Food

September 25, 2009

Jordan’s National Dish: Mansaf

It’s Friday in Jordan. Family get together day. Mansaf day. The first time I went to Jordan, my uncle took me to Jabri. “This is the only decent restaurant in town,” he said. “Order the mansaf.” I did and found myself faced with an almost intimidating amount of rice generously topped with lamb shanks simmered Continue reading

Arabs, Arts and Culture, Author, Books, Food, Jordan, Middle East, recipes
August 28, 2009

RAMADAN IN DETROIT

Here in Abu Dhabi Ramadan is essentially a national event, a month of family celebration as well as religious significance, with virtually every Emirati fasting. In THE NIGHT COUNTER, Fatima doesn’t talk about Ramadan but she is someone who fasts the whole month. Fatima spent most of her life in Detroit, which is the largest Continue reading

Abu Dhabi, Arabs, Arts and Culture, Food, Middle East, recipes

Author, Detroit, Ramadan
August 20, 2009

Mathematics and Olive Oil

In The Night Counter, Fatima is fixated on numbers and it is something that runs through the family for five generations. She thinks about math when’s she’s cooking, too, as any woman who raised 14 kids probably would—how much to make for each one, how much it was costing, and so forth. And how many Continue reading

Arabs, Author, Food, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine

Author, math, Olive oil, The Night Counter
July 9, 2009

HOW TO TEACH AN FBI AGENT TO MAKE HUMMOS

In THE NIGHT COUNTER, Fatima is baffled by the FBI agent that visits her at home and claims to have a Middle Eastern background but doesn’t know how to make hummos. A couple of years ago I wrote an article for Saveur about hummos and my own mother’s bafflement at its Americanization of hummos, i.e. Continue reading

Food, recipes

Food
June 19, 2009

A Recipe From the Night Counter: Foul Medamos

In The Night Counter, Laila goes to the Arabic grocery in Detroit and decides for the first time in her marriage not to buy the ingredients to make her Egyptian husband foul. Whether you write it out from Arabic as “foul” or “fool,” I’ll grant you that it doesn’t sound very appetizing in English. But Continue reading

Arts and Culture, Author, Books, Food, Middle East, recipes

Middle East, recipes
May 30, 2009

The Best View Of The Ski Slope In Dubai is at…

Dubai has now become the international destination for indoor wonders, but the Atlantis, Palm Jumeriah, the Burj Dubai (tallest building in the world), the seven star Burj Al-Arab, and all the other more recent developments don’t seem to come as close to the excitement that people seem to have at seeing modern Dubai’s first wonder, Continue reading

Arabs, Arts and Culture, Dubai, Food, Lebanon, Middle East
May 13, 2009

Tabouli: Derogatory or Funny? (Plus Some Tips)

Tabouli has been my number food group since coming here–easy, healthyish, and familiar, in that I stop by the Lebanese Mill to pick it up, and it’s just one of those places where everyone knows your name. But I can’t say that tabouli inspires enough passion in me for a song, as it does these Continue reading

Arabs, Food, Middle East
May 6, 2009

The Differences Between Abu Dhabi and LA, or the lack thereof

Ever since I left Los Angeles nine months ago, I’ve been saying to myself, “That’s something I should blog about.” Now that the opportunity has reason, I can’t think of any of those somethings. In fact, there has never been a time when this writer has been left so wordless. I even left this Continue reading

Abu Dhabi, Arabs, Author, Books, Food, Los Angeles, Middle East

Abu Dhabi, Los Angeles

About Alia

Alia Yunis is a writer, journalist and filmmaker. She is currently producing and directing “The Golden Harvest,” a feature length documentary about how olive oil has shaped the Mediterranean culture, cuisine and history for 6,000 years, through war and peace. Her debut novel, The Night Counter (Random House) has been critically acclaimed by the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and several other publications. It was also chosen as a top summer read by the Chicago Tribune and Boston Phoenix. The Boston Globe has called it “wonderfully imaginative…poignant, hilarious.” Alia was born in Chicago and grew up in the U.S., Greece, and the Middle East. She has worked as a filmmaker and journalist in several cities, especially Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including The Robert Olen Butler Best Short Stories collection, and her non-fiction work includes articles for The Los Angeles Times, Saveur, SportsTravel Magazine, and Aramco World. She currently teaches film at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.