Eating Disorders

.

Eating with Libyans was normally an informal affair. Everyone would sit or lie on the floor around a large communal bowl of food. You would sometimes use a spoon but often you would just pick up pieces of the food using pieces of bread or just your fingers. Unfortunately, this relaxed style of eating didn’t always go down well when translated to other cultures.

My daughter Emma used to run into problems with this. She spent the first five years of her life in Libya, and she spent much of that time with a Libyan family that we knew well. So she learned to eat the way Libyans ate at home. This caused problems whenever she went back to the UK, where she would tuck into a plate of spaghetti or even a bowl of ice cream using only her fingers. I didn’t see anything wrong with this but her grandma was absolutely horrified by it.

I ran into similar problems when I travelled from Libya to visit an International House school in Cairo. I was invited as guest of honour to a party at the home of one of the school’s receptionists.

My first mistake was deciding to sit on the floor when I saw there weren’t enough chairs for everyone. The hostess said “This isn’t Libya” and brought me a chair.

Then came the food. This consisted of tiny (1.5 inches across) pizzas. I was handed a pretty china plate with three mini-pizzas on it. I picked up the first one with my fingers and ate it.

Everyone stopped talking. Somebody started laughing. “Look at him. He’s eating like a Libyan,” she said. Then everyone laughed. After this, all the Egyptians proceeded to eat their pizzas the proper (British) way, with a knife and fork.

Sometimes I could understand why Libyans generally disliked Egyptians so much.

.