Magh. A literary journey through the worlds of food between Arab heritage and Western modernity | Culture

In his book “The Kitchen of the Novel. In his book “The Kitchen of the Novel: From Visualization to Braiding,” Moroccan academic and writer Dr. Said El Awadi takes us through the chapters and pages of a number of Arab and foreign novels, showing how the art of the novel creates an imaginary world that interacts with the real world, and monitoring the presence of food in fictional literature.

In the introduction to his book, Al-Awadi says that the novels reviewed in the book include various kitchens that abound with varieties of tables that stimulate the senses, and the reader can almost see the images of eating sessions, sipping glasses and colors of pleasures, hear the creak of forks and knives, the gurgling of drinks and cooking spices, smell odors, kitchen spices and fruits, and taste the delicious appetizers, creating different psychological states, such as awakening a buried memory or flashing an extinguished idea.

According to the book’s introduction, this is not surprising as long as we expand the functional circle of food, which is not limited to biological functions, but tends to extend to anthropological, sociological and cultural functions, as food bridges established relationships with questions of existence, identity, class, gender, etc.

Narrative memory

We learn from the book “The Kitchen of the Novel. We learn from the book “Novel Food from Visualization to Braiding” that each food or drink has its own narrative memory that carries with it a variety of human relationships rooted in time and space, as if each food and drink vocabulary is the title of the full-fledged novel, and if it penetrates the imaginary narrative world, it provides it with a human experience that gives it depth and uniqueness.

We quote the author of the book:

“Isn’t a good novel also a narrative dish in which the chef selects the ingredients of his characters, events, places and times, adds the appropriate narrative spices, and then cooks it over the fire of experience and expertise?”

The texts of the book indicate that fiction criticism did not care about the “food of the novel” and did not harmonize with it, as evidenced by the absence of any detailed book that dealt with this vital component in any form, whether descriptive, historical, or interpretive.

Male gaze

The book attributes the reason for this to the male gaze that governs the critical treatment of literary texts, which made many critics view “food novels” as second- or third-rate literature, according to the book’s texts.

The book’s texts indicate that some saw food and drink scenes as a “purely feminine affair,” as if it were a vulgar topic that does not befit the dignity of criticism to delve into it and take care of its details.

Thematic approach

The book “The Kitchen of the Novel. The book is part of the author’s endeavor to fill the gap in critical studies dealing with the topic of food in literary narratives, by adopting a thematic approach that is open to cultural reading and an expanded rhetorical approach.

The first chapter is titled “Tributaries of Narrative Food”, in which the author works to identify the references on which the Arabic novel is based in the Arab heritage horizon through narrative models from Akhbar al-Tafilayeen, Akhbar al-Bakhla’, and Maqamat literature.

In the first chapter of the book, the author also evokes the modern Western and Latin American horizon by focusing on four important works of fiction, namely: “Food… Prayer “Food, Prayer, Love” by American novelist Elizabeth Gilbert, “Hitler’s Gastronomy” by Italian novelist Rosella Postorino, “Like Water for Chocolate” by Mexican novelist Laura Esquibel, and “Aphrodite” by Chilean novelist Isabel Allende.

The second chapter of the book is titled “The Arabic Novel and Visualized Food”, in which the author traces the first stage of the Arabic fiction narrative, and monitors the visual presence of food descriptions and the connotations and purposes they express related to three major themes, namely: “Food is an identity”, “Food is a message”, and “Food is a weapon”.

In this chapter, the author stopped at 6 novels representing 4 Arab spaces, from Egypt Naguib Mahfouz’s “Between the Two Palaces” and Hisham Shaaban’s “The Last Breakfast”; from Morocco, Mohamed Berrada’s “Far from the Noise. Close to Silence” by Mohamed Berrada, “The Neighbors of Abu Abbas” by Ahmed Tawfiq, and Syria Discuss Hani al-Rahab’s novel The Defeated. Tunisia He chose Chekri Mabkhout’s The Taliani.

The third chapter of the book is titled “The Arabic Novel and Braided Food.” In it, the author discusses the growing interest in the color of food in Arabic fiction, and how it has become a theme that braids the narrative, description, characters, space, and language.

The author examines the presence of food in three novels, namely: “Kohl and Habahan” by Egyptian novelist Omar Taher, “Bitter Orange” by Lebanese novelist Basma Al-Khatib, and “Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table” by Libyan novelist Mohammed Al-Naas.

Food culture

The pages of the book show that the Arabic novel has not been immune to textual interaction with ancient Arabic narratives and modern and contemporary foreign novels, and has taken them as two central pillars to build a narrative achievement through which serious novelists aspire to produce a “third text” that takes into account the needs of specificity and the necessities of distinction.

The Arab novelist himself has his own experiences as a human being with the worlds of eating and drinking, as well as living in a large country with a diverse cultural stock, of which food culture is one of the building blocks expressing an exceptional celebration of the value of generosity that comes from a distant desert past.

The book “Describing and Narrating Food” is one of the forms of textual interaction that the Arabic novel has established with the past of Arab narrative on the one hand and the present of foreign narrative on the other, as Arab novelists worked to integrate it into their narrative worlds to advance multiple aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual goals.

Weighty presence

The texts of the book pointed out that those who are familiar with the Arab heritage code in its linguistic, historical, scientific, social and literary diversities clearly notice the extent of the weighty presence of the discourse of food, which is not limited to describing food and drinks, but tends to open wide horizons to intertwine with issues of Arab-Islamic identity when the heritage code categorizes it into halal and haram and fences it with a system of morals and values.

It also overlaps with issues of culturalization manifested in the migration of food and drink between Arab and non-Arab spaces, and with issues of the civilizational scramble that made some of the food choices of nations a means of contempt and disparagement.

The book highlights how the ancient Arabic narrative took care of the theme of food, making it framed by different traditional narrative styles, such as: News, journeys, manamat and maqamat, and sought narrators, characters who were generous givers, miserly frugal or parasitic gluttons, and gave the spaces descriptions that varied between elongation and reduction.

In the conclusion of his book, the Moroccan academic and writer Dr. Said Al-Awadi listed a set of conclusions:

• The need for critics to focus on clarifying the use of food in novelistic discourse, and to overcome the “belittling vision”, because food in the novel goes beyond its biological/abdominal dimension to touch social, cultural and political dimensions, and can even be a productive reading entry point for a number of Arabic novels.
• It is hoped that this novel will expand some of the concepts that belong to the Arabic food field, such as the concept of “intrusion,” which can be expanded to express the manifestations of a comprehensive intrusion that we live in today, such as the intrusion of media and people into individual lives, among others.
• The concept of generosity can be expanded to signify the absolute solidarity that humanity needs in its current context of poverty and pandemic crises.
• The presence of food in the Arabic novel has evolved under the influence of its Western counterpart.