Amid Grief Over Gaza, Palestinian Americans Are Seeking Comfort in Molokhia

Manal Farhan lost her appetite. It was November of 2023, more than a month since the October 7 attack by Hamas in Israel, killing 1,139 civilians and members of the Israeli military and taking more than 200 hostages. The violence that day sparked an Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip that had already killed more than 14,000 Gazans (the toll has climbed astronomically since), flattening buildings, and creating a dire humanitarian crisis. Farhan, a Palestinian American in the throes of intense grief, hand-stitched a Palestinian flag and hung it outside her home in Logan Square. Then, she says she received a call from the management company representing landlord Mark Fishman telling her to remove it — if she didn’t, she’d be evicted. “I said ‘I’m Palestinian and there’s a genocide.’ They said, ‘You have to remain neutral,’” Farhan recounts.

Between anxiety about the eviction and the horror of witnessing Palestinians slaughtered and dismembered by bombs daily on social media, Farhan struggled to eat. “When you’re carrying that level of stress, your body stops responding to hunger. Hunger becomes a secondary concern,” she says. But hunger would often return when her mother Karima would make molokhia (ملوخية), a leafy stew with roots in Egypt that today represents a unifying dish across the Arab world. Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” The leaves, also called jute mallow, spread from Egypt across the Arab world with migration and trade. It’s seasoned simply with salt, garlic, and lemon, boiled in chicken broth, and often served with chicken or lamb.

In times of turmoil, we turn to the dishes that make us feel safe, and more and more these days, people in Chicago — home to one of the nation’s largest and oldest Palestinian immigrant communities — are seeking solace in a bowl of molokhia. As one count estimates at least 186,000 Palestinians may have been killed by Israeli forces — according to a letter published by researchers in the British medical journal the Lancet — Arab Americans are searching for comfort and solidarity by any means. In that climate, the dish is taking on a new political significance for many Arabs introduced to it for the first time. Almost every weekend, organizations like the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and Students for Justice in Palestine organize large protests downtown. On Thursday, August 22, groups assembled outside the United Center to protest the exclusion of a Palestinian American speaker at the DNC. Autonomous groups blockade streets in Wicker Park, protest weapons manufacturers like Boeing in the Loop, and even dyed Buckingham Fountain blood-red, spray-painting “Gaza is bleeding.” And now, as the Democratic National Convention descends upon Chicago, protestors march and disrupt politicians’ speeches, condemning them for funding Israel’s army. To ignore the political reality of the people who love this dish, then, would be to tell an incomplete story of molokhia’s place in Chicago.

“I don’t know a Palestinian who doesn’t love molokhia,” Farhan says as we eat and discuss her case at the Palestinian-owned Salam Restaurant in Albany Park. The same Palestinian flag Farhan made in November remains hanging outside her home as she continues to fight what she contends is an unlawful eviction. (The landlord argues that a lease agreement bans any article from being displayed out of a window.) Palestinian Chicagoans and allies have protested the eviction, boycotting the Logan Theater, which Fishman owns. Being evicted here in Chicago for “expressing love and pride” for her heritage, as her federal lawsuit against Fishman states, is ironic for Farhan. Her maternal grandmother’s home in occupied Palestine is now inhabited by Israeli settlers. (Farhan’s lawsuit, which argued neutrality was never the objective — other tenants could fly Christmas and Hanukkah decorations out their windows, according to Farhan’s lawsuit — was dismissed in March and Farhan awaits an appeal.)

Alongside graphic photos of corpses and rubble, I see displaced Palestinians making molokhia in Gaza on social media. “Mloukhieh is one of the most popular dishes loved and made by Gazans. Usually, it is made with chicken or chicken broth, but since no protein source is currently available, we are making it with processed chicken broth. As usual made with love, amidst the war,” Renad, a 10-year-old content creator from Gaza, writes in a caption. The lack of chicken is glaring; meat being nearly impossible to find or buy due to Israeli blockades of food, hygiene products, and medicine. Many, especially in North Gaza, have died of starvation. Still, the dish seems to retain its celebratory and comforting meaning, even in the depths of hell. “Palestinian food is one of the foundational aspects of socialization in our culture … regardless of the fact that [the refugees] were displaced and dispossessed,” says Lubnah Shomali, the advocacy director of Badil, a human rights organization for Palestinian refugees.

Lubnah, a Palestinian Christian, was raised in the Chicago suburbs before moving her family, including her daughter, my friend Rachel, to the West Bank to connect with their culture, even though life was harder under occupation. Lubnah says refugees often pick up different methods of making molokhia from each other, the same debates I hear in Chicago melded. “Within the refugee camps, there persists this need to host, invite people, and make meals,” Lubnah says.

