How Borders Changed What People Ate and What They Forgot

The Kitchen as a Border Archive

When I say borders changed what people ate, I mean something specific: the lines drawn by treaties, mandates, and military fronts between 1918 and 1949 did not just move populations. They moved pantries. They renamed dishes. They made certain ingredients illegal to sell, impossible to grow, or too expensive to remember. And they made other ingredients suddenly available, cheap, and mandatory.

This is the thesis of this site: every dish I write about here is a record of displacement. Not a metaphor for it. A record. The kibbeh that lost its bulgur ratio in São Paulo, the mujaddara that became a Lenten staple in Marseille, the sfiha that kept its name but changed its meat — these are documents. They are as datable as a passport stamp.

What follows is a working method, not a manifesto. I want to show how to read a border in a recipe, and why the forgetting matters as much as the cooking.

1. The 1923 Population Exchange: What Left the Anatolian Kitchen

The Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923, made religion the criterion for forced migration. Roughly 1.6 million people were moved. About 1.2 million Orthodox Christians left Anatolia for Greece; about 400,000 Muslims left Greece for Turkey. The numbers are from the League of Nations and are cited in most standard histories of the period.

What does that do to a kitchen? It splits a cuisine along a line that never existed before. Before 1923, a cook in Cappadocia might make mantı with a lamb filling and a yogurt sauce, and a cook in Thessaloniki might make the same thing and call it manti. After 1923, one is Turkish and one is Greek, and the recipes start to diverge because the ingredients available on each side of the border diverge.

In Greece, the arriving refugees brought pastourma, sujuk, and a whole vocabulary of Anatolian spice. In Turkey, the departing Orthodox left behind churches, vineyards, and the specific local knowledge of which wild greens to pick in which month. Some of that knowledge was written down. Most was not.

The forgetting is not accidental. It is administrative. When a state decides that a population is no longer native, it also decides that the population’s food is no longer native. The dish survives, but it survives as a guest.

2. The 1948 Nakba: Ingredients That Became Checkpoints

The Nakba — the displacement of roughly 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war and the establishment of the State of Israel — is the event that most directly shaped the Palestinian kitchen as I know it. It is also the event that most directly shaped what Palestinians forgot.

Before 1948, the Palestinian kitchen was regional and agricultural. The fellahin of the coastal plain ate maftoul with whatever was in season. The urban kitchens of Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem had knafeh, mutabbal, and a sophisticated pastry tradition. After 1948, the coastal plain became Israeli farmland, and the refugees became camp residents in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

What changed in the kitchen? Everything that depends on land. Za’atar — the blend of thyme, sesame, and sumac — became a marker of identity because the specific wild thyme of the Galilee was no longer accessible. Olive oil from the West Bank became a political commodity, not just a cooking fat. The taboon oven, which requires a specific clay and a specific fuel, became harder to build in a refugee camp.

And the forgetting? The generation that knew the names of the wild greens — khubeizeh, hindbeh, lisan al-thawr — is mostly gone. Their grandchildren know the dishes but not the landscape. That is a border in the mouth.

3. The 1949 Armistice and the Rise of the ‘National’ Dish

Borders do not just remove ingredients. They create national cuisines by fiat. The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbors froze the lines, and the new state needed a food culture that was not Palestinian. Falafel became Israeli. Hummus became Israeli. Sabich — a sandwich of fried eggplant, egg, and pickles — was reclassified as an Israeli invention, even though it came from Iraqi Jewish immigrants who arrived after 1950.

I am not going to pretend this is a neutral dispute. The contesting parties are clear. Palestinian cooks and historians say these dishes are Palestinian, and they have the older written record. Israeli food writers say the dishes are Israeli because they are eaten in Israel, and they have the state. The stakes are not just culinary. They are about who gets to be native.

What gets forgotten in that fight is the Iraqi and Yemeni and Moroccan Jewish kitchens that arrived after 1948 and had to negotiate their own place. The sabich is Iraqi. The jachnun is Yemeni. The shakshuka is Tunisian. But in the Israeli national story, they all become ‘Israeli.’ That is a border doing its work.

4. The 1956 Suez Crisis and the Egyptian Kitchen

The Suez Crisis of 1956 — the invasion of Egypt by Israel, Britain, and France after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal — had a kitchen consequence that is rarely discussed. It accelerated the departure of Egypt’s foreign communities: Greeks, Italians, French, and a large Jewish population that had been there for centuries.

Alexandria, which had been a Mediterranean port city with a hybrid cuisine, lost its pastitsada, its bouillabaisse-adjacent fish stews, and its specific pastry tradition. What remained was a more ‘Egyptian’ kitchen — koshari, ful medames, molokhia — which was always there but now became the only thing left.

The forgetting here is not of ingredients. It is of technique. The Greek bakers of Alexandria knew how to make a certain phyllo. The Italian cooks knew a certain tomato sauce. When they left, those techniques left with them. The Egyptian kitchen did not become poorer. It became narrower.

5. The 1975–1990 Lebanese Civil War: What the Diaspora Kept

The Lebanese Civil War displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The ones who went to Paris, São Paulo, and Melbourne took their recipes with them. The ones who stayed learned to cook with what was available.

In Beirut, the war made certain ingredients impossible. Fresh fish from the Mediterranean became a luxury. Kibbeh nayyeh — raw lamb kibbeh — became dangerous to eat because the meat supply was unreliable. The mezze table, which had been a daily thing, became a weekend thing.

In the diaspora, the opposite happened. Lebanese cooks in São Paulo had access to more meat, more sugar, more everything. They made kibbeh with beef instead of lamb. They made tabbouleh with more bulgur and less parsley, because parsley was expensive. They made sfiha with a thicker dough, because the local flour was different.

When the war ended in 1990, the two kitchens met again. The Beirutis found their diaspora cousins’ food too sweet, too heavy, too Brazilian. The diaspora found the Beirutis’ food too austere. Both were right. The border had done its work on both sides.

6. The 2011 Syrian War and the New Diaspora Kitchen

The Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, is the most recent border event in this series. It has displaced more than 5 million people, most of them to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Europe. It has also created a new diaspora kitchen.

In Gaziantep, Turkish cooks and Syrian refugees have created a hybrid kebab culture. In Berlin, Syrian cooks have opened restaurants that serve shawarma with German bread. In Beirut, Syrian cooks have taken over the lower end of the restaurant market, making falafel and fuul cheaper than the Lebanese versions.

What is being forgotten? The specific regional cuisines of Syria. Aleppo had a refined pastry tradition. Homs had a specific way with kibbeh. Damascus had a mezze culture that was different from Beirut’s. In the camps, those distinctions blur. Everyone eats the same thing because everyone has the same ingredients.

7. How to Read a Border in a Recipe

If you want to do this work yourself, here is a method. It is not complicated, but it requires attention.

Step 1: Name the dish and its oldest known version.

Find the earliest written recipe you can. For hummus, that is probably 13th-century Cairo. For kibbeh, it is medieval Baghdad. For pastilla, it is Andalusian. Write down the ingredients and the technique.

Step 2: Find the border event.

What happened between the oldest version and the version you know? A war? A population exchange? A famine? A quota? A labor migration? Name it and date it.

Step 3: Identify what changed.

Did the meat change? The grain? The fat? The cooking method? Did the name change? Did the dish move from daily to festive, or from festive to daily?

Step 4: Identify what was forgotten.

What ingredient or technique is no longer in the recipe? Who remembers it? Is it written down anywhere? If not, it is at risk.

Step 5: Name the stakes.

Who claims this dish now? Who benefits from that claim? Who loses? Do not pretend there is a neutral answer.

8. Why This Matters Now

Borders are not just lines on a map. They are filters in a kitchen. They decide what is available, what is affordable, and what is imaginable. When a border moves, a cuisine changes. When a border closes, a cuisine forgets.

The Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa have been through more border events in the last century than almost any other region. That is why their cuisines are so rich and so contested. Every dish is a palimpsest. Every recipe is a record of what was lost and what was kept.

I write about this because I want the forgetting to be visible. I want the khubeizeh that my grandmother picked in the Galilee to be named. I want the pastitsada of Alexandria to be remembered. I want the sabich to be called Iraqi. I want the kibbeh of São Paulo to be called Lebanese-Brazilian, not just Lebanese.

That is not nostalgia. It is accounting. And it is the only way I know to cook honestly.

FAQ

What is the single most important border event for Eastern Mediterranean food?

The 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange is the most structurally important, because it created two national cuisines where there had been one regional cuisine. The 1948 Nakba is the most politically charged, because it is still contested. The 2011 Syrian war is the most recent, and its effects are still unfolding.

Is hummus Israeli or Palestinian?

The oldest written recipes for hummus come from medieval Arab cookbooks, including a 13th-century Egyptian text. Palestinian cooks have been making it for centuries. Israeli cooks adopted it after 1948 and made it a national dish. Both claims exist. The historical record favors the Palestinian claim, but the Israeli claim is backed by the state. I name both and let the reader weigh them.

How does a border change a recipe even when the ingredients are the same?

Because the context changes. A dish made in a refugee camp is not the same dish as one made in a family home, even if the ingredients are identical. The meaning changes. The memory changes. The technique changes, because the equipment changes. A taboon oven in a camp is not the same as a taboon in a village.

What can I do to keep these food histories alive?

Cook the dish. Write down the recipe. Name the border event that shaped it. Ask your oldest relative what they remember that is no longer in the recipe. If they cannot remember, ask what their mother made that they have not eaten since childhood. That is where the forgetting lives.