Thirty Years in a Ziploc Bag

In the early 70’s, I sat on the shelves in a tiny kitchen in Karachi, watching a young girl hesitantly scribble Urdu poetry in her notebook, only to be followed by the sound of the paper being ripped to shreds.

As her mother kept refilling my stainless steel masala daba, the girl’s hands grew - fingers longer, reach more certain. One day, a man I didn’t recognize walked through the front doors. Forty-eight hours later, the earthy perfume of mehndi filled the air. She traded stains from my turmeric for patterns that were a reminder that she was about to start a new life across the world.

The day of her flight, she rushed into the kitchen, gasping between breaths. Her eyes darted back and forth across the shelves, until her gaze finally rested on me.

She carefully popped open the metal lid meant to protect me from the unforgiving heat and began to scoop out my brightly colored piles into a plastic bag - red chili for its signature heat, and cardamom as a floral postcard of home.

Her mother appeared behind her. Eyebrows knitted together, she asked her what she was doing.

I’m going to be so far from you. How will I make your aloo gosht tarkari?

She disappeared in her mother’s arms, her face hot and wet against her shoulder. The next moment, I was tucked into a dark corner of her purse, and crossed the ocean for the first time.

In the heart of Kentucky, I was transferred from that plastic bag to an old pasta jar. The young woman’s face would scrunch up as she spoke on the phone with her mother, a thousand miles away, trying to make sense of adding a little bit of this and a healthy scoop of that.

Why weren’t there any clear measurements for the recipes from her childhood?

The kitchen became an experimental lab. As I sat in random heaps on the counter, I’d sometimes see a tiny smile, but most of the times, coughs would echo off the walls and salty droplets would fall on me. Before I knew it, two little ones were running around, and I was left to catch dust on her shelves.

Over the years, a suffocating cloud of powdered sugar would overtake the kitchen - the young mother had started her own bakery from scratch. As the amount of wedding cakes she baked grew, so did her daughters. When they made different cities their new homes, I’d hear the mother softly sigh as she pulled out a smaller pot than usual to make dinner.

One afternoon, home much earlier than usual, the mother sat quietly at the dinner table. After two non-stop decades, she was forced to shut her bakery doors. A terrible pandemic had swept through the world.

She wasn’t still for long. Quiet evenings were replaced with the thud of a knife on a cutting board, and the crackling of oil on the stovetop. The ancient yellow from across the ocean stained the fresh carrots from the farmer’s market down the street - in that pan, her two halves began to fuse into one another.

I’d overhear phone calls with her daughters, longing for a way to close the distance between them.

Soon after, the glow of a ring light would reflect off the repurposed tea bottles I was in. The mother’s soft Urdu would fill the kitchen as she sprinkled parts of me on dishes that would be shared not only with her daughters, but an entire online community. The young girl writing poetry in the shadows had found her voice, and now she was helping others find theirs too.

One morning, while the sunlight was beginning to seep through the window, the mother stood over the stove. She began to compose - a dash more cinnamon, a little less cumin. She guarded the pan, her attention never wavering as the heat made me bloom.

The mother funneled me in a plastic bag, and I felt the scratch of a Sharpie on my side - for Zahabiya. Hours of icy darkness and muffled engine roars later, I crossed the ocean in reverse. When light finally hit me again, I was in the hands of her daughter, surrounded by the crisp dunes of the Sahara Desert.

She was older now, more confident. Yet when she peeled open the bag and my scent wafted through the air, she stood still for the first time in months.

Her friend from Italy entered the tent, and the aroma made her head tilt to the side - Where did you get that from?

I was then sprinkled on whatever they could find - boiled eggs, carrots, and quinoa. With each bite, the daughter’s shoulders relaxed an inch lower.

From nihari in the Italian countryside to dal in a wellness cafe in England, I became the only thing in her backpack that didn’t need a translation.

When the mother asked her to help share her story, the daughter immediately booked the next flight home. Overnight, I was back where everything started: the California suburbs.

I was poured into a dozen different bottles and tested against every shade of paper. I was renamed a dozen times until the father spoke one word that made the noise finally stop: Sola.

The Urdu number for sixteen, for the sixteen spices the mother had chosen for our story.

Today, I sit on a table in their backyard, overlooking the rolling hills in the distance. The mother carefully pours each part of me into the bottle they selected, wrapped in the crisp, ruby-red paper of a new label. The daughter adjusts her lens, waiting for the setting sun to ignite my layers.

Chapter One is bottled. It’s time to see where I travel next.

Read the story on our Substack here.