Antoun Issa, journalist and author

"These wars are just part of this acceleration and expansion of colonialism"

Journalist and author Antoun Issa's new book Rebirth: A Love Story From the Depths of War has just been released. The book is about his mother's experiences of her time in Beirut in 1974 during the Lebanese Civil War and her migration to Australia.

On the menu: Ashta without rice, burnt chicken drumsticks, and cheesecake with chocolate. 

Sides include: food as a tool of communication, coming out to the family, and a sprinkle of Canaanite mythology.  

Antoun's social cause is free access to quality healthcare and education for all. It helps marginalised communities, it helps the millions struggling with cost of living and housing, it helps the poorest among us, it helps the elderly, it helps children, it helps parents, it helps First Nations communities, it helps those with serious mental health issues. It provides a foundation for a quality of living that every human being has the right to, which then feeds into healthy, productive and happier communities. 

To find out more about the project and Savva - head to threefoodmemories.com
Insta - @savvasavas @threefoodmemories

Email us at threefoodmemories@plated.com.au, we'd love to hear from you! 

TFM is produced and edited by Lauren McWhirter with original music by Russell Torrance. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the ground we stand on, and I thank them for allowing Papa to tell stories on these glorious lands we share.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

My guest on this episode of Three Food Memories is a journalist who brings both analysis and ache to the page. Sharp on politics, history, and power, yet never detached from the intimate human cost beneath it. A Lebanese-Australian writer and commentator, his journalism has taken him from Beirut to Washington to Australia. His latest book, Rebirth, a Love Story from the Depths of War, is an Australian story as much as it is a Lebanese one, in that it connects to what it means to be truly native to a land. Antoineiza, welcome to Three Foot Memories. Thanks for having me. It's a very poignant time to be releasing your book when Lebanon is under attack again.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

You know, it's I've been asked that a few times. And uh I think I'm in a just a a normal state of just seeing Lebanon constantly in war. You know, when you've when you grow up from a civil war background, and throughout my lifetime, Lebanon has been in, I don't know, this is maybe it's um when you count the Israeli occupation until the year 2000, you had a whole bunch of car bombings and assassinations in the 2000s, you had a war in 2006 with Israel, you've had um the Syrian war next door, which kind of almost dragged Lebanon into it in the 2010s, and now we've had we've got this. So it's it's just been a constant state of war and crisis my entire life. So I don't really know any Lebanon any different, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

So this is obviously not the first time you've sent, seen it, felt it. Um this is what is it? Is it conflict, an war, an invasion, an attack?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

So this is where the history element, you know, I've been diving into this for a long time. Um, you know, I th I think what we're seeing is, you know, particularly in Levant, so Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, that's the area, geographical area of that Eastern Mediterranean uh before um colonial borders came in after World War I. We're actually seeing, I think, a century-long process of attempted colonization. And all these wars and crises are just part of this acceleration and this expansion of colonialism in especially our area. Because what Israel is seeking is not, for example, the same with what it seeks with Iran. It's bombing Iran because it wants to knock out a regional rival who might compete with it for hegemony and power in the region. With Lebanon, it actually wants to take the land. Like, but today, for example, they just bombed the bridges in southern Lebanon because they want to disconnect it from the rest of the country, and they've always harboured desires to want to take South Lebanon. So we're facing a different threat to what the Iranians are facing with Israel. And it's been an ongoing process. We are, it's, it's, it's been war after war. It's been the degradation of Lebanese society to the point where so many of us have left and we live all all across the world. And I juxtapose that with, you know, when we consider the colonization of Australia, for example, um, it wasn't a five-minute process. It wasn't that James Cook arrived and the next day we had the Federation. We had the Federation 1, you know, 14 or 24 years later, after the British arrived. So for the entire 19th century, it was a gradual expansion, a gradual colonization of the entire territory that is now Australia, the frontier wars, the conflicts that they had with um Aboriginal and inhabitants in different parts of the country. It wasn't just a five-minute process. And so what we've been seeing over the last, you know, century, I guess, in Palestine and Lebanon and Syria, is this attempted colonization of more and more land.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

My my own time in Lebanon, once I got over the the war, ravagedness the state of the psyche of the physical, actually, because it is wherever you go, you see bullet holes and it's nothing to turn around a corner and there's a sandstone, you know, building just shot at. Um, but I discovered the Lebanese people are an open and progressive people. They're people dealing with universal issues, they're strong people, and they're very, very positive against the backdrop of this conflict. I mean, which is very much the essence of your book, Rebirth, a love story from the depths of war. When I looked at this book, it kind of had the vibes of all quiet on the Western Front meets Heathcliff and Kathy in in Wuthering Heights. Who is this story about?

