Bread not bombs

Here’s a thought-provoking article in the Washington Post, via my Palestinian sister-in-law, about a cookbook with a difference: The Gaza Kitchen. Most of us know Gaza only as a place that regularly crops up in news reports about violence between the Palestinian population and the state of Israel, but as this book (and blog) shows, there is more to life in this troubled region than bombs and helicopter gunships. It’s all too easy to dismiss writing about food as frivolous when faced with the grim reality of violent conflict, but the truth is that cuisine possesses a cultural significance that gives it a powerful role both in conflict itself and in the possibility of mediation. My Polish grandmother, who recently passed away, lived through the turmoil of the Second World War and survived great privation. I always recall how food so often played a central role in her stories – stories about Soviet labour camps, stories about the tribespeople of central Asia, and about the Middle East where she eventually joined the Polish Free Army. Food brings people together and sometimes drives them apart, but there is no doubt that in extremis, it is never far from people’s minds.