Saba Imtiaz

Journalist.

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Another film deconstruction post. This time it’s 1982′s Jeevan Dhaara featuring the ever glorious Rekha. To check out what they dd with polka dots (with a side serving of leheria aka diagonal stripes) head to The Polka Dot Post!

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Glorious!

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Knit, purl, write / The One Where Saba Knits a Scarf

Today I finished knitting a scarf.

It took around five months, and today I cast off the final stitch, and snipped off the last yarn end, while listening to thank u, next on repeat.

I've wanted to learn knitting for ages. I tried a few years ago and gave up: I lacked the patience or discipline or focus.

I'd never really tried again. Then Alanna Okun -- who is also a brilliant editor -- wrote this piece for NYT Smarter Living about how to start knitting. And something struck: I could start it. I could knit that very same day. I bought the book Alanna recommended on Kindle. I looked up how to say knitting in Arabic on Google Translate, then traipsed all over downtown Amman looking for a shop that sold wool, only to find a tiny store tucked inside a market. (I would only discover weeks later that there was a massive wool shop five minutes away, but well, anyway.) I got needles from a stationery shop (I actually went in to ask the manager where I could buy needles) and then I tried to start learning.

Which wasn't easy. At all. There were perhaps some dregs of muscle memory, but I could barely fathom anything. How exactly was a knit stitch supposed to work? Why were all my cast on stitches so wonky? Where was the wool going?! Could a needle even go there? Did I even know what knitting looked like?

I saw a lot of YouTube videos, and then I found Judy: I slowed down her hugely helpful videos, and for hours I followed her hand movements trying to match wool for wool. I’d read Stitch ‘n Bitch, then go online and look for Judy demonstrating what I’d just read.

But every time I’d knit I’d end up with a big holey piece that curled up. I unravelled and knitted and unravelled until I got sick of the sky blue coloured wool I’d bought. Midway through a garter stitch patch, I switched to rib knitting, and it.. (after one abandoned try) started working. I was a genius. I could knit! I switched colours! I was making a stripy scarf.

Enter, my grandmother.

My grandmother is a champion knitter, who I have now also learnt was markedly obsessive about knitting as a young woman. She knitted sweaters (and many other things) for her children and grandchildren, and they were works of art: thick cable-knit sweaters, a sleeveless blue sweater with silver beads, a multicolour jumper. If I had adult versions of those sweaters now I’d wear them in a flash.

Part of the reason I was attempting to learn on my own was that I wanted to present her with some basic skills when I went to Pakistan.

I presented my patch.

She promptly unravelled it, while I stared aghast at days of knitting just... gone.

Then we started again. And again. I tried to learn how to cast on stitches from her. She doesn’t knit anymore, but her skills are incredible. I bought a few more balls of wool and began to make a striped scarf again.

This time, though, she said it had to be at least two-and-a-half metres long. So since August, I have been knitting, carrying my knitting from my house to my grandmother’s, knitting through conversations and people making social calls [on her, not me]. I have carried my knitting everywhere. I took my knitting on board a Daewoo bus to Islamabad, and the woman next to me started asking about knitting and then we had a great conversation about education and crafts. I’ve knit this scarf on a train to DC, on a jetlagged morning at a Starbucks in New York, in a cab, while watching a movie, while singing along to old Kishore songs, while upset about work, while trying to find the will to do anything at all. All the while I’ve realised that of all the things I’ve done and worked on in my life, knitting has felt the closest to an achievement. I made something. Which is sad: I also wrote thousands of words and that should count for something. But this is the problem with writing: it seems, bizarrely, intangible, like the value of me -- the hours I spend thinking and typing and rewriting - mean nothing. Every time I have a piece published, I marvel at how I did this: it feels like an out-of-body experience: how did I put these words and thoughts and reporting together? Why does it have seemingly less value than a physical object? But then I think: women’s work -- knitting, cooking -- isn’t valued at all either. It’s never art, it’s never considered for the incessant self-praise that so many men indulge in, and it isn’t valued at all. And so the thing you have to do is to value your own work: to praise yourself, and promote yourself, and to never think it is cringeworthy. No one else is going to do it for you.

And now I can knit, and I will tell everyone who doesn’t even ask that I made this. Me. I knit a two-and-a-half metre long scarf.

*Thanks to the helpful women at a knitters’ group in Amman who helped me bind off my knitting today!

