The tiny kitchen is crowded with women deftly chop-ping, f rying, and plating a variety of authentic Moslawi dishes to be served to mourners gathered in other parts of the house. Small at three years old, and constantly in the way, I squeeze and dart through the mass of black skirts and dresses that fill my nana's kitchen. The light dim, and darkened further by the smoke of f rying pans, women clad in grief. Aroma of potatoes, meats, dolma, kibbee, rice, stews, onions, and spices brighten the thick noisy room, perfuming hot sweat given off by the oven, stove, and bustling women. My paternal great-grandmother, Nana Salma Daoud, a widow for 42 years, died; and my Nana Rahael's house is full of relatives and f riends invited to the after-burial luncheon. This is our custom—no mourning without eating and weeping. We mourn with those who mourn, we sit silent, sometimes we whisper about the dead. The children are admon-ished if so much as a giggle escapes their lips. We do not leave those who lost the dead alone; we descend upon them. We press into the lonely void and fill it with our exhaled breath. Our lives, like breath, evaporate, but our place remembers us still. We drink coffee with no sugar. We embrace the bitter black that swishes in our mouths and in our hearts. The bitterness reminds us of the death and departure of our loved one. The mourning men and women, old and young, sit with the family of the dead. The children are shooed to another room, the garden, wherever, to prevent their levity f rom violating the sorrow. The sisters and aunts never sit, they are busy serving tray after tray of coffee; other relatives bustle in 2DINING TABLES AS BATTERING RAMSthe kitchen preparing the food—offering it up, to those gathered
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