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American Thanksgivings
I am an American Muslim from India. My adolescence was a series of rejections, one after another, of the various dimensions of my heritage, in the belief that America, India, and Islam could not coexist within the same being. If I wanted to be one, I could not be the others.

Food was one of the battlefields.

My mother used to pack samosas, pakoras, mangoes and other Indian culinary delights in my school lunch, for which I would get mercilessly teased by my classmates for the associated smells and messes. I started requesting cold cuts on white bread with brownies on the side.

“Brownies? White bread?” said my mother, aghast. “There’s no taste, no nutrition. Why don’t you want the food I give you, the food of your heritage?”

“You mean the food of my torment,” I wanted to say.

My mother caved on my school lunches (excepting the white bread). At home, though, we still ate Indian food.

And on Thanksgiving, my mother made biryani – one of the jewels of Indian Muslim cuisine. Like turkey, it takes all day to prepare. And like turkey, it is a feast food – a food of gathering and gratitude.

For a while, I thought I was cheating on America. After all, there were no commercials for Thanksgiving biryanis on television. The President never pardoned a goat, the meat traditionally put in biryanis.

I’ve been conducting an informal survey of the Thanksgiving meals of some of my friends. A remarkably high number are preparing the feast foods of their ethnic and religious culture – lamb for my Arab American friend Tarek, an array of curries for my Indian American friend Sunil, kissra and pumpkin stew for my Sudanese American friend Hind – on Thanksgiving. But all of them use the food to serve a large gathering, and all of them take a moment to offer gratitude.

I now view the different parts of my heritage as mutually enriching, and I see America's diversity as a source of strength. As the great American poet Walt Whitman said of himself and his country, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

This range of Thanksgivings is a metaphor for America: Different expressions on shared values.

The food is different, the spirit of gathering is the same.

The prayer varies, the offering of gratitude is common.
Posted by: Bobby 2007-11-22
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=208691