SPEAKER_02 4:59

It's about my mum. Um, it's her war stories. So mum lived on the front lines of the Civil War in the first two years of the Civil War, so between 1975 and 1977. The Civil War for context started 1975, officially finished in 1990, but we've been in Mayhem literally ever since. But for the first two years, mum lived on the front lines, and her town was one that just kind of suffered immensely in that war. How old was she? She was, um, I have her in the book starting, she was 18, just before the war started. And uh, you know, so I use her as a character, you know, I fictionalized the names, I've changed a few things, but the essence is still there. And I start the book with a pre-war setup of what it was like in Mum's Town, in Beirut, in Lebanon at the time, her life, how she was living. No, I mean, like, she wasn't thinking of politics, she wasn't thinking of war, she wasn't thinking of anything, but all around her, all these machinations were taking place that all of a sudden just rudely intruded into her existence and the existence of everyone around her and just impose itself. And that's what war does. It imposes itself on people who never asked for it, who weren't thinking of it. You don't wake up in the morning being like, Oh, I've got to plan my day around, you know, a sniper in the building across the road. Like, you don't plan for these things. And so you plan to live your life. And she was planning to get married, she was planning, you know, to take that leap from, you know, in our cultures, and I'm assuming similar in the, you know, Greek culture, you know, women and men got married early in their life. So when you turn 18, 19, you're looking for suitors, right? So in in those days in the 70s in Lebanon, she was, you know, coming of age, and that's what she was planning for. So, you know, she was working, she was providing and supporting her family. Um, she was enjoying her time with her friends. It wasn't, and then all of a sudden, you know, bombs are going off all around her, bullets are whizzing past her head, and it just disrupted everything. So I start the book with that pre-war to sit to showcase the just the dramatic transition, but also the requirement for people to quickly adapt. One week you're going to work, you're having a barbecue, you're doing whatever. Next week, you can't leave your house. And so for the first few months of that civil war, I have mum and her family, or my family, just being sequestered into their home, unable to go anywhere. Grocery stores are bakeries are burnt to the ground, you can't even get food supplies. So it's just like everything just becomes all of a sudden you have to become creative. How do you survive in this context?

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Are they scratching their heads thinking, how did we get here?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

I think the So in the book, I I do sh I do have a thread, a very a thread of the political context weaving through. And, you know, in patriarchal societies, you know, men talk politics, women don't talk politics. So because I have mum as the main character, I see you see a bit of the window into how women kind of operated. They weren't talking about politics, but they kind of knew. She would eavesdrop on her dad, my grandfather, and his conversations with the other patriarchs who were talking about politics. And so there was like, okay, things are getting bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And then uh uh so it wasn't that like it came out of the blue, but it just in the haste in which it kind of imposed itself, I think, was very shocking and dramatic.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

You you lean into Baal the Baal cycle mythology um for this book. There's the Baal, the Mott, and the Anat. Unpack that for me.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

So I have to unpack it because these guys got mentioned in the Epstein files, and Phoenician mythology is getting a terrible rap at the moment. Candace Owens did a whole episode on it. Um so here this is to counter Candace Owens. Just no, just give us some more context on this. It's not just the Epstein class who who have kind of like misconstrued this entire thing. So pre-uh obviously Christianity, Jesus came, you know, was in Palestine. Uh the Canaanites had their own mythology, and the Canaanites were the indigenous, our kind of like indigenous ancestors who lived in the Levans from you know Gaza all the way up to you know the coast of Syria. Um and uh they had their own mythology and they had their own pagan gods, and a lot of it actually informed Greek mythology. And uh Baal was, I guess, our Zeus. So he was the storm god who was worshipped because he would replenish the lands with rain and storm and allow harvests and people would be happy because they could eat and grow their crops and trade and all that stuff. So you know, in those ancient societies, whether it's the Greeks or us, I guess we'll relate because we traded and you know, we were neighbors. But um, you know, they these pagan religions were the way in which they made sense of their world, right? They had a god for storms, they had a god for sand, they had a god for deserts, and they hadn't, you know, it's they didn't have sciences that we have today, they didn't have the knowledge that we have today. So these religions were that. And so the story is that Baal, um, in the in the periods of long droughts and long summers, where people were fearful that they weren't going to be able to like, you know, grow their crops and harvest, um, you know, they created a story where Mot, the uh the brother of Baal, the evil b uh brother of Baal, this was an evil god, right? An evil brother. Like Ly. Like Loki. Yeah. Um, yeah, pretty much. Um captured Baal, held him underground in the underworld. This kind of fed the stories of Hades in Greek mythology. Um, and then when the rains came for the new season, people would be you know, there'd be festivals because oh Baal has returned, the rains are here, we can grow our crops again. So resurrection and rebirth and revival was a huge concept, a philosophical and a religious concept that the ancient Canaanites kind of, you know, was central to their belief system, which kind of fed into the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection story, because that was something that people there kind of already were worshipping for 3,000 years, this notion of revival, this version this notion of renewal. And so in my book, I framed it as such. You have the you have three parts. You have the pre-war part where everything is rosy and dandy. That's Baal. You have the s second part, which is Mot, where it's war and and hell on earth, and then you have the third part, which is Anat, which is the migration to Australia, the rebirth, the chance to renew.

