The Tale of Jamil and Buthaina

While we were visiting one well-appointed Gaza City kitchen, our host’s neighbor dropped by to visit. The elegant lady, Um Zuhair (Baraka El-Haddad), saw we were busy in the kitchen and, enthusiastic to take part, offered to show us how to prepare one particular dessert she was fond of making. Soon her jeweled hands were kneading dough for hulba, a fenugreek and olive oil cake.

While kneading and baking, she launched into a full recitation of “Jamil and Buthaina,” a tale dating back to Umayyad Arabia. Rewritten innumerable times, it is still much loved and often recited today. It recounts the story of a star-crossed pair: the poet Jamil Ibn Ma’mar, of Medina, and his beloved Buthaina from a neighboring tribe. Her family impedes their marriage, considering his poetry a blot on her honor, and Jamil is left to wander the desert composing verses so tender they make the birds and the stones weep. He sets the standard for frustrated love transformed into literature. Along with the similar “Majnoun Laila,” Jamil’s poems probably filtered into Europe through Muslim Spain to inspire tales like Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet.