Fits like a glove/Atrociously Overcooked

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WONK (slang) n.
1.
a student who spends much time studying and has little or no social life; grind.
2.
a stupid, boring, or unattractive person.
3.
a person who studies a subject or issue in an excessively assiduous and thorough manner: a policy wonk.

Replace "studying" with "stuck in Jam", and what do you get ?

It's like looking into a mirror. The impossible meeting of one lonely word and the person it describes best !
Ok, I'm (slightly...) exagerating. Remember the urge to add spices to the Pickle of your story ? That's what's happening in this post : you're in the middle of a chutnification process, with too much self-loathing sauce (in my factory, there is only that kind left for the moment : the delivery boy is late again).
What label should I put on this jar ?

WONK CHUTNEY

How my grandfather came to Lebanon

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Magic carpets always were fashionable in the Middle-East, be it in the days of King Salomon or nowadays. You just have to watch my mother lovingly brush her carpet or shout if any of the boys step on it with a dirty sock to know it is true. Believe don't believe I know of a carpet which saved a boy's life.

Once upon a time, in Turkey, there was a village and there was a Chaldean mayor and his son Joseph. These were dark days, and Muslims killed the mayor. Joseph burried the horror and the pain of this day deep inside him, behaved as if nothing had happened.
Until his school organized an outing. In Joseph's class, there was a boy who was a Pacha's son. This day, all the anger gushed to the surface, and Joseph knew the time had come to avenge his father ; he throttled the Pacha's boy.
News travelled fast, as they always do. Joseph was denounced. To save him, his mother decided to flee. In the living room, the carpet seemed to wink up at her.
The former mayor's wife fetched a donkey, loaded it with a rolled carpet inside which a boy lay huddled and hidden, and set off. Southwards she went, for weeks and weeks she went south.
Nobody questioned her at the frontiers : just an old woman, a donkey, and a carpet.
And that is how she smuggled her son into Lebanon, under the protection of the family's magic carpet.
Like a caterpillar out of its cocoon, Joseph emerged from the carpet into a new land, a new life.
I don't know what happened to the carpet after this, but I like to imagine it safely rolled in some attic, ready to fly with another passenger.

Crazy Lebanese

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Languages are funny clowns : they have universal principles, but they all put so different make-ups on their faces.
I was thinking about Lebanese the other day. This language is related to Arabic, spoken in Lebanon, and it's my mother tongue along with French. But French I studied at school and used every day, whereas Lebanese, I spoke and heard without reflecting on it. These days I've been looking at it more closely, and I discovered funny things about it.
Let's give a sample, translated word for word.
"Hallo Mum, how in-you ?"
"Fine. Where brother-yours ?"
"Went football match. Me hungry. Me want food. In our home food ?"
"Yes, in our home. In my home potatoes and taboule."

Have you noticed there is no verb "to be" ? What about the verb "to have" ? Can you find it in the sample ? I've always thought there was a verb "to have" in Lebanese, because I knew how to express possession, but I was mistaken : there is no verb "have". Instead, Lebanese uses an adverbial group :
hande : in-my-home = I have
handic : in-your(fem.)-home = you(girl) have
handac : in-your(masc)-home =you(boy) have
handa : in-her-home = she has
And so on.
So weird : I've always thought I was using the verbs "to be" and "to have" when I spoke Lebanese, but I wasn't, and I didn't even know it.

I love Lebanese idiomatic expressions. This language is stuffed with images. Like :
"Your blood's so heavy !" = You're annoying me.
"You're taking the soul out of me" = You're annoying me.
"His face is upside-down" = He's annoyed.
"He took a face" = He's cheeky.
"He's making his face white" = He's flattering you.
"Ya my uncle !" = gosh.
"Ya blindness !" = damn.
"May he send you [over there] !" (yib'atlac) = go to hell !
My grandmother grew up in Syria, so she sprinkles her talk with Syrian expressions. To ask "How are you ?", she says "your corner ?" - Arabic languages are very concise as you can notice.
When someones coughs, you pat him on the back and say "Smala !" (meaning "in God's name!"). When you see a healthy babe, a very intelligent child or a beautiful person, you can also say "smala".

My father's language is interesting : it's a mix of French and Lebanese. The definite article in Lebanese is "al". In French, for"glasses" we say "des lunettes". What does my dad say ? "Des al-lunettes". *grins*

Crazy languages. Crazy Lebanese. Crazy country - 150 years of troubles, of robot speech and funny idioms and delicious cuisine and Lebanese way of thinking. Let's hope all won't be lost. Lebanese are a very stubborn - they just have to be so about peace. Ya lebnaniye, ma lesim tet'aatalo !

Ya hamme, ana johane ! Ya uncle, me hungry ! *winks*

The Pickles of Memory

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What is writing if not an act of pickling ?
Words are dipped in ink and spread on flat jars called pages. They are labelled, stored in books and put on shelves. And whenever you want, you can open them and taste the flavours of past memories, forever preserved on sheets of paper - or almost : for pickling isn't an exact science. Compare tomatoes and pickled tomatoes : they aren't completely alike. Pickling alters memories, distorts history, changes fruits, especially if you like your pickles spicy.
Pickles are 'licious, but they appear more like agents of metamorphosis than of preservation. And like pickles, like history.
We are all reconstructing our own history, pickling our stories, and we end up with a pickled, spicy self on the shelf of our minds. Who are we, what are we ? What's our (his)story ? Let us dine pickles together.
Nobody described the process of pickling ("chutnification") better than Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children, a novel in which the narrator ends up running a pickle factory. The chapters are the jars, and Saleem fills them with his story. Thoughts and emotions keep seeping into food, especially chutney. Food becomes the stuff of life, the matter of history.
Here's a quote from the last pages :

To pickle is to give immortality, after all : fish,
vegetables, fruit hang embalmed in spice-and-vinegar; a certain alteration, a
slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely ? The art is to
change the flavor in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty* jars
and a jar) to give it shape and form - that is to say, meaning. (I have
mentioned my fear of absurdity.)
One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of
history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be
overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be
possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of
truth...

*the novel has thirty chapters. The remaining jar is for the ending, but Saleem doesn't quite know how to end his story at this point.

What does your story taste like ?