4: thai funeral cookbooks, ghost airlines, kyrgyz girl power pop, sacha robehmed

Past years outside Dubai have never felt like this, but somehow in quarantine I’ve caught the Ramadan mood. The quietness, the introspection, the lightheaded sense of focus. Sliding my schedule around entirely to be awake (work) through the night and sleeping around sunrise. I’m neither Muslim nor fasting, so not sure where this is coming from, but I’ll take it. Feeling a little bit IDM, a little bit Bridget Jones: every day feels like a set of spare, start-stop granulated notations in space.

I’ve been enjoying White Town’s—such a satisfyingly bombastic name for a Desi guy—1997 album Women in Technology lately. I’m not sure it’s all that good of an album, actually which I quite like—I can’t handle anything more than the barest competence of late. Speaking of highbrow marxist ways, I’ve long wanted to be in some sort of reading group that makes its way through the core Whitney ISP texts without having to engage with the program itself, if anyone is interested? A cultural marxism primer is what I’m after, really. And recommendations for well, everything, now that I’m clambering out of the past few weeks’ deadline onslaught.

I’ve been thinking about how a phrase like “I can’t breathe,” which one might have once deployed to 😂wheeze reply on the internet, is now so very extremely off the table, first as Eric Garner’s last words, and now as so many other people’s. I can’t stop thinking about the Giant Baby, this bodega collage to allow safe browsing from the sidewalk, how perfect Jan Svankmejer’s Meat Love is, and this Wayne Koestenbaum piece on the writer’s obligation either. The problem with art criticism is that there’s no obligation, is there, and no accountability either.

This week’s rather scatalogical diary comes from one of my oldest friends Sacha Robehmed in Tripoli, and features her puppy Kino, who I’m gutted to not be able to meet this summer. And below, outsourcing the spiky boi beat to Hangzhou, where students are adopting this excellent social distancing headwear.

spiky boi

Is it permitted to flee the city? The coronavirus cruise: onboard the Diamond Princess. The mortuary science professor who came out of nowhere to help NYC. Native Americans are being left out of US coronavirus data and labeled ‘other. Nannies tell the truth about working during the coronavirus. Art and the 1918 flu pandemic. War and virus. Uganda is using coronavirus rules to raid a LGBTQ shelter and jail residents. Black women have often faced racism in healthcare. Covid-19 is only amplifying it. Satyajit Ray classics tumble out of loft in son’s lockdown cleanup. Zoom’s biggest rivals are coming for it. 100 years after influenza killed his brother, WWII veteran dies of Covid-19. Accidents involving flowers. How to weigh a virus. 76-year old woman clapped so hard for healthcare workers her wedding ring fell 13 stories down.

glouglou and snackchat

Get fat, don’t die. The reclusive food celebrity LI Ziqi is my Quarantine Queen. In Thailand, funeral cookbooks preserve recipes and memories. How the game-changing George Foreman grill made history. Takeru Kobayashi and a kodiak bear: remembering TV’s greatest hot dog-eating contest. It’s time to delete your delivery apps. CSA sales were struggling—and then the coronavirus hit. How I threw a dinner party in isolation. During the Renaissance, drinking wine was a fight against physics. Released early to thwart Covid-19, ex-offenders confront hunger outside. My restaurant was my life for 20 years. Does the world need it anymore?

ramadan kareem

Everything about Ramadan is different this year, but we need it more than ever. Why I still fast during Ramadan. The Parrot isn’t hungry: on family, food, and fasting during Ramadan. The quiet before Ramadan in Yogyakarta. Ramadan during coronavirus: Muslim doctors weigh whether to fast. How IHOP became a Ramadan favorite. Centuries-old Ramadan practices and traditions upended by coronavirus. The Imperial Kitchen.On fasting. Lebanon becomes the first Arab country to legalise cannabis for medical use. Cooking with Naguib Mahfouz. Left on 86th.

