Last Night in Brighton

Chapter 3

3. Falafel

فلافل

They said Mamoun’s in Downtown Manhattan served the best falafel place in New York. That’s saying something in a city with an Egyptian falafel cart on every corner.

At the time, I lived on the Lower East Side, not far from St. Mark Place, the street full of bars, crust punks, tattoo parlours, and Mamoun’s — a little out of place, like a warm embrace. I would have sooner gone to Brighton that night too, but the express train wasn’t running. I didn’t choose Mamoun’s; Mamoun’s came to me at the right time. I began wandering Alphabet City, then I headed downtown through Nolita and Chinatown, then West through Soho and around Greenwich Village, then back east toward St. Mark’s and Mamoun’s. I passed what must have been at least a hundred restaurants, many of them serving good and affordable food. I was hungry and tired. I felt my blood sugar descending. But frustratingly, I couldn’t settle on a place for dinner. Everything was wrong.

Before I arrived at Mamoun’s, I realised why I was being so maddeningly indecisive. That’s what happens when you wander about town like that, like a pained soul. You sort things out in your head. That’s why I habitually came to Brighton high or hammered: to stop my constant self-interrogation, where I was both the good and bad cops.

I realised that night on St. Marks, probably at the very moment the chef dropped my falafel into the deep fryer, that I was still hungry like a human, but I was beyond food. The body functioned; the soul, or whatever it is in us that produces appetite and taste, did not. I had lost my flavour for living.

I had never been to Mamoun’s before that night, much as I had heard about it. I had spent much of my life not eating fattening and greasy foods, in part to make myself beautiful enough for a Hollywood romance that merited what is heavy for me about being gay. Even growing up, we seldom ate falafel, because I was raised by my grandparents, who suffered from conditions of the heart. By the time I was born, our family was already beyond the deliciousness they had known. That’s what happens when you are raised by old people who, in turn, were raised by young people, without the same concerns about longevity: From the start, you are raised on reminiscences. Nothing seems to happen in realtime. Gone before my time were the days of falafel, their heft, their cholesterol. Cherished in the rearview were the youthful falafel, like the time-before land from whence we came, like Egypt.

That night, I stopped caring about any of it — about my heart, about being fat or greasy or too far from home. There was a sainted stillness in me. An indulgence.

I did not order a sandwich. I’d have loved a sandwich, to be sure, with an oven-baked pita, fresh salad, pickles, and tahina. But I wanted to really taste the falafel. I was uncertain I would even recall its flavour, since I had kept myself from it for so long. I ordered three à la carte orders of falafel, four nuggets per order. The cashier offered tahina on the side for dipping. ‘No thank you,’ I said, anticipating a reaction. The cashier looked down at the register with a grimace, as if to say I was foolish. We both knew: Tahina is a marvel of the Arab traditions of culinary and scientific innovation. Our pioneering and imaginative ancestors had performed a kind of alchemy — They had conjured a cream from sesame seeds. But I had come for falafel, not tahina. I had come to settle a score with falafel.

Mamoun’s was a crowded establishment, not just because the falafel are among the best in the United States, but because New York City restaurants — like New York City flats — are small. You always have to slide into a seat with your a*s in other diners’ faces. That night, I wedged myself into a spot at the window-side table, between a beautiful, fat woman with very small pores who was entirely unconcerned with me as she enjoyed the sensual experience of her sandwich and an straight couple with unimpressive faces who had already finished their meal and, in their otherworldly canoodling, had neglected to yield their space to the hungry people waiting for seats.

I counted 12 falafel. I lifted one to behold it. I bit into it and marvelled at the innards — the way the parsley in the falafel batter had yielded such a dazzling emerald-tinted nugget. The perfect taste. Not too much grease. With other non-Egyptian falafel I had eaten in the past, I lamented the use of chickpeas in place of the Egyptian fava bean, our life source, our s**t in the figurative sense, and literally, since it was the main source of fibre in our Egyptian-American diets. But Mamoun’s non-Egyptian falafel was beyond reproach. My eyes began to cross as I inspected the insides for whatever it was that made them so delicious. I realised I would never make another falafel again, with fava or chickpeas. I popped it into my mouth. And then I put another into my mouth and another, until my cheeks were full, and I was forced to breath through my nose. I was uncertain whether the sensation of occlusive moisture on my face was grease or my tears. My eyes began to burn, so I closed them. I popped another falafel in my mouth. A groan — a gust of air, like a door creaking — came forth from somewhere in my chest. Rather loud, I immediately recognised it as having come from a place of despair. A release.

When I opened my eyes, the straight couple were staring and smiling.

‘You alright, buddy?’ the man asked.

I looked at him blankly, until it became apparent that he should look away.

Six falafel remained. I put my hand in my plate. I wanted to feel the falafel grease. I wanted to know the oil intimately. I could feel the straight man looking at me timidly out of the corner of his eye. Of its own volition, my hand seemed to wrap around the remainder of the falafel in their little paper basinet, strangling them out of shape, back into a state resembling the batter from which they came. This child’s food-play had become a performance for the straight man. Then I began to ball the batter again. Slowly. Muscle memory. I had only ever made falafel once. And that was all it took. I would remember the motions of it for the rest of my life.

I was certain now that I was crying, as a tear rolled down my cheek, cutting through the sweat and grease on my face. I should have been ashamed. I was miserable as ever. But I was also happy. It had been some time since I could cry.

When I had prepared the reconstituted falafel, I used the clean back of my right hand — for I am an old-fashioned gentleman — to nudge it over to the straight man who had manifestly been waiting for the c****x of our time together. I arose and walked to the door. I wondered as I left if I was the weirdest person the straight couple encountered that evening on St. Marks.

‘صحة وهنا’ - Saha wa hana, I had leaned down and told the straight people, as I passed through the exit beside them. To your health.