SPEAKER_03 11:42

How did it help you uh uh drawing on these these ancient mythologies? How did it help you write the book?

SPEAKER_02 11:49

It helped kind of crystallize I mean you could there's so many ways you can write something like this. You can write it with a terrible ending, or you can write it with uh the notion of renewal. And I think the story of the Civil War and mum was that. It was a story of renewal. She didn't she wasn't vanquished by the war. She found renewal elsewhere. But that's not to say it's a simple, it's not sort of happy ending, it's not Cinderella, right? It's it's renewal but with the s the deep scars of what a war does to you. And so it's about carrying that loss and carrying that pain and finding a way to renew yourself.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Was there comfort in knowing that this very tragic story of of your mothers and everyone else who lived in Lebanon at the time had been told before that this is part of history, that this is the the way that history repeating itself yet again and again, part of humanity?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

I don't know if that's I don't know if that was the case. Um I mean that that's not what I tried to showcase with the first part of the book. The first part of the book was more yes, there's been suffering in Lebanon. Um it didn't start in 1975, but there was also you know a culture, a beauty to the culture and the folklore that um, you know, was very prominent and present in the country, even in the 60s, just before the Civil War began. So, and that a lot of that has been lost. So it wasn't that there, you know, people came from a dark place and were preparing for another dark period. There was, you know, there was tragedy prior to 1975, but there was also a lot of beauty still resonant in the local culture and community. Do you still see that when you go to Lebanon? I see less and less of it. Right. And that's what that's the heartbreaking part, and that's what I try to capture in this book. Is there's a loss of an old Lebanon that we haven't recovered, and I don't, and I'm it's not guaranteed that we will recover. War destroys societies. People are much more distrustful. You know, I was there in 2024 and I went into a neighborhood, and because I wasn't from the neighborhood, they were like, who are you? What are you doing here? It's it's very distrustful in the country. Uh people don't move around, people stay in their areas. A lot, actually, most of us have left. I mean, you know, most of the Lebanese population lives outside of Lebanon. And it's getting hammered constantly, crisis after crisis. And you think about Beirut, just for one example. Beirut has gone through so many evolutions in such a short span of time. Because with every conflict and every war, there's a huge demographic change because you get a flood of refugees, you get a flood of displaced people, which is what we're seeing now. We've saw like, you know, a million people displaced in the South Lebanon. Where are they gonna go? They're gonna go to the neighborhoods in Beirut. Some of them will try to go to the mountains. So for you know, 1948 when the Nakbah happened and the Palestinians got expelled from Palestine with the state of Israel being created, there was a wave that went to Beirut, and all these refugee camps were established in Beirut, which is where the flashpoints happened. One of them was in my mum's town. Uh, you had the Syrian war happen just, you know, in the last 15 years. We had a flood of Syrians, uh, we've had a flood of Iraqis, we've had a flood of people from different parts of Lebanon who've had to move there for economic reasons because their n their villages are so poor. Like it's gone through so many demographic shifts in the last 40 years, with every tragedy, there's a new wave of people looking for refuge and and and safety.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

So, food memories. How have these been able to help you hold on to an old Lebanon?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Food is our expression of love in our culture. And it's, you know, Lebanese are known to be incredibly hospitable. I'll say it's a case of Syrians and Palestinians, we're all the same people. Take the colonial borders out the way, we're all the same people. And hospital part of that hospitality, or the central part of that hospitality is food. You know, I remember, you know, being a child, and um, you know, we had a Maltese lady live across the road. She was also a migrant, similar age to my mum. But she married into a she married a white husband. And he was, you know, I'd go to their place, I'd have dinner there once or twice, and it'd be like baked beans and very, very, very blank, very bland white, 1980s, 1990s. And then she would come over, and you know, the way we eat, and we would always have food for her. We just have food on the table. And it's just and it's so informal. It's just like, come in, eat. Yeah. Like you, there's like there's no ifs, no buts. You know, and I remember on one occasion we just had, I just she was so, she was just enjoying herself. We had like a simple meze on the table. You had your sliced cucumbers, your slice, um, you know, mint, you had, you know, loved ne homos, whatever, eggs, an assortment of dishes, random dishes on the table, radishes. And there she is, just like plucking everything. She's really enjoying herself with the bread. And she's like, This is how we eat in Malta, you know. And so she, when she would come to our house, she got a taste of her own home and her own Mediterranean, I guess, background. I guess that that's uh a way of kind of showing that food is central and it's to our way of life. It's central to it's in an expression of love, it's an expression of hospitality, it's an expression of everything. And it's I was saying that so much of Lebanon has been lost. Food is like the one thing that we still have. Um, and it might be the thing that actually gets us through.

