I was a little hungry in the airport at 2 a.m., or rather, I was anxious about not getting hungry, I have a weird thing where I can get a little panicky if I don’t have food on me while traveling, relic of getting stuck on a runway for six hours in a storm once, without any food. V. distressing.
There were various hot fast food options, but I really wasn’t that hungry. Also, most of them had hard-core salespeople coming and harassing you to come eat there, when you’re just trying to walk by or sit in your seat and wait for your flight, and that tends to annoy me and make me not want to give them my business.
So I tried a very inexpensive sandwich from more of a stand-type place — it was…fine, but reminded me of mediocre British pub sandwiches I had when I visited there in the early 90s. America does better sandwiches as a default, I think.
It made me think about Preeta Samarasan‘s brilliant passage in _Evening is the Whole Day_, where limp British cucumber sandwiches are sadly consumed on the train, with delicious nasi lemak being denied to our poor child protagonist, the whole thing a sharp metaphor of colonialism…
But at least this sandwich was a little spicy. I like spending time in places where a little spicy is a default. I was visiting Kevin in Switzerland for a few weeks one summer, when he was doing a math institute thing there, and I was very glad I’d brought chili powder with me, because after a few weeks of admittedly delicious cheese and chocolate, I was DYING for some spice.
At various points during the trip, the lovely Pakistani folk would ask concernedly if I was okay with the spiciness of the food, and I admit, I would have to try not to laugh, because nothing I ate in Pakistan was actually what I’d call spicy.
Come to Sri Lanka, my Pakistani friends. We’re on the equator, the peppers grow hotter, we’re going to make tears stream down your cheeks… (Well, not in the tourist restaurants, but if you go eat at someone’s house, and tell them you like spicy…)
I did like the yogurt & herb potato chips, and brought some home for Kavi, who liked them too.
Lahore, Pakistan.
