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.
That. 🎯
But he’s the self-appointed King Of Houmous. He’s in charge of it, and how it may be sold, and in what varieties.
It’s his houmous now.
You could always just fuck off back to Jordan and have plain humus and flat bread for the rest of your life.
The airport is that way.
But if he couldn’t get houmous in the supermarket he’d be complaining about that too and saying it was oppressing him.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would be proud.
If he wants to play ‘cultural appropriation’ I have a long f*cking list…
[ Recalls the leftist who tried to pressure me into eating hummus, even after I repeatedly told him I didn’t care for it. ]
So it is neither Jordanian nor “Palestinian”, just somewhere in the general vicinity of the Ottoman Empire.
Just going to leave this here. For no reason whatsoever.
It’s perhaps worth noting that Mr Tabari felt it necessary to include no fewer than six photographs of himself.
How do these clowns even make it through the day?
Just going to leave this here.
Nothing says “Palestinian” Love quite like mimicking throwing a Molotov cocktail.
It does seem to involve a lot of needless drama. Such that one can be traumatised and outraged, reduced to sobbing, by the availability of houmous.
It all sounds exhausting.
And I think we’re expected to admire this emotional self-indulgence and the cack-handed attempt to manipulate.
You lot and your extra vowels…probably serve hummus on aluminum plates.
Who knew Semtex could be so decorative?
This must be the lowest effort virtue signal possible, short of Tweeting a hashtag and calling it a day.
“Daddy, what did you do in the war?”
“Well son, I wizzed up some chickpeas in a blender with some tahini, olive oil, lemon and garlic.”
“Oh.”
Don’t you dare oppress me with your mockery of British spellings.
The irony of getting upset about “appropriation” is that when people adopt something (food, clothing, music) it is because they like it. The more things they like about your culture the more positive they are likely to feel about the people who have that culture. Insisting on tribal boundaries in the modern world is not only stupid it is counter-productive.
Oh, and let’s cheer for this sap whose life is so easy that THIS is the worst thing happening to him.
I was literally eating Hummus when I read this. Coincidence? Or proof of patriarchy? [Those serving sized ones from Costco are really good. Esp w crackers.] Costco colonialism???
Increasingly, as I read about articles or twitterings like this one, my response is an emphatic “Oh, DO f*ck off!”. Ye gods these people are tiresome.
HRH Hummus Guy there conveniently forgets that his tribe of malcontents tried to take over Jordan, something which the Jordanians didn’t appreciate, unlike the UK (weird how some countries are allowed to be nationalistic). Furthermore, Judaism came before Christianity came before Islam, and while Palestine in Jesus’ time had Arabs, there were zero Muslims among them. I am willing to bet my meager salary that hummous was a dish known to the Jews, Arabs, and other Levantine peoples long before Mohammed PBUH ever graced the planet. Palestine has been around a LONG time, has hosted many cultures and peoples, and their foods. This sorry excuse for a human is actually appropriating as “his” something far more ancient. More likely he’s just butthurt at the Israeli brands of hummus at the supermarket.
Here we have a grown-ass man bragging to his readers about crying to his mommy over a foodstuff . . .
No wonder they blow themselves up.
I just checked the local supermarket and they stock 27 varieties. Something for everyone. I was toying with the idea of adding some to my shopping list, but now I’m not sure what the new rules are. Do I need to get permission from Mr Tabari or some other ludicrously vain and uptight leftist?
I feel you. As I believe the kids say.
That said, I can’t say I’m intrigued by the roasted beetroot and mint.
Taking the oppression to the Next Level: Sabra brand hummus. Oh the horror!
Don’t you dare oppress me…
Me oppress? It is you lot going back to the old Victorian roots and trying to force your colonial spellings onto indigenous ways of knowings of spellings.
He seems to think so.
This was a favorite term of art in grad school in the 90s, and I see it’s still going strong.
It never involved actual erasers or vanishing or anything. It was just imaginary, like all the rest of it.