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Ashta is your first Ashta pudding without rice is your first food memory. So how do you, first of all, how do you make it without rice? I don't know. Ask her.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

If I knew how to make it, I'd make it. I asked her the other week, I'm like, can you make this thing? And she forgot. Like, what are you talking about? Like the Ashta without the rice, I used to make it as kids all the time. I haven't had it in so many years. Um, well, she makes it, uh, and it's I guess you know it's got a fl it's very floral. Uh I think it's our version of custard. It's uh it's very floral, it's a bit more white than custard, custard's got a yellow um colouring to it. Uh, and it's got um, you know, rose uh water, orange blossom, and then when you let it cool, it just creates this really thick skin on the top, which I absolutely loved because you just dig your spoon in and you have the softness of the texture underneath blended with this kind of like hard custody top with this floral I need it right now, but uh it's uh yeah, that's my first memory, and those, and you know, she used to pour them in these very 80s-looking crystal checkered bowls, and uh yeah, that's that's like that's the memory of like happiness for me.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

What um and so when would she make it? Just randomly, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

When you come home from school, it would just be there on the table. But like six or seven plates, and then there's four of us kids, and so you know, it'd be a competition to who could eat the most.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

So we have a version of this also in our culture, it's called Arizoghalob, and it was also my mum would also put it in the cut, glass, they were never crystal. I don't think they were crystal. They weren't crystal. Um But um was Ashtha the easiest and earliest way into a world that your mother came from, into her stories of Lebanon?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, I think so, but I think it's more than that because um actually I don't think it's I don't think it was from her background. I've got to ask her and clarify that. She learnt a lot of her cooking with her mother-in-law, my grandmother in Australia. Here. Yeah. So this is the Anat part. This is the part three. And in part three, this is where food becomes really sensitive. I mean, food is always in this book. That's another theme. I'm actually glad I'm talking to you about this. It's a theme in this book that's kind of like subtle and h and not as prominent, but it's there. I always reference the food.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

So she wouldn't have had Ashta in back in Lebanon.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

No, I don't think I'm not sure. I've got to ask her, but I know she got most of her cooking uh skills from my grandmother in Australia, and cooking was her way of healing. She formed, she came from Lebanon broken, she was obviously incredibly depressed before we knew what depression was. She was, you know, crying every day, her family was still stuck in the wall, there was no, you could you couldn't speak to them. She couldn't speak to her own mother, right? And so she was in deep depression. And my my grandmother here just took her under her wing and and and it was in the kitchen where mum learned how to heal, and she healed with my grandmother. And that's where the ushters came in. That's where all of her ability to cook this amazing Lebanese cuisine, because my grandmother was an amazing cook, just came to bear. Luckily, I was born, I was the youngest, so by the time I was born, mum had already developed skills, and I'm eating all this wonderful food. But yeah, cooking was her way of healing.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

So rose water and orange blossom are very sacred and intimate flavours and essences, aren't they? They almost go into erotic territory when you think of how they've been used over history. How has your appreciation for these two particular flavours changed over the years?

SPEAKER_02 20:43

It's become the signifier for what our cuisine is. You know, when you grow up, when you grow up in a house, when you're a child, you don't know any different. So you're like, okay, this is just the way the world is. And then you come, you know, when you spend I've spent a long time overseas, I've spent a long time out of a Lebanese context. And so when I do taste these flavors, even if it's in a in a Persian restaurant, you know, it's not necessarily Lebanese, but I know they use those flavors too. It's like this is like, I feel there's like a homecoming. I feel at home. And so it's interesting how these like unique flavors, you know, come to be the connection when you are far away, when you are in a different space to, you know, where you've come from. And I think that's what I'm orange blossom.

SPEAKER_03 21:27

For me, it's a private, it's a very, very private connection too. And in that time, it's it's something that I can't spend. Look, I'm tearing up just thinking about rose water or orange blossom. Right. The same for sesame seed or anything like that. And it's it's becomes my own private Idaho. Is that the same for you?