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Naan

On a recent summer afternoon in Lahore, Abdul Qayyum placed naan from the tandoor onto a basket, ready for collection. The Khalifa Naan Shop is opposite the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore, a gloriously beautiful mosque that in recent years has become a favorite with Lahore’s moneyed couples as a backdrop for wedding portraits. The naan shop, according to its listing on Google Maps, has been around since 1869. “It’s been at least fifty years working here for us,” Qayyum said. “It’s very old,” said another worker. “A hundred years old.” They make naan stuffed with keema or chicken, roghni naan and plain naan. They make naan all year around. “Its the kind of thing that is eaten every day,” Qayyum said, as the sky began to turn grey. The shop opens at 9 a.m. every day and closes at 2 in the morning. The time doesn’t matter: People buy food from all over, Qayyum says. They know which shop sells the best tikkas, which one has the best naan.

How has the neighborhood changed in the last fifty years?

“At that time, things were different. These naans -- you could get five for four annas. Now each naan is ten rupees. Then the salary was 40 rupees a month. Now its 150 a day. it’s the expense. Things are so expensive. Flour is more expensive. The environment.... everything has changed. Now a new Pakistan is about to be made. We’ve seen the old one, now lets see the new one.”

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Art from Guantanamo

I wrote a piece for Dawn's Footprints column on the Art from Guantanamo: Ode to the Sea exhibit in New York, and the art produced by eight current and former detainees of the prison. There are still Pakistanis detained at Guantanamo, whose names and cases have disappeared entirely from the social discourse.

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For Vogue.com, I wrote about the art of Sara Vazir, who has fostered this decade’s major henna trends, from white henna that’s taken over Instagram, to lace glove henna and love story henna, and how Vazir’s work takes a cue from South Asian traditions. https://www.vogue.com/article/white-henna-beauty-trend-bridal-sara-vazir-hong-kong-instagram/amp

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Reading (and rereading) the ‘60s guide to single life

 Sex and the Single Girl was published in 1962. I first read it last year, and every few months I get back to it. I reread books a lot, but this isn’t the book I read to kill time before an appointment or eating alone. This is the book that I read when I feel uninspired and sad and in the opening-last-bag-of-chili-chips throes of misery, and every time I read it, I go away wanting to do better, be better, dress better, and to just get to work.

Sex and the Single Girl was revolutionary when it was published. But there’s still something about the book that feels startlingly different: that it doesn’t consider as strange or unnatural to build a life as a single person, a life for yourself, a life that celebrates the idea of independence, a life that is fun. The reason it feels new, still, is because it’s so imbued in practical advice. This is an actual guide; not the glossy version of single life, not the cliched parts, but the parts of SATC that were about the hustle and the

Of course, Brown’s book is mired in the idea of getting — or at least, being appealing to a man — singledom with a view to getting somewhere. There are archaic, stereotypical views — particularly of gay men — and parts that will make you cringe.

But it’s the everyday routines where Brown’s advice on what to wear, how to decorate, how to spend, how to focus on work is absolutely fantastic. Sometimes I wish I could go back to my 18-year-old self and hand her this book. Brown’s advice is so different from the notions of indulgent self-care – sure, you should indulge in self care, but also do well at work. Brown is brutally honest – and right – about so many things, like byob – who wants a party where you have to bring things at? Or the merits of chilled rose – so far ahead of the last few years’ rose and frose trends. Or the joy of creating a jewelbox of a tiny, cheap apartment — more people, she writes, will say “That girl has the most divine apartment” than they ever will about a divine husband, which I would get inscribed on a t-shirt if I could. Brown doesn’t think it’s a compromise to live on a miniscule budget, but to feel pride in living within your means and having a career and to not feel shame or guilted into entertaining or dining out when you’d rather save it for the Balenciaga coat of your dreams.

Cupboards, she writes, should be almost bare: “Who are all these other people you’re feeding?”

Brown describes how she’d turn her ennui – once not being invited to a shower by a girl she’d apparently slighted – into opportunity, entering a competition (which a friend of hers had won previously, making her jealous) Brown doesn’t pretend to be immune from all the feelings that plague us – envy, jealousy, loneliness, exhaustion, weight. But she teaches something more important: that a single life is a great life. The fear of missing out is real, but don’t let being single — or being poor — make you think you can’t enjoy brunch. It is the life that other people should and do covet, not the other way around. And this is a lesson that’s perhaps even more important today, in a world of faux #goals (a word I have happily muted on Twitter and would on Instagram too, because in the immortal words of Chrissy Teigen: 

Brown’s book is a compelling get your life together spiel. So: Why are you sitting around feeling sorry for myself? Why don’t you condition your hair and go out for a walk? Why don’t you drink a glass of cheap something and study up on your French? (Or Arabic or Farsi or whatever it is you’re doing?) What excuse do we have for sitting around and waiting for things to happen?

