Seema Reza
A Wikipedia search on chicken soup makes no mention of Indian, or much less Bangladeshi, chicken soup traditions. Perhaps it is an oversight. Perhaps the fact that the soup is more of a “soupy chicken” than a chicken soup, served on a plate, over a bed of rice, precludes it from being included in a list of bowl-dwelling soups. This lightly spiced chicken floating in pale gravy is a classic whose ingredients can be found in any American grocery store. The recipe is not exact; anything that traveled more than eight thousand miles in 1972 in the head of my mother, a sweet, docile, new bride, had to be flexible. You must have ginger and onions of course. And whole spices—sticks of cinnamon that curl in on themselves, pods of cardamom, peppercorns, and little rattle-shaped black cloves. Potatoes are nice, but not a requirement. They turn into lovely yielding pillows of softness, barely needing to be chewed before melting and sliding down your throat like a luxury. Be sure to have plenty of juicy lemons, cut into wedges to squeeze over your plate before you eat.
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Are her limbs well rounded and her toenails painted? Is she comforting, a woman with large breasts and thick lips who smells like perfume? Does she dust her dresser twice a week?
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The best way to cook it is with a whole chicken (or two), cut into eight pieces. I have the butcher remove the gnarliest pieces, but my mother does not. In this respect, my mother is less delusional than I.
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Is she delusional? Or is she matter-of-fact, scientific, and accepting of his flaws, of their marriage, of the fact that he has long been broken of the habit of trusting anyone?
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It can be made with boneless chicken breasts cut into bite-sized cubes, colorless and featureless once cooked. Innocuous, unrecognizable, there’s no need to confront what it is you have done, and to whom. This is the easy route, but if you choose it, the finished dish will lack the salty dimension marrow and blood release into the stew.
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Eventually she will want a baby or two to bring to her breast, toddlers to zip into coats against the American winter. Will these little Bangla-speaking children eventually force my sons to the margins of their father’s heart?
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But I am getting ahead of myself, talking about cooking bones. There are steps to be completed long before this, when you’ve first returned home with a Styrofoam carton of chicken. You may have decided the fate of the chicken long before you set out for the butcher’s shop, or it may have been spur-of-the-moment when faced with the butcher’s questioning yes as you stepped up to the counter. You may have faltered, distracted by the lollipop he holds out to your preschool son, or by the put-together lady before you who ordered four little steaks for a perfect square family.
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She is probably book-smart, easily amused, quiet, a movie-watcher. An accountant, maybe, drunk after two rum-and-cokes. Not a whiskey drinker.
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Someone may have told you that ginger does not need to be peeled before being ground. Tell my mother this and she may remain outwardly neutral about the vulgarity of that proposition while telling you evenly that it most certainly does. So peel it, and then grate it by hand, or blend it in your little mini-food processor. Be lazy and chop it roughly like I do, but the results won’t be the same. The ginger will just sit atop the chicken, always a bit aloof, not quite integrated.
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Or perhaps she will be more interested in my sons than I am. What I consider ‘little kids throwing a ball,’ she may find fascinating. She may know instinctively not to bring a book to the game; she may not even have the inclination. Perhaps it is I who will finally be pushed to the margins.
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The vulnerable chicken, naked and bloody, must be smothered in plain yogurt mixed with the ginger and salt and pepper. Let this sit in a glass bowl on your countertop and turn your back to it. If you have other things to attend to, cover it and stick it in the refrigerator. Whenever you come back, it will be ready.
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She must appreciate his body, the few scars on it attained in predictable ways—the round indentation on his shoulder from childhood immunization and calluses on his palms from hours at the gym. His smooth, muscled back cleared of hair by the trimmer wielded by one of the children and maybe one day—but not yet—her. She must run her toes along his calves and feel the weight of his hips between her soft thighs and feel lucky.
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When you return to the kitchen, take a large round onion and peel it—you can’t have heard anyone tell you that the papery skin has any destiny other than being discarded, so there’s no need to ask my mother and risk her silent judgment (she has already judged you, though so subtly you’d never know it). Slice the onion thinly and try to keep the slices uniform. If your hands are unaccustomed to this work, don’t worry—in this task, speed is prized above accuracy. While you’re doing this, have some light colored oil heating in a pot. The pot you use is up to you. My mother prefers a stainless steel flat-bottomed wok, available at any shopping mall department store (never buy your pots in a set at a super-store—if you look, there are sales to be had on the good, name-brand stuff; clip the coupons when they come in the Sunday paper). I prefer a brightly colored, enameled, cast-iron dutch oven, which heats evenly and looks hip.
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What does she think of the care he puts into dressing, into masking the thinning hair at the crown of his head? Does she find it a little egomaniacal, a little contrived? Or does she appreciate a man who loves himself as much as she loves him?
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Heat the oil, and test it with a peppercorn. If bubbles form around it, give it company in the form of five more peppercorns, four cardamom pods, three of those darling cloves that remind you of a flower on a stem, and two cinnamon sticks the length of your ring-finger. If, like me, you prefer your comfort food to stand up to you, add two whole, dried, red chili peppers to the pot as well. Let everything sizzle and darken a few shades, and then allow the onions to go in with a scream. By this I mean that the onions, or more precisely the water in them, will scream when they make contact with the oil. If it gives you some relief, you may choose to scream yourself. No one is listening.
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Do they fight? Or is she too even-tempered to fight? Does she just sulk quietly and withdraw? Perhaps this is the best way, to wait until he asks after the grievances, pleads to hear what he has done wrong. And then maybe she tells him meekly that her feelings have been hurt and he envelops her in his arms and promises to do better next time.
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Watch the onions, and stir them frequently with a wooden spoon. You don’t want them to brown and grow crisp, to allow the heat to make its mark on them. You want them soft and pliable, yellow and translucent. Seeing them swim in the shallow oil, the heat and steam rising up to your face, you may feel like humming a peaceful, meaningless tune. Do this, because still, no one is listening.
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Does she laugh easily, encourage him to lighten up? Or does she step back and allow him to brood while she goes about her business? Or do his dark periods tinge Her days and weigh on her?
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But don’t get distracted. There are potatoes to peel. Don’t even discuss this with my mother. You and I know, the peel contains nutrients—without it, potatoes are little more than white bread grown underground. The peel shows that the potatoes pushed out roots and staked a claim in the earth, that worms wound their way around those roots and someone on all fours burrowed to retrieve them. The peels are spotted and masculine, the white flesh is feminine, comforting. In this you have no choice: poke the eyes out with a knife, remove the peels quickly, feed the whole unsightly mess to the garbage disposal.
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She was raised back home. Like him, like all of his friends, like my mother. Not an American, like me. She would know better than to confront things directly, to talk back to his parents or her own. She would know how to get her way without getting dirty.
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Chop the potatoes into quarters. They should be roughly the same size as the chicken pieces. If your onions are ready, put it all in the pot—chicken, potatoes, yogurt-ginger. Stir it once, turn the heat to low and put the lid on it. Even covered, the smells will waft through the house. Hang your coat in your closet and close your bedroom door. You don’t want to smell like dinner everywhere you go. As it is, your hair will smell like fried onions until you shampoo it three times. Put up a pot of rice. If you don’t know how to cook rice, maybe I’ve wasted my time by telling you all of this. Maybe you’re even more American than me and you just won’t understand.
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Seema Reza is a poet and essayist based outside of Washington, DC, where she coordinates and facilitates a unique hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization among a military population struggling with emotional and physical injuries. Her work has appeared on-line at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, HerKind, ABCDLady and Boudoir Magazine.