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Yeah, I mean, look, I uh I used to drink I'm not sure if you've had this in Greece, but we used to drink uh rose syrup with water. Yeah, that was my I still do it.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

I have it like a cold bottle in that.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

That's my favorite go to drink. It I for me it's not it it just evokes a happy childhood memory, but it also evokes you know, when I in the 80s and and 90s, when I grew up, my family was still very Lebanese, right? They had only just been there less than a decade. Arabic was still spoken a lot in the household. You know, we hadn't assimilated as much as we have today. And over the decades of us being in Australia, you can just gradually see the Lebanese-ness in the way we even conduct ourselves in our household. You know, slip away, slip away, slip away. To the point where I'm calling mom, I called her yesterday and I said, Stop speaking to me in English, speak to me in Arabic. And she just won't. Like she just like always defaults to English now. When we were now kids, it will always be Arabic. So it's things like that. And so as you've kind of noticed that your own, the way you live, has become less and less Lebanese or how you were raised culturally, things like the rose water, things like that you used to have as a child all the time, but you don't have as much anymore, it it just it brings you back, but also reminds you that, you know, why aren't we integrating this in the way we live today? Like why why is it only just a nostalgic memory?

SPEAKER_03 22:58

Looking at your life now as a child of Lebanese born parents, um, inheritance, survival, and belonging. Let's look at that, how what you inherited from their Lebanese, their Lebanese lives, and how it played out for you in a playground.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Oh, there's so much. What did we inherit? Trauma. Um we inherited in terms of like the immaterial, it's you know, it's a combination, I think, trauma, but also love, I think. And I think that's also a big feature of the book. And I wrote that at the very end, um, that there is a kind of like a unique well, there's a perseverance of love that kind of made its way through that carries the loss with it. You know, I I kind of I I think one thing that I got out of writing this book is that I stopped looking at trauma and love as two separate things, but I just now see them as weaved together. They coexist. They coexist. Yeah. And I think and love and pain coexist. And um it's you know, going through life, you kind of like you inherit these two strands and you kind of see them as oppositional, but then you go through a process like writing this book and actually really expending that intellectual energy to kind of dive into it in a really deeper way, even on a spiritual level, and you just come to this realization that they are weaved together, they that love and pain are inseparable, that they draw their cups from the same well. And actually, you know, a lesson that I've learned is that the most powerful and profound and painful depths of your heart is where love finds its probably its deepest resonance.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

So let's add another layer to this circumstance of life, you being a gay. So when you add that on top, what happens?

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Complexity.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

I actually do know, to be honest, I actually think what being gay has done is that it's afforded me the time to do this. When I think about my everyone else in my family Do this as in write the book? Just even just doing what I've done my whole life, spending the time to actually think about these things in a deeper way. Because when you when I look at my um my other family who are all, you know, they have children, they've had partners, they have partners, that you know, so much of their time and their energy is is spent on raising families, on providing for their families. I don't think they even have the time to think about these things in a deeper way. Whereas I think being gay means like you're out. And mum said this to me years ago. She's like, she was stressing over one of my siblings and their relationships, and she's like, You're lucky because I don't have any expectations of you in this regard.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

But uh, but but I You're free. But are you lucky?

SPEAKER_02 25:38

We're lucky in the sense we have this freedom. Right. We have this freedom to be able to we don't have these patriarchal expectations of us. So we do have the freedom to be, oh I have the freedom to go live around the world, which I did for 10 plus years. I have the freedom to kind of delve into mythology. I have the freedom to delve into history, I have the freedom to run around war zones, I have the freedom to like sit with mum and then go to Italy and write a book. Write a book. If I had children, I would never have had this liberty and freedom to do that. Um, so I think being gay, yeah, it had obviously come with its layers of complexity, but I think ultimately it gave me the freedom to be able to invest myself into this and actually do something for the family as a whole. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

So your second food memory is burnt barbecue chicken drumsticks. Oh, I like this one. I like this one because of the audience, the people that are involved in this story. Right. Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

So when in the 80s and the 90s, I hope you have like Gen Z listeners. Yeah. Because I eighties and 90s in suburban Australia was a different world.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

Well, this story is a bit the castle movie meets the Griswolves meets. Yeah. He died with a falafel in his hand.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

It was such a pleasant, it's such a pleasant time. There wasn't any internet, you had, you know, telecom at home, no mobile phones, pre-mobile phones. Like, and all you had were each other, your people in the neighborhood. That's who you had in your social network. That is it. And because of that, you had, you know, my dad built this brick makeshift barbecue, which is really impressive for him because it's not really that handy, um, uh, in the backyard in our outer suburban, semi-rural home. And, you know, we were like one of three ethnic families in the whole town. It was a very white town. And all our neighbors were white by this Maltese lady, which is, I think, why she gravitated to my mum so much. And, you know, he'd just throw, he'd you know, he'd come with this village vibe. This is how life was in the village in Lebanon. So he came with this like village kind of like vibe of like neighborhood, neighbours are your family kind of mentality. And, you know, we had a gate between us and the next door neighbor. Oh, and the the the board, not on the street. Right. We would just go back and forth. Like it was like they would they wouldn't come through the front door, they'd come through the back door. Like it was, it was just, it was a village. Our court was a little village and it was really beautiful. And he would always throw these barbecues and have and it was like a really good, you know. I always see Australia as like a pot that's still melting because it's still very new and we're all migrants from different places. And the melting happened in this kind of suburb and in this neighborhood, in this court, where dad, you know, we would have my very Lebanese relatives who could still at that stage their English was even worse than what it is. Uh I mean it's better now, but it's it was terrible, right? And you had all these Anglos from the neighborhood, and we just all just like eat, and they have never seen Lebanese food before, right? They're baked beans, white bread, hundreds and thousands, and veggie mite. So, you know, they were just in love with the food that we had to offer them, except for the burnt chocolate chicken. And so I remember the burnt chocolate chicken because like it would be black on the outside, I'd dig in, and then it'd be pink on the inside. And I'm like, I don't think this is and I was like four or five years old, and like this isn't working, mum. So I think they stopped doing that. But it was just, you know, I remember the smoke, I remember the I just remember the joy, and I just remember, you know, everyone in the neighborhood just being around and just it just loving what was what was there.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Let's go back to those Anglo neighbours, those Anglo friends, the white as you call them, because I call them white as well. Um, growing up, we had we had these people in our stories as well. We had Brian and Terry, we had Steve and Diane. My mum used to make these beautiful sesame kulodakya, and Diane used to say, Oh, these are the I used to get so offended, these are the biscuits I feed my dogs. They look like dog biscuits, and it's like, hella. Go home to your Scotch finger biscuits and don't call my mum's biscuits. And my parents were just so open and they'd laugh with it. But to me, it was absolute horror. Yeah, it wasn't until later that they understood what our cultures meant to us and why we worked. They they used to ridicule them in sort of that soft kind of um soft way. I don't think they meant any malice by it, but it wasn't until later. Yeah, you know, and now it's really cool to eat our biscuits and all the rest of it. But you know, we took that stuff, I'm sure for you. Yeah. We took that stuff in our lunchboxes to school and it was like, get it out of here. What do you think your parents taught this community?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Uh, I think they taught them what neighborhood what neighbours are meant to be like and what neighborhood's meant to be. But the other thing they also, and you know, and and food played an instrumental role in that. Food is the way, this is the Lebanese way. We were talking about how food is so central to us. This is our expression, it's how we communicate. It's a communicating language. You know, food is our way of building friendships, it's our way of pacifying aggression, it's a way of um, you know, bringing people together and building this kind of village vibe. Because what is more how I mean, how do you make someone feel so more welcome than when they walk into your home and you have a buffet for them ready to consume, right? So it's it's an expression of incredible generosity that immediately heartens the guest that enters your home. And so I think we taught them that. I think we taught them that through food and through uh uh uh well, especially through food, but you know, it's it's how we kind of come together.

SPEAKER_03 30:59

Did it give your mum relief from the pain and and the depression, do you think? I don't know. She does say that those years were the happiest. Right. The happiest time. Probably where she's smiling a lot more, and the smiling became more and more consistent and that ha that happiness in time.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Also because I think it was, yeah, I think it was because, you know, for two reasons. One, which is what I kind of bring out in this book, is that she I think she finally got a glimpse of what she had originally envisioned and planned before the war disrupted everything. You know, getting married, having children, having a a happy home, and having a great neighborhood that was full of laughter and joy and food, right? And what ended up happening is that she moved to Australia incredibly depressed, she had her losses to a world that she doesn't even know, she can't even speak the language, she's lost everything. Um, and it was, you know, until she got to that point in the late 80s, it was a decade of working really hard, learning a new language, getting through it, and just pushing and and and surviving and finally getting to a point where I feel, you know, she's like, oh, this is this is the kind of thing that I wanted. And yeah, it took me a very painful road to get there.

SPEAKER_03 32:09

Before you co-founded Deep Cut News, you spent four years writing for The Guardian Australian. In the first piece for The Guardian, you argued that responding to the Orlando massacre with more anti-Muslim intolerance only deepened the harm. And while not published in The Guardian, your open farewell letter, shaped by heritage and hard-won clarity, was a quiet, defiant refusal to make your views smaller for the comfort of others. Was that a fuck you fuck off?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Pretty much. In a very polite way.

SPEAKER_03 32:42

So now let's now let's look at a piece that really resonated me with me. It's the article that tethers me to your story and connects me to your story and and and even more so, you know, rebirth. Um it was an article that you wrote in 2017 titled How Time and the Same Sex Marriage Survey Helped Settle My Family's Feud. Tell me about this particular article and why you think I found it hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

I reckon you would have found it. I I reckon you would have found my mum's reaction to me coming out hysterical because that's such it's something out of my big fat Greek wedding. Like it's just like that loud, dramatic. She was totally putting it on, by the way. Um, you know, uh, I came out to her and she decided to explode and erupt and be that loud Mediterranean mum who's just like making it all about herself, you know. Oh, how did this happen to me? Why me? La la la la. I'm like anyway. Um, so I th I think you might have you may have found that funny. Uh, because I find it funny. I found it funny then. So was it written with it was written with the intention of humor, I'm sure it was, because part of it was when I got to the point of my my when I was referencing my relationship and the fact that my parents wouldn't recognise my relationships at the same level as they would my siblings' hetero relationships, that there was a seriousness to that, because that was a underlying kind of hurt that I had. But after a while, um you know, like I I gotta give it to mum, you know, and I I and in hindsight, it's just you know, these are 40, 50-year-old wogs who've come from a world that that where this isn't even a consideration. Forget about it even being a topic of discussion. It's not a consideration, it doesn't even enter the thought process of this ever happening.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

But then you've got your brothers and sisters who are like characters in this. Yeah. You've got your two sisters who are supporting you and kind of sheltering you, putting you into the bomb shelter, and then you've got your brother who's fighting for you like a Samson.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

Yeah. And that was the difference, right? You had, you know, children who were raised here and being like, this isn't a big deal, uh, to your parents who n never thought this was a real they never thought it existed, you know?

SPEAKER_03 34:59

And all of a sudden, what is this? And then there's uncle and aunties who come into the story as well, who were there just kind of rinse like rinse. Oh, they're just eating troublemakers, those ones.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Um especially my uncle, you know, he's past now. So um, but he uh yeah, he was definitely not on my side in that first that first time. But we had a doctor come there, it was a whole intervention.

SPEAKER_03 35:20

There was a doctor to I forgot about the doctor, it was like giving a medical.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

It was such a yeah, I could see why it's funny. It's so dramatic. But then there's your play about this, it's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Um but there were these characters coming in and out of the story. Yeah. And I mean, sure, and I could feel your pain. Look, you know, it was very it was kind of all identical to my story. What I didn't have was the support of the siblings, and I think for you and what carried you through, and probably because you were the youngest of all of them, so they were gonna be Hughesy protected, uh protecting of you. But it was it finishes in a beautiful way because it finishes with the story of the same-sex vote. Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

What happened then?

SPEAKER_02 36:03

Um Well, I mean, look, uh just a quick quick rundown. Like, mum had been making a lot of effort uh, you know, in those years leading up to um that happening. So it's 15 years, so 15 years between me coming out and the vote taking place. And throughout that entire time, even early on, mum really made an effort to try and understand what was going on with her son.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

I just to interrupt you on that one, I think mothers know. Yeah, I think they they know it's what they do with that knowing they choose to accept it and work with it or choose to push it away. Yeah. My understanding from your story and the way she sets it up, and I encourage everyone to read this article because it is a lot of fun. My gut feeling is she knew. Yeah. You know, of course, everyone knew back to my auntie said.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

My auntie said at the time, we all knew, we just didn't want to believe it. Um so back to the 15 years. Yeah, so she made a lot of effort. Dad was obviously a lot harder, typical traditional uh patriarchal male. Um, and then when it came to when we didn't really talk about it, dad and I didn't really talk about it. And so uh whereas mum did, and she, you know, she was there when she loved my ex-boyfriend. Um, and I think that was a real opening for her that she saw that oh, you guys aren't just, you know, drug taking party animals, we are, but uh you guys can have stable relationships with really wonderful, beautiful people. Um, and my ex-boyfriend was really lovely, really accepted by her. They she loved him so much. And um, so she was, you know, she was really there, she was there for me when we broke up. Uh so she was kind of like she was enmeshed. But dad was still, you know, he still needed a bit of a journey to get there. And um the confirmation came with the marriage equality vote. So, you know, I asked mum, you know, how did you how did dad vote? And she said he voted yes. Which I I wasn't expecting, but I kind of was because I knew this is this is and the same theme comes in my book. Love finds a way to triumph. It just does.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

It's creative, it does its own thing, but it finds a way. Oh, we must never underestimate humanity in is and the best of it, because if as long as we water it, even if we've got like millimeters in our tank, as long as it gets that water. Let's move on to your third food memory. Your third food memory is cheesecake with chocolate icing. This is something that mum made.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Hmm. It is. And uh she'd have been experimenting for a while, I think in the 2000s, with cheesecakes. And um when I went overseas, I went overseas in 2011-ish, um, for about a decade, and you know, Gallivancing around the world, Lebanon, Washington, Europe, being a journalist. And uh every time I'd come home, I'd walk in and I'd open the fridge, and she knew I loved the chocolate icing iteration of her cheesecake. There would be a cheesecake with chocolate on top, and she would never say anything. She would never, you know, pre-worn on the drive home from the airport, she wouldn't say anything. She just would wait for me to open the fridge and find it in there. No one had touched it. None of my other s siblings with the grubby hands got to it before I got to it. And it was just and it comes back to food being an expression. Like it's just it's a communication.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

And she would leave it in the fridge for you to discover, wouldn't she?