☞\( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞ yeehaw

An innocent man spent 46 years in prison. And then made a plan to kill the man who framed him. The Indian village where each person’s name is a unique song. Exit West: an interview with Ishmael Reed. The forgotten Tiger King of Harlem. What the history of rhyming dictionaries reveals about literary snobbery. The ghost airline that has linked Cairo and Tel Aviv for decades. Come here, let’s drink! Kef music from Ottoman Istanbul’s multicultural nightclubs. Army Ranger School is a laboratory of human endurance. The Malaysian Job. In ‘Afropessimism,’ a Black intellectual mixes memoir and theory. Kyrgyz girl power pop: “Bad daughter, when will we be free?” Collecting rare sneakers from Japan. Betraying my hometown. A way back: E.O. Wilson’s ideas for saving nature—and humanity along with it.

&&

Wages for housework and social reproduction: a microsyllabus. Cinema from the South Caucuses: the best contemporary films to watch online. “Oil.”

quarantine culture diaries: sacha robehmed

monday

Momentous day—walking the puppy this morning, he lifted his leg for the first time peeing! So far he’s been doing this power stance pee, 4 paws planted and nose in the air, but some wildflowers that he sniffed at for a while provided a reason to get on 3 legs. Today felt like the start of summer, warm and sunny. I love my corniche morning walks and getting to see the sea. It’s busy, technically a public holiday for Orthodox Easter, people cycling, jogging, just taking in the view on the bench. Since last Tuesday, people have started to come back slowly. The army still patrol, but don’t ask persistent dog walkers (me) to stay at home—they’re not trying to clear public areas anymore. It’s this weird middle ground of not knowing the rules, and people slowly seeing how far they can push the boundaries of what’s been possible since lockdown started. 

Another coronamilestone—the at-home haircut! M bought a mirror especially so he could trim the back of his head. (In our first week of lockdown he had shaved his hair and beard off, and was unrecognizable. I called him Humpty Dumpty, a reference he didn’t get as apparently Humpty Dumpty only made it big in Anglo nursery rhymes.) He cut the back of my hair, which hasn’t seen a hairdresser since December. On a good day, without glasses, it was a little Tokyo Season 3 and 4 from Casa de Papel but the mullet aspect was getting to be too much so M went at it with the kitchen scissors. I bitched about it and tried to get him to angle his scissor hand like i’ve seen my hairdresser do. It surprisingly turned out ok, and feels much better.  

We watch a Youssef Chahine film, Cairo Station.

tuesday

Woke up surprisingly early and energized despite tossing and turning last night. Even got in 20 minutes of pilates before my alarm went off, (though honestly, lacked the focus to keep going). Letting the dog out, another momentous puppy triumph—no overnight poop! 

After our morning walk, my partner has already started working at the dining table. I set up in the other room but see some dying bananas and instead decide to procrastibake. There goes my mid-morning, but it turns out to be a fricking triumph, saving that recipe for sure.  I fret about a client that was meant to have sent a ToR by now—do I email to follow up or leave it? 

M. leaves for a meeting and half day at the empty office. At around 12, the dog starts getting restless—it’s before lunch, but he didn’t eat much breakfast. He keeps jumping up on the desk and I ignore him til he pees. I take him down, come up, reheat some loubia b’zeit (beans in tomato and olive oil) that M. made yesterday, with a dollop of yoghurt. I eat while editing a document, then give Kino his lunch and take him out. We’re by a small port with a few tiny private fishing boats. A scooter pulls up with two guys and a small husky and they approach as Kino runs through pigeons—turns out she’s a 6 month old pup. They play. The owner asks me what he eats, I say just dry dog food biscuits, while he espouses Lucy (the husky’s) diet of meat as helping her grow big and strong quickly.

His friend gets a black plastic bag and starts pulling out raw meat, tossing it at the dogs. Kino, off the lead and bounds over gobbling the first bit. The next piece, Lucy gets, and I stop Kino while she eats more and they head back to the scooter. Kino then follows them, running into the thankfully quiet road despite my calls—ruled by his stomach. He bounds away and finds a rib, and we do the dance when a dog has food and he’s off the lead and he doesn’t want you to take it away from him. I let him keep it and we trot home, bone in mouth, Kino to the balcony with his stinky treasure. 

