I first met Sid Mintz
through my husband, who had been a student of Sid’s at Yale. When, some
years later, I coordinated the translation into Arabic of Sid’s Sweetness
and Power, which was published in Tunisia in 2007, those of us interested
in the translation had the opportunity, over several years, to hold weekly
meetings to discuss sections of the book – a book that brought an
anthropological and historical dimension to the process of globalization, to
relations between the North and the South, to transformations in taste in the
context of commercial exchange.
Around this time I became
interested in the work of political cartoonists in Tunisia and Egypt, whose
approach I see as in some ways similar to Sid’s – they use humor even when
discussing very serious subjects. And there is another area of overlap
since the cartoonists, in their social criticism, often looked at how policies
affected food practices.
Two cartoonists, among
others, whose work expresses these concerns are Nagui Kamel, publishing in the Al-Ahram
newspaper in Egypt, and Chedli BelKhamssa who publishes in La Presse in
Tunisia. Their socially critical discourse, appearing in periods of harsh
censorship, for many years did not call into question those in authority.
However, since the onset of the uprisings in the Arab world in late 2010,
we see cartoonists of both sexes openly criticizing those holding political
power and depicting culinary and food practices as a way to do this.
In
hommage to Sid Mintz, to his love for and intellectual interest in food, to his
deep sympathy for the poor and to his strong criticism of those responsible for
inequality, as well as to his sense of humor, I would like to devote a few
paragraphs here to several Tunisian artists who show similar concerns.[1] This will lead, at the end, to a
characteristic Tunisian recipe.
Nadia Dhab is a
Tunisian artist and cartoonist who has worked with a number of Tunisian and
foreign filmmakers. Since 2012 she has been publishing on her Facebook
page a series of cartoons that she signs La bulle de Dlog(“Dlog” is
“gold” spelled backwards and her name “Dhab” is Arabic for “gold”). In
expressing her opposition to Nahdha, a moderate Islamic party that won
the 2011 elections for Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly and that was
feared by the secular elite, she portrayed the main protagonist in her cartoons
as a young woman in jeans, wearing high-heel shoes and a longline bra.
One of her cartoons that has food as a theme criticizes the well-known
coffee chain Starbucks for agreeing to open branches in Saudi Arabia that would
forbid access to women.
This cartoon shows the
outraged protagonist throwing her coffee into the rubbish bin while crying out
the word “Starbeuurk,” mixing together the brand name and an expression of
disgust and showing her condemnation of a company that betrayed women.
Another Tunisian cartoonist, Imed Ben Hamida, published several
cartoons in 2015 which evoke food practices and express criticism of the
political system, a criticism that was impossible before the fall of the Ben
Ali regime. In one cartoon he shows the prime minister wearing a chef’s
outfit, stirring a large kettle labeled “government,” and trying to create from
the mixture a new government.[2] Another cartoon shows President Béji Caid
Essebsi(founder and former head of the Nidaa Tounes political party) and his
son having returned to the stone age and standing under a caption, “Shake it
up,” that is used in preparing couscous and that immediately recalls the
Tunisian proverb, “Shake it up and it returns to its true state.” Here
the artist suggests that the current political system has reverted to the
stone-age, with the son wanting to become the political party’s head and then
also, like his father, the country’s president.[3] In a third cartoon, pictured below, the
artist uses language borrowed from meat preparation to show the problems in
getting a law passed -- the so-called Reconciliation Law -- that would allow
figures accused of corruption under the Ben Ali regime to return to economic
activity.[4]
Here, President Béji Caid
Essebsi is saying to Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Nahdha political party,
“Ya Sheikh, if we don’t get this passed as 3osban[an offal-based dish],
then we’ll get it passed as qadid[salt-preserved dried meat]”
Among the artists who emerged following the start of the uprisings in the Arab world, the Tunisian Héla Lamine is certainly one whose work should be followed and explored, since she shows great originality. She employs a variety of techniques – painting, drawing, photography, scanning, collage, etc. -- sometimes several techniques in the same work. In 2013, in homage to Zoubeir Turki, a celebrated figure of the l’Ecole de Tunis (an early group of Tunisian painters who started working in the late 1940s), she takes up how to cook)).[5] Ommok Sannafa is a woman from Tunis dressed in traditional clothes(headscarf, skirt over trousers, sleeveless blouse over a striped sweater, wooden clogs), and usually sitting at a mida(a low circular table). While using the same materials as Zoubeir Turki – a brush and India ink -- Héla Lamine reinterprets Ommok Sannafa and brings her environment up to date, substituting modern cooking utensils for older ones and freeing Ommok Sannafa to speak of sexuality, as when she holds an apple cut in two that opens to show a woman’s sex.
In 2015, Héla Lamine participated in a group exhibit[6] where two of her works had
as titles the names of dishes cooked by Tunisian women: 3in Sbanouréia(Eye
of the Spanish woman) and Bouliss Mkattef(Chained Policeman) – two
different names that are used for the same dish, with the first evoking the
emigration from Andalucia to Tunisia that began before the fall of Granada in
1492 and continued until 1610,[7] and the second denouncing
police action under the Beylical regime (before and during the French
colonization that started in 1881)] These scans have the merit of
reminding us how the same dish, or the same word/expression, may have different
meanings according to context and communities. Héla Lamine’s scan “Bouliss
Mkattef” was highly political because it appeared in the context of and
alluded to Weld El 15’s rap song, “Boulicia Kleb”(The policemen are
dogs),[8] for which he was sentenced
to almost two years in prison.
[1] The artists whose work appears in this presentation have given permission for their work to be shown here, and I thank them for this.
[2] Imed Ben Hamida. 20 January 2015, BusinessNews.com.tn.
[3] Imed Ben Hamida. 6 November 2015. BusinessNews.com.tn
[4] Imed Ben Hamida. 28 September 2015 . BusinessNews.com.tn.
[5] Mohamed Kouki. La Cuisine tunisienne d’Ommok
Sannafa. Tunis: AlAsria, 1983.
[6] Collective exhibit, “L’indice
d’une suite”, Bardo Museum, 16 December 2015 - 7 January 2016.
[7] Slimane Mostafa Zbiss. Histoire des Andalous en
Tunisie. http://www.smzbiss.org/default.asp?id=5
[8] Elodie Auffray. Tunisie: le rap en sourdine (Libération,
4/10/2013) http://next.liberation.fr/musique/2013/10/04/tunisie-le-rap-en-sourdine_937142
Recipe
To dine on 3in
Sbanouréia/Bouliss Mkattef, as it is prepared by Tunisian women:
Ingredients:
1 large beefsteak.
2 finely cut onions.
1 teaspoon of coriander
powder.
1 bunch of parsley.
1 teaspoon of finely ground
black pepper.
5 hard-boiled eggs.
Pinches of salt, to taste.
Cooking:
Lay the steak flat.
Mix the finely cut parsley
with the onion and the spices and spread this over the meat.
Place the eggs on the steak
on top of the parsley and fold the steak so that the ends meet and then tie
them together.
Place the meat in a pot
with 100 g of tomato sauce, 2 chopped garlic cloves, 3 tablespoons of olive oil
and a glass of water.
Cook over a low flame for
45-60 minutes.
Serve hot.
(This dish may also be served with rice.)
