From the pages of Metro, some highly emotional news:
It was endless – and deeply unsettling. I genuinely felt shaken and that emotion caught me off guard. I picked up the phone and called my mother in Jordan…
As soon as I heard her voice, I started sobbing. She heard me sniffling and, in true tough-love fashion, said, “Ah, you must’ve caught a cold from that British weather?” “Yes, Mama,” I mumbled. “Just a cold.” I couldn’t bring myself to verbalise my shock and disgust because I didn’t yet have the words to describe it.
I do now, though. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that my culture – houmous – was being culturally appropriated. It makes me sick.
I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves. What with the brutality of it all. Namely, a supermarket aisle with – and I quote,
An entire shelf stacked with all kinds of wild, colourful houmous.
Apparently mere proximity to such a thing – again, a shelf of houmous in a supermarket – can traumatise grown men of a progressive persuasion. Including Mr Amro Tabari, whose dip-induced agonising unfolds before you now:
I grew up in Jordan but my family is actually from Palestine. Before I was born, they were forced to flee in 1948 and we became refugees.
No, the relevance escapes me, too. Perhaps something will be made of this later, given sufficient contrivance.
Despite this, I had a happy childhood with my parents and older sister. Throughout it all, houmous was a staple. In fact, we’d have it as a family every Friday as part of a breakfast ritual. Mum would make it from scratch and we’d sit around the table sharing it.
I go for the red pepper variety, myself. Hey, I’m just sharing, too.
It wasn’t until I moved to the UK in 2013 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy that I began to see houmous through a different lens.
No laughing at the back. This is a tearful tale.
In supermarkets, I was stunned: all different types of houmous ‘fusions’ – many without chickpeas at all.
Stunned by houmous options. When not sobbing, I mean, or filled with a sickening outrage. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Mr Tabari’s emotions, or professed emotions, incline towards the operatic. One might say baffling.
Sure, culinary innovation is great. But sometimes what looks like fusion is actually confusion – or worse, erasure.
I suspect an explanation of a sort may be looming.
The reason I felt so shocked in that supermarket aisle was because I was lamenting what had become of my culture. My houmous. To me, houmous isn’t just a recipe; it’s an identity rooted in the Levant, long before modern political borders were drawn.
Ah, the aforementioned contrivance. Houmous as a political identity. I think this is where the credulous are meant to feel guilty, or deferential, or something.
Once I realised how far houmous had been taken from its roots, I turned to a Lebanese-Palestinian friend of mine and asked for his mother’s recipe… Now I try to share my authentic houmous with anyone and everyone I meet – and they love it. In Brighton, where I live, café baristas, flower shop owners, food critics, and even fellow amateur theatre actors have all tried it. They all listen to me when I tell them about the history of houmous, what it means to me.
I would guess that at least some of those baristas, flower shop owners and amateur theatre actors are just being polite. Not everyone needs a sermon with their dip. Even in Brighton.
I have even made huge pots of it and brought it to pro-Palestine marches with me.
You see, that’s where we’re going. Because of course we are. He’s had photos done and everything.
Whenever I offer my houmous to people, they often ask me: “What’s your secret?” “Palestinian love,” I reply with a smile.
This is starting to sound like one of those fabulist anecdotes in which the speaker is supposedly always being asked, “But how do you cope with being so slim and pretty and loved by everyone?”
Houmous… tells stories across generations. When it’s commercialised without context or origin, something sacred is lost.
One more time. Dip.
It feels that houmous is colonised, butchered, brutalised. When heritage is repackaged and resold – especially while communities tied to it are struggling – it becomes an insult. It’s not just houmous; it’s history, belonging, and pride.
And finally, inevitably, the demand:
Stop the cultural appropriation.
Or you could just, you know, dial back the pretentious, self-involved whining. Three or four notches should do it.
Mmmm – I am eating the delicious culturally-appropriated chicken curry I made using Caribbean jerk chicken spices instead of korma or garam marsala blends, and whatever fresh and frozen veggies I had on hand. I’m sure I have marginalized, erased, and oppressed any number of magic brown cultures here, but I have asked no one’s permission, and begged no forgiveness. I am, however, grateful that my local supermarket/Walmart stocks any number of delicious spice blends and other ingredients from around the world, thereby enabling my evil culinary endeavors.
Oh and homemade hummus and pita chips (made from mass-produced pitas at the supermarket) is my go-to contribution to whatever work potluck I am forced to participate in because it’s cheap (couple cans of chickpeas and I got everything else already) and easy and everyone can eat it.
The counter demand:
Fun fact! Jordan, or Transjordan, was part of the British Mandate for Palestine, so they merely relocated within “Palestine.”
I am quite sick of the cultural appropriation shite. I haven’t seen any recent stories of Italians bemoaning the plethora of Pizza Huts and Olive Gardens. Cultures mix, intermingle, and new things are created. It’s happened throughout human history.
Tonight, after work, I will be stopping at the store to buy some things.
First, Sabra Supremely Spicy Hummus (hopefully, or plain if they don’t have it).
https://www.sabra.com/products/sabra-supremely-spicy-hummus
Second, Stonefire Original Naan.
https://www.stonefire.com/products/original-naan/
So there’s TWO cultures I’m appropriating!
A Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy, eh? Sounds like a little cultural appropriation to me.
AKA, professional catastrophist/propagandist paid by taxpayer money.
Oh my goodness … those magic words just didn’t work out, no matter how many times she says them.
My wife was in a supermarket recently and saw a woman point at a tub of Israeli humous, declaring loudly “I will not buy genocide houmous.”
In 1948 the only part of the mandate left was Cisjordan (hey, why not), Transjordan having been recognized as independent by the UK in 1946.
To your larger point though, yeah, “refugees” in 1948 (after 14 May Gregorian), not so much, moving from a Jewish partition to an “Arab” partition in Cisjordan, maybe, or, like Arabs/Moslems today in the IDF, Knesset, or Israel in general, stayed put and enjoyed life.
Remember when Fidel Castro emptied his prisons to send serious felons to America as “refugees”?
I assume that’s what’s going on with many of today’s criminal “migrants”.