A few weeks ago, the YAGM volunteers were invited to the home of a Palestinian family who are fast becoming friends with our program directors, Jeff and Julie. They are a Muslim family and speak little English (although arguably they speak a great deal more English than we do Arabic...), so we were a bit mystified by their desire to host the 8 of us, only one of whom knows Arabic (inshallah, this number will grow throughout the course of this year!). None-the-less we made the trek to their home one Tuesday evening a few weeks ago and were met with unbelievable and humbling hospitality.
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| The feast! |
The hostess had spent hours (possibly a couple days) preparing a veritable feast: think Thanksgiving x100 + stuffed grape leaves. It was incredible. We sat down to piles of cold cooked chicken, a divine rice and meat dish, fresh salads, the aforementioned grapes leaves stuffed with rice and meat (a personal fave), yogurt, hummus, little tasty fried hush puppies with meat inside and sodas. That probably wasn't even all of it to be honest. I focused my attention on the grape leaves which were amazing, even by the high standards set in Palestine. The hostess was ever attentive; if anyone came anywhere near to seeing the bottom of their plate they were offered more. Actually even if you hadn't come close to seeing the bottom of your plate you were offered seconds, thirds, fourths...
A note for my fellow TIME '09 alums, I did you all proud. I ate like a Moroccan-host-family champ. :-)
The dinner conversation was very pleasant. It took a lot of translating and miming on each side to communicate, but the family was patient with us. After we had stuffed ourselves we washed our hands and retired to the sitting room where we had piles of fresh fruit and mint tea. Followed by dessert and Arabic coffee (a thimble-sized jolt of rocket fuel, far more flavorful than coffee in the US). I'm not even joking, it was a double dessert special.
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| The YAGM with the generous family |
In some ways, I'm still not sure exactly why the family invited us over. Most of us really couldn't communicate much and, other than Jeff and Julie, we didn't know this family very well at all. But in other ways, it makes perfect sense in this context. Hospitality toward guests is a fundamental way of life here. Guests like us are vulnerable since we are far from our family units. We therefore require extra looking after to make sure that we're well taken care of. In"biblical times", a traveler in need was literally in a life or death situation dependent upon the generosity of strangers. It's comforting to know that families here want to look after us.
This type of over-the-top generosity is a very humbling honor. Although we had trouble sharing a language with this awesome family, they were willing to go to the trouble to share a feast with us.
