Life and Food
Photo by Zen Chung
Mom packed her recipes into our air shipment bound for Pakistan, anticipating how different the food would be from America. I can still picture those stained, well-worn index cards, each holding the secret to staples like mayonnaise, yogurt, and chocolate sauce. Knowing she’d miss root beer, Mom found a recipe that rivaled A&W’s and even brought a refrigerator-ice-cream recipe that tasted almost like the real thing. Thanks to her determination, we recreated the comfort foods we’d taken for granted, even on the other side of the world.
In Tarbela, Pakistan, our lives changed overnight. Suddenly, we had a cook and a gardener living in a one-room apartment attached to our company bungalow. Mohammed and Sadik became fixtures in our daily lives. To be honest, I liked having someone else make my bed. (Mom never approved of my sloppy hospital corners.) She quickly put a stop to it, insisting I’d never learn responsibility. What bothered her most was their constant presence in her home. She’d grumble, “I hate that I can’t walk around my own house in my underwear!” Not that she would.
Mohammed was in his sixties, with an enormous red mustache and a sheen on his head. He was accustomed to British-style cooking, such as runny British scrambled eggs, which horrified me. Patiently, Mom introduced her recipes and showed him how to cook for my brother and me. As a result, everything we ate was made from scratch, a shock after a childhood of ultra-processed foods. Even the chicken was fresh, slaughtered outside the back door, dipped in cornflakes, and fried. And the homemade peanut butter cookies Mohammed perfected were always waiting for me after school.
Before we moved to Pakistan, Mom would slap pink beef patties between her palms, then pinch off a bit for me to eat, calling it Steak Tartar. I hadn’t connected cows with ground beef yet, so to me, it was absolutely delicious. In Pakistan, beef was from was water buffalo, and Mom didn’t trust them the way she did American cows.
Food and its preparation were taken seriously to avoid illness. All vegetables and fruit had to be washed in pink disinfectant to kill bacteria. Water had to be boiled before use or drinking to avoid parasites. Mohammed and his abundance of caution and discipline kept us safe.
Despite the radical dietary changes, I adapted well. Breakfast was American scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttered toast with fresh-squeezed blood orange juice. It was quite a change from Fruit Loops. Lunch was natural peanut butter and apple jelly on commissary bread, homemade applesauce, an oatmeal cookie, and an orange Fanta from the school canteen. At dinner, Mohammed set two places for my brother and me at the sprawling dining room table. He served water buffalo patties with oven-baked potato wedges, steamed fresh peas, and powdered milk, disguised with chocolate sauce.
When the kitchen was spotless, Mohammed retreated to his quarters to cook curry and rice for himself and Sadik. The aroma drifted through the air vents, though they were too exotic for me.
After dinner, my brother and I retreated to our giant air-conditioned bedrooms to read until bedtime. There was no TV and little family interaction in a compartmentalized house.
Dad got home late every night. With the servants in their quarters and the back door locked, Mom took over the kitchen, using her recipes to cook for two, like old times. They retreated to their air-conditioned suite to dine at their picnic table, where they talked and listened to classical music on their record player, as if the outside world didn’t exist.
When my brother and I left for boarding school in Murree, Mohammed and Sadik had less to do. Mom used the opportunity to reclaim her household and privacy by locking them out for most of the day, except for cleaning and ironing, which she always hated. She became known in whispers as the rogue American memsahib.
At boarding school, our meals remained fresh, though sometimes strange. Often, I wonder how I survived on so little calories. I probably owe it to Mom, who kept me supplied with jars of peanut butter and calcium pills. Looking back, it’s no wonder most of the kids at school were skinny.
I’ve never had an interest in cooking. I wish I could blame it on Mohammed, boarding school, or my failure in home economics. It just wasn’t my thing. When my girls were young, the stress of managing a business, a household, a husband, and two kids under five often felt downright apocalyptic. I gravitated toward convenience, processed, and fast food for my own sanity.
Now, with just David and me in our cozy empty nest, we find ourselves dining much as my parents once did. Cooking for two has become a quiet pleasure, a ritual that anchors our days. Free from processed foods and hectic schedules, we linger over meals made from scratch and rediscover the comfort in the familiar. In many ways, life and food have come full circle.
