4th of July- International Style

When living as an expat, holidays become 10 times more important than at home. I decided that we should still have a Fourth of July BBQ in Syrian style with all of our international friends! My host father took me and a friend around the morning of the fourth to the Souq for veggies and meat. At the open air vegetable stand we got 8 green bell peppers, 12 potatos, nearly 20 onions, 8 potatos and 10 cucumbers for the equivalent of about $7 US.


A few shops down was the chicken. It's a small "hole-in-the-wall" type place that basically has a display case of the meat you can buy, and a fridge under it where they keep the meat. There are 3 options for chicken: legs, breasts with bones or breasts without bones. Being the spineless Americans that we are, we went for the breasts without bones. A chicken "breast" here is actually both halves of the breast, so it's much bigger than back home. I think we ended up getting at least 10 of those.


Next was the coal and the kharouf (sheep) meat. It's funny because there are a billion little shops here that sell exactly the same thing. Choosing between one or the other doesn't have anything to do with quality or service though, you just go to the shop of whoever you know. For example, my host dad was taking us to his friend's store that had coal, but they were closed so we went to the place next door. Then for the kharouf we went to a shop that he's gone to since he was a little kid. Again there was the display case with the hanging sheep carcus and the fridge of meat below. He cut all the meat off of the bones and pushed it through grinder that sort of gave it the shape of raw hamburger meat like we have in the states.


We slaved away all day in my friend's tiny little kitchen, save for the 5 separate trips we made to get eggs, mayo (twice), skewers for kabobs, and more olive oil. Our shopkeeper friends on the street were really nice, telling us where to go and giving us the Arabic name when needed. It was funny when I was trying to find skewers since I didn't know the name I had to describe it in Arabic like "ya know the thing that you put the meat on when you want to BBQ it?" One of the carpet shopkeepers, Ibraham, took us all the way to the Souq Al-Hamidiya to find the Siyakh Lehme (skewers).


Our party was planned for 7, but around 6:15 we realized we didn't know how to light the coals. There is no lighter fluid to be found. My host dad came to the rescue again, rigging up this contraption on the grill. The grill is basically this small little stand, and then he got a metal cylinder from somewhere and kept putting coal down it and somehow created fire. I can't possibly describe it withouht a picture, it was just too inventive!



We roasted the kabobs with onions and peppers, occupanied with my potato salad, Afghani salad and good ol' sweet tea! My American friends teased me about the obvious southern influence on the meal. There were also four Brits who celebrated the "loss of a colony" and teasingly complained of the mochary we have made of the fine British tradition of tea drinking. We were also joined by a couple Syrians and a Spaniard. There were no American flags to be found, so we settled for a Hezbollah flag and sang parts of "My Country Tis of Thee," which the Brits swore was to the tune of their national anthem.

There were no fireworks, or pledges or American flags, but the jovial spirit, good food and new friends weakened the longing for home and familiarity on Independence Day.