Bread is life
I learned a lot of useful phrases in my colloquial Egyptian language class yesterday, included two ways to say “shame on you,” depending on the severity of the transgression. I’ll keep those phrases close to my tongue when walking through the streets alone.
More importantly though, I learned that I have committed, on more than one occasion, a grave insult to Egyptians. In the past, I have thrown away bread.
In Egyptian Arabic, aeysh means bread. It also means life*. Therefore, throwing away bread is forbidden, or haraam and someone who does so is worse than wasteful. I’m not a wasteful person, and I always try hard to eat the bread we buy. However, the local bread goes bad really quickly. We try to eat the five or six pieces in the same day we buy it, but sometimes we just don’t.
I knew I was being wasteful, but in my defense, I didn’t know it was haraam. My classmates seemed to have already known this rule though. A student from France said it’s really bad if someone is found throwing out bread in France (but really, is there any stale bread in France? How could anyone possibly not eat the entire loaf of French bread in one sitting? I’d never waste crusty French bread!). Another student let us know that it’s also forbidden in Spain; my Arabic teacher suggested it’s because Muslims once lived in Spain.
Our teacher suggested we should give our leftover bread to poor people, but I don’t feel too good about giving slightly moldy, stale bread to someone to eat. Instead, last night, I opened the screen on our window, tore up the piece of leftover bread which I purchased four days ago, and threw it onto our balcony. I don’t really want to attract pigeons (or ferrets) to our balcony, but I certainly don’t want to offend our doorman when he takes our garbage from us.
*As an aside, aeysh also uses the same root for the verb which means “living in a country.” My teacher taught me a useful phrase to say if I believe someone is cheating me: “Thief! I live in this country.” I’m pretty sure I’ll never use that phrase.
Tags: Egypt, Tag Index
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November 16th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
You know what your father would have said – make bread pudding! Maybe it’s o.k. to throw out old bread pudding? Or you could make stuffing as a side dish or topping on a casserole. Another common suggestion from your dad was – make bread crumbs! Use as binder in meatloaf or as a topping on casseroles. Enjoy.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:02 am
i’m begging you to send this to Morning Edition
April 27th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Hmm, I’m not sure about being harram, but I think it’s more just to not be wastefully. Especially since so many people can’t get bread. But – I have NEVER heard it being HARRAM – that is pretty severe and if it is, it’s just in Egypt (it’s not for the gulf or Jordan…) 🙂