Day 317

Started reading The Language of Baklava. It's a memoir with recipes about "raising an Arabic dad in America". 

Bud learns English not from books but from soaking in the language of work, of the shops, of the restaurants after arriving in this country. I don't know how he learns to hail strangers but whenever my father needs directions--which is frequently--he flags down men and women alike with the same greeting: "Hey Bud!" I grow up thinking of all Americans as Bud--even though my father's name is Ghassan Saleh Abu-Jaber, he becomes the original bud.

Bud misses the old country so much, it's like an ache in his blood. On his days off he cooks and croons in Arabic about missing the one you love. I ask him whom he misses, and he ponders this and says, "I don't know, I just do."