BEZJIAN: TRAVELS WITH BASTURMA
By Nigol Bezjian

/bezjian-travels-with-basturma/
August 17, 2009

Take a nice flank of beef or lamb, salt it for a couple of days to
extract the fluid before coating it with a paste-crushed garlic,
hot red pepper powder, cumin, and crushed fenugreek (Greek hay,
or foenum-graecum in Latin, chemen in Turkish) seeds-then hang it
in a dark breezy place for a couple of weeks to dry and absorb the
paste, and you will have basturma, a delicacy of Asia Minor produced
for centuries, and appreciated and handled like Jamon Serrano Pata
Negra. This stinker is basically cured meat, and Armenians, its master
makers, call it "abouhkd."

Intact fenugreek seed has no smell until it’s crushed like garlic; when
the two are combined, it is a double barreled shot of a distinct odor
that smells even from a distance. The chemical substance enters the
human system and announces its presence in breath, sweat, and digestive
waste, sometimes for days. At least, that’s how it’s been for centuries
until the recent arrival of fenugreek-less, garlic-less, red food dye
coating invented in the annals of Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian Quarter
of Lebanon, giving it a place in the gastronomically correct times.

Survivors of the 1915 genocide brought basturma to the Middle East;
the ones who were from Kaiseri were the best makers and the rest
were the best consumers. Undoubtedly this kitchen napalm was made to
preserve meat for long winters and the spices assured the intake of
healthy morsels. My grandmother, like many of her generation, made
basturma omelets fried in olive oil with pieces of lavash bread on
cold days atop the diesel-fueled stove-forcing us out of the house
like all the bugs and mosquitoes, moths and flies that may have
taken refuge within the warm folds of our rugs and carpets. Some of
her friends kept chemen in small jars and consumed a spoonful of it
every day, fighting winter fatigues, germs, or viruses. (In fact, I
hardly ever saw any of them suffering with the flu, a chest cough,
or much else.) When we complained about the smell, they’d say:
Our nation is united in remembering genocides, great King Dikran,
Christian holidays, and "in our food and all its smells."

A few years ago, my neighbor, Mr. Donabedian, a survivor and a graduate
of Beirut’s Saint Joseph University’s first class of pharmacists
in 1931, invited me to his humble, overcrowded dwelling and proudly
exhibited his thesis-a study of fenugreek and basturma in more than
200 typed pages that remains unpublished, now languishing in one of
his many drawers inherited by his widow. The benefits of the fenugreek
are many, he said. Immunity in wintertime, the great ability to reduce
sugar and cholesterol levels, the boosts of iron in anemia sufferers,
and of milk by 900 times in breast-feeding mothers. "They make fun of
basturma, ignorant of how it helps them," he said with a mischievous
boy’s smiling eyes through his shaded glasses.

Armenians successfully introduced it to Middle Eastern cuisine a
slice at a time, and with that "unwanted Armenian" became synonymous
with "smelly basturma." Ugly expressions like "It smells like there
is basturma here" were coined and abusively used to mock an Armenian
among the crowd. A stereotype was thus created, and driven further into
mainstream consciousness by the famed 1960-70’s comedian Shoushou when
he caricatured an Armenian peddling basturma. After several episodes,
Armenians ganged up to force him to dispose of his infamous character
for good, though it lingers among his generation.

A friend’s mother once saw me at a maternity hospital, where I was
visiting her daughter to congratulate her newborn child, and said, "I
knew you were here, I smelled basturma," which was swiftly reprimanded
by her daughter-"You are not funny at all, Mom"-to recover the older
generation’s racial offense.

Meanwhile basturma traveled far with the advent of the Lebanese
Civil War, when many Armenians left Beirut and settled mostly in
southern California. When I had moved there to attend UCLA, a friend
took me to a pizza parlor in Pasadena owned by a proud acquaintance,
who had added his Armenian-ness to the Americanized pizza by adding
a basturma topping (like the Hawaiians’ pineapple and Mexicans’
jalapeno, each flagging a territorial claim on the cheese and
tomato surface victimized by cultural competition among ethnic
groups and a "New World" way of identity reformation disfiguring
original foods. Some had gone further, offering in global English
"Any More Topping Additional," reinforcing the great American freedom
of personal choice for a price.) Four years ago, another friend in
Cairo took me to the Al Fulfula restaurant, which boasted many local
dishes prepared with gusto. The menu surprised me with the variation
of the fool dishes-made with the impossible-to-dislike fava bean-now
evolved by hosting many toppings. What, basturma with fava beans? "Add
anything to anything," my friend said. "Great democratic freedom
brought in by Sadat’s closeness to Barbara Walters."

