Two Seconds to Breathe

The unraveling of suppressed emotions in an unexpected place

Somewhere over Serbia, at 38,000 feet in the air, I allowed myself to cry.

On the flight to France, on my way to cook at events I have been planning since February, I had brought with me a book I saw on Emiko Davies’ Substack; How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K Fisher. This book was published in 1942 as a lifestyle advice for people going through the scarcities that come as a consequence of reckless wars.

Before even going into the chapters of the book, I was already caught up in my emotions. I was still in the introduction of the revised edition (1952) and it hit me really hard. In the past six years, we went through a devastating economic crash, a global pandemic with a suspicious lockdown, shortages in anything imported (Lebanon imports most of the goods or raw materials for food and non-food industries), literal blackouts on top of the usual power cuts, a destroyed port, bombings, ethnic cleansing, invasion, and occupation. Some of these were labeled as a “war” by the media, but looking at all of this from afar, it has been nothing but a continuous nonstop war.

In the book’s introduction for the revised edition (1952) Fisher writes about how the war, World War II, is now in the past and people are no longer restricted by food stamps and rations. It made me think of how tiring these years have been to go through.

It made me think of how we don’t have all of this. We don’t have a competent and functional authority, a fair one nonetheless, to get us out of the messes its politicians got us into. We had to learn it all ourselves; how to manage our worthless sheets of paper we use as currency, how to ration the food we have, how to stock up on non-perishables, how to switch to affordable goods without them being tubs of hydrogenated fats, how to use every scrap of food and waste nothing.

It made me think of those living off of donated ingredient boxes and those living off of donated meals cooked by local or international organizations who always set up camp when disasters strike. And there has been many.

It also made me think of the occupied Palestinians in Gaza blockaded for decades. Imports controlled, calories counted and goods that are necessary for the local cuisine forbidden by the Israeli occupation. It made me think of the blockade of wheat flour and all food trucks, under the excuse of fearing them being stolen by gangs (some of which were fueled and supported by the occupation itself.) It made me think of the narcotics allowed by the occupation to enter, and harmful pills hidden in the bags of flour to cause damage to the occupied. It made me think of the permission to import highly processed low nutritional foods as another form of damage to the occupied without getting accused of withholding food.

The occupied found ways to benefit from whatever they could get, and grew when they could in order to sustain and eat well despite everything.

Being in it and so close to it, I couldn’t think of it clearly. Maybe I didn’t allow myself to. I swept it under the rug inside my mind. The reality, fears and tragedies… I had no space to process them. But at such a high altitude, and reading similar thoughts written over 70 years ago, there were no rugs to sweep anything under. There was no ground to have the rugs on, and you can’t sweep things under flying carpets. My eyes felt heavy, and not because I only got 4 hours of sleep… My eyes were heavy, and then the tears came.

The moment I tried talking about these feelings, tears flooded my face. The knot in my throat grew larger, barely allowing a few words to come out of my mouth. The nonchalance I mistook for strength was nothing but a shell, and it needed a step back and a tiny pin to burst. I had no options. When you’re in it, you either crumble, or you find ways to keep going. Not out of courage or strength, but out of necessity.

“It is disheartening, too. Now, of all times in our history, we should be using our minds as well as our hearts in order to survive… to live gracefully if we live at all.” M.F.K. Fisher