The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber Page B

blossom water, remove the saucepan from the heat, and stir well. Pour the mixture into a freezer tray and place in the freezer. Once frozen, remove from the tray and beat well. Freeze again until ready to serve. Serve in small silver bowls, if you have any, and sprinkle the pistachios over the top.
    SERVES 6 TO 8.
    SAHLAB is a white powdery starch made from the ground tuber of an orchid.
    MASTIC is a natural resin produced in the Mediterranean from an evergreen shrub of the pistachio tree family; it also happens to be excellent for stomach ailments.
    ORANGE BLOSSOM WATER, a uniquely fragrant flavored water, is also used to make “white coffee,” a popular Middle Eastern drink made by adding orange blossom water to boiling water and sugar.
    It’s as if there’s only a certain amount of space in my brain, and the more space Jordan takes up, the less room there is left for America. Sometimes I lose track of what language I’m in and gibber between the two of them, substituting English words for Arabic and vice versa. My favorite breakfast is no longer pancakes, but bread doused with oil and Zataar. Just once in a while, something reminds me of my former life: a woman who laughs like my grandmother or a Jordanian cousin who smokes his cigarette the way an American cousin does.
    When these reminders occur, I stop and think: Am I still an American? And it confuses me, because it seems like a kind of unbecoming or rebecoming—to turn into this other Diana—pronounced Dee-ahna, a Jordanian girl who has forgotten the taste of fluffernutter sandwiches or Hershey’s bars. But sometimes there are hints of other places. For example, there is a swanky hotel in the middle of town where we go to buy the American newspapers. In their carpeted lobby with the wrought-iron tables and chairs, they serve tea in china cups, alongside blue-and-white plates filled with hard cookies that taste of a million miles away. These “biscuits” disintegrate between my teeth, falling into basic component flavors—jam, sugar, flour. They aren’t very good, and the tea is a weird mystery of crushed leaves and condensed milk— none of it is especially American, British, Jordanian, or anything else. But I crave this tea service because alongside the frilly plates and pots of this and that, they also serve a small kettle of piping hot chocolate for the children. Like the ice cream, it tastes nothing like my memories of powdered cocoa mix, but unlike the ice cream, it’s much better than the original. It tastes faintly of cherry and cream, and deep inside this, I believe I taste echoes of the sharp, sweet Hershey’s bars of the corner store just down the street from our house in America.
    SENTIMENTAL HOT CHOCOLATE
     

    Stir all the ingredients except the heavy cream together in a saucepan over low heat until the chocolate melts. Increase the heat and cook until the hot chocolate comes to a low simmer but is not boiling. Pour into mugs and top with the whipped cream, if using.
    SERVES 2.
    Jordan, it seems, reveals itself slowly. There are layers of mysteries like scarves in a scarf dance. There is the mystery of the traffic circles all over town that have no clear rhyme or reason. There is the mystery of the Jordanian drivers, who drive partially by steering and partially by hanging out the windows and yelling at one another. There is the mystery of the woolly white dust that travels through the air and deposits like silt along curbs and store windows, which we dust from our shelves and tables every morning, only to find it redeposited by afternoon. There is also the mystery of the particular wind that brings the dust, a storm the Jordanians call the khumiseen, meaning “fifty,” as in fifty days and nights of blowing dust storms. Munira tells me to never open my mouth when this particular wind is blowing. It’s the sort of wind, she says, that carries bad omens, random or misplaced spells. It is a wind filled with unanswered questions, unfinished