Comfort in chaos Amid gunshots and heat, Iraqis create good food

Editor’s Note: Senior Style writer Alicia Anstead spent two weeks last month in Iraq. The following piece is the last in a 10-part series about her journey.

If you think it’s hard to get good food in Maine, try going to war-torn Iraq, where for many, the electricity runs unevenly, refrigeration comes in ice blocks and dining out is curbed by a curfew. Oh, and you could also be shot by an AK-47. War, of course, is not appetizing.

Two weeks ago, when I was in Iraq, food was not the first thing on my mind. Still, I had to eat. But what could possibly be available that would suit a nervous stomach and, indeed, not make it even more unstable?

Spaghetti. For the first several days, that was the only option because my stomach was churning. Sometimes the noodles came cold. Sometimes they were topped with a dollop of a chunky, salsa-like tomato mixture. Once the dish came with shreds of mozzarella cheese. The point for me was not to add to my digestive uneasiness but to do the job of filling an empty space. That and a Heineken and I was, as the military says, good to go.

The more I adjusted to the intensely hot climate and the nighttime gunshots, however, the more adventurous I became, in a culinary way. Each day, as I ate at one of two restaurants (the one in my hotel and the one in the hotel across the street), I began to sample local specialties.

Neat piles of flat bread would arrive as accompaniment to creamy hummus, baba ghanoush, cucumber and tomato salad, chickpea salad, and tabbouleh. On the hottest days, I ate cool plates of watermelon for dinner.

In the north, I tried the local yogurt, which was lumpy and sour and delicious. Others raved about kabobs and mixed grill, with chicken, beef and lamb, but I never was daring enough to try it. I did, however, drink another signature Iraqi staple: tea served in shot-size glasses with a dune of sugar in the bottom. In the midst of chaos, the tea was a comfort.

If I had visited in peacetime, I was told, diners might request camel meat. Or goat meat. But these were not normal circumstances, and war is no setting for food lovers.

Nevertheless, Iraqis will tell you that food survived the terrors of Saddam Hussein. These days, Americans in Baghdad may not feel safe strolling casually through open-air food markets, but Iraqis shop daily for fresh fruits and vegetables and meats. Despite the war, the markets were bustling with carts of food and animals for slaughter, and sticky, baked sweets.

The best meal I had was served on my last day in Baghdad on a visit to the home of Abtihal Juad and Basmah Al-Izzi, the mother and sister of my translator, Sa’ad Al-Izzi. The family exemplified the generosity I encountered among most Iraqis. When I arrived, they greeted me with hugs and soda. Sa’ad had to translate all conversation, but not for long. We all spoke the same language when it came to food.

Mrs. Juad and Basmah saw that we were happily seated in their home’s one air-conditioned room, and then began delivering plates of food. In addition to hummus and baba ghanoush, they presented beriani (rice with vegetables) with baked chicken, salads, boorag (a meat dish) and kubba (minced meat with cracked wheat, onion and nuts). Basmah, who is in her mid-20s, made noodles in a bechamel sauce – not an Iraqi dish but certainly a house specialty. Shortly after we began eating, the electricity went out. This was not uncommon for the Al-Izzis, who had taken to sleeping on the roof of their house to stay cool at night. Sounds of bullets and the lights of flares often disturbed their sleep, but the family seemed to accept this as normal during the dangerous upheaval of their city.

After lunch, Mrs. Juad, who had prepared the meal in her hot kitchen, served green and red grapes, bananas and cantaloupe.

“Why didn’t you come and have lunch with us every day?” she asked. “This is what Iraqis do well. They love to eat.”

As we drove away, Sa’ad demanded that the driver pull over at a roadside stand. Then he disappeared behind the wooden shack and returned in a few moments with a bag full of Iraqi dates. He handed them to me as a gift. “Keep them out of the sun,” Sa’ad said with a chuckle, “or they will melt into honey.”

The one day Sa’ad took me to lunch at a noisy restaurant – it was safer to go out in daylight – the Iraqi love of eating was apparent in the seemingly endless rounds of food, including the traditional spiced rice with raisins, followed by tea, then lemon tea, then thick, bitter, hot coffee and, finally, fruit turnovers. It’s no wonder that Iraqis take advantage of the intolerable late afternoon heat as a time for siesta. When your stomach is that full and your head spins in the penetrating sunlight, sleep comes easily.

The restaurant felt like pure decadence, especially compared with the food the troops consume, the MREs (meal ready to eat) which are delivered in sealed plastic bags to their dusty posts. A few soldiers from Maine told me that dinner had become distasteful and discouraging, so much so they preferred to eat the ramen noodles their parents had sent them.

One soldier at a checkpoint in Kirkuk gave me an MRE when he and his buddies did the equivalent of getting takeout food from a local restaurant. They had pita bread with meat stuffing. I had Country Captain Chicken. There is no question about who had the better meal.

The opportunity to try camel never arose, but in Baghdad, I ate masgouf, a barbecued carp that is perhaps the most renowned local specialty. Carp is famously native to Iraqi rivers, especially the Tigris River where masgouf cafes were once jewels along Abu-Nuas Street, one of the former grand boulevards of the city. Before Saddam Hussein came to power, the trees on this street grew richly into a tunnel that covered the roadway. Playgrounds and sculpture gardens overlooked the river. It was a place where diners did not mind waiting 45 minutes for a delicious, succulent meal. They picked out fish, as I did, from a pool in the cafe and watched as the chef hit it over the head, fanned it open and then speared it on wooden stakes in an open fire. There, the wild flames cooked it to a crispy finish.

While the process is exactly the same as it has always been, the scenery has changed because of degradation and deterioration under Saddam. To safeguard his Republican Palace on the other side of the river, he destroyed any potential sniper position on Abu-Nuas Street.

Now, tree stumps stick up from the parks. A playground is overturned, its slides rusty and broken. Tumbling sculptures look like chipped ghosts. The tunnel of trees is long gone, and trash litters the sidewalk. Traffic flows chaotically with cars sometimes scooting up onto the sidewalk.

But the masgouf is the same. It is served on a bed of flat bread and accompanied by fresh onions, tomatoes, pickles – as well as swarms of flies. I had high expectations for the masgouf but found it less flavorful than the decorative side dishes. I had been warned about eating uncooked vegetables, but I ignored that advice and didn’t regret the decision.

As we ate, Sa’ad told me about another fish called “Saddam Hussein’s Fish” because it is very expensive. My meal cost about $15 or $20 and Saddam’s would have cost about $150 or more, said Sa’ad, who chuckled at the thought of the deposed leader no longer living in gustatory luxury.

At the end of the meal, the sun was setting and soon it would be curfew. Time to go. We drove back to the hotel, where another dinner of pasta and a beer awaited me. As I sat at the dinner table in the courtyard beneath my room that night, I found myself dreaming of a Baghdad in which I could walk the streets merrily in search of a sweet glass of tea and spicy delicacies to be eaten festively into the night, of an Iraq free of MREs and dilapidated cafes. Then, gunshots chattering in the streets beyond the wall around my hotel brought me back starkly to my meal and to the unpalatable menu of war.