Um Ramadan

“I always watched my mother cook,” says Um Ramadan as she looks out the window at Gaza City’s evening traffic, “but I didn’t really learn to cook until I married and my mother-in-law taught me.” Her husband’s family, like her own, were fishing people from the bustling port city of Yaffa. They were exiled when her husband was just a child.

Her mother-in-law must have done a fine job, because Um Ramadan is a truly brilliant cook. Soft-spoken and unflappable, she effortlessly prepares a dozen things at once. After her eldest son left to join the Fatah Party in the West Bank in 2007, with her husband unemployed, the burden fell on her to support the family. She began to cook for busy urban professionals and wealthy city dwellers, making meals that rival those of Gaza’s famous seaside restaurants. “Perhaps in another life, I could have been a chef,” she imagines, somewhat dreamily. With a weighted smile and an understated tone, she recounts her family’s history—interspersed with an encyclopedia of recipes.