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An Omani ranger approaching a Boswellia sacra tree in Oman. GARY PAUL NABHAN -
An adobe tower at the Roxanne Swentzell Tower gallery in northern New Mexico. GARY PAUL NABHAN -
ARAB/AMERICAN: LANDSCAPE, CULTURE, AND CUISINE IN TWO GREAT DESERTS Gary Paul Nabhan 160 pages, softcover: $17.95. University of Arizona Press, 2008.
Desert cultures are a breed apart. The environments
of each shape the particular ways in which its inhabitants – human
and otherwise – survive and express themselves. But beyond each
desert’s distinctive topography, climate and culture, “a living
river of common heritage runs through them all.”
So says
Gary Nabhan, Sonoran Desert ecologist and author of this delectable
volume of essays. Nabhan searches out the commonalities between
desert cultures and landscapes – specifically the deserts that have
informed his ethnic heritage and those that have shaped his life
and work experiences. Nabhan’s great-grandfather immigrated to the
New World from Syria. Thinking he was bound for the U.S., he ended
up in Vera Cruz, Mexico, instead. He died before his wife and
family could catch up with him, and they immigrated instead through
New York. As a result, Nabhan was born in America. Always
fascinated by deserts, he has spent most of his adult life
exploring and studying the arid environments of the Southwest and
Mexico.
Using food, language,
culture and history, Nabhan draws intriguing parallels, linking the
deserts of his Lebanese and Syrian past with those of his North
American present. He delves into the history of an ill-fated
nineteenth-century attempt to introduce camels to the American
Southwest. We visit an out-of-the-way cafe in Chihuahua, where menu
items include stuffed grape leaves, mashed chickpeas with sesame
paste, and lamb kibbe. “Wherever there is an oasislike agricultural
area on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border,” Nabhan writes, you
can find groves of dates, figs, olives, apricots, citrus fruits,
grape vines, and pomegranates, much like those you would see on the
Arabian peninsula. He also invites us to the remote O’odham lands
that straddle the U.S. and Mexico, where we ponder the way some
Spanish and O’odham words echo the sounds and meanings of Arabic
terms, perhaps carried to the New World via trade routes and the
peculiarities of human migrations.
Nabhan offers us a “what if” – a walk through deserts seemingly
worlds apart – and he finds in the sands of both common roots. Both
lyrical and liberating, this is an intensely warm and personal
foray through two very different regions that share far more than
we might suppose.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Lines in the sand.
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