Good morning. There is not as much to report from yesterday because I just slept for about 13 hours! We got home from lunch/dinner at Tara’s house at 6:30pm. I had been falling asleep there and even a big cup of tea did not seem to help wake me up. I think the house the perfect combination of sleepy qualities. I had been cold when we got to Tara’s and got surrounded by warm shawls. I was now warm, well fed, and listening to people talking in soft, soothing voices in a language I don’t understand. I decided I would just go to sleep as we got in. I tried to stay up as Alan read my blog entry from yesterday, but I can’t remember if I even got through that. I slept in the same position for 13 hours. My neck hurts a little bit this morning, but otherwise the sleep has done wonders. I feel that I may have finally kicked this jet lag.
Ok, time to describe yesterday.
A large SUV picked us up around 11am. Sarteeb sent his driver to take us to the office. It is a new office and we were the first family members to get a tour since it was completed. It is such a fancy office! Everything is stainless steel and nice wood. There are large flat screen TVs everywhere. Sarteeb is the epitome of the powerful businessman. He took us into an office that had beautiful replicas of Iraqi historical structures on the bookcases. He told Alan that we could choose one to take as a gift. I hesitated to take one. In response, he told us to take two. Mom and Dad, you will love these. They remind me of all of the special objects that grandma used to bring back from her travels around the world. You can expect one in the mail when we get back to the states. You can add it to grandma’s display cabinet.
After choosing our gifts, we joined Sarteeb, Tanya and Mohammed in Sarteeb’s office. His secretary brought us tiny cups of sweetened Turkish coffee. It is so strong! My tummy was still upset, so I drank very little. Sarteeb sent for his man in charge of advertising to show us the latest commercial for the chicken. They are working on brand recognition right now. While Sarteeb was out of the room, the four of us brainstormed marketing ideas. The Iraqi youth seem to be obsessed with gangsta rap. There is graffiti everywhere here. Most of it is in Arabic writing, but at the Citadel I saw “50 CENT” written in large letters. We said that Sarteeb should hire rappers to make commercials that look like rap music videos where 50 Cent and Snoop Dog rap about the yummy chicken. This led to lots of laughter.
The plan was to drive south of Erbil to visit the poultry empire. I can’t think of another term to describe that I saw. The whole company is self-contained and (to my understanding) soon to be the largest poultry company in Iraq. Their only real competition is by companies in other countries. They have the breeder chickens to lay the eggs. They have a hatchery to incubate the eggs. They raise the broiler chickens to the exact weight needed to slaughter and sell. The have a factory for slaughtering and cleaning the broilers when they reach the right weight. They have another factory for making egg cartons for the eggs produced to sell. Everything needed is produced on site. It is very impressive. There are armed security guards at the gates to the compounds. There are guns all over the place as I have traveled around the city. They are not small hand guns that you see police officers using in the states. They are BIG, scary looking guns. I guess all guns are scary. It is just weird to see them.
As we pulled up to the new office building at the compound, Sarteeb got a phone call from his wife, Nayab. Nayab talked to me on the phone. She has been reading the blog and feels left out because she is in Jordan.
So Nayab, here is a paragraph just for you! J Nayab is Alan’s aunt and Shownim’s sister. She lives in Jordan with her three children, Omar, Lana and Zaineb. I met Omar and Lana at Tanya’s graduation from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Omar and Lana go to school in Canada and are home in Jordan for Christmas break. Nayab really wants to meet me. She was right when she said that by the end of the trip, I will have met almost all of the family. I will only be missing Nayab and Zaineb, and Alan’s family that lives in Sweden. Alan had tried to convince Nayab and the cousins to come to Erbil while we were here, but Omar and Lana have too short of a break from school for extra travel. However, I am now a part of this family for life. There will be more visits in the future and I know we will meet then. Nayab was so nice and friendly on the phone. She has wonderful English, which made talking to each other easy. I look forward to meeting her in the future.
