When I read this, I laughed! Certainly not because I'd be amused if having to sell books for what to eat. It's that I've just run into a writer's take on that situation, in a memoir.
I've begun reading Amoz Oz'
A Tale of Love and Darkness, set during his childhood, from the time of a British-controlled Jerusalem up through the early 1950s. He made a situation with books vs. something to eat seem almost comical, probably not least because his mother at least then seemed to set stock in being able to find and value the humor of life, no matter what.
If once or twice it happened that there was not enough money to buy food for Shabbat, my mother would look at Father, and Father would understand that the moment had come to make a sacrifice, and turn to the bookcase. He was an ethical man, and he knew that bread takes precedence over books and that the good of the child takes precedence over everything.
Presumably then his dad would surrender the selected books for cash and come home with the necessary foodstuffs. Apparently it didn't always work out that way!
Father would generally return an hour or two later, without the books, laden with brown paper bags containing bread, eggs, cheese, occasionally even a can of corned beef. But sometimes he would come back from the sacrifice with a broad smile on his face, without his beloved books but also without anything to eat: he had indeed sold his books, but had immediately bought other books to take their place, because he had found such wonderful treasures in the secondhand bookshop, the kind of opportunity you encounter only once in a lifetime, and he had been unable to control himself. My mother forgave him, and so did I, because I hardly ever felt like eating anything except sweet corn and ice cream. I loathed omelettes and corned beef...
The book is hardly light reading, as one should be forwarned by just the title. I'm happy that I bumped into it, but of course it's hardly a typical "summer read" and how could it be, given the times. So I'm just picking it up now and then to read a few more chapters.
I must say the rest of my "summer read" this year, which is a deep dive into Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa (and so necessarily into French colonial history and its aftermath unto this day in France itself) has hardly turned out to be a light read either. I'm learning a lot and enjoying most of it -- in small doses-- but I'm spending more time in my studio with fabrics and assorted UFOs (unfinished objects) than I usually do of a summer.
However, I've been particularly taken by two books set in Alexandria as it trembled before its fall to Arab nationalism after Farouk's reign ended and Nasser rose to power:
Out of Egypt, André Aciman (memoir of the twilight of Alexandria’s cosmopolitan era)
Alexandrian Summer, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren (novel based on memory of that time)
These two authors lived on the same street in Alexandria, although they did not know each other then. The elder of them has written the introduction to the younger's novel. One was just born when the other’s family had decided to leave Egypt ahead of the Suez War and the even more dangerous times that lay ahead for Alexandria’s British, French, Jewish and even Egyptian Christian residents.
There was a long, erratic twilight between the mid-50s and 1967, but because of its long history with so many cultures, the Alexandria of everyone speaking seven languages (and casually observing or desecrating the same Sabbath elbow to elbow in different rituals) tottered along on its business connections and old habits for much of that time.
Egypt’s defeat in the Six Day War resulted in Nasser’s fury and the expulsion of almost all non-Arabs from Egypt, including not just Europeans but the descendents of Jews who had lived along the Nile for centuries, along with some Egyptian Christians. The younger author’s family was expelled during that time, as night fell on Alexandria’s multicultural history.
I have really enjoyed these two books, but it's infuriating to think how our seeming inability as humans, to both acknowledge and shrug at our different tribal ways, does keep tearing at the tapestries of our lives together. I suppose our memoirs of such struggles are written partly in the hope the next generations may sometime elect to read them and refrain from having another go at cooking from a very terrible recipe while expecting different results.
Anyway these two books catch the bittersweet languor and complexity of a now long gone Alexandrian era pretty well. You can almost feel the breeze off the sea and hear the buzz of polyglot gossip. In that respect at least, I appreciate their having landed in my summer reading.
But you can find recipes online -- look for Peranakan Achar or Singapore Achar. Some of my extended family is from Penang so we make it just slightly differently, but the same idea. The pickles keep well but who knows how long really; they vanish in short order.
