One day after tensions erupted between Shiias and Sunnis due to terrorists blowing up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraq (May 2005), I had an extraordinary experience. Even though I am a woman, I got to walk into the bakery room of the Iraqi kitchen where local men were making their flat bread, pronounced hhoebz. The ovens were fired up and the small room was full of tables and ovens and eight men each doing an individual task. One man pulled the dough from the bowl, rolled them into balls and then placed them on a tray of flour. Another man placed the balls in lines on the table behind the men who spun the balls into flat circles. They looked like Italian men in a pizza kitchen throwing dough into the air. Four men were lined up, each at the mouth of a clay oven, spinning the dough then throwing it into the oven to bake. Quick easy movements; they made it look so simple!
They indicated I could try throwing one. My guards agreed and I began my attempts at baking bread, Iraqi style. I mimicked the baker’s actions, but my round ball of dough did not flatten and spin like theirs into a perfect man-made circle. It lobbed and lumped. They laughed and gave me a new ball to try. After the third one, I barely got the hang of it. This is something that takes practice. They bake bread almost 12 hours a day for the Iraqi Army. In one easy motion the worker transfers the dough from his hands to a round, inverted dish-like utensil. Quickly, the flattened dough is thrown against the wall inside the clay oven. I was having difficulty getting the dough to spin into a flat, round piece so my mentor did this for me and handed me the round dish with the flattened dough. It was now my turn to reach into the hot clay oven and throw it against the inner wall.
My first throw was not hard enough. The dough shriveled and fell into the flames and cinders below. I was surprised by the intensity of the heat inside. Other clay ovens used real wood for fire, but these ovens were using propane. The embers were hell red hot at the bottom. For my second throw, I smashed the dough into the wall. It stuck. I withdrew my hand quickly before the heat burned it. Success! The man teaching me smiled and handed me another inverted dish with flattened dough. I threw three against the inside walls of the clay oven. A minute later, after the dough had bubbled and browned, a man with metal tongs took the circular flat bread out of the oven. He handed me one to eat. I watched him continue to work. His job was to remove all the baked hhoebz and throw it onto the table behind him where another worker collected them into baskets for distribution.
I tasted my joint effort – Iraqi and Canadian working together to achieve a common goal. Regardless of the political tensions off base, a few smiles, mimicking behavior and contagious laughter are the things that transcend political lines and language barriers and unite us as humans in the constant struggle between life and death.
Posts