Hearing that Nayab is reading the blog made me feel somewhat like a famous journalist. I have been writing this to let people back in the states know how I am doing. However, I have realized that people here are also reading it to see how their home is being portrayed. Maybe I can help with Sarteeb’s brand recognition when my blog becomes famous and Hollywood starts calling me.
EAT AL-SHAMAL CHICKEN! J
Sarteeb let us go meet the broiler chicken during feeding time. I was worried about breathing in anything from the chickens, so we all got decked out with shoe covers, lab coats, gloves, hairnets, and face masks. I would have loved some lab goggles as well, but I didn’t want to sound pushy. I think it was the chemist in me that always feels safer wearing lab goggles. The person in charge of running the compound spoke very good English. He looked directly at me as he described the science that goes into raising the chicken based on the exact guidelines set for healthy chicken. Sarteeb prides himself on doing everything in the best way possible. I thanked the man so explaining everything so well for me in English. I felt like I was being treated like a foreign investor… or maybe that famous journalist again! J
EAT AL-SHAMAL CHICKEN!
After the tour, Sarteeb drove us back to Tara’s house for lunch. Lunch is usually served around 2pm, but we did not get there until closer to 3:30pm. Driving to and from the chicken compound was an experience. I have mentioned that the traffic is crazy. I should take a video to show the insanity. People make their own lanes. There are no stop signs, so people barely slow to make a turn onto another street. I just grit my teeth, hold on tight and hope for the best. There is nothing else to do.
Tara’s house is in a section of town called Dollar-ville because rich people live there. It used to be called Frog-ville because the only thing that lived there were frogs. The house is beautiful! I told Lara that she is so lucky because it looks like she is living in a museum. I went around and took pictures of the furniture, the light fixtures and the art work. It was so opulent and striking. I loved it all.
Lunch was fantastic. We started with a soup called Kufftat Ajam, which means Persian Kufftah. It was similar to the Kufftah dumplings that we had the first day here, but rather than having the beef surrounded by a rice shell, here the beef and rice were mixed to make the dumpling/meatball. It was so yummy. This was followed by black rice with tabouleh and a bean stew. I don’t think that I explained black rice when I mentioned it earlier in the blog. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of eating black rice before, it is rice and chicken that are cooked in a sauce of pomegranate molasses. The molasses you can buy in the states tastes sweeter and tangier to me than the ones I have tried here. Alan makes this at home with a lot more sauce. So far, the ones I have tried here are cooked to be drier. They are both good, but I think I refer Alan’s version. The rice Tara made was better because it had the perfect texture. It’s not too hard. It’s not too soft. It is just right.
Traditionally, black rice is served with beans. The bean stew had white beans in a tomato sauce. They had been cooked for a long time with chunks of beef that were so nice and tender. I ate my bean stew with the tabouleh, which added a nice amount of acid to the stew from the lemon juice. The parsley in the tabouleh makes the salad taste so nice and fresh. It was much better than a majority of the tabouleh that you can find in the states.
Let’s talk dessert. During dinner, I had noticed a cute chocolate cake on the counter. It was decorated with a smiley face in white and pink frosting and covered in sprinkles. It looked great. Shownim started cutting into it. Tara asked if I wanted cake or if I wanted Kanaffa. Kanaffa is my favorite dessert of all time. It is made with a cheese custard that is covered in shredded philo dough and drenched in honey and rose water. Tanya recommended that we look at both and then decide. Tara brought out a dish of something that looked like chocolate pudding. I was pretty confused because I thought she was bringing out the Kanaffa. I said that this is not like the Kanaffa that I am used to in the states. She had actually brought out a chocolate mousse with layers of bananas and cookies. The Kanaffa soon followed. What does a girl do when she has three yummy desserts staring up at her? How is she to choose? Here the choice is simple. Eat them all. That is exactly what I did. The Kanaffa was absolutely wonderful. It was not as sweet as the ones that I have had before, meaning that it is light enough to where I could eat a lot more of it. This is dangerous… very dangerous.
I was full. I was warm. I was happy. It was time to sleep. J
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