By Thomas Winterhoff
First published on August 9, 2000. (Also broadcast on CBC Radio.)
Copyright © Thomas Winterhoff
A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine kindly procured for me a small piece of seemingly innocent halvah — that obscure yet delicious treat from the Mediterranean made with ground sesame seeds and honey. I thanked her profusely, as it’s a favourite food of mine, but my face then flushed deep crimson with embarrassment.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her why.
About a dozen years ago, I spent a summer working in Berlin as part of a work/study program through the Germanic Studies Department of the University of British Columbia. As you may know, Germany is still home to quite a large number of Turkish gästarbeiter (“foreign workers”), people who had been given work permits to come to Germany in the past during times of labour shortages.
Ahmed was one of these wonderful, down-to-earth people. He and I worked side by side on the factory’s packaging line and often talked about our homes and families. He was as curious about the Great White North as I was about his intriguing and mystical homeland.
Since he had expressed a wish to learn English and I was also interested in learning some Turkish, we began tutoring each other using our somewhat limited grasp of our only common language: German.
The best time to practise was during mealtimes. Whenever our workgroup would break for lunch, everyone would first tend to pass around some of whatever he had brought to eat that day. It was Ahmed who introduced me to Turkish tea, which has enough sugar infused into it to make even the most reserved practitioner of dentistry swoon.
It was during my first week on the line that he offered me a container of what looked like (for all I knew at the time) tinned tuna gone horribly wrong. Since Ahmed’s proficiency in English was about as well-developed as mine in Turkish, it took considerable coaxing and a series of bizarre hand gestures before I finally agreed to try a small piece.
I just about fell off the bench. After a Spartan student diet back in Canada that consisted primarily of beer, Kraft Dinner and beer, my first taste of halvah was the most sensual food experience I’d had in weeks.
Over the course of the summer, Ahmed brought in an increasingly delicious parade of halvah that his wife would prepare for him. After the original sesame seed and honey halvah came others containing chocolate, small currants, pistachio nuts and a variety of other incredible ingredients. I would savour every piece as I attempted to make good on my promise to teach him my mother tongue.
The only English book we immediately had available was one that Ahmed had bought at a flea market: a battered copy of John Cleland’s erstwhile banned Fanny Hill, a ribald and explicit memoir of a young woman’s introduction to sex and romance in 18th-century London.
The bookseller had apparently handed it over with a nudge and a wink, but as far as Ahmed was aware, it was simply a run-of-the-mill novel which would (given time) allow him to master the intricacies of the English language.
Ahmed was of a religious faith that tends not to discuss such racy matters in open company. I felt compelled to choose my words carefully, so as to not offend his sensibilities. Whenever we came to a particularly graphic episode, I would incorrectly translate the passage as a detailed description of the room’s furnishings — and scrupulously avoid commenting on the acrobatic activities taking place thereon.
Ahmed would methodically chew on his wife’s halvah and listen carefully as I read aloud to him, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration and his rough-skinned fingers slowly combing his thick, black beard.
It was during these long and rambling passages that I would sometimes see him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye with a puzzled expression on his face.
Perhaps he was wondering just what it was about mahogany table legs that made 18-year-old Canadians blush and squirm the way that I did. One can only imagine what went through his mind as I described the “group setting” in the living room.
My time in Berlin eventually drew to a close. As I punched my timecard for the last time, Ahmed came over to say goodbye, holding two small packages in his burly arms. The first was a half-kilogram selection of his wife’s finest halvah, given with her best wishes for a safe journey.
The other contained our English “textbook”, for (as Ahmed put it) he had not found it to be anywhere near as interesting as the bookseller had intimated. Besides, it seemed to him that I had enjoyed it considerably more than he had.
Perhaps, he said — as he shook my hand emotionally in farewell — he would take up Italian instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment