In front of the Citadel photo by Hovic

The famous Abu Abdo photo by Angelique Sanossian

Zlebyeh

Zlebyeh

Shuebiyat

Shuebiyat

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For most people in a Muslim-majority country like Syria, Friday is a day of rest. Shops and cafes mostly close until the afternoon when Friday prayers are over and then business builds only slowly towards the evening rush. For many young Aleppians, it was meant to be a lazy morning. For me, an Armenian, I had to wake up early to go to school. But Friday mornings will always make me think of three things: a breakfast of the best ful in the world, delicious Syrian sweets – Shuebiyat or Zlebyeh — and drinking coffee by Aleppo’s citadel.

During my last year in high school, Fridays would always be marked by the trio of ful, sweets and coffee by the citadel. After twelve years of education, Syrian students take their baccalaureate, a final exam administered not by individual schools but by the Ministry of Education. Knowing that your teachers no longer control your grades lead many students to see the final year as demanding but also a time of freedom. As the ties to our schools frayed, few of us were very obedient or disciplined.

As I was in an Armenian school, our weekend was on Saturday and Sunday, unlike public schools which closed their doors Friday and Saturday. On Fridays, along with as many as a dozen classmates, we’d skip the first two classes of the day and go in search of the three wonders while most of the city was asleep.

Our journey would start around 7:30 am from al-‘Aziziyeh Square, about two hundred metres from my school. The first destination was the best ful “restaurant” on earth – Abu Abdo al-Fawwal. I would argue that Abu Abdo was probably the second best known person in Aleppo after the president. His shop, which he inherited from his father, who had inherited it from his father, was located in one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods of Aleppo – al-Jdaydeh. It was an old district located just outside the city walls and is one of the best preserved areas of the city.

After enjoying a bowl of ful, we would head to the nearest sweet shop. These shops in Aleppo are much more than they are in most countries. They don’t sell manufactured sweets and chocolates but make their own pastries from hundreds of different recipes that go back centuries. My two favourites are classics in Aleppo – shuebiyat, small triangles of flaky pastry filled with clotted cream and baked in butter, and filled often with pistachio and walnuts, and zlebyeh, a thin sheet of fried dough, also filled with cream and topped with cinnamon and pistachio nuts.

After consuming all that food, not everyone was ready to climb the magnificent Citadel of Aleppo. Some would go back to school while the cooler kids would skip another class. There were two options: either going to one of the cafés in front of the citadel or climbing the citadel itself. Either way it was a trip into the most ancient history of Aleppo. On Friday mornings the area is quiet. Most of the shops were closed, the cafés had no more than one waiter and the usually vibrant life seemed frozen in a different time.

Friends, food, sweets and culture. What else could you need? These memories of our beloved city are what we cling to now. Friends are scattered all over the world, from Canada to Australia, from Armenia to Beirut. The delicious dishes and sweets that represented the richness and generosity of our culture have become dreams for many Aleppians, who now struggle to get a daily meal. In the absence of food, friends and sweets, Aleppians sit and watch how their Citadel has become a sniper base for the army and a target for the rebels.

The post Easy Like Friday Morning appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Before the conflict in Syria, on any busy street in Aleppo on a Friday morning you would see a long queue in front of one small shop. Everyone in the line, including children, would be carrying a big bowl and would be waiting to take home fool, the traditional breakfast of choice for the people of Aleppo.

Fool is just very slow cooked fava beans flavoured with tahini, garlic and lemon juice but it means so much more to Aleppians than these simple ingredients would suggest. Fool is easy to make but people have always preferred to buy it at the fawwal’s (literally Fool maker) shop. Fava beans are best cooked over a low flame very slowly and most fawwal’s do it overnight until the beans are soft.  The more beans that are cooked at once, the better they taste according to local lore, hence the preference for buying it from a fawwal.

The sauce of tahini, lemon and garlic is added and then once the fool is brought back home, people add olive oil and some spices. Aleppians like to eat fool with a large white onion – as sweet as an apple, as people from the city often say. Alongside, you should have a large cup of sweet tea.

Aleppians take pride in their cuisine and fool has a special place in it. The old city of Aleppo used to have the best Fawwals. In alJdeydeh for example, Haj Abdo alFawwal was the most famous place in town. People came from different cities to taste one of the best fool dishes in the world at his little authentic restaurant. Haj Abdo was always there himself to open his shop every day at dawn and would serve fool until five in the evening. Another famous place for fool was the old bazar (Souq alMdeeneh). There were lots of small fool shops in the Souq. Then fool restaurants started to invade the fancy areas and the newly built shopping malls in the city. Aleppo’s new neighborhoods started having Western looking restaurants that serve fool and other traditional dishes. The fool restaurants were busy most of the time.

When Aleppians started leaving the city, most of them headed to Turkey and they took their cuisine with them. Fool and falafel restaurants started appearing everywhere in cities like Gaziantep, Antakya, Adana, Mardin, Konya, and even Istanbul. Aleppians could not bear the idea of not having fool and Turks found it really convenient, cheap and above all very delicious.

The post Friday’s Fool appeared first on The Aleppo Project.