The Smell of Saffron

I grew up in a tiny part of Western China no one’s ever heard of. I can easily survive without your idea of “Chinese” food – stir fry chickens, any sort of rice, dim sum, or seafood that your idea of “Chinese people” supposedly cannot live without, that most Jews in New York City probably cannot live without. 

But everything I ever loved eating growing up in Western China involved lamb – spicy noodles with lamb in a popular spot just down the street from my dad’s work, lamb intestine for breakfast with my mom, lamb dumplings when the get together gets large, stewed baby lamb prepared by grandfather on my birthday, lamb in clear broth with winter melon when grandmother wanted us to get healthier, lamb kabob every time when go to the night market, and lamb stuffed in naan I always buy with my cousin after school behind our grandmother’s back. There were just too many culturally vibrant cuisine dishes that existed no where else in this world but in this tiny autonomous region. 

I once read an article on Valerie Jarrett about her experiences growing up in Iran. When she says ”If I walk into a house and I smell saffron, I’m happy,” I instantly knew what she was talking about. That is because the Persians where the ones who traveled two thousand years ago via the Silk Road to eventually settle in that tiny region within Western China where my parents were born and raised, and where I was born and raised. I often wonder if I were to visit Iran one day, would it oddly feel kind of like home? 

Memories triggered by the senses can cause powerful emotions. For me, it was not just the smell of saffron, but also the sight of slaughtered lambs being cleaned and dried on wooden racks, the arabic phrases and the symbolic moon outside of every restaurant, and the presence of elderly Muslim men with their white hats and long beard that instantly put me at ease. It was days of not seeing the rain, sand blowing with the wind, the brightest sun and bluest skies, that somehow puts me in a better mood. 

I will forever connect those sights, sounds, and smells to a world that I deemed completely nostalgic, reassuring, and fortunate to have lived within. A world that has pretty much ceased to exist today as China develops and assimilates into the 21st century. But that would be another long post on my witness to change on a city I have repeatedly returned to since my first departure more than 13 years ago. 

The trick any immigrant (or kid from a divorced family, girl dumped by a boyfriend, or anyone who went through trauma for that matter…) should keep in mind is to not dramatize the past and over-glorify the motherland like it was some kind of perfect Heaven – as much as I miss my childhood city, I know full well that had I lived and grew up there, the childhood city still stays in the past and this present city that embodies that space today is something totally different. While I changed thousands of miles away, so did my city. So, it would be foolish for me to claim that life would be easier had I staid in my city of perfectly sweet memories.

For now, I’ll settle with the smell of saffron.