The beginning
We Only Wanted
to Make Lunch
My older cousin and I had gone into town, and at some point we decided that we would make ourselves a tajine.
I had never made one before. That alone was enough to make the whole thing feel important.
We went to the souk and bought what we needed: potatoes, carrots, herbs, onions, tomatoes and a little meat. Nothing complicated. Just enough for two hungry teenagers.
The memory
We Prepared It
Like It Mattered
We went back to the little house in town where we sometimes spent time. We washed everything, cut the vegetables and prepared the tajine together.
Then we put it on a low fire and left it to cook slowly. While it was cooking, we went out again to buy bread and something to drink.
After that there was nothing clever to do. We waited. We talked. We laughed.
And every time we checked on it, the smell made us happier. It was my first tajine. Of course I was proud of it.
Then the door opened
The Tajine Was Ready.
So Were Three Other People.
Nobody was supposed to come. We were almost at the moment we had been waiting for.
Then my uncle arrived with my father and a friend.
And there it was: our tajine, hot and ready.
The only problem was that it was a small tajine. For my cousin and me, it would have been enough. For five people, certainly not.
In the end, they ate it.
My cousin and I did not.
Even today I laugh when I think about it. We had done the shopping, cut everything, watched the fire and waited for that smell to become our lunch — and we never tasted a single bite.
We thought we had cooked that tajine for ourselves.
Years later, I sometimes wonder if it had ever been ours at all.
What stayed with me
A Small Lesson
About Rizq
At the time, I only saw the funny side of it: three unexpected visitors had appeared at exactly the right moment to eat the first tajine I had ever made.
Years later, I think about that day differently.
We make plans. We choose where to go. We buy the food and decide who it is for. Yet rizq does not always arrive according to our plan.
Sometimes what we believe is ours was already on its way to somebody else.
We choose a road, make a plan, prepare a meal. But rizq has a way of reaching the person for whom it was written.
The moments around it
A Souk. A Knife. A Fire.
And a Lot of Waiting.
My first tajine was the first tajine I cooked — and the only one I never tasted.
I am still proud of it.
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