Mariya Khan
Dinner Prep
I always find Ammi humming the same Pakistani music that Nani always sang whenever she cooked. Her voice always cracks as the music rumbles through her throat and nimble fingers. She works at the kitchen counter with swollen feet cracked like dry dough, flipping rotis in atta before shaping them.
Her rotis are perfectly round: crafted by the perfect bride. One by one, Ammi brushes off atta and places each on an oiled tava. A rag presses the roti down in the middle and each corner,
allowing it to billow and puff just like how Nani taught her.
Ammi learned with a family tava three generations old. This is not the one that I will learn from. Now, she uses one bought from the South Asian grocery minutes from her Canadian home. This is the one that I will learn from, the one that will begin new traditions. The family tava could not fit in her suitcase and new life. It now collects dust in a box at her cousin’s Islamabad house.
Even from sitting at the kitchen table, I know that Ammi’s rounded back aches from three hours of cooking, from cutting five onions, mincing eight garlic cloves, slicing and cubing chicken, roasting and swirling spices with her own brand of alchemy. Every two days she performs the same motions like clockwork, deviating in meats and veggies but always singing the same music. I don’t understand these songs from her homeland, feeling distanced from the world that is supposed to be a part of me.
We are at the kitchen table to study multiplication charts and fill out detailed reading logs. Later, as we gulp down the food and suck in spices that create runny noses, Ammi listens to our school adventures. I wonder if she thinks of her own school days, her mind back in Islamabad. It’s unclear if we’ll ever go back, so these memories are all she has.
Abu won’t be home for dinner. Most of the time we eat without him. Abu and Ammi are used to an entire daavat every night, but we only have this kind of feast on the weekends. His second job at the local grocery keeps him out late. Ammi will save his leftovers on a Corelle dish covered with another Corelle dish.
When Abu returns at one a.m., Ammi will be asleep with a heating pad around her to hug away her back pain. She once told me that she always dreams of Pakistan. Usually, she is gazing out the window of her childhood home at the houses clustered on her street and other women preparing dinner. A different view than here, where she stares at the lemony wall of her Canadian kitchen.
Someday she’ll teach me similar things – how much pressure to apply while rolling the atta into round rotis, where to massage my feet to bring down the swelling, how important it’ll be to plan meals before a weekly run to the grocery. I know it won’t be how she learned in Islamabad, surrounded by Pakistani music and women who lived for cooking. But maybe I don’t need to learn that way to be considered a Pakistani woman. Maybe I will find a way to transfer this uprooted slice of Islamabad from this Canadian kitchen into my own. Maybe I can forge my own kind of blended traditions.
I always find Ammi humming the same Pakistani music that Nani always sang whenever she cooked. Her voice always cracks as the music rumbles through her throat and nimble fingers. She works at the kitchen counter with swollen feet cracked like dry dough, flipping rotis in atta before shaping them.
Her rotis are perfectly round: crafted by the perfect bride. One by one, Ammi brushes off atta and places each on an oiled tava. A rag presses the roti down in the middle and each corner,
allowing it to billow and puff just like how Nani taught her.
Ammi learned with a family tava three generations old. This is not the one that I will learn from. Now, she uses one bought from the South Asian grocery minutes from her Canadian home. This is the one that I will learn from, the one that will begin new traditions. The family tava could not fit in her suitcase and new life. It now collects dust in a box at her cousin’s Islamabad house.
Even from sitting at the kitchen table, I know that Ammi’s rounded back aches from three hours of cooking, from cutting five onions, mincing eight garlic cloves, slicing and cubing chicken, roasting and swirling spices with her own brand of alchemy. Every two days she performs the same motions like clockwork, deviating in meats and veggies but always singing the same music. I don’t understand these songs from her homeland, feeling distanced from the world that is supposed to be a part of me.
We are at the kitchen table to study multiplication charts and fill out detailed reading logs. Later, as we gulp down the food and suck in spices that create runny noses, Ammi listens to our school adventures. I wonder if she thinks of her own school days, her mind back in Islamabad. It’s unclear if we’ll ever go back, so these memories are all she has.
Abu won’t be home for dinner. Most of the time we eat without him. Abu and Ammi are used to an entire daavat every night, but we only have this kind of feast on the weekends. His second job at the local grocery keeps him out late. Ammi will save his leftovers on a Corelle dish covered with another Corelle dish.
When Abu returns at one a.m., Ammi will be asleep with a heating pad around her to hug away her back pain. She once told me that she always dreams of Pakistan. Usually, she is gazing out the window of her childhood home at the houses clustered on her street and other women preparing dinner. A different view than here, where she stares at the lemony wall of her Canadian kitchen.
Someday she’ll teach me similar things – how much pressure to apply while rolling the atta into round rotis, where to massage my feet to bring down the swelling, how important it’ll be to plan meals before a weekly run to the grocery. I know it won’t be how she learned in Islamabad, surrounded by Pakistani music and women who lived for cooking. But maybe I don’t need to learn that way to be considered a Pakistani woman. Maybe I will find a way to transfer this uprooted slice of Islamabad from this Canadian kitchen into my own. Maybe I can forge my own kind of blended traditions.