"Give us this day our daily bread."

18 September 2008
“Give us this day our daily bread.”

The sun-bleached, utilitarian flats and businesses of Amman boil and bubble, sliding past like mercury on my taxi window. I’m oblivious to this urban mirage as the taxi speeds toward my home in Dahiat al-Rasheed, but the taxi isn’t getting there fast enough. All I can think of, the thought that has haunted me all day long while I’ve been plowing through Arabic classes and seminars, is that I have half a pita hidden in my clothes closet, and I can’t figure out how to dispose of it. The fate of that pita influenced my life so much in the past week that it’s tale merits the telling:
The pita originated in any of the dozens of bakeries around Amman and found its way into the family refrigerator where it became stale and slightly molded before being offered to me upon embarking for a last weekend’s trip to Madaba. I graciously accepted this offering, thinking then that I fully understood the importance of bread in Arab culture – i.e., not to be wasted within what I considered “reason”. While en route to Madba, the pita became increasingly inedible having become smashed and shattered in the bottom of my overstuffed backpack; needless to say, it was not consumed and returned home in shards in its plastic bag. Not wanting the family to think I had wasted it, but knowing that my trash is inspected as it is sorted through and disposed of, I couldn’t throw it in my garbage can; I couldn’t throw it out my window where it would land on the street directly below, incriminating me (were it still one piece, I could have tossed it, Frisbee-like, to the nearby field where the Bedu would bring their hungry goats in a day or two and eat the evidence. So I shoved it under one of my sweaters, until a couple of days later when I decided that finding some pretext to dispose of it in a public garbage bin would be too much trouble (disposing of it SIT’s building might have been o.k., but I didn’t think of that). Furtively opening my little garbage can, I buried it in a heap of facial tissues (I’ve had a cold this week) hoping it would make it to the dumpster outside undiscovered. How horrified my expression must have been when (after finding my trash can empty and assuming that my pita had found rest in its moldy grave) I casually opened the refrigerator the next day to find it shamelessly sitting on a plate. To my amazement, the family later seared the pita on the gas stove-top to clear away the mold and crumbled the cleansed bread as croutons in the fatoosh (salad).
In semitic cultures, bread or khobez is often synonymous with life (does “bread of life” sound familiar?); it represents the fundamental portion of space and food that the Creator gives each person. Wasting any of this portion of grace is a blatant disrespect for not only what one has been given, but also is considered stealing from one’s neighbor (by wasting resources that could have been used by another). No matter how mangled, the bread (or its remains) will either find its reconstituted way into some dish or will be fed to animals. Now I see that the thing to do would be to have returned the bread to the fridge. When I realized the family was no longer offering me bread, I began seeking ways to offer restitution for my cultural faux pas. Earlier this week, I had purchased some sketching supplies at the Jordan University bookstore, and I spent some time sketching one of Dunia’s (my host Mom’s daughter) four children. The family loved it, and thereafter I offered some basic drawing instruction to the two girls, followed by help with math homework. In exchange, they are giving me extra Arabic study at home by allowing me to complete the younger kids’ Arabic homework alongside them. As Yusuf played at my feet and the girls cozied up next to me on the sofa, I saw that the adults were talking quietly and watching the scene with nods of approval. Before returning to Dunia’s home, the kids begged for me to spend the night with them this weekend, and Khatm (my host mom) nodded and smiled, grasping my hands exuberantly. Although all worked together for my good, I don’t think I’ll ever waste a crumb of bread again.