THE SPICED RICE (PILAU

A fond memory from my adolescence that I cherish is of cooking pilau (spiced rice) with my father. His grandmother passed on a treasured recipe that she carried with her while migrating from the terrains of Kabul. For generations, this recipe was improvised, cherished, and recreated, resulting in a hearty meal shared amongst the loved ones. In the context, the dish itself is not merely my heritage but the act of creating it, passing it down, and renewing associations to cement present and future communal and familial relationships. Even if the dish completely changes, or is not being created at the moment, its transcendental being too is heritage. If heritage is a mentality - a way of knowing and seeing, then all heritage becomes, in a sense, ‘intangible’ (Smith 2006).