Feast with theatre music and dance

We arrive, we thought to lunch, but instead of tables and chairs we see just chairs in two sets of rows, facing each other in a long wide oval. We mill around, we sit, we see the musicians who wait, like us. For someone to arrive. In due course, the musicians begin, and they play with each theatrical presentation of each dish.

Two sisters speak in Arabic and English about making bread. They sit by a doorway. Talk is part of bread making for women as they form and pound the dough, talk about the kids, the neighbours, and beating harder when they complain about their husbands. “Careful, you’re beating my bread, not your husband!”

Alissar speaks of Za’atar, she paces along the centre and hands out some of the herb, then works with a mallet-sized wooden pestle to grind some. She tells us the wild herb that grows among rocks was declared “protected” by the Zionist colonialist project in the 1970s. Possession of za’atar effectively became illegal. Yes, a wild herb, verboten!

We are served small squares/rectangles of toasty folded bread with za’atar, salt and oil. Several volunteers carry large trays, and we wait as they go back and forth to the kitchen. We wait, and I think of recent TV images: groups of people in Gaza waiting for food handouts because their homes and economies have been destroyed, because aid trucks can’t get in. People who have always put their own food on their tables, now forced to hold out an empty saucepan in the jostling hungry crowd.

Waraq zanab, stuffed vine leaves. The sisters are now behind the kitchen bench, laughing about technical problems with microphones amid accusations of going off script to say things about Mum. For their cooking is all about what they learned from Mum.

Maqloubeh, Miriam speaks at length and with love and smiles in Arabic about this dish, and though we are given what seems like a very short translation, I am charmed by Miriam. The dish is baked, the baking dishes are overturned on a table placed in the centre for us to see each baked rice and eggplant dish come out cleanly. Some are vegetarian, some have chicken, they are served with yoghurt and roasted nuts. Delicious, it’s all yummy.

The violinist speaks to us about the stealing of culture by the Zionist invasion, for instance, Palestinian songs are taken, translated and sung in Hebrew, with no acknowledgement of their Palestinian origins. He plays a beautiful violin solo for us.

Two of the three sisters of the 3Tomatoes Café are back in the kitchen, this time talking of Fattoush. They tell us how their mum made them help in the kitchen, how they hated that as kids, how grateful they are now. Fattoush is a salad with tomatoes, cucumber, radish, herbs and spices and crumbed bread.

We are given a final gift, Kamouneh, a spice mix with rose petals. Everyone is given a small jar, it’s a scent for calming the nerves, for strengthening the spirit. Paula tells us that women used to go out even during military curfews to find the ingredients.

Then the musicians perform Ya Bahriyeh, a song by Lebanese oud player Marcel Khalife that, we are told, has come to represent resistance, and we dance. Some of the Palestinian women had danced earlier, but this time we dare to join them. And we sing too, as we had been given copies of the text, and we manage at least the chorus.

Riverton Press was very fortunate to attend this excellent RedSeeds and Third Space Production of food, theatre, music and dance, presented by chefs, cooks, story tellers and musicians at the Community Refugee Welcome Centre in Callan Park, Sydney.

Today, images of Gazan people trying to return to what might be left of their homes in northern Gaza impose themselves upon similar images from 1948, when they fled during the Nakba, and from 2023, when again, they were forcibly displaced.

Photo, 1948, from the Middle East Institute http://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/2021-05/Palestinian%20refugees%20fleeing%20their%20homes%20near%20Haifa%2C%20June%201948%20Credit_%20Corbis.png

Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza walk towards the south. Photo, Reuters, November 2023. https://i.tribune.com.pk/media/images/image_2023-11-09_21_58_191699549216-0/image_2023-11-09_21_58_191699549216-0.png

And today, people who left northern Gaza after October 7, 2023, heading back there:

Photo, Reuters, 27 January 2025.