A Recipe for Belonging

 

A Section of Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania in 2019

Growing up as a mixed kid — half Arab, half East African — I often felt like a blend of ingredients that didn’t know which kitchen she belonged to. At family gatherings, I often caught myself in between two worlds: Arabic chit-chat on one side, Swahili lore on the other. Both felt familiar and foreign at the same time, like humming to your favourite song without knowing the words. The more I learned about each culture, the more I felt I didn’t fully belong to either.

It all changed when I started to delve into the connection between Emirati and East African cuisines. Something in me healed. These two worlds I spent my whole life trying to balance. They’d already been intertwined for centuries. My favourite dish growing up, machboos, turned out to be living proof that belonging doesn’t always mean picking one side. Sometimes we are the perfect blend. The byproduct of trade, travel, and shared history over generations.

Machboos (or kabsa, as it was originally known) is a spiced rice and meat dish that is a staple in Emirati cuisine. It’s usually served at Eid celebrations, family azeemas, or honestly, any time your auntie wants to show off.

The dish is built around fragrant rice, tender slow-cooked meat (usually chicken or lamb), and a blend of spices like cardamom, turmeric and saffron (the holy trinity of Arab household kitchens). But the secret weapon is loomi, the dried lime that adds that perfect tangy element to the richness of the meat.

The word kabsa comes from the Arabic verb kabasa, meaning “to press together”. Fitting, since everything in this dish is cooked tightly in one pot, allowing the flavours to infuse and become inseparable. It was a practical meal for the nomads and coastal communities in present-day Saudi and Yemen. The perfect desert dish: one pot, easy to share, heavily nourishing, and impossible to mess up (unless you forget the salt, then God help you…)

Fast forward to the 17th - 19th century, the Omani Empire ruled parts of Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast. It was the ultimate cultural bridge between Arabia and East Africa. Arab settlers brought their dishes, like kabsa, to the coast and the local cooks revamped it.

Dinner as experienced along coast of East Africa in 2019

When I first tried pilau at my grandmother’s house, it was a déja vu moment. It almost tasted like machboos but with a twist. The dried lime was replaced with coconut milk, but the essence remained the same. It felt like both sides of my family had been communicating through food for centuries.

Pilau, born in Zanzibar and Mombasa, is a spiced rice and meat dish cooked in coconut oil and flavoured with local cloves and cinnamon. Traders later carried those flavours back to the Gulf, influencing machboos. The machboos that I know today is basically a melting pot (pun absolutely intended), with its Arab technique, Indian rice, Persian loomi, and African spice.

By the time UAE was born in the 20th century, machboos had become ingrained into our national identity. A beautiful tale of migration, trade and shared cultural heritage.

For years, I saw my mixed background as a hindering imbalance. Never Arab enough, never African enough. But identity isn’t about purity its about the mix of flavours that makes you, you.

Now, I see my “cultural imbalance” as a recipe for strength. Let’s call it a “fusion” instead of confusion. Like machboos, i’m a blend of different tales influenced by history and adaptation. I’ve lived two different childhoods, and that’s a privilege. I’m a cultural chameleon fluent in both worlds; I can code switch between habibi and habari like a pro.

When I eat machboos now, I don’t just taste the aromatic rice and spices… I taste belonging.

Maryam Marshad

Research Assistant and Intern

Intellectnomics Research Group (IRG)