When M. gets back around 3, he mentions there’s a guy selling plants downstairs—do we want some? It’s a grandfatherly 3amo I’ve bought strawberries and some pretty flowers from before. He’s thin and the definition of weathered, his skin is that kind of cracked leather vibe from sun and hard work. No mask. He has a plant I don’t recognize, he says it’s “fil” which I confuse with pepper / capsicum (filfil in Arabic) but we then determine it’s this plant that has white flowers that smell beautiful, to the point that it’s used in a morning greeting, saba7 el ful. I get some marigolds, a yellow pansy, something else he promises smells lovely but I’m unfamiliar with the name in Arabic. Placing the plastic pots in a cardboard box, he insists on bringing them inside to the lift of the building, his hands incredibly shaky, the toll of years of pushing a wooden cart.

Lockdown begins at 7, which has  become our cocktail on the balcony coronavirus ritual. Add a couple frozen raspberries to the gin and tonics, we watch the sunset.

wednesday

Today I was greeted by 3 stinky poops. The day went kind of in that direction—sort of average to blah. Morning walk, coffee on the balcony watching the neighbors call to each other. It feels like everyone is related in our little corner of the world. They all know each other well at least, and call to each other from their balconies, or ordinarily go to each other’s place for coffee, or in the evening, sit outside the mini market at the bottom of our building that never seems to sell anything, smoking shisha. They always greet each other (and me) in the street, and if they see me go by and they’re by their door, invite me in for a coffee.   

A Syrian dude I know through language exchanges and mutual friends, who’s stuck here and currently living alone after his German and French flatmates fled before the airport shut, messaged me asking if he could walk the dog. I jumped at the chance, and I filled the free hour by eating chips. Later, Kino and I worked from the sofa as M. was in the office again. Until he started freaking out at 4:30 so we took a walk. Stopped by the sweets shop on the way home to buy some date cookies, tying Kino up outside and walking into the place with hand sanitizer at the door, and trays of baklava, knafeh, qatayef  (mini pancake-type things) ready for Ramadan. After weighing them, the price was 8000LL when I only had 6000LL. Embarrassingly I haven’t brought enough change with me. I offered to return with the correct change but the shop keeper insisted that I pay the difference tomorrow—this, when we’re more than 6 months into an economic crisis, with COVID on top of that. Tripolitans are the nicest people. 

The most exciting part of today was when M. came home with a BBQ! And astory about purchasing it straight out of an Arabic comedy sketch—he asks for a grill, they give him the piece that’s like a rack with a handle that you put the meat in. He says, “no a grill,” the shopkeeper gets another one that’s the same but smaller, he says “no a grill,” shopkeeper goes “yes I gave you a grill.” Then has to describe what he wants. Turns out the Lebanese word is completely different. 

I get back in time to work a bit before my last call of the day. My 6pm call ended well after 7, my head aching dully despite drinking a ton of water. Feeling lazy and devoid of energy, and M. not in the mood to cook.  I ordered a burger because I saw it on Zomato when trying to find the menu for the good Italian pizza place. Cravings satisfied, early to bed. Feeling a bit blah. 

The more the world seems to move outside, the more sluggish I feel it seems. Today there were families with young kids walking on the corniche, families cycling, guys swimming—shops and restaurants mostly still closed but life returning. Meanwhile I can literally only tell it’s been more than a month in lockdown because I have my period again and we’re still doing this. 

thursday

Third day of wearing my tiger pants. Baggy loose cotton with fond memories of Nepal and deep pockets, a hole in the right leg. I’m rediscovering my summer wardrobe. Tiger pants is not a reference to that Netflix show I keep hearing about but still haven’t seen. Nor tiger-patterned. Rather, because they’re black and have tiger/dog shapes on them in neon colors. 

Managed to leave the stove on, to give my coffee an extra long brewing for about 45 mins while taking Kino on his morning walk—whoops. The hallway smelled amazing but I freaked out at almost potentially burning the house down. Did manage to pay the sweet shop the extra 2000LL I owed them, but they insisted on giving me a handful of m3amoul for free, Easter cookies filled with sugared walnuts and coated in powdery sugar. 

Lunch was leftover noodles and reading my horoscope from Chani. “Beyond family trees and in honor of them, it’s my work to see what orchards can be cultivated from the gifts I have been passed down.” Seemed apt given that tonight I have my SWANA plantcestor class. 

