Spoonful Chronicles
Title: Spoonful Chronicles
Author: Elen Ghulam
Genre: Women’s Fiction
To make sense of the unlikely events that have brought her to this place, Thaniya turns to food, curating memorable eating experiences of her life, searching for clues. Between her childhood aversion to cucumbers, her search for an authentic Iraqi kubeh in the city of Jerusalem, her 10-year tomato wars with her husband Samih, a mood altering encounter with a blood pudding in Edinburgh, and a Kafkaesque nightmare involving a cauliflower, Thaniya unravels repeated patterns occurring in her life. The secrets of love, friendship and destiny hidden in her cauldron of mishmashed cultures begin to reveal themselves.
Just yesterday a
patient shrieked with delight when I entered her room: “Oh My God! I can’t
believe it. Hummus lady!”
I was taken aback.
“Excuse me?”
“You are hummus lady,
in the video. You saved my marriage.” The skinny young woman looked at me with
awe as if I was a deity of some sort. This understuffed scarecrow told me that
she had married an Egyptian. They had been fighting for months. Finally, he told
her it was over and walked away. She accidentally found my video on YouTube and
decided that instead of eating a tub of ice-cream, she would make a tub of
hummus. When her husband came home to pick up his things, he encountered the
plate of hummus. One taste led to another. His wife found him licking the plate
clean. She sat down at the table without a word. Her husband began to cry.
“This tastes exactly like the hummus I used get in the public market of
Alexandria,” he told her. They talked things over. Cried together. And decided
to fight to stay together. Experts might tell you that a marriage should be
based on respect and shared values. But if you listen to Thaniya Rasid, you
would forgo all that and entrust your life partnership to a flatulence-inducing
legume. I suppose marriages have been
based on shakier ground. This must be
the mushiest. “Why don’t you make more videos?” asked the woman.
I shrugged. “I’m not
sure cooking is my forte.”
“Oh it is, it is,
there is magic in these hands!” She grabbed both my hands as if rubbing
invisible lotion into her own hands.
I wanted to tell her:
“Leave your husband, he’s an asshole.” But instead, I grabbed her chart and
focused on the medical task at hand.
My name is Elen. I am an Iraqi-Canadian. Please allow me to tell you a story of a curios event that happened to me.
I was a perfectly happy computer programmer doing the nerdy stuff that computer programmers do. You know! Geeky stuff. Like the normal stuff that an Iraqi-Canadian would do if they worked as a computer programmer. When one day, out of nowhere, the inspiration to write hit me over the head. It came at me fast and furious and turned my life topsy turvy.
I was always an avid reader. Ok I was a bookish geek. But the idea that I would try to write never even occurred to me, until the violent incident with the muse.
Since then I have published a memoir called “Don’t Shoot! … I Have Another Story to Tell You“. Which Was followed by a novel called Graffiti Hack. That one tells the story of a hacker who installs lavish graphical designs on commercial websites. Imagine the trouble she gets in? Well I had to. I was writing the story, so I had to imagine every last bit.
A third novel is on it way. I don’t know where all these ideas come from, they just pop in my head and I write them down. In addition to writing,
I am a flamenco dancer, I enjoy painting and I love to cook. Somehow all these activities inspire each other.
I am a married mother of three, living in a pink house in Vancouver BC
Really I just love telling stories and I love listening to stories.
Links
www.ihath.com
https://twitter.com/ElenGhulam
https://www.facebook.com/ElenGhulamAuthor
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOKZboCaeSr9tSzXXZm-Ugg
https://twitter.com/ElenGhulam
https://www.facebook.com/ElenGhulamAuthor
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOKZboCaeSr9tSzXXZm-Ugg
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank you for visiting.
I love to hear comments
and like to visit you back.