Maysaa Algherawi

When Maysaa, newly married at 18, moved to Saudi Arabia from Syria, she didn’t know how to cook. So her mother wrote a book of her own recipes and packed it with her luggage and other items bound for her new home. At a time when international phone calls were expensive — and therefore limited — it was her mother’s recipe book that taught Maysaa how to cook. Maysaa speaks of her mother with great longing, or haneen (meaning a feeling of love and nostalgia); she taught Maysaa to trust her inner compass.