For Mizrahi Jews, Jewish people of Middle Eastern descent, molokhia is part of their memory too, even though the Nakba severed these ties. Hisham Khalifeh, owner of Middle East Bakery in Andersonville, recalls meeting an 80-year-old Mizrahi Jewish man there in Chicago. “He still had his Palestinian ID in his pocket,” Khalifeh says. The man wanted to talk about the food he’d loved in Palestine and all that had changed since he was cleaved from his Muslim and Christian neighbors by Israel’s formation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. Khalifeh says the man told him in Arabic, their shared ancestral language, “Naaood lal tareekh.” Let us go back to history.

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“White people love tacos [and] enchiladas… but I remember being a kid, eating molokhia at school and everybody being like, ‘Ew, this is slimy green stew,’” recalls Iman, a Mexican Palestinian Chicagoan. Iman agrees molokhia is a core part of Chicago but is doubtful others will see it that way — which she doesn’t mind. “It’s one of those things I feel is so loved but hasn’t been claimed or taken over by white culture yet.”

The first Palestinians arrived in Chicago in the 1800s, long before the modern Israeli state was established, according to Loren Lybarger, a professor at Ohio University and author of Palestine in Chicago: Identity in Exile. He recalls eating molokhia frequently at the homes of Palestinian community leaders in Chicago during his research.

Molokhia, the national dish of Egypt, is ancient. The pre-Arabized roots of its name means “for the royals” or “for the gods.” A 13th-century Syrian cookbook lists four different versions; one that calls for charred onions ground into paste and another with meatballs. It’s a food that’s inspired myth and religious fervor, as it’s said that the soup nursed 10th-century Egyptian ruler Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah back to health — hence the name. (It’s also sometimes called Jew’s mallow, referring to a claim that Jewish rabbis were the first to discover and cultivate it.) The Druze, an ethno-religious group in West Asia, believed and still believe the caliph was God. So many Druze do not eat molokhia even now, obeying his command. For most people, though, molokhia is no longer solely for kings or gods anymore. But making it can be an affair fit for royalty.

Cooked molokhia leaves have a “viscous quality, similar to nopales in Mexican cuisine,” Lebanese chef Sabrina Beydoun says. Molokhia is comfort food, something teeming and right in the deep greens, the grassy and earthy smell. “My mom would prepare it with a lot of pride,” she says. “As I’ve gotten older, I look back on [it] with fondness and nostalgia.”

And everyone has a different way they like their molokhia — the variations and debates are practically part of the experience. “Everyone does it their way, and everyone is convinced their way is better,” Beydoun says, laughing.

My friend Rachel, a former player on Palestine’s national basketball team, prefers molokhia leaves whole (Beydoun says this is common amongst Lebanese people), while my other Palestinian friend Rayean grew up with ground leaves. Farhan’s mother Karima’s special ingredient is a bit of citric acid.

At Cairo Kebab, the city’s only Egyptian restaurant, molokhia became the second-most requested dish among its Arab diners since the spot began serving it daily in 2023 off Chicago’s fabled Maxwell Street in University Village, according to co-owner Mohammed Saleh. “Home foods ground us and make us into who we are,” he says. Molokhia is arguably part of a larger shift, where restaurants owned by marginalized ethnic groups are increasingly serving dishes once relegated to the home, due to both wider awareness through media, desire for the dishes among immigrant communities longing for familiar foods, and chefs feeling empowered to explore their identities in a deeper way.

“A lot of our customers who are Palestinian or Jordanian will ask for a bunch of lemon, or will ask for us to not cook it with garlic,” says Mohammed.

Ahmed, the owner and head chef of Cairo Kebab and Mohammed’s father, adds that unless they’ve had molokhia before, “Americans eat it however we serve it.”

Ahmed makes the restaurant’s version with lots of garlic in sizzling butter, while Raeyan’s family goes light on garlic. I love the chicken with crispy, roasted skin, and frequently alternate between spooning the molokhia onto the rice and chicken, and spooning rice and chicken into the molokhia. Some like it skinless and boiled. Most of my friends eat it with rice; Ahmed says many prefer sopping it up with bread, and some eat it plain like soup, with a spoon or light sips from the bowl. Usually, it’s served with squeeze after squeeze of fresh lemon.