Another long day, but feel inspired to make a cannelloni before the spinach in our fridge wilts irredeemably, leaving evening pup responsibilities to M. 

friday

There’s a poop and a greenish sludge with a distinctly pea-pod shape—vomit I think—greeting me this morning. A friend comes to walk the pup at 8am, so I enjoy a quiet, lazy half hour alone on the sofa with my coffee waking up. Kino returns, having refused to walk far yet now full of energy. Playing on the sofa, a tiny insect jumps on me. I catch it and head to the bathroom. I can’t seem to kill it between my fingers alone, and end up trapping it on some wet toilet paper. I search “what do fleas look like” and freak out. Our normal vet is closed, or at least not answering the phone, so I call another one that’s open. Kino gets isolated in the room where he sleeps, and I put the blanket that’s on the sofa to wash on hot. I initially make an appointment with the vet for Saturday but then imagine how much my Virgo, orderly, neat, and tidy partner will be upset, and decide to put work on hold today to deal with this.

I fix the vacuum which was broken but actually just had some leaves (?!) trapped in the hose, clean the bag, and then get started vacuuming every chair, curtain, and all sides of the sofa, even underneath, as all the articles on “how to get rid of fleas in your house” instructed.  I drive half an hour to the vets in Koura, inland through beautiful olive groves. The Google Maps location is wrong, there’s a sign saying they’ve moved, and somehow I figure out where exactly. The pup gets a dewormer that he’s due, and a flea/tick chewable, and I get some much needed pet stuff (as everywhere near us has been closed) and a few more doses. The bill is over 300,000LL and we do the currency dance of where I ask what their exchange rate is in dollars,  and the receptionist checks with the vet who says 3000 i.e. 100$. I go to hand over my card and she double checks with him and he says no, for card, the official rate, 1500, i.e. 200$.  I just pay in lira cash as I’d brought enough with me.  

Coming back home there’s an army checkpoint to deter people coming to the corniche. It’s at an intersection and I let a car through, when someone else behind me pushes in front. I complain to the army officer and show my ID, explaining that I live in Mina which is why I’m entering there, and he lets me through. Feeling irrationally extra-annoyed and aggravated at the Hyundai driver who pushed in I speed up and see him ahead, the sea to the left. Eventually catching up I put my window and yell an insult which feels good momentarily, before scurrying away.

By the time we get back it’s 3pm. I saw one flea jump off in my car. One in the street before we enter our building. I’ve bailed on going to check out this farming cooperative I’m hoping to get involved in. Isolate Kino. Some leftover cannelloni for lunch, and then back to cleaning. I’m mostly finished by the time I have a work call at 5, where I share what I’ve been working on and somehow focus for an hour and a half. Once I’m off it at 6:30, back to cleaning—this time vacuuming the room Kino’s in. I check him first, and find a few more fleas trying to bail, on the surface of his fur as the NexGuard  does its magic. I have a little pot of water handy and drown them like the internet instructed. M. and I walk him, I finally, eventually, have a shower and a much needed Aperol spritz before M. makes a salad for dinner. Can’t even remember if we watched a movie, but a friend shares posts from “Lebanese dude with a sign” lamenting the exchange increasing to almost 4000LL that day (which it reaches).

  

saturday

I wake up around 6am because of a migraine, slowly aware that it’s early and there’s pain and it feels like my face is sliding down over my right eye. I take my 50mg of Imigran. Sleep til 8:30 and wake up still with a migraine. Used to these, I can kind of half function. M. is still sleeping to I let the pup out, feed him, and again go outside for a much shorter walk than normal. 

I came back to M. making coffee, which we have on the balcony. It’s one of the favorite parts of my day but today I’m barely there. The caffeine relieves it a bit, and we sit among our plants, looking at the flowers on the rogue courgette plant, the buds on the jasmine and pink oleander, the sprouts of basil I planted a few weeks ago. We talk about the new plants and what to do with them, the repotting that needs to be done. M ordered lemony garlicky foul and malayziyeh that is a Tripoli alternative to fatteh, warm chickpeas and tahini with fried nuts on top. Heavy and headache-y, I postpone my Arabic class til Monday, and go to bed. 

