"Bud," Boyfriends and Baba Ghanouj

An Arab-American memoir feasts on the story of a father, a family and a cross of cultures

Excerpted from the book "The Language of Baklava" by Diana Abu-Jaber, copyright 2005. Published by arrangement with Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

OUR REGULAR ENGLISH teacher, Mrs. Loprienzo, goes on maternity leave, and when the substitute takes over, everything changes.

Mr. Sims brings in cases of new books, full-bodied, difficult, modern works. One of the books that most intrigues me is "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," replete with Gertrude Stein's descriptions of salons and dinners full of painters and writers. Inspired, I ditto off fragrant blue, hand-printed invitations to come to my house and read literary works, to perform and "converse." I bestow these invitations upon friends whom I have deemed sophisticated and urbane enough to invite — my three closest girlfriends, Olga, Sonja and Mahaleani, and the three American boys with long hair in my English class.

We get to the house before my parents get home from work, then sprawl out in the long, blowsy backyard grass. Boys have always been forbidden in the house, but nonetheless there we are. I'm hoping my father, Bud, will back down from making a scene in front of a group.

We sit cross-legged while Jay Franklin strums his yellow guitar. Jay wears his hair in an unbroken oily sheath, propped to one side of the rim of his glasses. It wouldn't be so hard to imagine myself falling for Jay Franklin.

Why not? He isn't obviously good-looking, but he has wonderful, watery blue eyes and Coke-bottle glasses, and he's brave enough to sing this awful stuff to us. I think he must be sensitive and, therefore, completely different from Bud.

I'm almost 16 now, and circuits of feeling run through me.

Next comes Jerry Depiza's reading of a short story that renders in minute, Escher-like detail a scene in which a man bullies his young son into shooting a deer. Finally, Martin Chapelle gives an impassioned reading from The Communist Manifesto that I ignore.

Olga opts out of the performance; she has already decided that she's a conceptual artist. My two other girlfriends shake their heads when I ask them to read. "We're the audience," Sonja says. They look at me expectantly, and I feel the gravity of my hostess-performer role. First I try to bribe the audience by bringing forth a French picnic from a Styrofoam cooler. The menu is inspired by M.F.K. Fisher's descriptions of meals in the Alps and on the French Riviera, but it is influenced more specifically by the availability of ingredients in upstate New York. While my audience eats, I read them a story I've been rewriting for years, a seven-page opus about, yes, the man who constructs a pair of getaway wings out of pull-off beer tabs.

I am on high alert, prickling with the expectation of Bud bursting out of the back door at any moment. The boys are oblivious to my state, but my three immigrant-kid girlfriends are also on alert. They all know Bud, and they've all heard Bud's speech, as well as their own parents' versions.

When I finish reading my story, I don't even say, "the end," I just start to stuff the papers back into an envelope as if I'm hiding evidence.

My friends smile, begin to clap, and then the back door opens.

Bud comes out and sits on the back porch, the wooden boards creaking. "Well, something big is going on here," he says. "Something, something, something!" Everyone glances at me. My lungs ache. What was I thinking?

The step creaks again as Bud shifts his weight. He says pointedly, "So. Are you studying?" In one of those miraculous moments of group telepathy, my friends say, "Yes!" "What are you studying?" Bud asks, hope and skepticism in his voice.

"English literature," Jerry Depiza volunteers at the same time that Sonja is saying, "Science." "Social studies," Martin Chapelle adds.

Then Jay Franklin delicately steers his hair behind one ear and says, "Diana told us you make your own hummus." Even the wind hum in the trees stops. He pronounces it the way you pronounce the stuff you put in with potting soil. But the fact that in Syracuse, in 1976, Jay Franklin knows what hummus is at all is like a little star falling down into our back yard.

My father's face becomes tender as he focuses on Jay, and I think this might be the first time he's ever really looked at a young American male. Or at least the first time he's ever looked at one without thinking molester or rapist. "You know hummus?" he asks in a low, ardent voice.

It turns out that Jay's parents were Peace Corps workers in Turkey.

Jay also knows about pita bread, falafel and "the eggplant stuff." Bud and Jay form an instant food connection, chattering while the rest of us try to act casual and discuss poetry. But we're amateurs at high-art talk, and Bud and Jay drown us out with their excited discussion of tahini sauce.

Bud stands abruptly, and with no further ado gestures for Jay to follow him up the back steps. I want to call after Jay, tell him he doesn't have to go! But, like an enchanted child in a German fairy tale, he seems to have forgotten about his past life. The two of them tramp up the steps, and soon we hear the sounds of pots rattling and cupboards opening. The other guys get bored and decide to bicycle home. Jay Franklin and Bud are making something in the kitchen, nattering on like old friends. Bud has stolen my boyfriend.

Jay and my father prepare dinner that evening. They make hummus, rice, olives with chili paste, and a lightly braised chicken with thyme and onions. Jay sits and eats with us, the first nonfamily American boy ever to do so. He and Bud discuss varieties of foods — my father's love of tagines and couscous, Jay's recent discovery of mole, their mutual unhappiness with instant rice.

"This is great chicken, Jay," I say, trying to reclaim his attention.

He nods absently and flips back his long shank of hair. "Is sumac a traditional Arabic spice?" he asks Bud.

"Really, it's so good!" I crane my face toward Jay.

He and Bud trade an indulgent, knowing look.

"Isn't it funny how people never seem to write about food in novels?" I soldier on, determined to have some art tonight. Jay looks as though he isn't sure who I am. I stir tiny meandering paths through my baba ghanouj with the tines of my fork. It seems at that moment that there will never be a way to have both E.M. Forster and baba ghanouj at the same table.

But Bud perks up. "That reminds me!" he says brightly. He takes out his special bottle of araq so he and Jay can drink a toast to themselves.

"Here's to cooking lots of nice food with your friends," my father says.

"Perfect," Jay says. They touch glasses.

I see the light of pleasure and acceptance and approval in my father's eyes, and I realize, with some regret, that I can never have anything to do with Jay Franklin again.

"Stolen Boyfriend" Baba Ghanouj

2 medium eggplants, cut in half lengthwise

½ cup tahini

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

Juice of 3 lemons

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Tomato or cucumber slices, for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. On an oiled baking pan, roast the eggplant cut side down for 20 minutes, until the eggplant is very soft and tender. Scoop out the pulp. Place in a large bowl and mash with a large fork or spoon.

2. In a medium bowl, mix the tahini, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste; add water for creamier consistency. Stir into the mashed eggplant. If a smoother consistency is desired, you can blend the ingredients in a food processor.

3. Garnish with tomato slices or sliced cucumber. Serve with a dash of olive oil on warm pita bread.