“Dad says that everyone invented baklava.” It occurs to me now to wonder what that means. Aunt Aya rolls her eyes.“Your father? He is the worst of the worst. He thinks he cooks and eats Arabic food but these walnuts were not grown from Jordanian earth and this butter was not made from Jordanian lambs. He is eating the shadow of a memory. He cooks to remember but the more he eats, the more he forgets.”

“How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education:“Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him.“If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered.My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.”

“Heifer.”“Rich man’s whore!”“At least mine can cook the food he eats. And replaces it, too.”“Now see, Dee-Ann Smith. That was just mean!”

“He wanted to see her eat. After the sex, after he came inside her, he wanted to have her eat food he'd bought her, and he wanted her to take the stuff from his hand. Hell, he wanted to go out and kill something for her, bring the meat back, cook it himself, and feed her until she was full. Then he wanted to lie beside her with a dagger in his hand, protecting her as she slept.”

“We approach the house and I wave at Jimmy. "And if he thinks he's eating with us, he's got another thing coming," my dad says.Jimmy approaches us and takes the shopping bags from me, looking inside them."Lamb roast. Am I invited?”

“Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her.”