Kleitcha: Healing my Way Home
by Talitha Fanous
At times, the weight of the past can be burdened with a heaviness that is hard to carry. I can see the patterns of hurt woven into the fabric that makes the womxn* in my family. How over the generations, that hurt has molded itself into an ugly wall that does nothing but hold them back from finding their truth, their light. The love turned into resentment, envy, poison being passed down from one mother’s teat to another. Till one day, a soon to be mother decided that this burden was not one she wanted to offload on her children. So she learned to transmute the pain into gold, and nursed her children into a different way of being.
I am eternally grateful to my Mama for her alchemy, for working through her pain and forging a different path for me than the one she was afforded. Through watching and learning from my Mama's journey, there is one thing that I have come to know for certain: resilience courses through our veins. I believe it has for many generations of people living in displacement. The will to continue despite being pummeled by what life has to throw at us.
Image from above of a thick roll of dough being cut with a knife by grandmothers hands against a beige countertop.
One critical ingredient of resilience is finding joy, and the lineage of womxn that I come from found joy through creating. I learned from my Mama how to pour energy, love and hope into the dark places in order to make a life worth living. Laughter was a big medicine that she shared with us. She also made sure we had creative outlets, and supported me in tapping into that. With my Teta the story was different, her painful past took over her life and she relayed that into her relationships and the way she moves in the world. But there was always one place where I could feel that hurt shift for her, and that was in the kitchen. She didn’t know how to show her love in many ways, so she poured it into the food she made. Sitting around a meal was a sacred practice in our family, a space where we could put all our quarrels and differences aside and just be present in the abundance of love that was conjured up by Teta.
Although Teta and I had our differences, one thing we always found common ground in was food. We both have hefty appetites and found joy in the act of eating itself. Teta saw that as an opportunity to train me – to be a good housewife, that is – not something I have ever aspired to be. But I saw an opportunity there nonetheless, to learn to cook all my favorite meals! Foods that wouldn’t be readily available living in the diaspora, especially when I lived in less culturally diverse regions of the United States. Although I didn’t know it at the time, those lessons taught me so much beyond techniques and recipes; they brought my Teta and I closer together through our mutual pleasure for cooking and sharing food with others, and they also opened up a path for me to be able to step into the practice of ancestral remembrance and intergenerational healing.
Image of Arabic coffee in small cup and plate with baked Klietcha on the edge of the plate, all being lit by morning sunlight.
While I always feel at home when I cook anything that I grew up eating, there is one food we make that feels like a direct connection through the generations of my lineage. Kleitcha. An Assyrian sweet bread, often stuffed with dates. Each region has their own twist on the recipe. Some versions are plain while others, like the one my family makes, have an array of regional spices mixed in. Traditionally, this bread is made twice a year on Eeda Gura and Eeda Sura, what is known as Easter and Christmas.
There are many things that didn’t make it through the displacement of our people over time, but this recipe was not a physical item that could be taken or lost. It has been kneaded into our soul’s DNA by being passed down orally and through the physical act of making it generation after generation.
When I’m feeling down, one of the ways I heal that pain is through making Kleitcha. The first time I stumbled across this connection, I was in a really heavy space. I was in the depths of a depressive episode. I felt that the world had been continuously falling apart, and that the pain and suffering was a never ending cycle of the human condition. My mind was the most cynically unkind person that my heart could turn to, but it felt as though there was no one else. No one to share this deep seated pain and gut wrenching sadness with. So my heart returned to its abuser, time and time again, because I was taught not to burden others with my pain. I was taught to hold it in and suffer alone, that my mind was the only one that could handle what my heart was feeling. Yet, my mind didn’t know how to console my heart. That day, I needed comfort beyond measure and my mind was not the place to find it, so I turned to my stomach, my trusty old friend. Except this time, my stomach wasn’t satisfied with being stuffed to capacity – bingeing was not the solution. But I felt as though the remedy I was searching for was within reach. Something told me to call my Teta and ask for a recipe that I’ve only seen her make, but never participated in the creation of. I told her I was really wanting Kleitcha and for once, I’d like to make it for myself. Although she started with the precautions to not share the recipe with others, there was no hesitation for her to hand it down to me.
Image from above of two large oblong dough balls in a pale green bowl.
I was excited to be able to make it on my own, but my will to create wasn’t there. So my journal sat there, opened to that page for a couple days. On the third night, I woke up at three in the morning from a dream I couldn’t remember. I gazed over searching for water and instead, saw the recipe clear as day, waiting for me. I got up at that moment and went down to the kitchen and started to collect the ingredients to bake. I stood there for a moment and said to myself that I have never made this on my own. Tears started to well up in my eyes, when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a faint voice echoing, “you are never alone, Habibty.” It was not a voice my mind recognized but I could feel my great great Teta Marta calling me into her kitchen. The place of warmth and comfort, the place where love penetrates through you like the heat of the oven does to bread, allowing you to defy gravity by expanding above the worlds’ heaviness. As I began putting the ingredients into a bowl big enough to fit a small child, I felt her hand tip over the jar of habbit barakeh just a bit, adding a little more love and blessings into the dough. When I got to the kneading, a part of the process that is difficult for me because of the pain I feel in my hands, I was in a state of joy that dissipated the usual insistent burning. My hands felt strong and unwavering. I could hear Tetas sweet songs harmonizing with the rhythm of my kneading, and that joy spread from my hands, and expanded my heart. As I put the dough to sleep, she reminded me that my worries and pain need to sleep as well, so I can give my mind the chance to rise above the walls it has built.
By the time the dough was ready to be shaped into braids, the tension that was in my mind had already dissipated, leaving room for my hands to get creative, to shape and mold the dough to my hearts’ desire. As I set the tray in the oven, I could let go knowing that I have poured love into the dark places of my spirit, that I had stepped into my own alchemical process and began the work of healing. I could now sit back and allow the sweet fragrance of all the spices to waft into every corner of my being, elevating me into another state of consciousness.
Image of glistening braided light beige dough speckled with black seed, shaped like a wreath, sitting on a sheet of parchment paper in the forefront with dough braids in the background of the same tray.
But the magic of this bread doesn’t end with baking it. One of the most joyful parts of this creation is yet another cultural trait- generously sharing this abundance with others. For this type of powerful love was not meant to be kept, but added to our pot of communal wealth. Getting to see all the love, resilience, and alchemy being passed from my ancestors, to my hands, to the hearts (and bellies) of those who taste it, is another way this bread helps me heal. While I don’t think Teta was always conscious about the ways she was supporting me on my journey, this shared practice of baking Kleitcha taught me about how teta unknowingly lifted herself up, and brought that into my life as well. By sharing a seemingly simple recipe, she opened a door for me to start healing a wound that has been passed down for generations.
*womxn is a term used to replace “women” to denote that womxn are not a subcategory of men, but rather their own, empowered beings. Womxn are self identified regardless of the gender/sex they were assigned at birth.
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