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Dust, danger, and the TV trolley

If you’ve ever owned a TV in Pakistan, you might have also owned/encountered/been told to dust a TV trolley. 

What is a TV trolley? It is the fancier iteration of the stationary shelved TV ‘rack’ and the wood glass-fronted cabinet to place the TV on. But the TV trolley was really the same cabinet but on wheels. It held the VCR, the VCR ‘cleaner’ tape – a scam if there ever was one – the protective plastic cover for the VCR, and the selection of video cassettes you were lucky enough to own / “forgot” to return to the video rental shop, and the TV rested atop it this edifice. Despite the wheels, the TV – and the trolley – was/is never really mobile and is usually restricted to one vantage viewing point, only ever moving if you moved house (revealing the rusty wheels’ marks on the floor) or when the TV had to be sent off for repairs (99% of the time there’s always something wrong with the ‘tube’.)

TV trolleys, as it turns out, are also dangerous. According to this study, of the 55 kids taken to a Karachi hospital ER because of injuries caused by falling objects – 40% were injured by TV trolleys (!!!). 71.4% of the 55 were admitted to the ICU, and the most common injuries were to the upper limb and head -- leading the researchers to conclude that injuries caused by falling TV trolleys were an important home safety issue in Pakistan.

(Even though I’ve never owned a flat screen and abhor TV trolleys I have been unable to KonMari them out of the house. I have tried. They remain, rusty wheels and all.) 

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On anxiety, airports, and the 22-hour stopover.

I love flying. It is truly one of my favorite things. I love the food, I don't even mind twisting myself in the seat to nap. I love falling asleep right before the plane takes off and waking up to discover that i am already floating away, that I am going somewhere. Everything else about flying can be so unpleasant: but not this, this moment of buoyancy, of finally being in the unknown.

Time and regular routines are suspended. You land at an airport. It is 4 am wherever you flew from, except in this brightly lit space where it is never day or night, you can eat a burger when normally the very idea would make you hurl, or order a glass of wine at an hour when bars outside the airport have finally cleaned up the night's debris. Here, you are in an everything-goes zone.

It's just getting there that's the difficult part. My anxiety has little to do with planes, but with the part of getting on the plane: applying for visas [this amazing essay says it all], the airline staff who can never quite understand my visa, who photograph pages and send it to their colleagues over WhatsApp, all trying to decipher whether I can actually travel.

Sometimes I look at the people who are immaculately turned out for the airport -- hair done, outfit coordinated, in shorts and sandals and heels. I am the one wearing an anklelength dress - with socks, because it was the only warm thing I packed. [Never again.] I walk around aimlessly, looking at the joke-sized bars of chocolate and dithering over which cafe looks less likely to be soul destroying. I used to exhaust myself on stopovers, unable to decide whether I wanted to eat a burger or a doughnut or try and find a place to sleep while holding on to all my belongings. Now I just find a chair and try to relax. The joke-sized chocolate is the same everywhere. There's nothing new to see.

On airplanes, I am consumed by the kind of hunger I can't really describe. I eat the entire meal, even the too-sweet pudding. I drink too much. I drink too little. I know this is a bad idea. But I need to fortify myself for the journey ahead: It feels like an achievement: pouring the contents of a miniature bottle into a plastic cup, sitting back and sipping that makes me realize that its all over, for now. I sleep. I read. I wake up. I are aware of the possibilities: I could be anyone. I think about my life and the fact that I can even travel, that I have a passport and a life, and how I used to wish I could get a flight going anywhere, how ingrained the anxiety of travel is, the constant reminder that I have no right to be here, that the hundreds of dollars worth in stamps don't guarantee anything, that I could be turned away, that no one would know or care.

A few years ago, I was booked on what I thought was a short flight but which actually entailed a 20+ hour stopover in Dubai's Terminal 2 - both ways. The real joy, though, was that this was allowed me to stay in flydubai's business lounge, so for 22 hours I watched TV, and ate copious amounts of lentil soup, and lamented to the bartender. I watched the shift change, I walked around the rest of the terminal where the only highlight was a Paul, I tried to take a nap on the armchair, I ate bowl after bowl of lentil soup. A few days later, I did the exact same thing on my way back. It was horribly exhausting, but it was probably the highlight of my career. I will never amount to much, but for that one day I was a tired, dishevelled person who could order whatever I wanted to eat or drink.

The flight arrives. My phone never works. I plaster a big smile on my face - it’s easier to smile with a glass of wine running through your system. A visa is not a guarantee. You know your fellow passengers don’t feel this way: they are confident, their passports allow them the ability to pay a few dollars and waltz through. An immigration officer's stamp is suspended over my passport, my heart stops still and I can count all the money and time I have spent, everything leading up to this moment, and I wish I was back on a plane again, in that safe space where my anxiety is many hours away.

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A reading list of reporting, on reporters.

Around the world, journalists have long struggled to report against hostile governments, in times of censorship and  and war. But what does it mean to be a writer in a place where being a journalist can feel like being public enemy number 1, 2, and 3, where there is often no institutional support and funding, little acknowledgement, and where as "local journalists", there is little of the prestige or awards or opportunities that writers in the U.S., for example, often can access. Local journalism, after all, is mere fodder, local journalists merely bring the great color and quotes that end up being shared as part of someone else's work.

Here are some stories about how journalists work, and what it means to contend with challenges that can seem unfathomable to the world. And while I was writing this up, I thought about how striking it is that one can actually find reportage about reporters abroad, but little of their own work in some? most? international media outlets. There's so much to be said about how utterly broken the system of pitching, commissioning, and writing is, but that's for later.

 “Bodies of Evidence” (Laurent Gayer, Nida Kirmani and Zia ur Rehman, The Friday Times, February 2017)

In Pakistan, photojournalists work the morgue circuit to get grisly mugshots of dead criminals. This story peels back how they do this – and why there’s a culture of printing macabre photos of corpses in local Pakistani newspapers.

“Bangladesh war: the article that changed history” (Mark Dummett, BBC, December 2011)(Original piece: “Genocide”, The Sunday Times, Antonio Mascarenhas, June 1971)

In 1971, the journalist Antonio Mascarenhas traveled with the Pakistan Army as it stamped down on dissent from the country’s eastern wing – East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh – and saw the military’s planned campaign of brutally eliminating dissent in force. The story is an incredible piece of reportage, and the story of how Mascarenhas managed to write it and evade arrest – and save his family from reprisals – is testament to his commitment to tell the story.

“It’s Always the Fixer Who Dies” (George Packer, The New Yorker, September 2009)

Journalists Sultan Munadi and Stephen Farrell were held captive while reporting in Afghanistan; Munadi was killed in a raid while Farrell survived. George Packer’s lament for Munadi – the interpreter who died while his colleague was freed – is bitter and knowing, and strikes at the deeply unjust imbalance between the lives of journalists and the fixers they depend on.

“The unique burden of covering climate change in the Middle East” (Mark Schapiro, Pacific Standard, August 2016)

Reporting on climate change in the Middle East means contending with the intersecting forces of government and powerful figures in the economy, but investigative journalists are trying to bring out the stories of polluted rivers and emissions in a region where journalism practices itself are subject to censorship – and self-censorship.

“Kidnap, rape and ‘honor’ killings: on the road with a female reporter in rural India” (Snigdha Poonam, The Guardian, March 2015)

An immersive look at how a newspaper covers rural India through a feminist lens, and how women investigate stories that impact women.

“Woman’s work” (Francesca Borri, Columbia Journalism Review, July 2013)

An Italian freelance journalist in Syria tries to report on one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. She gets paid $70. The piece is a brutal indictment of how news organizations use freelance journalists; Borri wrote a follow-up piece in the Guardian about the response to her account from freelance journalists, and why the conflict itself had been forgotten in the conversation.

Unbylined (Roads & Kingdoms, ongoing)

This is an excellent series of interviews with fixers from around the world on how they report, the demands made of them, the challenges and the reporting credits.

"The Dissenters,” (David Remnick, The New Yorker, February 2011)

David Remnick profiles the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and the challenges it faces as it tries to balance idealism, reportage on the conflict with Palestine, and the polarization of society.

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A dinner from Herat, via Beirut

While in Beirut recently, I went to Makan - a lovely space that does global cuisine events - for its three-night western Afghan set menu [apparently prepared by a Sri Lankan chef!]

Herat is beautiful, but I visited in 2013 in the dead of the winter and don't recall much of the food, other than eating a massive heap of rice and chicken one afternoon that I could barely make a dent in. Though I consumed enough bolani and mantu in Kabul to last a lifetime. [Also, people: "Kabuli pullau" is not what we think it is]

Everything was delicious, though the kheer turned out to be more firni-like - and sans carrots - which was great because I don't like gajar ki kheer or halwa, and I was actually rather surprised to see it on the menu since I didn't know gajar ki kheer was an Afghan dish [though I know fairly little about Afghan cuisine] The salads reminded me of how great kachoomar tastes and I really should make it more often. I didn't eat the lamb stew because I can only eat red meat if it's minced/spiced and cooked to death. The khichri was like all good khichris should be: comfort food at its very best - generous.

Why did I never know bichak existed? I could have eaten half a dozen of in a single sitting. It's one of the things I like best about discovering a new cuisine: a single item that makes you slightly obsessed and searching for places to have it again.

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So happy for you! (Not.)

When I meet people for the first time, I usually don’t tell them that I’ve written a novel – let alone that it’s being turned into a film. This is because I don’t see myself as an ‘author’, or that I think this was the single greatest achievement of my life. I would hope that this is one small thing in a list of many things I’ve done – mostly with minimal to zero degrees of success – and that it’s not the only thing I’m going to do in life.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think it was an achievement; that it didn’t merit one – or many dozens – celebratory glasses of wine. Of course it was.

But it doesn’t matter. I could have written a dozen books. I could have published some amazing stories. None of this matters, because success at work isn't equal to a Facebook status announcing I’m getting married. After all, regardless of how much people moan and complain about weddings and so on, marriage is the only achievement that counts.

I know what you’re thinking. This kind of judgment must be coming from typical South Asian parents and uncles and aunties asking ‘beta, don’t you want to settle down?’ who don’t care that you’ve become a doctor/engineer/stand-up comic/writer/artist because you’re not brandishing a nikah nama. They’re the ones who’re always hassling people about getting married.

That’s where you’re wrong.

Look at who is really asking these questions. Is it all your family, or is it the 20-, 30-something acquaintances and friends and colleagues - your peers - who cock their heads to a side, and ask, all concerned, if you’ve met anyone yet?

I am 31. For the past decade – God, I hope it’s just me and you’re all not suffering from this – all I’ve been asked is by various friends/acquaintances/people I’m no longer in touch with/people I give zero fucks about:

When are you getting married?

Shadi kab karrahi ho?

Acha na tum sunao, koi mila?

[Me, itching to say] “Yes, I’m super happy you met someone and that you could afford to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding, but actually I just got discovered something really amazing for a feature…  [eyes glaze over] – yes, I’m single, and no, it’s not because I’m ‘too confident’ and I’m sure I can spend the rest of my life alone. How’s your marriage? Are YOU too over confident in bed? What, am I *not allowed* to ask that?”

As I spent this past weekend intermittently bursting into happy, emotional sobs – my book is the basis for a BOLLYWOOD FILM, FFS – I didn’t have the seventeen thousand ‘congratulations! So happy for you!’ posts on Facebook or the messages or the requests for live updates or excited calls or (actually this is an upside) WhatsApp groups created solely to congratulate you when you announce some sort of marital status change. It’s because unlike marriages/babies/whatever furniture-buying opportunity Facebook encourages you to post about, actually doing well at work doesn’t count for anything. You’re not obliged to congratulate someone for doing well at work. But we’re all apparently supposed to congratulate each other for getting married and having unprotected sex and having children. People are allowed to ask – heck, they expect and outrightly demand – money and gifts when they’re getting married. But what if you need money but don’t have a wedding invitation to tack it on to? Then it’s a loan, and cause for a shame spiral: if you’re not getting married, you’re not even allowed to admit you might need the money. (Don't even get me started on how single people are treated in visa queues. Just don't.)

We know the judgmental aunties and uncles who are obsessed with marital statuses, but you know what - we are them. We don’t call to tell our friends to tell them how happy we are when they do well at work, when they’ve actually made something of their career, we don’t call to console them when they get yelled at by their boss, but we’re happy when they “find” someone, as if they’ve finally found the missing dice from the overturned Ludo game from 1992. We splash out on gifts for weddings, but not for promotions. We’re all guilty of this. We ask about personal lives first – ‘how are you / how’s life / how’s x or y or z?’ – not about the reason the other person gets up every day - to make a living.

For the last year, I’ve tried to make a conscious effort to not ask people about their lives. It hasn’t always worked, and I also ask people about who they’re seeing. But I’d like to hope that I will one day know more about how someone’s doing at work and if that makes them happy than their kids or partners.

This is the thing. Whether I'm married or not, it doesn't matter. That's really not any measure of success or achievement. And unlike your marriage or child whose well-being I have to politely inquire about, at least I’m making money off my work. You could ask how it’s doing.

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Ready, set, go! Using CoachBot: the language taskmaster

I've been in Amman for a few months now, and my colloquial Arabic skills are still a sore point. I now find myself speaking an odd mix of fusha and colloquial, and I'm hoping that over the next few months I can practice more and switch over, and not ask questions like (true story) "Keef keep up?"

I'm excited about working on Arabic in different ways: I'm going to be doing some work on 'Master Arabic' - Alex Strick van Linschoten's upcoming (available for pre-order now!) hugely useful new book for intermediate Arabic students to get over the roadblocks in learning and advancing in the language. 

Alex has also developed a fantastic new tool for language study called CoachBot which I'm really looking forward to using as I practice Arabic (and hopefully get back to resuming my Farsi study this year.)

So CoachBot works like a task master: you pick how much time you have -- the five minutes before you're waiting for your ride, the 15 minutes off your lunch break -- and go:

All of this took less than five minutes. Fantastic! There are over 300 tasks online, and more are being added every day. So the next time you're complaining about how you just can't make the time to study, remember it only takes five minutes to get back into it. 

[sabaimtiaz]

Writing a trend story: the turmeric-infused edition

There's something kind of bizarre about watching one of your stories get onto the content aggregation cycle.

The story I wrote for the Guardian about the turmeric latte  trend was one of those pieces: I've now seen all versions and hot takes on the story - outrage, curiosity, more outrage, serious trend pieces.

I spend a lot of time on the internet, all in the name of researching trends. It's not just as easy as searching "turmeric trendy drink how?" Sometimes someone will mention something in passing and it'll click with something I've read or heard about. The turmeric latte story was a combination of a lot of this.

To start off with, I am often hugely cynical of trends. David Sax's fantastic book The Tastemakers shows just how the food we think is trendy lands onto our plates and Instagram feeds in an organised, almost mechanical fashion. Trends are rarely organic. And while there's probably a turmeric lobby out there too, what I thought was interesting about this was the reworking of the traditional South Asian turmeric drink, haldi doodh, especially after the ketogenic diet movement found ghee.

I can't recall the exact process, but this is how I developed the turmeric latte story:

- I saw images of the latte and was curious about what this was.

- I subscribe to a lot of newsletters: lifestyle, fashion, wellness. Turmeric kept popping up, particularly the mention of Cafe Gratitude's latte.

[If you're interested in lifestyle/beauty/style, I'd recommend signing up for Well & Good, The New Potato, the Coveteur and Byrdie. There's also a ton of sub Reddits, depending on what you're interested in / eating / et al. 

I also read Goop, because why not? (Turmeric lattes also featured on Goop)] 

-  If there's something that strikes me as being particularly interesting, I then spend a lot of time checking out whether there's more to it than just a manufactured trend or a newsletter mention, since it might just be for a very niche audience. Pinterest is often a good barometer: the site also puts out a regular trend report. [Though as a result my Pinterest feed is often flooded for weeks with items I only looked up for a story - please, Pinterest, stop creeping on searches!] I also scour Instagram to see if I can see the makings of a trend. (It was kind of amazing to see how significant turmeric latte already was on Instagram by the time I wrote my piece.)

- Research: The Google food trends report mentioned turmeric, and that was an interesting insight to include. I also subscribe to research briefs from Mintel and Hartman.

- Talking to people: Yeah, the basics. Who are the people actually driving the trend? Trends are cyclical, seasonal, arbitrary, irrational, and it's quite possible you've caught it too late (don't pitch pumpkin spice in 2016) or missed the original wave, and so the most important thing is to actually try and trace the history of the trend. It's actually fairly difficult to figure that out online, because there is so much replication of images and ideas, which is why talking to people is key.

- Relevance and being remote: It's often difficult to gauge a trend's impact or relevance to an editor / publication, especially if you're not based in NY/SF/LA/London and can't see the trend up close. I used to shy away from these stories, never believing I could do them remotely. But you can do this kind of story, regardless of where you are: Over the last year, I've reported on the revengebody trend and spoken to chefs and food entrepreneurs around the world on how they use Nutella, and invoked the internet's wrath over a turmeric-infused drink.

[sabaimtiaz]

Familiar food, in unfamiliar places: a Karachi Kheer in South Holland

This story was originally pitched and sold to a newspaper, but since the publication isn't going ahead I'm posting it here.  

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Photos from Hills & Mills' Instagram

Shahzad Kazmi is touting the benefits of agave nectar in the kitchen of Hills & Mills. The tiny town of Delft in south Holland is more known for being the birthplace of Johannes Vermeer than a hub for vegans, but Hills & Mills - which bills itself as a pure food cafe - is packing in fans of both.

Kazmi and his enterprising family have struck on a winning, and yet unlikely formula: turning popular South Asian food into hipster-friendly concoctions. Pakistani or Indian food isn't popular in Holland, let alone in this historic town in the southern province. But dishes like spicy nihari and haleem, the grains-and-meat stew, have been unlikely hits with the residents of Delft, along with the decidedly-unPakistani raw cocoa bars.

