Words by Nicole Nimri
Visuals by Sama Beydoun
LEVANT, WON’T YOU RISE?
Edited by Caline Nasrallah
Translated from English by Raja Salim
Arabic Copy Editing by Rayyan Abdelkhalek
Teta talks to Jesus like he’s on the sofa with her, tends to her garden like the Lord to his flock, cooks like a Creator. In al-Husun, the small town in northern Jordan where she’s from, she’d wake up in the darkness before dawn and start making bread in a taboon oven while the rest of the family slept. She toiled to have breakfast ready for her family when they woke up, just as her ancestors had done for thousands of years before her. By the time she was eleven years old, she had begun taking care of her brothers the way a mother does, teetering between roles of child and parent: she played as children do, but she would also cook, clean, sew, and play hostess alongside her mom whenever they had guests over.
And like an ancient curse, Teta ate her bread, both literally and metaphorically, with the sweat from her brow. Her childhood was cut short, her marriage too, and her life was devoted to raising siblings, then children, and at times, even grandchildren. She had never wanted to be married; she wanted to become a nun and live in the hills with God.
After Black September, a civil war between the PLO and the Hashemite Kingdom, Teta—my grandma, and her husband—my Jido, packed up my dad and his three siblings and moved to the United States where they would own a meat market in Indianapolis’ southeast side. In fact, it was a bag of flour that Teta’s father, my great-grandfather, carried atop his head for miles after Black September’s civil unrest. She said he told her that he wasn’t sure they would survive, and that he had brought what he could carry on foot. The makings of bread were precious; bread was the makings of revolutions.
Though Jordan lost control of the West Bank to the occupation forces in 1967 during the Six-Day War, the monarchy didn’t formally renounce their claims to the West Bank until 1988, a year into the Intifada. Within one year, they had formed the Arab Cooperation Council with Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen as a collective lobbying group to ask for funds from the Gulf States, and one of the first steps taken towards economic realignment was complying with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity program. In 1989, the government lifted subsidies on food and other common goods, namely petrol, resulting in severe rioting in parts of Jordan which led to the dismissal of the Prime Minister and ultimately to major liberalization within Jordan. Martial law was lifted, censorship in media was loosened, and parliamentary elections opened up for the first time in 22 years, introducing Jordan to new levels of democracy within the monarchy.[1]
Nearly a decade later, the Jordanian government enforced another economic restructuring program, again in compliance with the IMF, by lifting the subsidy on only one thing: wheat. After the government lifted the subsidy on wheat, the price of bread per loaf doubled, and what followed were some of the most extreme riots that Jordan had witnessed—one student protesting in Kerak at the time stated, “We need a revolution because we need bread.” [2]
In those seven years between the first and second round of riots, the Jordanian government had indeed passed a limited democracy, but it also signed a controversial peace treaty with Israel, leaving Jordanians wondering whether this move towards “peace” was worth it at all. The people had wanted for the sake of their daily bread—both edible and spiritual—to make that unsavory treaty easier to swallow, and without it, most Jordanians felt the price was too high.
Though the first round of riots in ‘89 brought many changes that pushed the nation forward, the era after the second riots was significantly less liberating. Protests were quelled with an iron fist, and censorship tightened more than ever. The rustles of a near-coup began again in 2021, in the same cities in which the riots first stirred in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but they were swiftly crushed and silenced without much coverage in either local or national news. For many people, censorship seems to be a worthy tradeoff for stability. Speculation about “what-ifs” and the paths not taken have apparently been unanimously dubbed fruitless as the situation appears to float on in a semblance of stability for now. There was a time, though, when we didn’t need to be so nervous about a descent to scarcity.
The oldest documentation of bread in the world was found in the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan more than 14,400 years ago.
Jordan was historically part of the Fertile Crescent, an area that has been colonized from empire to empire for its fertile soil and temperate climate, where wheat grew in abundance. The oldest documentation of bread in the world was found in the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan more than 14,400 years ago.[3] First as a direct result of colonization, and later through the IMF’s restrictions, Jordanians became forced to import white wheat as opposed to their own durum because of the vast price difference. Much cheaper than harvesting their own wheat and utilizing a stone mill, especially when only white wheat is subsidized, the heritage grain has seemingly been left in the past, though there has been a revival to the ancient practice in hopes of restoring Jordan to self-sufficiency and sovereignty.[4] A glaring mirror of its foreign policy, Jordan has what it needs within the nation but is forced to rely on external sources and nations for its survival.
But Teta, a Jordanian through and through, relies only on herself and God for her survival. When Jido passed away mere months after coming to America, Teta was in her 30s and had four children to look after. She vowed never to remarry. She was married to God now.
After all, it was she who bandaged a soldier’s head with couch fabric when he was shot on the roof of their home in Jordan, she who raised four children as a young widow in a foreign country of which she barely spoke the language. My family has a running joke that Teta believes that men are superior to women, but she is superior to all men. She ran the home, ran a butchery, ran a restaurant, ran an alteration business, ran our family. Teta was as much the family’s breadwinner as she was the resident breadmaker. They may have struggled to have enough, but they always had bread.
