Pickled Eggplants

pickled eggplants, pickled turnips, pickled peppers, pickled olives and pickled pickles

they’re tiny, and squishy and intensely purple and pink, like really really purple and pink and the sour acidic vinegary juice that they bounce around in, fills up every single pore and space of the tiny eggplants.  when your teeth pierce into the smooth skin of the eggplant, the pickled juice squirts in different directions inside of your mouth. it’s kind of sour, and like most pickled things (in my humble opinion) strangely addicting.  i love pickles.  but i never thought of the idea of pickling eggplants.  which is why the texture of it still surprises me when i eat it. eggplanty and pickly. 

and all of these tiny little intensely purple and pink bobble up and down in a big clear serving bowl in the assembly line of different varieties of garnishing items, at this local sanwich shop in the old city of Ramallah.  every day after school i stop by this place and ask for a ‘sanwish jaj” and they whip out a skewer of fresh chicken pieces seasoned and sprinkled with spices, each piece separated by a small unpeeld onion, ready to be placed sloppily by this sweaty fat arab man wearing a dirty apron on top of burning coals.  the smell is to die for.  in the States all of this smoke would definitely be a fire hazard.  but not here. Things are fresh, they are cooked right in front of you, and your nostrils are happy getting a delicious whiff of the slightly charrred and smoky sizzling chicken.

i had stopped by this shop on my new route back home from school after moving to a new apartment, and i was definitely pulled into this restaurant because of how good it smelled from the streets. it’s one of those really low key ‘messy’ eateries where people are sloppily running around, sweating and shouting and laughing and smiling at each other taking orders.  I had walked in , and I saw a large Arab woman, sweating under her hijab,wearing a black hoodie.  We exchanged a “marhapa” and “ahlain” and I told her what I wanted.  I had to patiently wait for a good 15 minutes for the sandwich making process to be completed, beginning from the skewer of raw meat and ending with the meat being stuffed inside a soft pita bread neatly slobbered with hummus, turkish salad, pickled eggplants, salad with tahini and purple cabbage.  This woman was definitely running the place, ordering a bunch of young guys running around, slapping down a bowl of hummus, making a circular and smooth dent in the hummus bowl with the back of a spoon and then sprinkiling olive oil on top of it with a powdered dash of this tart, dark purple spice called Summak (which I had never known before) on top, and carrying 3 of those bowls to a small shanty table and chair set occupied by a group of men chowing down on restaurant regulars: falafel, muttabbal, bread, fresh, onions and tomatoes and skewers of meat.

i tried small talk with the lady the very first day i had gone in there and that only entertained her and made her laugh.  the next day i came back and i told her how much i loved her sandwiches, and her ear to ear grin complemented with a sweet “habibty” was followed by a big kiss planted on my cheeks.