Yasmin Khan - Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus

YASMIN KHAN

RIPE
FIGS

Recipes and Stories from
Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus

Photography by Matt Russell

This is a book about food, of course. But its also a book about love. And about loss.

Its a book about the recipes that travel with us on the great journeys our species have always taken, and how these recipes comfort us and nourish us through times of great celebration or terrible calamity.

Its a book about the people I met, shared meals with, and cooked alongside, in Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus.

But most of all, I think, its a book about the resilience of the human spirit. And our capacity to endure the most unimaginable challenges and still find happiness in the smell of warm bread baking in an oven, a scoop of pistachio ice cream on a hot summers day, or a bowl of roasted pumpkin soup eaten by a roaring fire.

And its dedicated to all the migrants.

The triumphant sound of Afrobeat blares from small, tinny speakers perched on top of the kitchen counter. The rhythm makes my head nod and my hips sway as I pick another tomato from the large pile in front of me, and use my paring knife to remove its hard white core. I throw this pith in the compost and slice the rest of the fruit into thick triangles before transferring them to a large plastic bowl with the rest of the tomatoes Ive been chopping for the last twenty minutes. Next to me stands Sislo, my fellow line cook. Her head is down, repeating the same task, eyes focussed, hands quick. Reach. Slice. Toss. Compost. Its our moment of mindfulness for the day.

Earlier, Sislo told me that working here in the kitchen, at the One Happy Family community center, got her out of her head, out of her thoughts. Out of Moria, the largest of the official Greek camps on this island, where, at the time of my visit, 19,000 people live crammed into a space set up for 3,000. Or at least they did, until the camp burned down suddenly in the autumn of 2020. Out of Moria, where she doesnt feel safe. Where there are fights every night. Where you have to stand in line for hours and hours to get food handouts from the UNHCR and, at the end of that, sometimes when its been handed to her she has opened it to find maggots inside. Food isnt always so perfect. Sislo misses the cuisine of her native Zimbabwe, she talks me through recipes for peanut stews and sadza . I glance at the pile of tomatoes in front of us and calculate that we have another hundred or so left to prep. A gust of Meltimi wind rattles into the makeshift kitchen hut from behind the open shutters. The island feels stormy today.

Tomato juice runs down my forearm, stinging as it meets a small graze on my skin. My eyes drift out of the window, where, across the ocean, I can just about make out the faint silhouette of Turkey. Its a stretch of blue sea that feels simultaneously beautiful and mournful, idyllic and haunted. I look away, take another tomato from the pile. Core. Slice. Chuck. Compost. Ive slept so little since I arrived here, lying in bed night after night, my head spinning from the stories I hear, feeling angry and helpless at what I am witnessing, guilty for the privilege of my passport, for the comfort I take for granted.

Suddenly there is a loud CLACK! CLACK! CLACK! behind me. I reflexively jump at the repetitive banging, turning to see the head of the kitchen, Mahmud, hammering at vegetables for todays lunch. A rat-tat-a-tat clanging rings from his chopping board as he finely slices a white cabbage, using the blade of his knife to scrape its shredded shards into a plastic vat. Once finished, he glances over at the large pot on top of the makeshift stovetwo gas rings on which everything is cookedand where at this very moment four or five pounds of onions are frying. Mohammad! he barks, eyeballing the chef who is measuring rice just ten feet away in this compact kitchen. Mahmud gives a sharp tilt of the head and gestures with his eyes, pointing to the cooking pot with the tip of his chin. Without a word, Mohammad sets down the rice and rushes over to the gas ring, stepping up onto a wooden crate so he can use the three-foot-long wooden paddle to stir the vegetables. The sweet, cloying smell of caramelizing onions begins to fill the air.

At 1 pm, the kitchen shutters open and three orderly lines form. First the children get served, then the women, then finally the men. Although, in my eyes, so many of the men still look so young, just boys. Such young boys. The pace and temperature of the kitchen pick up. I peer around the corner to check the lines and guess there are around six hundred people to feed today. Everyone has a task and we move quickly, aware this may be the only meal the people we are serving might eat today and that they are hungry. Pour. Scoop. Pack. Pass. Rice with a cabbage and tomato curry, seasoned with lots of cumin and coriander seed. The portions are small but densely packed andmost important of allthey are warm and nourishing.

A group of children approach the kitchen hut, straight out of this mornings math class. I watch as Sislo passes a bowl to a young Afghan girl. Say thank you, instructs her teacher, who is next to the girl and her classmates. Merci, says the little girl, shyly, and Sislo gives her a wide grin and a wink. The girl takes her lunch and heads to the collection of wooden benches and tables next to the kitchen, joining her classmates who are chattering in Dari as they look out to the shimmering Mediterranean. I hear the trill of her laughter as another gust of wind bounds over from the waves and whips us all in the face.