Ask Mona (Almost) Anything: 3

AMAA

Photo: Robert Rutledge

Read AMAA: 2

Do you cook? E.R.

I vividly remember the day my mum kicked me out of the kitchen. She had been trying to teach me Egyptian dishes that I now sorely regret not paying attention to. Why oh why did I not learn how to make molokheyya, my favourite dish in the world that is sometimes uncharitably described as slimy green soup by ignorant palates but which for me is heaven. Or bamiya! Oh okra, you might be my second favourite dish but when you’re reheated the second day and that tomato base you swim in is so thick and flavourful, oh oh! I know all this deliciousness because whenever I visit my parents, my mum makes molokheyya for me the first night and bamiya the second.

I was banished from the kitchen–the cooking part of it, anyway; I’m an expert dishwasher––because I’m sure I’d mouthed off plenty of “Why do I have to learn how to cook? Just because I’m a girl?” enough times that my mum was done with my feminist hectoring. She was doing what was expected of her–teaching her daughter to cook. And I was resisting in the way that I could at the time–by refusing to learn.