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Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, California · 20 November 2022

CP-2022-048

Hythum Kiswani

53, commercial real estate broker, Playa del Rey · Recipe: Maqluba

Hythum Kiswani

Hythum Kiswani — Los Angeles Times, 20 November 2022
Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, California · 20 November 2022

Transcribed from the clipping

“I’M A FIRST-GENERATION Palestinian, immigrating to Northern California at the age of 9. This was just around the time of the Iran hostage crisis and, safe to say, it was not easy for a brown kid living in the ’burbs of NorCal. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Persian; I was lumped in with anyone from the Middle East as Iranian, so I got a lot of bullying but with an enhanced cultural/racial component. Fast-forward some years, and there was some form of assimilation but not enough for my liking. Thanksgiving dinner became a frustrating event for me. I was desperate to feel less abnormal — to just fit in and feel like I belonged — so I’d beg my mom and dad to have a typical American Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. My requests fell on deaf ears for a few years, but eventually a compromise was had: Sure, we’ll have turkey, but we’ll still have traditional Arabic meals meant for celebrations. So we’d usually have Maqluba. The dish has become a staple of my Thanksgiving meal because of the time and energy required to make it, the wonderfully intense aromatic flavors, and the link to my Palestinian heritage. It’s not found in other Arabic cultures. As such, it’s really a manifestation of families incorporating whatever ingredients were around in the kitchen to provide food for their family. Now Maqluba is one of my favorite dishes. I usually request my sisters make it for me when I visit, and I, in turn, cook dishes from my travels for them. Maqluba varies by recipe: Some add garbanzo beans, others eggplant, and some put a plate in the pot to isolate the meat from the rice. One constant is that it’s a very tasty dish, full of flavor and with wonderful aesthetics and presentation. My mom and sisters all have their own way of preparing it, and I’ve borrowed the best of all of them — with my own touch.”

Context added by this archive

The fourth maqluba in this archive in five years, after a travel page in Jaffa in 2018, a cookbook review in Michigan in 2019 and a Ramadan feature in Phoenix in 2021. This one is written in the first person by the man eating it: a nine-year-old who arrived during the Iran hostage crisis, was bullied as Iranian, and begged his parents for turkey. He got both.

Cite this item

"Hythum Kiswani," Los Angeles Times, 20 November 2022. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2022-048. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2022-048

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2022-048.

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