love
Perennial Blooms: on Love the Day after Valentine's Day
I was sitting here thinking about the kinds of love—how no matter what the movies try to sell us, nobody can make it on eros alone.
Bread and Stories
A long-ago neighbor said, "If you have enough money for two loaves of bread, buy a loaf of bread and a pot of geraniums." This section includes stories, memories, and recipes that feed the spirit along with the body. Or: each post, often by a guest author, is a loaf of bread and a pot of geraniums. Through our common language of food, Bread and Stories aims to cross many different kinds of borders.
Valentine's Day
Tennis Matched: An Iranian Love Story
I told a version of these friends' love story for Valentine's Day two years ago. They are always the first people I think of when trouble boils over within Iran and between Iran and the U.S. It seems like a good time to retell their story...and to share Solmaz's world-famous walnut cookie recipe.
Jewish grandma
Waste Not, Want Not: Grandma Jessie's Secret Ingredient
Food and stories: in the case of my old Jewish relatives, it's impossible to separate the two.
Bread and Stories
Seeding the Story Vault
I think we tell and hear too few kinds of stories about ourselves...
chicken soup
Hidden Grace and Hot Soup
In our digitally intertwined, always-on lives, one of the more startling windows into another person's day is the accidental connection: the butt-dialed call, the mis-addressed email or text. Yesterday I answered the phone and heard a friend cussing at some "moron" in traffic.
refugee
Far from Home: Amna's Story
Amna's warmth, humor, and hospitality have touched many people in the small southern town where she lives. She and her husband work, raise their kids, and look out for their neighbors like any American family—but their journey to "ordinary" was anything but. Until a few
immigrant experience
Three Thanksgivings—and Cultural (Mis)appropriations
I share "Three Thanksgivings" in gratitude for my family. They truly deserve a Homs-at-Home sitcom, written just for them, starring them as themselves, except for me. I’d like Joan Chen to play a glamorous (finally!) version of me.
stories
Bread from Ashes
I was born in Misrata, a city on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, but I took my first steps in Tripoli where I grew up and spent most of my life. From an early age I was bilingual, speaking Arabic and Tamasheq, the Tuareg language. The two languages embody vastly different ways of being...