Joke’s on you: hummingbirds only live in the Americas.
That explains that lack of extra vowels.
Wait, so after all this fussing it turns out that he had never bothered to learn how to make the stuff? And when I came time to recapture his roots, he didn’t even go with his family’s recipe?
I must assume there is a distinct lack of mirrors in his house.
The people who make plans for us tell us that complex historic European mindsets and sensibilities of how to be a free citizen of a free nation will be assimilated to by Arab immigrants who are able and willing to learn those things, and we’ll all be better and happier sharing recipes and republics with our new friends. On a completely different subject, an Arab tells us that Europeans are unable or unwilling to adopt an Arab mindset or sensibility with respect to a crushed chickpea recipe – the result is just off, foreign, alienating. Europeans just can’t help adding their own thing or leaving out the essential thing. And when you try to educate them what the correct Arab way is, most of them don’t even care – it’s as if they want to continue being Europeans and only take and adapt what suits them. Even when they use your words, it turns out not to be what you had in mind for them at all.
The Arab makes it clear that his irritation can’t be managed as Europeans do among themselves, where an Italian can just roll his eyes at the notion of pineapple on pizza and get on with his day. The Arab is literally driven to tears by Western supermarket aisles, driven to standing on soapboxes to make pedantic sermons to old English ladies walking their dogs on the Brighton seafront. His people just can’t walk around a common public space with our people without getting insulted and upset. And happily there’s no need for them to stay here to be insulted and upset by our quaint, tin-eared, implementations of their culture, because the Arab world is a big place.
I have some culturally sensitive responses.
1. Grow up.
2. When you say “Now I try to share my authentic houmous with anyone and everyone I meet”, you mean the houmous you culturally appropriated from your Lebanese-Palestinian friend’s mother. Did she blub to her Mum too?
3. Can we Brits have an abject apology, yea down throughout the generations, and stat, for your own cultural appropriation of Western inventions such as the WWW, the Cotton Gin, the Spinning Mule, the Sewing machine. Maybe even dynamite and Semtex if you wish to represent all your brothers. (As you ought; after all, you’re moaning that WE should).
4. Grow TF up.
PS Cant help wondering (culturally appropriating somebody’s stereotype, though dunno who) if living in Brighton and talking of flower-sellers, baristas and AmDram actors might hint at an aversion to being on the top of high buildings in the company of some of your more ‘enthusiastic’ Palestinian brothers?
It was Judea in Jesus’ time. It wouldn’t be so-called “Palestine” until after the 3rd Jewish revolt against Rome in 135 AD.
The Arab=Palestinian connection only came when [Egyptian] Yassar Arafat invented the identity in the 1960s as a political identity.
Oh the irony of this Arab in sniffling about “erasure” via hummus when the erasure of Jewish history in the Levant has been ongoing since Rome came up with “Syria Palaestina” for the land of Israel.
I guess he didn’t see the Sabra brand of hummus on the shelves or that bunch of flowers he’s tossing would have been a grenade.
Having added red pepper houmous to the shopping list, I’m now agonising over which breadsticks I’m allowed to eat. Should I go for the seemingly inoffensive grissini, or dare I pick the big cheesy ones, which enable much more generous houmous-scooping?
I need political guidance.
[ Desperately flicks through pages of Metro. ]
Dear Lord, what’ll happen when he discovers that hummus is as popular in Israel as it is in Jordan (and, of course, all over the Middle East)?
Through caution to the wind … big hummus scooping needs culturally-appropriated pita chips.
Once again, let’s apply the Klansman test. “The supermarket has a whole display case of different kinds of hummus. What is your reaction?”
Amro Tabari: “That’s terrible. Only Arabs should make and eat hummus.”
Klansman: “That’s terrible. Only A-rabs should make and eat that stuff.”
I believe they also share opinions on fashion and other topics.
[ Remembers Darleen is hardcore. ]