Wake up at 3:30, migraine free. M. comments that it’s like I’m a different person as I energetically pester him. But he has a call with his siblings at 4. There’s a storm, and after wasting some time hoping it will pass, Kino needs to pee.  Outside, I laugh as Kino tries to catch raindrops in his mouth. We meet Ginger the pug, the first dog outside his siblings Kino ever met, when his world expanded to the street a couple of months ago. His owner is also the only other woman my age in the neighborhood (our building is mostly people in their 50s and 60s taking care of parents in their 80s and 90s). Leash-free, the dogs chase each other up and down the street, with Kino leaping on top of and over the much smaller pug, who’s showing uncharacteristic energy. It’s raining but fun to watch, they keep at it for ages. 

As this was all outside her house, Umm Ginger invites me in for coffee. I refused last week, but with zero new cases recently it seems ok to say yes. I enter the traditional house with colorful tile floor, her grandma is sitting with the TV on, as the front door leads straight to the salon. We drink zohrat (flowers) herbal tea and I realize how much Arabic I’ve forgotten in lockdown—speaking English at home with M. and not interacting with people, I can barely string a sentence together. Taking Kino and my poor verb conjugations home, I feel energized but a bit worn out. 

Later in the kitchen with M, defrosting some stew that he made before the start of lockdown, I tell him about tea and that I feel like that’s enough socializing for the next week, maybe even the next month. He laughs, says he’s glad we’re on the same page and similarly homebodies (even without lockdown). 

sunday

Wake up at 9am to no poop! His wagging tail and excitement to see me every morning never gets old. He rolls onto his back for a belly rub every time I try to take him out, refusing to get up, so a few belly rubs later I ignore him. Slow, lazy start to the day! 

I love the morning walk the most, and normally take a route by the sea. Get to check in on its mood—calm and still after yesterday and Friday’s thunderous waves. We come home through the old souk of Mina, narrow streets and old stone buildings, the kind with plants sprouting from halfway up a wall. 

Morning balcony coffee, basking in the sun and enviously admiring our neighbours rose garden which just gets more blooms everyday. After, I start cleaning in earnest—vacuuming the whole house again just to be really, really sure we got those flea eggs/ larvae/ whatever, putting on loads of laundry on hot. M is having a blah day so does the washing up, and promises to mop this week. 

It’s stiller than usual this Sunday—maybe it’s Ramadan, maybe it’s the fact that no-one is meant to drive on Sundays, with the other days of the week alternating between odd and even number plates. After a quick work call at 1:30pm (my company is based in Jordan, where the work week is Sunday to Thursday), relax in the afternoon. 

I decide to bake cookies, having talked/dreamed about them for the last 4 hours. I never made cookies before lockdown, always more muffins or breads. But I’ve made a about a batch a week since, they’re kind of addictive. Had only about ⅔ the required butter but they still turned out okay. 

I called my grandparents—normally I only speak to them when I’m visiting my parents so it was kind of a first for me to call them. They told me how things were in Portugal; they’re big sports watchers so they seem bored. We set up the projector and settle in for a movie, River of Love, an Egyptian black and white one from the 60s with Omar Sharif and Faten Hammama that M describes as the Arab Anna Karenina. We haven’t really had any capacity for serious or depressing stuff, mostly watching Bojack Horseman, or black and white movies, since this started. 

We hear news of protests in Saht el Nour, the square that has been the hotspot of protests in Tripoli since October 18, Whatsapp groups buzzing with updates. Everything was quiet in our neighbourhood. Yesterday in Saida, a city south of Beirut, protesters molotoved a bank. Before the weekend the central bank announced that even those with dollar accounts would now only receive lira, at the “official rate.” There are about 4 different official rates—the 1500LL rate that’s still used when I use my debit card, the one for money lenders (2000LL) etc etc. while the street rate is over 4000LL. It means less purchasing power, frustration, a feeling of no control over savings, and awareness of my privilege in having a bank account outside Lebanon too. Before banks closed for lockdown, It’s been many slow months of watching a currency go into freefall. Friends share articles about beautiful weaving and crafts made with worthless Venezualan currency, only half joking that we’ll be doing the same with the lira. Many folks in this city rely on the informal economy, impossible during lockdown, and now COVID is slowing people are taking to the streets again, the revolution renewed. 

featured creature: eel larvae

Lectocephalus aka transparent eel larvae. Close up, they can be surprisingly cute:

🅽🅸🅶🅷🆃🅻🅸🅵🅴 is brought to you by rahel aima / @cnqmdi