SPEAKER_02 39:16

It's a communication tool.

SPEAKER_03 39:18

So there's there's there's big things in your book about Matt Triarchy and the mother. What did she transfer to you that gave you the agency to write her story?

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Well, first she always said that um this is a great oh, you know, I wanted to write a book about me, you know, like way back when. Um But uh it was I you know, I think I think there's a closeness with that you have with mothers, it's very unique. Hang on.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Let's talk about your specific relationship. Is it a closeness that you specifically have with your mother?

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Is it a different, not a favorite, not a mummies, but is it a different relationship that she has with her other three children? I would think everyone would agree with that. So could you be mummies? Is it because that you're the youngest or you're probably both? I'm kind of getting at. Does she see herself in you and in you? I think so.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

I think there's a lot of me that is her that and I think about that too. You know, when I w when I got to know who she was before the war. And you see the traits of that, you know, there is elements to her that's very bubbly, that's very jovial, that has a thirst and a quest for life that was she was incredibly rebellious for a very strict Catholic girl in a strict Catholic family.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

So do you think she sees in you the opportunity to feel some of the the unrealised dreams that she had? I think so. And perhaps that through you that she has encouraged you to begin living them out for herself.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

Yeah, I think so. But then I you've I think we're weaving a bit of the story of what we've been discussing here. Her wanting to be closer to me throughout the whole gaping, because it could have gone either way. If you shut your door on your child, you are going to not have access to a big part of them, and they're not gonna have access to you, and there's a bit of a chasm that happens. So it could have gone that way, but because she didn't, and she she sought she my coming out was a way for us to get closer because she wanted to understand me in a in a deeper way. Okay, who is my son? What is going on here? Um, and I think that that helped build that closeness, even more so than what it was, that then you know, kind of like it just allowed an honesty between us. Because you to keep that in mind, it was a year after the marriage equality thing that she sat down with me and told me all the details of everything that happened to her prior to the war and during the war. So it it's not something that was separate to it, it was part of it, it was part of this this closeness, this bond that was just getting deeper and deeper, this honesty that was just opening between us. Because what that's what true love is, right? Like it's an it's an open playing field, it's an honesty that you share. And um I shared my deepest in terms of me being gay, um, and I led her into my relationships, and she returned in kind by sharing her stories.

SPEAKER_03 42:14

As your social cause, you've chosen universal and free access to quality healthcare and education. Why is this something that you strongly believe in?

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Because it underpins all the other social justice movements, right? Healthcare and everyone having access to healthcare and education and quality education, free and quality education and healthcare is just the foundation of a healthy society, right? It means, you know, it it it it helps everyone. It helps the elderly, it helps the children, it helps parents, it helps people who are struggling in a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis, it helps the poor, it helps people with mental health issues. If you have access to these things, right, it just underpins the health and and the productivity and the happiness of all of our communities.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

In the spirit of Martha Stewart, here at Three Food Memories, we have a kitchen meets life wisdom tradition where our previous guest passes you some kitchen life guidance. Having lived so much in the thick of history, memory and identity, what is one piece of kitchen or life wisdom you'd like to share with our next guest?

SPEAKER_02 43:22

Pretty much what I've said several times in this episode, which is that food is an expression of love. And uh it's not just something a chore that we have to get through every day. It's a way you communicate with other people and use that as a communication tool because it's a way to open relationships with whoever is around you.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

Anton, thank you for spending time with me, and may you and your writing and the people of Lebanon be as strong as the Lebanese cedars.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

Let's hope. Thank you for having me. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

That's it for this episode of Three Food Memories. Be sure to spread the plated love and check out our hundred plus back episodes. You can catch them on YouTube as well. Just search for Three Food Memories. For all things TFM, head to the socials at Three Food Memories and at Savasavas. For more info, send us a message, head to threefoodmemories.com. Three Food Memories is produced and edited by Lauren McQuerta with original music by Russell Torrance. Nastika LaFilly and bye for now.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Thank you for listening to Papa's podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe and tell your friends. See ya. Bye.