Kitchen Conspiracies; Refugees in Dallas
My hair smells like curry and there are shallots under my nails. I have an oil burn on my hand and I spent all day in Dallas public housing with no air conditioning. I just got sick to my stomach because I told them I couldn’t eat fish and then we forgot about the fish sauce, fish paste and fish flakes in the soup. I kind of knew it going down. Ate it anyway. Because the fellowship, the sorority, meant so much and I didn’t want to be rude.
I’ve spent eight years talking with refugees. In the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in Europe, and in the US; we have talked about education, sexual violence, war, and loss. We have laughed and cried and prayed together. But I have never had a day with refugees like I did today. Because today we were in kitchens. Just us women. Cooking. And it changed everything.
Interviews feel funny — I’ve been on the receiving end of more than I care to count, and there’s nothing natural about them. But so often when I speak with refugees, it feels like an interview — we have a limited amount of time, there is an interpreter, I have the questions in my mind beforehand, and, critically, we are all very aware of the weight and consequence of every word spoken. We stare at each other. There are awkward silences. We wish we could bridge some of the distance between us, but the language.
Today, kitchens changed all that. Because I understand the language of the kitchen, even when I’m preparing food I have never eaten before. Peel, chop, sautee, season, taste: it is as familiar to me as it is familiar to the refugee women I cooked with today. So our silences are not strained — they are full of action, smells, grumbling bellies. Women who would never practice their nascent (or extraordinary) English with an interpreter and case worker listening in, chatter away when those authority figures are across the room and it’s just us girls in the kitchen. And when our eyes are on our knives and our garlic, questions can be asked and answered that would feel too intimate if we were staring at each other across a couch. Our guards are down; we are more ourselves. Moreover, we are engaged in an activity that unites us — making food to nourish those we love, activating our culture on a personal level, helping get the kids and elders fed before they get grumpy.
Or maybe it’s that we’re in something together. We are teaching one another: this is the way my grandmother made rice pudding, this is the way my grandmother did it. Cardamom? Genius. Have you tried coconut milk? No, but I will. It is these small kitchen conspiracies that form bridges, and when we walk over them we find each other. Something powerful happens when we recognize ourselves in one another — we realize we are not alone. For any of us from anywhere in the world, isn’t that what we want to know? That despite our pain, our losses, our grief, we are as human as the woman mixing batter next to us; as deserving of healing and empathy and welcome.
If it were up to me, I would cook with every refugee I ever meet. We could fatten our sense of sisterhood, gorge ourselves on compassion, and affirm our mutual entitlement to a community of dignity and humanity. Long live the kitchen, pass me the pan.
