ABOUT | Marwas Baltimore 1

AN OPEN LETTER ON MARWAS & I

I find my peace in the kitchen.

On days I drag my feet and scrunch my face, playfully throw balled up napkins at my coworkers now turned cousins. As I sit on crates in corners unseen, at the very top of the stairs, on top a cooler in the blazing heat or freezing cold. As I pause to stretch my ever aching body in the walk in, the basement, on the line, the sidewalk. As I spend hours laughing and creating and clowning and crying and cleaning fryers and dishes and fridges and floors and tables and sinks and and and talking and then not talking. Or as my now cousins call it, “when Safa goes inward”. That is where I find it. In the kitchens where I spend most of my time.

I find it in all the people I love. Sometimes in the people I dislike. Food carries me through my everyday and in moments of distress I let it drag me out of whatever doom I feel and into a place of creativity, mundane prep, pleasure.

There is a lot I could say about Marwas, how it began and all the things I have accomplished within it. For now, its only existence is through my everyday work and for that I am thankful. Detaching from Marwas, and focusing only on my imagination, artistry and dedicating myself to all avenues of knowledge, has in a way, saved me.

The story of Safa and Marwa, of perseverance and faith. I established Marwas very early into my culinary career and lost a lot of my passion along the way. Named for the other half of the story my name derives from, it makes sense that to hone my culinary path I had to pause Marwas for some time to reset and reconnect to food. From Baltimore, to Morocco, to Palestine. A blend of knowledge, endless creation, consuming love.

My mother, the original. The chef that raised me, french culinary trained, loyal, loving, catkoota.

My aunties, the real. The women who allow me to freak it in the kitchen, patient, affectionate, humorous, ghazal.

My cousins, both new and old, the ridiculous. The ones that answer all my questions, who give me all the sweetness in the world.

My siblings, the other parts of me. From Gaza, to Egypt, to New York, forever and ever, boundless.

Where would I be in my culinary career without them? I ask myself this a lot. I will be forever thankful to those that have taught me anything I know about food, and to those that continue to teach me.

For now, you can find me here, making blog posts, talking about all things food related and both the pretty and the (sometimes very) ugly realness of it all.