On a Wednesday afternoon, Kazmi - who arrived in Holland in 1976 as a 19-year-old and worked for 40 years in restaurants and catering - lifts the lid on a pot for the dinner service: a familiar chicken korma, but with the addition of sweet potato. At Hills & Mills, the traditional South Asian rice pudding of kheer is made with soy milk - something that would perhaps be considered unimaginable in most households in Pakistan - but one that Kazmi insists gives it great flavor and colour. There are no sodas on the menu, which also features a quinoa salad and banana-mango bread.

It's a far cry from his hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, where quinoa is only just beginning to pop up in upscale restaurants.

"Cooking was always a hobby," Kazmi says. His father worked for the Pakistani air force, and Kazmi migrated to London at the age of 17, but then moved to Holland on an aunt's advice.

He would cook for friends, at social and religious events, and at home for his (now divorced) Dutch wife, and kids. "I love cooking and eating," Kazmi says. "I could only fry an egg when I was in Pakistan. I lived in England for a couple of years alone and I learned how to make lamb chops, that sort of thing. But when I came to Holland and had a proper family life, that is when I started cooking properly and stocked the house with lentils etc."

But the transition from a home cook to the chef of an organic food restaurant seems like a leap, particularly given the stereotypes surrounding South Asian food as being unhealthy.

"You're not considered a good cook in Indian or Pakistani restaurants if the food isn't oily," Kazmi says.

Turning Pakistani dishes into paleo food seems like a tall order, but one that the family seems to have taken up as their personal challenge.

His sons - entrepreneurs Sheraz and Nawaz Kazmi - hit on the idea of taking their father's culinary skills and incorporating new food trends into a restaurant. Hills & Mills opened in the summer of 2012. Three years later, the cafe, which seats 30, is often booked to capacity. It helped that they opened in Delft, where nothing similar existed, and at the cusp of people discovering organic food and gluten-free diets.

Sherryl, the Hills & Mills manager, and Kazmi's daughter-in-law has seen dietary requirements multiply in the three years since the restaurant opened. "These days everyone has an allergy or an intolerance," she says. "We get lists - 'we can't eat this, we can't eat that' - but it's fine. We want to serve anyone. We don't have allergies ourselves but it's really hard for people who have a list of requirements to find a restaurant they can eat at and feel welcome. Sometimes it is difficult, but it is rewarding when five people come up and they have a different requirement and you can make them happy."

Sheraz Kazmi says that while his father sometimes has to be convinced about using certain ingredients or lowering the spice factor, he is the first to say that they can adapt recipes if they know what people need.

The familial nature of the business and the cafe is paying off - the family has ventured into opening up a salad bar in Delft. While some competitors have cropped up, the Kazmis believe what sets them apart is the soul of the restaurant: Shahzad Kazmi, who is branded as 'Papa Kazmi' - a name apparently bestowed upon him by a loyal customer. Kazmi credits his family's hard work, prayers, and authenticity: "People aren't stupid. They know what the real thing is."

Kazmi's fame is set to spread further: a cookbook featuring his recipes and sepia-tinted photos of Kazmi and his family over the years is being released this December. (Available here)  It features stylised images of the dishes, which is a rarity for Pakistani cuisine, given the stodgy look of most curries. Kazmi shows off the meatball curry for Wednesday's dinner - the meatball is almost tennis-ball sized, so it "looks good" in a bowl instead of just a couple of smaller ones. But ultimately, it's the taste that trumps everything.

"People say there is a lot of taste in my cooking. Whatever I make is with a lot of love," Kazmi says. "Anyone can cook, but no one can cook the same way. There is a difference."

Kazmi, who is 60, says he is happy to have his own venture, but might retire in the next decade. For now, he is enjoying the unexpected success and unfamiliar ingredients, as well as being the toast of Delft. "Customers just say - 'Papa Kazmi, make whatever you want.'"

[sabaimtiaz]

Anyone can cook (and make cauliflower rice!)

The first time I saw a dish made entirely out of cauliflower - a sad-looking "cauliflower steak" - I felt sort of vindicated that I kind of always avoided eating or cooking the vegetable. There are only a few dishes that feature cauliflower in everyday Pakistani cuisine - aloo gobi (potato with cauliflower) or gobi gosht, meat with cauliflower - and I'm only really familiar with the former. Aloo gobi is a good dish. Heck, cooked well, it can even be quite delicious. (Garam masala sprinkled on aloo gobi is all kinds of amazing.) 

