2 minute read
When You Feel at Home
When You Feel at Home
By Beth Anne Wray
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Arriving in Gujarat, India, from boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas, my siblings and I were always met by my parents at the train station in a town some miles away from home. We were then taken to their friend Isudas’s modest house. There, his wife and daughter ushered us in like family, sat us on the floor as is the custom, and served us hot spiced chai and fresh, crisp pooris (fried bread). This was our joyful welcome after months and months away from our parents. This was the taste of home. This was home. When I returned to Gujarat after forty years, I went to see Isudas’s daughter and told her how much that simple breakfast with her family had meant to me as a child. The next morning, she made me chai and pooris. As we ate, we caught up on each other’s families. That made me feel loved and at home. That was hospitality.
When my parents were transferred to Israel, I felt out of place and missed my birth country of India terribly. But visiting Arab Bedouin tents in the Negev and the Sinai Desert brought back sweet memories of sitting on the ground amongst our Indian friends. It filled me with a profound sense of home when the Bedouins welcomed us—strangers!—into their humble animal-skin tents and sat us down on worn wool carpets beside the sheep and the sleeping babies. We talked with respect about things we shared, like
our common ancestor Abraham. We played with their children and their goats and camels and we laughed together. Even without basic amenities like running water, they served us—not cups of chai, but tiny cups of thick, strong Turkish coffee, hot off the fire. Even without a stove or a refrigerator they fed us generously from a huge communal tray—not with pooris, but with lamb and rice and yogurt. It was not India; but it was still love and welcome. It made me feel at home. That was hospitality.
Bedouin tents with camels that provide transportation and milk, Gaza, Israel, 1980s
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