During Ramadan, Basma Jihad, a Palestinian mother of four, spends most of her evenings in the kitchen of her home, preparing Arabic dishes along with staples or Pakistani iftar spreads.
Jihad’s family have been living in the Pakistani capital for the past 29 years, but still love to cook their favorite Palestinian and Middle Eastern dishes, such as musakhan, maqluba, mansaf, ouzi and qidreh, for iftar to maintain a connection to their cultural heritage while living far from their homeland.
“In Ramadan, we mix in between Pakistan culture and our culture,” she told Arab News, as she cooked katayef, an Arabic dessert commonly served during Ramadan, and poured vegetable oil in a pan to fry samosas, a South Asian pastry with a spiced filling.
“I like iftar in Pakistan, it is different from ours.”
Jihad said that almost all Pakistanis break their fast with dates and starters, such as fruit chaat, pakoras and samosas, while Palestinians immediately start with the main course.
Though Jihad intends to stay in Pakistan with her family due to due increasing tension over Israeli attacks on Palestinians, they periodically visit Palestine, and remain in touch with their relatives and friends by phone.
“If they (my children) go there, I am always afraid. Maybe my son will do something without thinking, and they (Israeli forces) will kill him or put him, in jail. This is one reason I am staying here,” she told Arab News.
“Islamabad is our home now. We really love Pakistan,” she said.
Jihad and her family visit Hebron, her hometown in Palestine, every two or three years.
She returns to Islamabad with special spices and cooking ingredients to prepare Arabic cuisine. These include sumac, a spice used in the national dish of Palestine known as musakhan, as well as bulgur, jameed (dry yogurt) and green olives.
“We visit our country and when we come (back), we put all these things in our luggage,” she said.
Jihad’s rented house in Islamabad is decorated with a Palestinian flag and images of Al-Aqsa Mosque to keep in touch with her homeland.
Her two sons and two daughters were born in Islamabad after she moved there with her husband Jihad Muhammad following their marriage.
One of her daughters, Maryam, a secretary to the Omani ambassador to Islamabad, said that she loves Pakistani food as “it is a mix of tastes which we don’t have in our culture.”
She added: “We have only one taste in the food, but in Pakistani culture in each spoon you have a very different taste of the food.”
Maryam said that biryani and white chicken handi are her favorite Pakistani dishes. She said that her family love to have Pakistani food on the iftar table because of the variety of flavors.
Recalling her visit to Palestine in February last year, Maryam said that she took Pakistani culture there by gifting local handicrafts, spices and shawls to her relatives and friends.
Maryam said that she hopes her cousins and friends from Palestine can spend a Ramadan in Pakistan to experience “the difference of taste” in the South Asian country.
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