Of Fresh Vegetables and Foreign Policy

Life in the leafy suburbia of American cities is orderly, clean, and comfortable. It can also be lonely, monotonous and ultimately sterile. Yet city life is not an option in all but a handful of American cities as most down towns are desolate, crime-ridden and unlivable, especially if you have children. My older brother, who visits us yearly, enjoys the quiet and the greenery of our suburban home, a brief respite from the noise and chaos of Beirut. I and Um Kareem, on the other hand, could do with a little more chaos and noise. We feel the need to regularly escape suburbia to maintain our sense of balance. It is not only the physical isolation and the blandness of the suburbs that is stultifying, it is also the fact that, in the mid sized city that we live in, the suburbs have a predictable white bread homogeneity. Even for relatively well-integrated immigrants like us, such an environment makes us feel like outsiders.

So this morning, as on many Saturday mornings before, we temporarily escape the suburbs to a hundred year old Public market in the middle of a decrepit part of the city. When we step into the market, we feel like we have entered a different world. The market is everything that the suburbs is not. It is lively, chaotic, smelly, and packed with people. People of every social strata, of every color and age mingle freely. As you inch your way through the crowd, you hear a dozen different languages. It is as diverse a cross-section of humanity as you will see anywhere. The sellers are an equally varied bunch. There are the local farmers with ruddy complexions and calloused hands selling their produce and retailers hawking soon-to-expire fruits and vegetables at cut rate prices. There is a Vietnamese fish monger with everything from crabs to octopus, and an Amish family, looking like they just walked out of an 18th century painting, selling baked goods. There is an African-American man selling incense and a Mexican stand selling empenadas. But we don't only go for the atmospherics, the local fruits and vegetables, unlike their wax-covered, cellophane-wrapped counterparts in the suburban supermarkets, actually have a smell and a distinctive flavor and yet cost much less. There are also the occasional unexpected finds, like the farmer with a sign next to a familiar light green vegetable that read: "Kousa (Lebanese zucchini)". Now Um Kareem's delicious Kousa bi laban (stuffed Kousa in a yogurt sauce) has become part of our kids' culinary cultural heritage.

Today's prized vegetable catch was a bushel of foul akhdar (fresh fava beans), enough for many meals. After the market, we often head off to a Turkish grocery store in another humble part of town. There is a sizable Turkish community in our city; most emigrated to the United States in the 1960s to work in the garment factories around town. Entering that store with all its familiar sights and smells is like being transported back home; except that everyone in the store is speaking Turkish. We stock up on Nablus olive oil (the best I have ever tasted), Lebanese pickles and Turkish halaweh. For the first time I notice Syrian products all of the same Sham Gardens brand, I am impressed with the slick packaging and make a minuscule contribution to the Syrian economy by buying a couple of items before we head home.

Now, you might think that I am making too much of the significance of a weekly trip to a vegetable market. But the fact that we attach so much meaning to it reflects a true underlying need. To a certain extent, part of the problem is one faced by most first generation immigrants; that is no matter how long you stay in your adopted home, you never quite feel like it is home. The compartmentalized, homogenized and sanitized suburban living only magnifies this sense of alienation. But I think there is also a wider perspective to this. Despite all that has transpired in the last eight years, living in the United Sates makes one feel that the rest of the world and its problems might as well be on a different planet. It is a prevailing attitude that influences how this country interacts with the rest of the world. So simply put, for us, the weekly visit to the Public market serves as a reality check, as a way to reconnect with the rest of the world.

Who knew that fresh vegetables and foreign policy were so interconnected!!!!!!!!