1. Lemons

Chapter 1 of Accidental Alchemy

Hello, dear ones, and a warm welcome to new readers.

However you made your way here, I’m grateful you found me and happy to have you pop into my little world, whether it’s for a brief visit or a longer hangout around my campfire.

Accidental Alchemy is a serial memoir, so if you’re curious and have the time, I recommend starting with the Prologue and reading chapters in order for the full experience. You can access all chapters on my Substack homepage.

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I cut my teeth on lemons.

As early as I can remember, I was happy to suck on a juicy lemon, my palate shaped by tartness. There was always a fridge drawer full of lemons in my childhood home, at the ready to be mixed with allspice, cinnamon, cardamom and squeezed into the dishes that shaped not only my palate, but also my tongue.

Kibbe b’ laban. Fatayer b’ sbanegh. Man’ousheh.

To this day, my tongue rolls around those earliest words and tastes with longing. The words and flavors conjure up memories of Sunday lunches at my Teta’s house in the mountains, filled with more family members than I could name, more cousins than I could count.

The food was plentiful and the family and love even more so. So much sweetness to balance out all that tartness.

Those tastes and memories blended together deep down in the marrow of my bones, wrapping around the syllables of my sticky name.

Sumaya Abuhaidar — the name that fit so perfectly with those flavors, with the shade-giving umbrella pines and gentle Mediterranean breezes.

No one ever asked me “what does your name mean?”

No one ever asked me “where are you really from?”

What they did ask me, surrounded by all those comforting smells and loving faces, was “why do you have to have that white stuff on your nose?” and “why is your hair that weird color?’

“Dahab” Teta would say, touching my almost white hair. Gold.

Those were the only words I remember her ever saying to me. I was one of forty or fifty cousins, so a personal relationship with her, my grandmother, was not an option. The only way she could pick me out of the crowd was the dahab on my head.

Even there, in the heart of my bustling belonging, I never fully belonged.

On the outside, I look like I should feel warm and fuzzy about Thanksgiving. But on the inside, the roast turkey, sweet potato casserole, greens beans and mashed potatoes leave me yearning for tartness, hungry for the missing lemons.

I know, I know, there’s the cranberry sauce — the only tartness on that table covered with bland food. But it’s not my tartness, the one always at the ready in my own fridge drawer full of lemons. Not quite brimming, but full enough to feel safe.

But I pretend to be satisfied, taking a second helping. I answer the questions politely.

It means sky.

I’m from Lebanon.

All the while I dream of kibbe and fatayer, rolling the words around my mouth wordlessly as I yearn for a home that is no longer a home, for the tastes that shaped me and for the sounds that lulled me to sleep in that beautiful, awful place my bones will always cry for.

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All art and poetry included in this memoir is my own unless I specifically credit another author or artist.

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