Maqluba

Oral history

The upside-down pot in Tulkarem

Layla Al-Masri turns the pot in one motion. If it holds, the table cheers. If it slumps, the table eats it anyway and pretends it held. Maqluba is theater and dinner. In Tulkarem in Ramadan the eggplant is fried in the morning, the rice washed and left, the meat browned. At iftar the inversion is the first thing the children wait for — before the qatayef, before anyone speaks. She says her mother learned it from her mother, and that the neighbors made it too, Muslim and Christian houses on the same street, with small differences nobody thought to write down. I am writing them now, she said, because the street is not the same street.

Recorded by Archive demonstration