Food as love: In post-quake Turkey, those with nothing share everything

Ayda Suadioğlu’s fingers move as if they are extensions of industrial kitchen machinery.

She tears off pieces of dough, her hands drenched in olive oil, then flattens those pieces, rolls them into tubes, and twists them up in one breathless sequence.

Ms. Suadioğlu is making kaytaz böreği, pastries typical of Antakya in southern Turkey, topped with meat and pomegranate molasses. Next, she turns to içli köfte, or stuffed meatballs. Her hands mold each shell, composed of meat, bulgur, and spices, so nimbly they too look flawless. Both dishes will join a table of tabbouleh – this version with tomato and pepper pastes and pomegranate, to be scooped up with lettuce leaves – and lebeniye, a meatball and yogurt soup.

It is food for a feast, except the occasion isn’t festive. Ever since the Feb. 6 earthquake wiped out Ms. Suadioğlu’s catering company, she has been invited into private homes around Istanbul to cook the delicacies typical of the affected region, which, in a country famous for its gastronomy, is itself famous. Around today’s table sit those, like the chef, displaced by the earthquake, or with deep connections to the Turkish province at the border with Syria.

“When we cook, we feel like we are back home,” says Ms. Suadioğlu. “This is a way for the diaspora to feel they are surviving.”

Antakya, historically called Antioch, has been a crossroads of civilizations for over two millennia, and its cuisine is the perfect reflection of that melting pot. In 2017, UNESCO named Antakya, once a center of the spice trade along the historic Silk Road, a “Creative City of Gastronomy.” “It is said that 13 world civilizations have influenced and shaped its gastronomic identity with cuisines from the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Mediterranean,” noted UNESCO. 

So it’s perhaps no surprise that in Antakya today, one of the worst-hit cities where the vast majority of buildings have fallen, it’s food that has budded as the first sign of the city’s rebirth, bringing color to a landscape overwhelmed with the drabness of rubble and ruins.

We arrive at the Long Bazaar, the city’s marketplace and the heart of Antakya with its brisk trade in spices, carpets, silk, and jewelry. Today, piles of rubble line the alleyways. Because most of the roof covering has been damaged, puddles form when it rains. And yet store owners have opened their doors in defiance of the destruction, hanging strings of dried eggplant and red pepper at their entranceways. Butchers, breadmakers, and artisans specializing in cookware have reopened. Chefs making künefe, a famous Antakyan dessert, monitor the sizzling strips of dough, as thin as spaghetti, that they will top with cheese, chopped pistachios, and syrup. It is then baked in a round copper dish and sliced into triangular pieces. The dessert is the pride of Antakya. In one shop, a man who recognized foreign visitors insists on buying us one.

He fails in his efforts – we have just been fed a giant meal with endless plates of mezze including hummus, baba ghanouj, and various types of cheeses and yogurts. Even so, it’s an early window into how the cuisine here is not just about the food, but the rituals of hospitality that surround it.

As travelers to many lands, Monitor photographer Melanie and I have had a front seat to human generosity, which is truly universal. But Turkey seems to take that beyond. It started after I was connected via email to a man originally from Antakya – who insisted, despite not knowing me at all, that he pick me up from the airport and take me to his home in Istanbul to first ... eat. Ever since, I have felt like I’ve known Iskender and Eda Azaroglu my entire life.

That kind of hospitality intensified as we traveled to the earthquake zone. When we slept in a local businessman’s prefabricated container on our first night in Antakya, we arrived to a lunch, then a dinner, and then a breakfast – which all rank among the best meals of my reporting life. After every interview, residents with no home offered to prepare food. At one point, we visited with a group of women living in tents. One insisted on serving us coffee with little chocolates. As our conversation dragged into a second and third hour and we moved into her damaged home next to where she is sleeping with her family on the sidewalk, she pulled out flatbread and yogurt drizzled with olive oil. “I apologize,” she said as I, starving, graciously accepted her offering. She explained that since the earthquake they could no longer access fresh fruits and vegetables. “You are living in a tent,” I reminded her. 

Ms. Azaroglu, who organized a humanitarian effort in the quake’s aftermath and ended up accompanying us on our trip, lost 10 family members in the quake. Her husband lost his childhood best friend, Kemal Tolu. On our last day she stopped by the home of a woman to whom she had provided a tent and stove in those freezing early days. The woman, now living in a container next to her damaged apartment, insisted on thanking her. So she stuffed Ms. Azaroglu’s bag with pounds of grape leaves, flatbreads with pepper, and stuffed meatballs. It was all so heavy the bag broke.

By that point, I shouldn’t have been surprised – by those with nothing who share everything they can. It was apparent from the very start, at the table that Ms. Suadioğlu prepared. She lost five industrial ovens in the earthquake, 285 pounds of prepared food, and her home.

But she smiled as she cooked, contemplating restarting a new business, at least at this phase of transition. And the people around this boisterous table smiled too – not in joy so much as grace, unified in shared grief but also in shared culture and a deep appreciation for it.

“It tastes like the sun,” says Ms. Suadioğlu. “Somehow the sun gets inside of our food.”