“This isn’t our shawarma, but that’s how it has to be” Syria’s cuisine and sensorial memory in a Florianópolis’ Arab restaurant

Abstract

The article presented here consists in part of the reflection developed in my Master’s thesis “’Entre nós já existe pão e sal’: Memória e técnica em restaurantes árabes da cidade de Florianópolis”. Based in the field work I did in an Arab restaurant located in the capital city of the Santa Catarina state, Florianópolis, I reflect on the ways by which the relation that my host, an immigrant displaced by the Syrian conflict and now owner and cook in an Arab restaurant due to this migratory process, has with the cuisine of his homeland and how the sensorial stimuli that come from the making and consumption of the typical dishes from his culture act to evoke and make present, in his day-to-day experience, his memories that precede the Syrian Civil War. The reflection is based on the concept of sensorial memory and analyzes, from an ethnographic standpoint, the subjectivation processes that are experienced by forcibly-displaced Arab immigrants and how my host’s relation with the smells and flavors that come from the typical dishes of his culture mediate and affect his relation with his homeland memories. Simultaneously, I assess whether these dishes also act as parts of the narrativization of those memories and of the relations he built with his clients and other subjects of the Florianopolis Islamic community.