What’s Wrong with Greek Spices?

We had to sneak the married couple into their room since they had no papers. Mazen lied to them, telling them that their meal in the hotel’s restaurant was included in the room rate. They should eat as much as they could. After he moved his bags into my room, he had to rush to the restaurant and prepay with his credit card. The cost of the room and meal would end up around sixty euros per night, and I had to figure out a way to pay him back. His finances were not in great shape. My loans had been supporting him for the last few years.

Rasheed drove us to the city center since he knew where we were going for dinner. I sat in the back seat while the boys in the front rekindled an argument that had been burning for generations: which was the superior cuisine, Lebanese or Palestinian? The “we make the better okra stew” discussion lasted a whole ten minutes. The amusing aspect of such a discussion was that the difference between the two cuisines was barely noticeable to any but the dedicated food connoisseurs. Back and forth they went discussing culinary likes and dislikes. Who had the better oranges? Obviously our knafeh was tastier. They disagreed on whether hummus was originally Lebanese or Palestinian, but any fool knew that it was not Israeli. That was ha-ha-ha laughable.

“The restaurant we’re going to has the best Greek food on the island,” Rasheed said. “I know that’s not saying much, but we don’t have many choices.”

“Greek cuisine is an oxymoron,” my brother said. “They ruin everything.”

“True,” Rasheed said. “Let’s say that this restaurant is the least offensive.”

“Why would you add béchamel to a moussaka? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Exactly. It mutilates a perfectly good dish.”

Now you know why the boys liked you so much so quickly. When we saw you at the restaurant, you may not have made much sense at first, but the one thing that had their hearts fluttering was this: when the food arrived, you said that Greek food felt to you as if an incompetent chef was given all the correct ingredients to make a fantastic Lebanese meal and proceeded to fuck it up by using the wrong mixtures. They found that delicious.