A Helping Hand
It’s winter and my mom’s standing in the kitchen of my moldy flat in the outskirts of Greater London, chopping Romano peppers and red chillies. It’s been a little over a year since she was evacuated from Afghanistan, and though the outline of her large, sturdy frame is still familiar to me, she seems uncharacteristically wobbly, like a tree losing its grip on soil. The windows are foggy and her edges seem blurred.
When I was fifteen and lived at home with her in Kabul, I would join her in the kitchen only to help with what I’d call “fun tasks,” like stirring, squeezing raw chapli kebab mixture through my fingers, kneading dough only after she’d brought it together into a smooth ball. In the midst of one of these fun tasks, I once asked: “Mom, am I a good sous chef?” She didn’t respond. “Mom, I said, am I a good sous chef?” She was hunched over one thing or another, her dark brows catching beads of sweat, and without looking up said, “What’s that?” Poking the stew in the pot instead of stirring it, I explained, “A sous chef is like the head chef’s assistant, like their right-hand man.” No response. “So am I a good sous chef?” She looked up, saw the mess I was making, and took over the task she had assigned to me. “No, you’re a bad soup chef.”
Today, she’s making me a big batch of fermented red chutney so I can bottle it up and use it year-round. She drops the peppers in a stainless steel pot and I pull my phone out to take a picture of the glistening red skin of the peppers reflecting against the chrome of the pot. “Put your phone away and pay attention,” she says. “This is really easy to make, you can even do it when I’m not here.” She pours an entire bottle of distilled white vinegar in the pot and clicks on the gas stove. She adds salt and brown sugar. “How much sugar?” I ask, putting my phone away now. She responds, “I don’t know. Enough to add flavor but not too much sweetness.”
“So, like, a tablespoon?” I whisper to myself. She bends down and pulls something from the cabinet. “What are you looking for?” I ask. She’s pulling out another pot and says, “Now I’m making pickles. From cauliflower, pumpkin, eggplant and -” she begins chopping, yet again.
Her flight is tomorrow, she’s going back to the Netherlands where she was evacuated to, where she’d slept on her friend’s couch for a year before securing her own place. I can’t help her, and she can’t help me, and so when we’re together, we’re both in a frenzy helping each other in the only way we are capable of – her by jarring pickles and chutney, sewing my curtains, fixing the boiler, scrubbing off the mold everywhere, and me less capable, by staying still and memorizing every detail of our time together, a witness to her life.
Though I’ve tried, I could never carry all that she feels – a centuries deep wound in the shape of a nation, a loneliness made heavier by the work of being a woman alone in this world. I wonder if I, too, will pass this on to my daughter one day. “Hey,” my mother says, “Snap out of your trance. I have a fun task for you,” and passes the blender to me. I blend the softened peppers to a smooth, shiny red consistency. “Final Step. Open your hand,” she says, and pours nigella seeds into the palm of my hand. I move to drop them in the pot, and she stops me. “No, rub them in between the palms of your hands to release the oils, like this, look.” We’re standing over the pot rubbing our hands together, like two witches scheming, the black seeds crunching against each other as they gently fall in the pot.
