It’s become a little embarrassing to go every noon to the newspaper’s cafeteria. We are celebrities. The Americans with our retinue of Algerian colleagues. The publisher has directed that we must not pay, even though the prices for great homemade Algerian food are ridiculously low. We tip big, however, so we’ve acquired a regular waitress, a lovely girl with a red birthmark on her face who knows now without asking that I always want mint tea and Kamel likes the carrot salad.
The cafeteria manager who used to work in the technical department reels off his specials of the day to us every time we arrive and today he seemed positive what I had to order. Bouzalouf.
“Oh, bouzalouf, you must try,” affirmed Nadir, the translator I usually work with. “You know what it is. I will tell you. It is Algerian specialty, very delicious. It’s meat in a sauce…and I agreed before he finished what had seemed like a long explanation for stew. I almost missed the most important part of the description.
“It’s lamb’s head.”
“WAIT,” I immediately reversed course, “A head. No. I want vegetables.”
But, the other diners, the reporters and editors we are working with joined in with Nadir. No, it’s good you must try.
“I’m not heading a head,” I held firm. And Nadir laughed at me and said, “It’s not the whole head, it’s pieces of meat cut up in a sauce. You should try it.”
I recalled the pressure to try goat offal at a New Year’s dinner in Uganda in 2005 and as the cries to try it rang like double-dares around the cafeteria I gave in. I was too weak to resist the logic of, “It’s lamb’s head, not a goat.”
The manager set down a bowl of tomato-based sauce with chick-peas and pieces of dark meat. I could see bones.
“Are there eyes in here?” I demanded. Nadir laughed and said no. “Wait, that’s a tongue!” I protested. “That is the best part,” he assured me, adding in a very vein attempt to reassure and persuade me, “You know we also eat something else that is very delicious. Lamb’s stomach.”
I used a piece of baguette as a spoon and picked up the most innocuous piece I could find. I closed my eyes and put it in my mouth. Like the goat offal, this was not bad at all. I picked at a few more non-tongue pieces and ate all the chickpeas. And I drank a lot of mint tea.
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From Theresa Armao:
Your entry re the lamb's head reminds me that Guy used to occasionally bring sheep's heads home for my father who considered them a delicacy. My mother didn't pick the meat off, however, she cooked them whole.
One time, my mother cooked a couple -- and my father wanted to share this treat with his friend, Compare Dan. He wrapped one in a paper bag and brought it down to his house (on Corning Street) and left it on the kitchen table. Shortly afterwards, Dan's son, John and his wife, Claudia, came in. While her husband was in the bathroom, Claudia's curiosity overcame her and she opened up the bag to have a peek at what was in it.
Her unearthly shriek brought John running out of the bathroom with his trousers flapping around his ankles!
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