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eat a series of specific dishes served in a set order. My mother has been telling me that Umayma is a great cook, and I’m thrilled to be invited. Umayma and my mother have known each other their whole lives. They met in elementary school in Beirut in the 1950s, at the Ahliah, a then-groundbreaking school run by my mother’s aunt Wadad Cortas. The school still exists on the same spot in Beirut’s old Jewish quarter of Wadi Abu Jamil, and in its heyday, it brought together kids of all classes, religions,and countries from around the Arab world: Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other sects. Umayma, a Sunni, and my mom, a Presbyterian, became best friends when they were ten and have stayed close ever since. Umayma’s brother Ziad was also my dad’s college classmate, and my parents first met at the siblings’ home.
    I walk into Umayma and her husband Nasser’s apartment on the night of the Eid iftar to find a roomful of people, some of them old friends of my parents, plus my mother’s cousins Huda and Afaf, who’ve known Umayma since their school days—all in all a lively, mixed group of Muslims and Christians. I’ve known many of the dozen or so people in the room since my childhood though I haven’t seen some in decades, and my initial shyness on walking in fades when they greet me enthusiastically, wanting to know how my Beirut life is going so far.
    Umayma passes around a traditional Ramadan date-juice drink called
jellab
and glasses of an apricot nectar called
amareddin
. Then we gather at the table for dinner. First comes soup, which Umayma explains to me is always a first course at iftar meals since it warms the insides and preps the stomach for eating dinner after a full day of fasting. The soup is often lentil, but tonight it’s creamy asparagus bisque, from a recipe that Umayma’s sister-in-law and my parents’ dear friend Bushra, also an exceptional cook, has improvised for the occasion from the in-season asparagus. Then comes
fattoush
, a minty bread salad that combines tomatoes, herbs, and bits of fried pita with a dressing spiked with the extra-tangy sumac spice that’s popular in Lebanon and a favorite of mine; then the main course:
kibbeh arnabieh
, lamb meatballs stuffed with sweet caramelized onions and fried pine nuts, in a sauce made with tahini and the bitter-tart juice of local bou sfeir oranges. It’s not a light dish by any stretch, but I’vealways loved its mix of sweet and sour flavors, crunchy and saucy textures. Along with the kibbeh, Umayma serves another dish I adore,
tiss’ye
, made of layers of warm chickpeas topped with garlic-spiked yogurt, sautéed pine nuts, and fried-pita croutons similar to the ones in fattoush salad. Bushra helped make the dish, and I remember how my mother once told me Bushra won the heart of her husband, Ziad, by making him an exquisite tiss’ye during their courtship.
    For dessert, Umayma sets out a classic rice pudding called
mhalabieh
drizzled with a sugar syrup called
ater
, along with bowls of the ice cream I brought her from a local confectionery: the pistachio scoops are studded with bits of salty nuts and made with
sahlab
, an ingredient that comes from wild orchid roots and that creates an unusually elastic texture found almost exclusively in ice creams from the Middle East and Turkey.
    At the table, after discussing—what else?—the current political situation, everyone chimes in with gossip about new restaurants about to open in the neighborhood, and decades-old shops about to close, and corrupt contractors at nearby construction sites, and news of what some old family friends are up to these days. Everyone wants to know how it feels to pick up and leave New York and move back to this unpredictable little country. Their reactions range from “Salma, you must be crazy!” to “It’s so nice to see your generation wanting to return.”
    Besides all the exceptional food on the table, as a side effect of the dinner, I feel a little more