Tracing Gender and Sensuality in Middle Eastern Cuisine
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African Tribesmen Can Talk Birds Into Helping Them Find Honey
Their word is their bond, and they do what they say — even if the “word” on one side is a loud trill and grunt, and, on the other, the excited twitterings of a bird.
Researchers have long known that among certain traditional cultures of Africa, people forage for wild honey with the help of honeyguides — woodpecker-like birds that show tribesmen where the best beehives are hidden, high up in trees. In return for revealing the location of natural honey pots, the birds are rewarded with the leftover beeswax, which they eagerly devour.
Now scientists have determined that humans and their honeyguides communicate with each other through an extraordinary exchange of sounds and gestures, which are used only for honey hunting and serve to convey enthusiasm, trustworthiness and a commitment to the dangerous business of separating bees from their hives.
The findings cast fresh light on one of only a few known examples of cooperation between humans and free-living wild animals, a partnership that may well predate the love affair between people and their domesticated dogs by hundreds of thousands of years.
Claire N. Spottiswoode, a behavioral ecologist at Cambridge University, and her colleagues reported in the journal Science that honeyguides advertise their scout readiness to the Yao people of northern Mozambique by flying up close while emitting a loud chattering cry.
For their part, the Yao seek to recruit and retain honeyguides with a distinctive vocalization, a firmly trilled “brrr” followed by a grunted “hmm.” In a series of careful experiments, the researchers then showed that honeyguides take the meaning of the familiar ahoy seriously.
The birds were twice as likely to offer sustained help to Yao foragers who walked along while playing recordings of the proper brrr-hmm signal than they were to participants with recordings of normal Yao words or the sounds of other animals.
African bees are particularly aggressive and will swarm any intruder that so much as jiggles an adjoining branch. Even our closest relatives are loath to disturb a beehive.
“Chimpanzees want to eat honey at least as much as humans do,” Brian M. Wood, a biological anthropologist at Yale University, said. “But they don’t possess the technologies that have allowed us to tap into that resource.”
The Yao know what to do to subdue bee defenses. They wedge a bundle of dry wood wrapped in palm fronds onto a long pole, set the bundle on fire, hoist it up and rest it against a beehive in a tree. When most of the bees have been smoked out, the Yao chop down the tree, tolerate the stings of any bees that remain and scoop out the liquid gold within.
Researchers have identified a couple of other examples of human-wild animal cooperation: fishermen in Brazil who work with bottlenose dolphins to maximize the number of mullets swept into nets or snatched up by dolphin mouths, and orcas that helped whalers finish off harpooned baleen giants by pulling down the cables and drowning the whales, all for the reward from the humans of a massive whale tongue.
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Tracing Gender and Sensuality in Middle Eastern Cuisine
Regardless of whether you have a sweet-tooth or not, it never hurts to splurge on sweets especially if you are travelling in the Middle East and North Africa region. With its history-laden, one-of-a-kind food culture, the region is a trendsetter in healthy and nutritious eating practices in the global food industry. You can explore and attend to the revitalizing dimensions of Middle Eastern and North African cooking that also narrate gender and sensuality.
Names of dishes that describe idealized features of femininities and masculinities, as well as symbols of power and status, attest to the ways in which gender and sexuality are constantly weaved into practices associated with food. For example, in the Turkish context, a significant turn towards female erogenous body zones finds expression in desserts such as:
- Sütlü Nuriye- in Turkish, the word Nuriye is a given female name and Sütlü designates a lactating woman and Sütlü Nuriye connotes a woman with sizable breasts
- Dilber Dudağı- lips of a beautiful and attractive woman
- Hanım Göbeği- a woman’s belly which connotes round and plump female bodily features
The desserts reflect the essential flavors of Turkish cuisine and share an equally popular standing with a non-dessert dish called Kadınbudu Köfte (Lady’s thighs) which connote curvy feminine features.
In the Syrian and Lebanese contexts, ideals associated with round and plump feminine features find expression in cream-filled pastries called Znud as-Sitt, Znood es-Sett and Znoudel Sitt which translate as lady’s arms and/or lady’s upper arms. Desserts in the Syrian context called Swar as-Sitt (lady’s wristlet)and Taj Al-Malek (king’s crown) hint at gender-specific ornaments.
In contrast, the Egyptian Om Ali (mother of Ali) dessert speaks to issues of struggle, rivalry and power which shifts ideals traditionally associated with masculinity from men to women. According to legend, the story behind the dessert is based on the life of Shajar al-Durr, a Muslim woman monarch in the Egyptian Mamluk era who played a leading role in the defeat of the Seventh Crusade.
In Lebanon, the salty pastry made with cinnamon and raisins called Lahm biajeen (Lady’s fingers) brings to one’s mind the Egyptian desserts Asabea Zainab (Zainab’s fingers) and Romoosh el sett (Lady’s eyelashes) which make direct references to markers of beauty associated with womanhood and femininity.
In the Moroccan context, the dessertBriwat bi Loz (Bride’s fingers) made with honey and almond and Ara’yes (bride), also known as bride and groom sandwiches, in the Levant region specifically hint at traditional gendered conventions. A pasta dish from Jordan called Athan Al-Shayeb (Ears of the old gray-haired man) articulate notions of age, gender and beauty while the fried dough Luqam al Qadi (Arabic) and Kadı Lokması (Turkish), whose recipe dates back to the Al-Baghdadi from the 13thcentury, makes a direct reference to a powerful gendered image – a male judge or magistrate in the Islamic court.
Middle Eastern and North African culinary terms and practices offer opportunities to learn about the stories of people’s lives in the region and showcase a remarkable network of identities and values across a culturally and historically opulent context. While travelling in this part of the world, tasting the local delicacies or reveling in the flavors of good street food may not merely signal the trip of a lifetime. Rather, they can be tools in envisaging gender and sensuality in the Middle East and North Africa region in meaningful and lucid ways in order to critically examine the everyday and to be able to stumble upon new experiences.
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