In an urban neighborhood with a large Jewish population near my home, there is an Arabic restaurant. Name, menu and ownership mark its ethnic identification, yet its politics are otherwise obscured. An American flag, permanently placed in the restaurant's window since 9/11, greets American customers with a message of reconciliation. I am one of you, it says: come; eat; you are welcome here. In a climate where "Arabs, Arab-Americans and people with Middle Eastern features, everywhere are struggling to merely survive the United States' aggressive drive to 'bring democracy to the Middle East'" (Elia 160) and where the hostility toward Arab Americans is manifest in covert "othering" and aggressive acts of surveillance, detainment and bodily harm, the steady bustle of my neighborhood eatery is of consequence. Looking beyond the commerce taking place in the restaurant, the temporary community established there suggests Arab hospitality, which, as the speaker of Naomi Shihab Nye's "Red Brocade" reminds us, is predicated on food. Recalling an old adage, the poem begins: "The Arabs used to say, / When a stranger appears at your door, / feed him three days / before asking who he is, / where he's come from, / where he's headed. / That way, he'll have strength / enough to answer. Or, by then, you'll be / such good friends/ you don't care" (40). This stanza epitomizes the role of food in Arab culture as that which unifies, makes friends out of strangers and invites the other into the sanctuary of home. In this way, as patrons enter my neighborhood restaurant, permeated by the sounds and smells of the Arab world, I question whether this arena and, more generally, the preparation and serving of food, are untouched by national politics. Ordering Arabic cuisine, digesting the food of the "other," suggests cultural intimacy, a shared understanding that perhaps unwittingly permits entrance into an Arab homespace, as food remains an objective correlative of family, culture, and geography. This topography of home is not lost on Arab customers who frequent the restaurant. For these patrons, the establishment provides a safe space where food and language transport them to their native homelands. Acting as a bridge, a conduit to the "old country," my neighborhood restaurant provides insight into the manifold ways in which the portable elements of home, though seemingly depoliticized, are imbued with deep cultural and historical resonances.
