Yakhnet Fasoolya (beans and meat stew)

A response to a prompt shared in the Writing Memoir series run by Leena Magdi

Even if it’s 40 degrees outside, I need to eat hot stew.
A beans and meat stew, to calm the winter that never subsides inside me.

I need to know that my food was loved for hours. Left to simmer in the pot with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and bay leaves. I need to know that the meat in my food has resigned all its make-believe toughness, left to melt and tenderize until it falls off the bone.

I need to have it with a side of rice, and of course, every time I do, I am reminded that I am not home. I always get the water to rice ratio wrong. My rice is sticky, clumpy, either overcooked into a mush or undercooked into an unintentional ‘al dente’. Coarse at the center. Not soft and held together.

I need to cook a hot stew with rice because the day has been cruel and unforgiving. I need to cook hot stew and rice so I have a reason to call my mother.

So I can ask her to share specific instructions again.
So I can taste the flavors of her crackling and aging voice over the telephone…
So I can say, mama, remember how you spoon-fed me that bean and meat stew when I was a child?

Remember how I always wanted more of you?
Remember when life was not ladened with extra salt?
Remember?

I need to eat bean and meat stew with rice, so I can forget.