It was bread that would be Teta’s signature even in America—a “thank you” to a colleague who looked over her shop as she took a bathroom break or ran to check on the alteration business upstairs, an offering to a favorite customer or friendly neighbor, the star during every meal with my cousins. Hailing from al-Husun, which was famous for its wheat, and Jordan, which up until the ‘60s was 200% self-sufficient in whole wheat, Teta’s birthright had always been the baking and breaking of bread.
In recent years, my mother and I have made our Easter bread together—a long-honored tradition of breadmaking and sharing with guests who would make the rounds to each other’s homes and wish each other a Happy Easter while secretly rating whose bread tasted best. Before Teta moved to Indiana, she used to say that was her favorite time of the year: she and Jido would visit al-Quds, Ramallah, and Ariha to see their friends and cousins, and she always spoke of these memories fondly. It was a time when people could still travel freely to and from Palestine, mobility that is now an impossibility under occupation.
We knead the dough, the yellow from the turmeric not yet pronounced, peppered with anise and nigella seeds. Mama smiles, enjoying the feeling of dough between her fingers and on her knuckles, relishing in the feeling of creating something nourishing from a handful of ingredients. Baba interrupts to make sure we’re generous with the olive oil, pouring from a bottle of olive oil brought straight from Nablus by a friend of my mother. My mom blends the mix with her hands, then I stamp the bread using a traditional Arab wooden mold with intricate carvings before handing it over to Baba to bake and give a quick pan-fry. Our assembly line is efficient; we laugh, listen to Fairouz, and sample and compare different batches, being sure to set aside plates to be divided among friends, family, and the freezer. Together we make this ancient bread, a bread eaten across generations, across lands, and across wars—a bread that witnessed the birth of religions and the theft of nations.
My mom proudly shows me another mold that she has for maamoul [5], much smaller in comparison, that she’s had for years. She says maamoul represents the vinegar sponge that Jesus was given to quench his thirst in Golgotha and that kaak be ‘ajwa [6] was meant to represent the crown of thorns. Since then, maamoul has come to be made and eaten by Christians and Muslims alike, traditionally to celebrate the end of fasting for both Lent and Ramadan. It symbolizes a new season of God’s blessings. But it seems the region is in a constant state of awaiting the end of an endless fast—anticipating the sweetness of being rewarded for their patience and the end of going without.
The end of all waiting.
Teta makes her famous bread, soft, fluffy, a sensuous partner to hummus and labneh alike, in the hope that her children and their children will congregate at her home. With two brothers estranged from each other, Teta speaks of reunions as miracles, and speaks of miracles as something beyond biblical. She speaks of miracles like visits from my grandfather’s ghost or of saintlike women fluently speaking languages they’d never spoken before while she awaits our family’s miracle of reconciliation—a years-long fast she hopes to celebrate with her famous bread at the center.
Teta would nod solemnly, “There are still miracles… miracles even now. Miracles…,” she says, looking far away, “[…] that we could bring our kids here, raise a family, keep the house open and welcome everyone all these years… that my kids could start their own families… These are miracles. Loving without condition, without expectation… a miracle.” She might break half a loaf of bread for me and offer the other half to my brother before divvying up the rest among my cousins, their parents, and the guests she neither expected nor invited but who were welcome all the same. Just like fish and loaves of bread, we multiplied, and even this—perhaps especially this—is also a miracle.
[1] Ryan, C.R. (1998), Peace, Breads, and Riots: Jordan and the International Monetary Fund. Middle East Policy, 6: 54—66.
[2] Schmemann, S. “In Jordan, Bread-Price Protests Signal Deep Anger,” New York Times (August 21, 1996)
[3] Dunham, W. “World’s oldest bread found at prehistoric site in Jordan,” Reuters (July 16, 2018)
[4] Mruthyunjaya, K. “Al-Barakeh is Restoring the Blessing of Bread in Jordan” MOLD (October 10, 2022)
[5] A butter cookie made with semolina flour prepared for Easter and Eid, traditionally filled with dried fruits or nuts.
[6] Arabic translation of kaak (a type of bread) that is stuffed with dates.
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About the visuals
I am the last generation of a lineage of women who, at the age of 20, had a daughter. Today, we are four generations that form a powerful matriarchy in an environment that is far from easy. In the midst of continuous change, there is one constant, these women have always had a language to express their love: food.
“Mother Tongue – لغة الأمّ” is the beginning of a visual investigation that traces what we leave behind for the next generation. It follows the chapters of a country experienced by each of the women in my life. Through family archive work, I create a connection with the past. Through photographic work, I link it to the fast-changing present of a city.
Sama Beydoun, originally from Beirut and now based in Paris, is a multidisciplinary artist. She explores design, photography, typography, and illustration to express herself, drawing inspiration from street culture and collective narratives.