And a binary phantom there, Stygian, erect. / Saying, here is the untranslation of the world. -Forrest Gander, “Carbonized Forest”.
I. Gazans eat animal food; animals eat humans
For this week’s newsletter, I had considered writing a recipe, or making a TikTok or Reel in the style of those slick “What I Eat in A Day” videos. The subject: a type of bread unique to North Gaza, currently, i.e. small, flat and brown, almost cookie-like in appearance. My intentions were satirical; as a writer, I like how humor, as a rhetorical tool, helps me guide you through the briar of my argument, calling your attention to the greenery, and not the thorns. For, to crib from writer and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Twitter bio, “I write to change your mind for good.”
Now, however, my joke feels sick; words don’t come easy, let alone parody. It’s been over a month since I wrote about the manufacture of starvation and famine in Gaza; that crisis has only worsened. This week, the World Food Programme paused food delivery to northern Gaza due to Israeli gunfire and “the collapse of civil order”. Save The Children states that people are “forced to forage for scraps of food left by rats and eating leaves out of desperation to survive”.
Here’s where the bread comes in. In addition to boiling seawater to drink, Palestinians are eating animal feed, grinding donkey pellets or bird seed and blending it with wheat flour. Reporting on this, the Middle East Eye quotes Muhanned Alatanni, an eleven-year-old boy: “The animal fodder in the bread is very bad, the water is polluted, my stomach hurts.”
On that awful note, if you’re wondering what this genocide has done to children more broadly, on Thursday, Doctors without Borders told the UN Security Council the following: “These psychological injuries have led children as young as five to tell us that they would prefer to die.” (Here I feel compelled to point out that, although the suffering of children demands our attention, we should emphasize that Palestinian men deserve protection, freedom and justice, as well – particularly given that, as a default, our culture demonizes and pathologizes Arab and Muslim men.)
II. “In every house in Gaza we found olives, olive oil and spices. We cook there with mixed feelings.”
In a disturbing contrast to the above, Haaretz last week published a profile of IDF soldiers cooking in Gaza. Finding this article took some doing: After seeing a post on Instagram, I searched the English version of the newspaper, to no avail. A helpful stranger, responding to a comment, provided a link via private message. There I hit another obstacle: The page wouldn’t open. Changing my VPN settings to Israel solved that problem, however, and I read the story in translation by way of Google Translate.
A kind of Saveur or Bon Appétit puff-piece from hell, the article comprises an interview with two soldiers, Nadav and Elam, who began cooking for their unit in the kitchens of abandoned homes. The military and Israeli citizens from the kibbutzim supplied the ingredients, e.g. free-range eggs, sausages, tomato sauce, and “expensive cheeses, like pecorino, manchego and goat’s cheese”. Combining these with their rations, Nadav and Elam prepared meals like bruschetta, pasta bolognese, or “sardines in a reduced tomato sauce with a bit of spice”.
The reservists also made use of ingredients left behind by the dead or departed; “Gazan cuisine,” Nadav comments, “is full of spices”. Olive oil, as well, apparently, which they found in every home “by the gallon”.
I’ll end with two quotes, presented without comment. Nadav notes that “[he has] the hardest time with mediocre and unpalatable food, it brings [him] down.” Elam: “In the army, we eat a lot. Each of us has gained at least three kilos, if not more.”