| RAMADAN SONNETS | | Print | |
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Page 4 of 5 TASTE BUDS Arab coffee poured from an American plastic decanter, pale, made from what is known as "blond coffee beans" from being only partially roasted, prepared with cardamom seeds you can tell as much by some subtle cardamom vibration as by smell, pungent even in a Styrofoam cup. Then Malaysian chicken biryani, a sauce made from spices and greens, tiny pointed chili-peppers that in one bite open your nasal passages and put zigzag light along the sides of your head. Libyan couscous, very red, unlike white goat-buttery Moroccan style, with tender spareribs whose meat is as sweet as cheese. Then sesame halva, memory-triggers for Middle-Easterners because they grew up on chunks of it in pita bread for breakfast, as we did on the Pilgrimage in Mecca, and it was there I first heard of it as a staple breakfast diet with cups of milky coffee to start the day. This is the taste buds remembering God's Divine Names in their own way. DANIEL ABDAL-HAYY MOORE
15 Ramadan (night)
Red sky burns to ash TIEL AISHA ANSARI
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