salad and spicy condiment. Your mouth could feel the the cold, heavy lumps of baba ghanoush in the pita, would savor the earthy crunchy goodness of deep-fried chickpeas, and the mint in the tabouleh. There were even large bowls of red, oily harissa on the tables, the hot sauce that performs the internal version of a sauna. I loved this place so much that I had walked a mile from one of my jobs to eat there. I liked it so much that I had even written my own ad for it. It was always delivered in my version of a middle-eastern accent, which sounded suspiciously like Boris Badinov in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series. It went like this: “Why settle for pizza peasant, when you can be a falafel king?”
For all of these reasons I was sad to walk by Falafel King and not climb its golden stair for lunch. I hoped that the mellow, young counterman who had served me so many fine falafels would not notice my passing. In my heart I knew that he and Felafel King had nothing to do with 9/11 or the emotions that it evoked in me. I was miserable, even embarrassed, about how life had changed for me and everyone. Events had altered my view-point. Nevertheless, I could not deny the change, or be sure that my response to it was invalid. Still, a part of me always believes in dialogue, in making oneself clear, in being honest. And being silent and evasive is just a discreet form of dishonesty. Still, I didn’t know what to tell him, and I imagined that he would be offended if I told him anything. On the other hand, he probably didn’t want me to come in. Somehow, the World Trade Center attack had become for me the subtext to what all middle-eastern people thought of America—I had translated this specific, catastrophic event into a general intention, on which many people would not act, but which they secretly endorsed. I was a walking ambivalence.
Yet, one day I glanced up at the store, and he saw me. I nodded and kept walking, but then turned back. I realized that I was going to have a falafel, needed to have a falafel, not just for my belly, my taste buds, or the comfort the food gave to me, but for my psyche, to regain that one enjoyable routine I had that the events of 9/11 had taken from me. I was going to take the risk that the quiet, young counterman would not poison me, I would hold a more rational belief that his falafel would be as good as it had been a hundred times before. And maybe I wouldn’t have to explain myself.
He gave me his usual salutation, “Hey,” a friendly, low-key statement, that essentially contained a “I know you”, “How are you?”, and “Long time, no see” and placed on pressure on a response.
He made my falafel as I watched, asked if I wanted a hot pepper, which I did, and poured the spiced tea. I sat at a formica table in the back and stared out at the window. The music was on, a wailing voice, with the rush and tumble of Arabian arrangements. On the walls were posters of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt. As I expected they would, these innocuous relics of exotic climes that once transported me back in time to my youthful travels were making me nervous. The good-natured counter man had little business, so he walked back to the kitchen area behind a swinging door to bring a case of sodas to the cooler in front. He must have noticed my discomfort because he stopped near my table, and asked if there was something wrong. “No,” I lied.
“That’s a relief. A few days ago a customer was having a little difficulty. You know, chest pains. I thought it was a heart attack. Or heartburn. Either way, it’s not a good thing for a customer to be sick.”
I told him I wasn’t sick, just a little uncomfortable. Ever since 9/11 I had been anxious.
“Yes, I know. Me, too. Business is slow. Not just for me, but everybody. I know how people feel. I feel the same. But nobody believes that. I been here for fifteen years, on this street. But people forget. I understand. Maybe they will remember. I hope so.”
I hoped so, as well. It’s much easier to remember the carnage, the pain, the loss, than the hundreds of good falafels that came before, or to realize that the people you thought were good were as good as you thought they were.
I sat down at a table in the back, watching the door, tucking into the heavy sandwich cradled in my hands, while on alert. I chewed with delight the crusty chickpea balls, the sweet, marinated grape leaves, and crunchy lettuce, drenched in white tahina and red harissa. I sipped the sweet mint tea and scanned the tourism posters from Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan—all countries that I would never be able to visit. Yet, I was tasting them in a way. As I was taking the last bites of the pita , two Arabic speaking young men came in and chatted with the counterman with voluble good spirits. They ordered and looked back at me. For a moment, my gut constricted and I went on alert, wondering how I would be able to get out of there if I needed to, since there was only one way out, and they were standing before it.. But the customers then turned back to their friend, the counterman, and they continued to talk in their musical dialect with the boisterous, high spirits of men in their early 20s. When he had prepared their sandwiches and they had paid, they shook his hand, gave him a salutation and left.
I could not help smiling at the peaceful resolution of this moment, at its normality. My reaction had been unnecessary. Was I merely lucky? Perhaps. After all, many Mafia rub-outs have occurred in restaurants. Or just maybe a good little restaurant is a little like a sacred place. Yes, this is a place foremost about food, and maybe food trumps hate.
In Rick Seback’s whimsical and informative documentary about sandwiches, the Palestinian-born owner of Sepal, a middle-eastern restaurant in Cambridge, MA, famous for its falafels, said that he has many Jewish customers with whom he often sits and discusses the political situation. He expressed his conviction that sharing good food could be a start toward understanding and peace. Maybe one day we will all find a way out of our post 9/11 dilemmas.
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