Marcus Samuelsson - Make It Messy: My Perfectly Imperfect Life

I ve never seen a picture of my mother.

I have traveled to her homeland, my homeland, dozens of times. I have met her brothers and sisters. I have found my birth father and eight half brothers and half sisters I didnt know I had. I have met my mothers relatives in Ethiopia, but when I ask them to describe my mother, they throw out generalities. She was nice, they tell me. She was pretty. She was smart. Nice, pretty, smart. The words seem meaningless, except the last is a clue because even today, in rural Ethiopia, girls are not encouraged to go to school. That my mother was intelligent rings true because I know she had to be shrewd to save the lives of me and my sister, which is what she did.

Although Ive never seen a picture of my mother, I know how she cooked. For me, my mother is berbere, an Ethiopian spice mixture. You can use it on everything from lamb and chicken to roasted peanuts. Its Ethiopians salt and pepper. I know she cooked with it because its in the DNA of every Ethiopian mother. Right now, if I could, I would lead you to a red tin in my kitchenone of dozens I keep by the stove in my apartment in Harlemthat is filled with my own blend and marked with blue electrical tape and my own illegible scrawl. I would reach into this tin and grab a handful of the red-orange powder, and hold it up to your nose so you could smell the garlic, the ginger, the sun-dried chili.

My mother didnt have a lot of money, so she fed us shiro. Its a chickpea flour you boil, kind of like polenta. You pour it into hot water and add butter, onions, and berbere. You simmer it for about forty-five minutes, until its the consistency of hummus, and then you eat it with injera, a sour, rich bread made from a grain called teff. I know this is what she fed us because this is what poor people eat in Ethiopia. My mother carried the chickpea powder in her pocket or bag. That way, all she needed to make dinner was water and fire.

In Meki, the small farming village near where Im from, there are no roads. We are actually from Abrugandana, a village smaller than Meki that does not exist on most maps. You go to Meki, take a right in the middle of nowhere, walk about five miles, and theres Abrugandana.

I know my mother was not taller than five feet two inches, but I also know she was not delicate. Country women in Ethiopia are strong because they walk everywhere. When I go there now, I stare at the young women and their children and its like watching a home movie that does not exist of my childhood. Each woman has a kid, which is me, on her back, and the fingers of her right hand are interlocked with another, slightly older kids fingers, and thats my sister. Each has her food and wares in her bag, which is slung across her chest and rests on her hip. The older kid holds a bucket of water on her shoulders, a bucket thats almost as heavy as she is. Thats how strong that child is.