Khalifeh has fond memories of molokhia with quail. Ahmed says in Egypt’s second-largest city, the port town of Alexandria, it’s often made with shrimp, and some use rabbit. In Tunisia, the molokhia is dried and ground into a powder, resulting in a silky, nearly black-colored stew with lamb. Sudanese people, because of their shared history with Egypt, also love molokhia. It’s spelled molokhia, mlokheya, molokhia… The differences are endless and dizzying.

“When I was a kid in Egypt, molokhia wasn’t just a food, it was an event,” Eman Abdelhadi, an Egyptian Palestinian writer and sociology professor at the University of Chicago, wrote in an email. “A whole day would be spent in the arduous processes of washing, drying, and cutting it. It was something we all looked forward to.” Ahmed says that during Ramadan iftars, a time of gathering after fasting all day in the Muslim holy month, many customers request at least two plates of molokhia when breaking fast.

For Arab Chicagoans who didn’t grow up with molokhia, Chicago is often the place they first tried it. “We don’t have molokhia in Morocco. But I heard of it because we used to watch old [Egyptian] movies,” says Imane Abekhane, an employee at Cairo Kebab. “Then I came to Chicago, tried the Egyptian molokhia, and I loved that.”

When I first started investigating molokhia for this piece, so many of my Arab friends told me Cairo Kebab’s was the best place to try it in Chicago — a bowl made me understand why. Tender roasted chicken, bright green molokhia balanced with just enough garlic and salt, vermicelli noodles in the rice, and a side of homemade tomato-based hot sauce with chile flakes, chile pepper, and black pepper — all delicious. Ahmed made the molokhia at my table the way it’s sometimes made in Egypt, with flair and performance, a gloopy river of green cascading from one saucepan into another before pooling in my bowl. Mohammed notes that he’s seen more Palestinians and Arabs come into Cairo Kebab for home dishes like molokhia since the devastation began in Palestine last year.

Even if everyone cannot agree on how to make it, everyone I spoke to agrees that molokhia is an Egyptian dish. But because of the large population of Palestinians in Chicago, many’s first meeting with molokhia — including mine — is at a Palestinian friend’s home, or at Palestinian-owned grocers like Middle East Bakery, where Khalifeh says non-Arabs often come in after seeing it online as part of a growing advocacy for Palestinian cuisine and the Palestinian cause — their resistance against Israeli occupation. That gives the dish a certain political significance.

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When we made molokhia, Rachel used dried leaves her grandmother brought her from Palestine, an experience Mohammed Saleh says is common. “When we go to Egypt, my parents are always gonna bring back at least one suitcase full of dry pre-packaged goods, including molokhia,” he says.

Frozen and dried leaves are also readily available in Chicago, at Middle East Bakery, Sahar’s International Market, or Feyrous Pastries and Groceries in Albany Park. Both Raeyan and Rachel insist that dried — which produces a darker color than frozen — is better. Ahmed says dried has its merits, but frozen leaves preserve molokhia in its original state more effectively, the process of drying giving it a different taste and color. “Frozen is as close to molokhia leaves harvested in Egypt by hand as you can get,” he says. Khalifeh, in contrast, is adamant that dried is always better, saying it has a flavor and texture that frozen can never achieve. One of his tactics is to put a little bit of frozen leaves into the dried, helping with color and consistency. But he and Ahmed both say that not everyone can make dried molokhia correctly.

And perhaps something is lost in the modernity of freezing, something exchanged when sifting through the molokhia leaves is forgone. “My mom and aunts sit on the floor, removing stems and remnants of other harvest[s] like tobacco leaves,” Beydoun says. “It’s a communal practice. It is a poetic thing to witness.” In dried leaves, I see survival — a way to transport ancestral plants for scattered diasporas. Frozen molokhia must be shipped. But dried can be carried; it is not dependent on any company, just those who have a relationship with the plant.

Still, almost everyone agrees fresh leaves are best — if you can find them. Sahar’s has fresh molokhia leaves this summer, but “they go fast and we sometimes don’t know when they’ll come in,” a grocer told me over the phone. Hisham also directed me to Việt Hoa Plaza, where I found fresh leaves that the grocers there also said are rarely stocked due to the growing popularity of molokhia in East Asian cuisine. According to the Markaz Review, Japanese farmers started growing the plant after advertisements in the ’80s pushed molokhia with slogans like “the secret of longevity and the favorite vegetable of Cleopatra!”

“[It’s] very popular in Japanese grocery stores as well as Korean grocery stores,” says Kate Kim-Park, CEO of HIS Hospitality, adding that their version is slightly stickier. “The plant is called 아욱 (ah-ohk) in Korean,” she says.

