Essay: Your Arab Friends Are Not OK

Yaser Salameh @thechefyaso

I am not ok.

A Lebanese boy on Instagram, a chef of about twelve years old, explaining how to make a dish that is popular in his homeland, felled me on Sunday morning. 

He was not hurt. It was not a video that came with a graphic content warning. He was beautiful in his enthusiasm for cooking mujadara, a savoury dish of lentils, rice, onions, and a mix of sumac, turmeric, and pepper. It was his insertion of “We love you Lebnaan, and we’re praying for you” that got me. He was speaking English but he pronounced the word for Lebanon in the way we do in Arabic.

And he lost me thereafter to sobbing.