593. Zaporizhzhia and Za’atar

For the month of April I have been participating for the ninth time in the annual A-to-Z blogging challenge, writing a post for every letter of the alphabet. My theme this year is the world, the world that is always with us, that we must not keep out and cannot do without.

     (Reuters file photo)

You do know that ionizing radiation knows no national boundaries, right? All nuclear facilities, even if they are civilian power plants, release radiation into the air and water. All of them have incidents in which workers are contaminated. All of them require water and electricity to cool the radioactive waste that they generate. All of them are at risk for a nuclear meltdown as in Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three-Mile Island. And all of them are vulnerable to a missile strike from the air, in which case they could turn a conventional attack into a nuclear disaster (shattering the illusion, by the way, that “Atoms for Peace” are a different animal from atomic weapons). This is why the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is keeping International Atomic Energy Agency officials awake at night and should be matter of  grave cause for concern for us all.

If you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war on between Russia and Ukraine, a proxy war for the United States since without massive U.S. military support, Ukraine has no hope of prevailing. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine, the largest nuclear power plant  in Europe and one of the ten largest in the world, has been caught in the crossfire, with the Russians occupying it in March 2022 and three drone attacks striking the complex in early April 2024. In between, shelling and a fire have damaged various party of the facility, including a nuclear waste storage area, and power outages have threatened the ability of the cooling system to operate. Even though all the units are currently shut down, the station still requires a constant water and power supply “to cool the reactors and prevent a potentially catastrophic meltdown” (Murphy, Faulconbridge & Murphy).

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Forgive me. I had to get that out of my system. Now to turn from the nuclear Z to a nourishing one: Za’atar.

      Origanum syriacum, a highly valued food spice (Davidbena)

Za’atar is the name given to a family of culinary herbs and a spice mix that is beloved in Palestine and across the Arab world. The family of herbs includes different varieties of wild thyme, oregano, and wild marjoram, and za’atar the spice mix includes one or more of these, along with roasted sesame seeds, sumac, and salt. Za’atar has a variety of uses, as a seasoning, a coating for frying or baking, or, with olive oil, a dip. It has a distinctive tangy taste that is extremely addictive–or, as my cousin would say, “more-ish”—meaning, you can’t stop eating it once you start.

For Palestinians displaced from their homes or homelands, za-atar is the very taste of home. Sadly, Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza, even face a conflict over za’atar. Since 1977 the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture has declared wild za’atar a protected plant and strictly regulates its harvesting, thereby making the gathering of za’atar a politicized food practice, criminalizing a food that is so meaningful to Palestinians. I would imagine that these restrictions only serve to intensify the longing for this cultural comfort food.

I have chosen za’atar to cap my month of A-to-Z posts on the world—the world that is always with us, and that we cannot do without—because of how and by whom I was introduced to it.

Just last month a group of us were celebrating a successful two-month campaign for our town council to pass a resolution in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. We had worked around the clock engaging in simultaneous education and outreach to our town councilors and to our fellow-townspeople, and in return had been met with an outpouring of support. Of course there were those who disagreed with us, and we had had many conversations and email exchanges with different individuals and constituencies. In the process we made new friends across three generations and, we hope, will continue to build community in our town in preparation for whatever challenges may lie ahead.

People came to the celebration gathering bearing foods of all kinds. One of our new Palestinian friends brought a big box of  Palestinian medjool dates, and another brought a generous batch of homemade manakeesh/mana’eesh za’atar, naan-like bread topped with za’atar spice mix and olive oil, then warmed in the oven—heavenly! Andrew and I were instant converts and Andrew immediately started researching how to make our own, using homegrown thyme and wild sumac. A couple of days later he did find dried sumac in a local Turkish grocery store, so perhaps we won’t need to wait long before we can make our own.

The za’atar didn’t just give us an excuse to break bread together. It gave us a chance to share something that was meaningful to our Palestinian neighbors and to fall in love with it ourselves.

I chose the ever-presence of the world as my theme for this month of daily blogging because so many of the skeptics we encountered in our work for the ceasefire resolution said that it was not appropriate for the town council to take up an international issue that has no bearing locally. Faced with billions of our tax dollars going to fund the genocide of a people and a rapidly escalating war, that argument never ceased to confound me, and I continued to make the case for the issue’s relevance and urgency in as many different ways as I could. Still, because nativism, isolationalism, and xenophobia appear to be on the rise, not just in the United States but worldwide, I decided to make the broader case this month—for continuing to hold the world in our hearts and our minds as we engage with our neighbors over local issues. In my view, we have nothing to lose and the world to gain.

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