Chef Sangtae Park of Omakase Yume in the West Loop has fond memories of cooking molokhia and eating it with friends and family. “I add it in traditional [Korean] miso soup or as side dishes [banchan] by blanching the leaves and sometimes mixing sesame oil, sugar, and Korean red pepper flakes,” Park says.

You can also grow them yourself. Iman decided to start planting molokhia and other plants used in Palestinian cuisine like wild thyme (sometimes called za’atar, though it is applied differently than the spice mix of the same name) this March. “I felt like it was an act of preservation and resistance when people are trying to erase Palestinians,” Iman says. Globally, Indigenous cultures stress the importance of seed-keeping, and Palestinians are no different. But planting molokhia was difficult in cold Chicago. “[Molokhia] prefers temperatures between 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) and 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) and well-drained, loamy soil rich in organic matter,” says Luay Ghafari, Palestinian gardener and founder of Urban Farm and Kitchen, adding that Chicagoans should start planting the seeds indoors under grow lights “four weeks before the last frost date,” transplanting them into the garden when the chance of frost is over and the soil has warmed.

“It would get really hot and then it would get really cold again, so I was constantly running them in and out of the apartment when they were little seedlings,” Iman says. Now, the molokhia plants are healthy and mature, nothing like the yield Iman sees from Palestinian fields, but something she’s proud of. Ghafari says molokhia is an annual that can grow several feet tall in optimal conditions. “During harvest season, you often find it sold in large bales because it takes a large quantity of leaves to yield enough quantities for consumption.” But home plants in Chicago like Iman’s don’t yield enough leaves for much besides smaller pots of stew. Iman’s Mexican mother tends to the plants at their family home near the suburbs. “It’s our bonding thing,” Iman says.

Raeyan’s mother Nancy Roberts, an Arabic translator, typed up Raeyan’s grandmother’s molokhia recipe — the recipe we cooked from — that was passed down through generations. This, too, is a kind of sacred seed-keeping.

“I plan to pass [recipes] to my children until liberation,” Abdelhadi says. “Mahmoud Darwish said the occupiers fear memories, and Palestinians have made memory a national pastime.”

After running around in the summer heat of Chicago in search of stories about this plant, what were my memories of molokhia? They weren’t Rachel’s, Raeyan’s, Iman’s, or Laith’s — memories of childhood, family, heritage. But I was building a relationship with molokhia.

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A colleague once said, “Palestine lines my mind.” I never forgot it because it so aptly described these past 10 months for me. Now, somehow, molokhia had settled there too, becoming part of my memory of this brutal time, intertwining with Palestine, with Gaza. “It was very bad today,” Hisham says quietly when I mentioned Gaza during our interview, referring to the Israeli airstrike that day in al-Mawassi, a designated “safe zone,” that killed over 100 people in a matter of minutes, most of them children. In every interview I did for this article, the genocide either kept coming up or the tension was thick as it was talked around. So how could writing about molokhia ever just be about food? How could researching, eating, and making molokhia not make Palestine fill my mind, and enter my dreams?

One night I dreamt that Rachel, Raeyan, and I were bustling around my kitchen making molokhia, me sifting the leaves with henna-stained hands, Raeyan stirring by the stove, Rachel chopping garlic. My friend Omar was in the kitchen too, watching. It was almost an exact replica of how we had looked when we cooked it.

Except Omar doesn’t live in Chicago. He is in Gaza.

The day of the dream, Omar told me the bombing was heavy; he might not live through the night. “I hope you live. May Allah protect you,” I messaged back. The next sunrise, I got a reply. Alhamdulillah. Thank God. Omar was still alive. For months, this has been the cadence of our messages. I may not live through this night. I hope you live. May Allah protect you. Alhamdulillah.

There was a night when, after we all saw yet another horrific image of a Palestinian person’s body mutilated by Israeli attacks and U.S. weapons, it was suggested, I forget by whom, that we go to Lake Michigan and scream. When we got there, we were silent for a long time. It wasn’t embarrassment, but the fear that God had stopped listening to our screams. What evidence did we have otherwise? Then, almost in unison, we screamed, the sound carrying over the water. And I have to believe we were heard.

Naaood lal tareekh. Let us go back to history. Nataqadam lal horeya. Let us go forward into freedom.

Nylah Iqbal Muhammad is a James Beard-nominated travel, food, and entertainment writer with bylines in New York Magazine, Travel + Leisure, and Vogue. You can follow her on Instagram, Substack, and Twitter/X.