How could one ever forget taking tea with the Taliban or being offered Quality Street chocolates by a man alleged to have overseen the horrors of Darfur? I consider myself more a recovering journalist these days, but when I look back on the years I spent as The Irish Times foreign affairs correspondent, I realise many of my most vivid reporting memories are bound up with food.
From the frontlines of the Libyan uprising in 2011 to assignments in Somalia, Congo, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other places in between, it’s very often the conversations over meals shared at tables or on floors that linger longest. Some of the most memorable interviews of my time in journalism were made all the more unforgettable because of what we ate as we talked.
Musa Hilal seemed very proud of the Quality Street, I was more interested in getting answers from him
One encounter was particularly jarring. When I arrived at the Khartoum villa of Musa Hilal, leader of the so-called Janjaweed, the government-backed militias that had laid waste to villages across Darfur, the last thing I expected was to be reminded of an Irish Christmas.
It was 2009 and Hilal had agreed to a rare interview. As small talk segued into questions about his alleged war crimes, bowls of sugared almonds, dates and cardamom-scented caramels appeared in front of me, later joined by a tin of Quality Street. Hilal seemed very proud of the Quality Street, I was more interested in getting answers from him.
Two years earlier, I had spent another evening in Khartoum interviewing – though it was really more of a debate – Hassan Turabi, the septuagenarian Islamist who brought Osama bin Laden to Sudan in the 1990s. As Turabi held forth on everything from bin Laden to feminism, his cook served freshly made doughnuts, tiny still-warm globes dusted with powdered sugar that melted in the mouth.
A few months before, Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had returned to her homeland in 2007. I met her at her Kensington apartment. As she poured tea, she told me that the accompanying shortbread biscuits spiked with cumin seeds were made from a family recipe. They were buttery and delicious. We discussed the risks of her planned homecoming. By the end of the year Bhutto was dead – assassinated at a political rally – and I was having tea with her grieving relatives in Pakistan.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, Irish Times photo editor Brenda Fitzsimons and I once donned burqas to travel deep into Taliban-held territory. We had just finished a breakfast of oval-shaped flatbread (freshly cooked in a brick oven dug into the ground) with local cheese and honey when the Taliban commanders we were due to interview arrived. We all sat on the floor drinking sugary green tea as the gruff Taliban answered my questions.
Back in Pakistan, during a lunch interview with a corpulent Taliban sympathiser in Karachi, I watched as he ate dish after dish – with seconds of everything – until he admitted he would prefer to talk about what makes a good biryani.
Food was often a way to learn more about a place and people. During the violent crackdown on post-election protests that rocked Iran in 2009, I initially ate bland meals at my Tehran hotel – where it was clear the government was monitoring foreign journalists – and wistfully remembered what Iranian friends always said: that the best food in Iran is eaten in private homes.
I was delighted when a contact invited me to dinner with her family. The luscious home-cooked fesenjan – a classic Iranian dish of chicken cooked in pomegranate and walnut – was served with the addictive crusted rice dish known as tahdig, along with a side of political gossip.
On my first day in Riyadh, I made the mistake of trying to enter a restaurant through the main door. A flustered Pakistani waiter shooed me towards the “family entrance”, which led to a windowless room where families and women could eat. Two young Saudi women invited me to their table. Over plates of roast lamb and rice, they told me stories of their lives that showed the disconnect between private and public in that gender-segregated society.
During mango season in Pakistan, I often wondered if I could sneak a crate on my flight back
Reporting on protests over the soaring cost of wheat in Cairo in 2008 – Egypt had been hit hard by a surge in global food prices – was a reminder of how much bread is a staple in one of the region’s poorest states. So much so that in Egyptian Arabic the word for bread is aish, which translates as life, rather than khobz, the word more commonly used by Arabic speakers elsewhere. I met desperate women who had queued for hours to buy subsidised bread for their families, only to find the supplies had already run out.
In eastern Congo, locals told me the story behind the yellow discs of Gouda-like cheese that caught my eye in the markets of the regional capital, Goma. Belgian priests, struck by the abundance of cattle in the nearby Masisi hills, started making the cheese in the 1970s. It has since become a cottage industry for the area. I brought home several wheels of Masisi cheese.
In Iran I bought dried barberries to use in pilafs when I returned to Ireland. In Jordan, I knew where to find the best zaatar (the thyme, sesame seed and sumac seasoning beloved of the Levant), having lived in Amman for some time. In Lebanon, I always made sure to stock up on locally made pomegranate molasses, though the best pomegranates I have ever eaten were in Afghanistan. During mango season in Pakistan, I often wondered if I could sneak a crate on my flight back.
Reporting across the Middle East and Africa, I refused to take sides in debates over which country produced the best dates. One memorable dinner in Mogadishu consisted of just-caught lobster barbecued on a simple grill on the beach. I can still taste the wonderful grapes that grew in the sunny courtyard of a safe house in northern Syria in summer 2012. The children of the household urged me to eat more as the adults talked of war.
When I first visited Libya in February 2011, arriving in Benghazi just days after anti-regime demonstrations began there, I knew little about the country, given how isolated it had been during Gadafy’s 42 years in power. Those protests later tipped into an armed uprising. On the frontline rebel fighters sustained themselves on tuna rolls laced with harissa, the fiery paste popular across north Africa. “It’s the taste of Libya,” one told me.
I later discovered that the country’s most-loved recipes say much about its history, from dishes associated with the indigenous non-Arab Amazigh (or Berbers) and Libya’s former Jewish population to the variations on macarona (pasta) that nod to Italy’s colonisation in the early 20th century. The Italian legacy also most likely explains the Libyan obsession with pizza, gelato and excellent coffee. Reporting on Libya is challenging but journalists are always happy to learn that good espresso is easy to find in downtown Tripoli.
Most foreign correspondents have a number of comfort items they bring on trips to ease what can often be difficult or dangerous assignments. I’ve seen many survival kits filled with proper ground coffee as an alternative to the Nescafe found everywhere. Others like to pack cocoa powder, tabasco or miso. My essential was a stash of teabags – Earl Grey for mornings and chamomile for evening – because boiling water can almost always be found, and tea is a taste of home.
Mary Fitzgerald was The Irish Times foreign affairs correspondent from 2007 to 2014
