Memories of a Lost Egypt: A Memoir with Recipes [signed]

"Matthew's presence transports me back to the Cairo kitchen, where I am tasting the ful that Ahmet, the cook, prepared and helping Grandmaman Marguerite mix dough while she sings songs to me in Arabic. Her family pride was profoundly linked to the kitchen, so when I attempted to make sambousek once for my friends and did not follow her recipe for this cheese-filled golden dough faithfully, she was outraged. "This recipe is at least hundreds of years old. You do not change it!" she shouted. I see her standing at the stove, a diminutive woman usually dressed in black. Her thick, curly, henna-dyed hair was pulled upward in a large chignon; there was always a lock of hair escaping that she would try, again and again and without success, to push back into her chignon. My daughter Marianne, who looks like her, has the same gesture of trying to push a lock of curly dark hair behind her ear. I smile as I watch the curl fall down in front of her eyes."From Memories of a Lost Egypt