Lebanese ‘thank you’

It was late spring 1976, in Denison Street, Newtown . . .

The Lebanese family who’d bought the place next to our student doss house, invited us in one Saturday afternoon to thank us for a small deed we’d done (something to do with sorting out a local council matter for the head of the household).

We could never figure out how many there were, and how they were all related, but they seemed to range in age from eight to eighty. The young girl (the eight-year-old) knew the most English, and we’d communicate official business through her.

These guys were poor. I don’t mean in the monetary sense. They were Christians, fresh from the Lebanese mountains, and fresh from the troubles in that country. They lived an extremely happy – but very, very simple – family life. They were like wide-eyed children surrounded by ‘sophistication’ they had never experienced.

Anyway, the menfolk (I assume) had knocked up this small, crude wood-fired brick beehive oven in the middle of the broken-concrete backyard. And when we were ushered through, and fussed over, and motioned to upturned milk crates capped with splendidly coloured cushions, the women were already busy producing wafer-thin round breads.

They had these rolled around sticks, which they deftly flicked into the open door of the small oven, in which the unleavened dough would land flat – baking in a seeming instant.

I was fascinated. And hooked. I’d been making wholewheat ‘bread’ next door for some weeks, without success. Here was a new experience. And a new, simple taste sensation.

When I asked if I could have a go, I was swiftly – and firmly – told it was ‘women’s work’; my job – along with my mates – was to sit back, relax, eat bread and other Lebanese wonders, and down this potent, milky-white liquor.

I can still see that afternoon . . . Scrappy inner-city birds in the scraggy trees by the back wall, wood smoke from the fire wafting around us and mingling with our cigarette smoke, our collective laughing at things none of us quite understood, eating wonderfully simple bread, and getting delightfully pissed on rocket-fuel home brew.

Bread. What a leveler . . .