But cauliflower rice is something else altogether. It took an ingredient I'd only ever associated with South Asian food into a form I'd never thought possible. And while people in the paleo community (and beyond) are making everything with cauliflower - from pizza to breadsticks - cauliflower rice is the real winner in all the paleo-friendly recipes. 

What is cauliflower rice? So it is essentially cauliflower chopped up into rice-like grains. And while that may seem like a difficult task to accomplish, it is - even for my lazy cook self - actually not that difficult.

So the internet has many ways of prepping cauliflower rice. Most recipes involve chopping up the cauliflower in a food processor, then squeezing the water dry using cheesecloth, and then cooking it.

I am far too lazy to ever actually do this. Also, I don't own a food processor. Or enough cheesecloth. (Using a grinder can work, but you have to be super careful because it can turn to mush within seconds)

When I have time, I grate a head of cauliflower with a handheld grater. Which is painstaking but produces perfect grains. 

When I don't have time, I chop up the florets until they're small enough to be cooked quickly.

This week, I used this method: it involves chopping up a cauliflower, then adding it to a blender with water (!), pulsing the florets, and then draining the water. I'm not even kidding, it produced fine, little grains that will probably cook in seconds. It's in the freezer now, but I can't wait to see how it turns out. 

So I usually use this recipe for cauliflower fried rice as a loose guide. I chop up an onion and / or spring onion, garlic, a handful of spinach, and sauté the lot. I add the cauliflower and several liberal dashes of soy sauce and oyster sauce, as well as chopped up green chilies. I also really like adding in an egg - it looks like egg fried rice, but the rice doesn't turn out too eggy because the cauliflower is so dominant. I've also added everything from jalapeño peppers to peas and chicken. It cooks super quick, so it is really the ultimate 'look at what lazy Saba cooked and Instagrammed dish'. It's all the convenience of a stir fry. It's a rice dish that doesn't need a sauce. It tastes great. Like, really great. Just go make some cauliflower rice already.

[sabaimtiaz]

City of Gold

I watched City of Gold recently. It’s a great profile of Jonathan Gold, which shows how the easy descriptor ‘LA Times food critic’ doesn’t quite fit, because Gold isn’t just critiquing food. He uses food to tell the stories of LA, the stories in the shacks and strip malls, the places where no one goes to look for food or cant quite believe good food exists.

City of Gold didn’t just help me think about food in terms of writing, but also about the impact of where we choose – and choose not to eat – has on the lives of people. Jonathan Gold, essentially, tells the stories of Los Angeles through chronicling the city, inch by inch, food truck by stall, but what I thought was incredibly compelling was how Gold’s work has changed the lives of restaurateurs across generations. That is obviously not the role of the critic, but a part of the culinary-immigrant experience that Gold chronicles so well that I really enjoyed. It also cuts at this inherent snobbery people have about food; this idea that good food can only be found in authentic, hole-in-the-wall places, or in high-end dining concepts, never the places in between.

[sabaimtiaz]

The One with the Cereal Diet

A few years ago, I went on one of those diets where you only eat cereal for three meals. To be fair, I actually really liked cereal, having concocted a recipe as a kid that called for adding liberal lashings of honey and sugar to already-sugar-laden Frosties, a recipe I called "honey crunch" and featured in my "cookbook". Everyone refused to eat Frosties honey crunch except my rather patient father, who politely put it down after a bite. Anyway, the diet worked to a degree - as all diets do initially - because I cut out snacks and just ate more cereal or tasteless protein or fruit instead.

Cereal was stuck in my mind as not just a comfort food, but also as the food that could double as being healthy. I put it, quite firmly, in my "good" food category, even though the Willy Wonka description of cereal as the wood shavings from sharpeners might be a better way to describe some of the awful cereals out there. (Hotel breakfast buffet cereals firmly fall into this category.) I ate so much cereal on this diet that I now find it boring, but mostly, my idea that it was "good" killed the joy out of it.

It took me a long time to understand the idea of eating well or eating more mindfully, and it is still something I struggle with. Courtesy cereal-based diets and conflicting advice over the years, I have a moral relationship wth food that I am slowly trying to break down. For years, I put food into categories like good and bad, food that made me feel guilty, food that should have made me feel healthy but just made me resentful. I've slowly started recognising this - thanks to Darya Rose at Summer Tomato, and our conversation on this - and I am starting to enjoy food for being healthy on its actual merits, not my preconceived notions of what is meant to be good. One day, I hope to enjoy the occasional bowl of cereal without putting a label on it.