Back in Beirut, basturma had become a common sandwich served with
toppings of cheese, pickles, lettuce, mayonnaise, tomatoes, and
mustard, hot or cold. A "Middle Eastern hamburger," as a Lebanese
friend called it.

Outlets like Bedo and Mehran produced basturma in the factories for
the hovering mass of "the poor, the tired, and the hungry," who would
have been welcomed by the Statue of Liberty. Armenians, who had lost
the ownership of the delicacy by entering it into the "affordable
food" concept, now had to look hard to locate the original makers-the
best-kept secrets, who made them for those who cared, craved, and paid.

I recently was flying from Beirut to Dubai on Emirates Airline. Thirty
minutes after takeoff, the Kenyan-born stewardess placed the breakfast
tray on my folding table. It held little plastic containers of things
easy to dislike, easy-to-accept air food, prepared on assembly lines,
then packed, frozen, shipped, airborne, and defrosted in microwaves
and served to captive travelers. In the palm size UFO-like plate
were a few leaves of tormented lettuce; a single, disfigured finger
of a stuffed vegetarian grape leaf; a single pit-less, oil-less,
and salt-soaked dry olive; a drop of dehydrated hummus; a paper-thin
wedge of lemon; and under it a curled up and humbly seated single
transparent slice of basturma! Ecstatic, I tapped on my co-traveler
Jacques Ekmekji’s arm and asked him to look deep into his Lebanese
mezza toy-plate. Instantaneously we both forked the slices in the
air smiling at each other and "basturma!" we declared.

Alas, it was soggy from the stuffed grape and pale from the lemon
acid. On one edge, the hummus had left heavy marks. I recalled the
Teleliban B&W shows of Shoushou with his Turkish fez, bicycle-handle
moustache, and unforgettably unpleasant voice that made fun of Armenian
pushcart vendors of basturma. Off-screen, he drove his Pink Cadillac
convertible in the pre-Civil War posh streets of Beirut before his
mysterious death in 1975 at the age of 36. Now eaten by passengers
of all nationalities, how many of them knew what it was and that two
Armenians-the butt of Shoushou’s jokes-were flying along with them? I
asked Jacques, who smiled and said, "And how do we know who designed
the uncomfortable seats we are confined to?"

In my hotel room, after having dinner with friends at the Anar
Persian restaurant, I pondered what basturma meant beyond the common
explanation that it meant "pressed" in Turkish. But basturma is not
pressed at all. If the Turkish word for "press" is "bassma" from the
Arabic "bassm," where did the "m" or "ma" go and where did "turma"
come from? It cannot be from a nomad’s lexicon, since fenugreek
first had to be planted and grown, and the meat needed a long time
to dehydrate and be cured, and certainly needed a cool breezy place
instead of the desert heat. In Kazakhstan, there is a stew called
"basturma" made with vinegar-marinated cubes of meat; Georgians
have a barbecue of meat cubes marinated in pomegranate juice called
"basturma"; in India, there is a meatless stew called Kashmiri methi
chaman, made with fresh fenugreek leafs; and there is a plentitude
of Persian dishes with fenugreek leaves (shanbalileh) crowned in
"ghorme sabzi," which we had at Anar.

The Armenian dictionary explains that aboukhd originated from the
Zoroastrian and Manichean texts of the Pahlavi language, indicating
that its timecard is a few thousand years older than the Turkish
basturma’s arrival from the Far East. Fenugreek seeds are one of the
ingredients used by the Armenian Church to make Muron (Chrism) since
301 AD. There is also a town called Chaman on the border of Pakistan
and Afghanistan not far from Kandahar; to top it all, Kandaharian is
the last name of an Armenian friend in Beirut! Go figure…

However and whatever the case, I leave it to food politicos and
philologists to dissect the origins.

Meanwhile, enjoy basturma-topped pizza served in many Armenian-owned
pizzerias in the Baltic capitals, in Yerevan, Los Angeles, or
Boston. Basturma sandwiches are also common in many cities around
the world. And you can find it as a whole or sliced in Armenian-owned
grocery stores in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Sidney, Tehran, Moscow,
and far beyond. In fact, it can even be ordered as a block in a
vacuumed-sealed plastic bag from amazon.com!