Remembering the Taste of Damascus
The painful, perhaps impossible task of sustaining the memory of a lost home
After my parents fled the war in Syria for Egypt in 2013, they did their best to recreate their old life. My mother, a stellar cook and hostess, arranged the living room in their new home in Cairo to resemble the one they’d left in Damascus, filling an elegant bowl on the coffee table with little chocolates wrapped in colorful paper, and throwing her decorative cushions from Syria across the sofas. My father replicated his favorite corner from our old house, lining up his knick-knacks on the small table next to his favorite chair. The kitchen always smelled of spices, olive oil, and garlic whenthe past into the present were always somehow incomplete. Something remained transient, temporary, and not quite set.
