My first memory is of my grandfather, Dandy, frying me chicken in the early hours of the morning. I am sitting on his hip watching the chicken fry in the iron skillet. I remember crawling down the back stairs backwards to get to his room. I could not go down the stairs standing yet. I opened the door to the guest bedroom, walked over to his bed and said "Make me fried chicken." He tried to pull me into bed to go back to sleep, but I was having none of it. Nobody makes fried chicken like my Dandy did, Allah yarhamhu. He died when I was nine. I miss him. i grew up in a hard way. Dandy took good care of me.

I know best how to get to know people through cooking with them and sharing food with them. In Morocco, I sat with the women in the kitchen and helped cook. I learned a lot that way. I learned how to smell if there is enough salt in the soup during Ramadan since we couldn't taste it. I learned how to make Cous Cous from an old woman who stood beside me and made me steam the grains myself for the family's Friday lunch. She kept laughing and smiling and saying, "Taste it, is it ready? Is that enough salt? More butter?" As if I knew! I soon learned.

It wasn't the ingredients or knowing the magical moment to take the grains out of the steamer, it was the "Bismillah."

I had been trying and failing to make a local soup. I asked the old ladies in the mosque for help. I explained everything, how much of this and that I was putting in it. One woman just looked at me with her head cocked slightly and said, "Did you say 'Bismillah'?" I had said "Bismillah"! I had added the basmallah to the soup, but the soup still was no good. She just shook her head at me. She did not say it, but I had treated the basmallah as a simple ingredient.  I had treated all the ingredients as simple ingredients. 

Shaykh Abdel Haqq made the best Moroccan tea I have ever had, perfectly brewed from not so great tea leaves. He said with a big grin, "Do you know why I make the best tea!?" He answered, "I say 'Allah' as I brew it." It was true, while he was making the tea I heard him making dhikr. Slowly saying "Allah," as if he were gently laying the Name before him with every breath. He had been laying the dhikr out before the tea, surrounding it, infusing it with the name "Allah." The tea became a dhikr. And we could taste it.

Sufis in Morocco would not just say "eat, eat" when food was laid out, they would say, "Eat, there is healing from God in it." Yes. The healing is in the intention toward the food, in the remembrance of God, in my Dandy's care for me, in the community of women, and in the enjoyment and blessing of sharing food with one another. My soup turned out to be good in the end. Alhamdolelah.