The Kahi Abides
The Kahi Abides
Pastries in Kirkuk
Rain doesn’t fall often in Kirkuk. One might accordingly expect a torrential downpour to dissuade most from heading out early on a winter weekend morning. If there’s one dish that will compel a man to navigate cold, flooded streets before Friday prayers, however, it’s kahi, the pastry treat that is Kirkuk’s signature breakfast. At least, so Abdullah tells me in the taxi ride from Erbil.
We’re heading an hour south from the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region on a reporting trip to one of Iraq’s most contested cities. Situated geographically between the Zagros Mountains and the lowlands of Mesopotamia, the historic city of Kirkuk sits at the crossroads of many different cultures. Turkmen, Kurds, Arabs, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and other minorities all call the city of some million people home. Who was there first (and should rule today) is disputed. More recently, the stakes were raised with the discovery of oil under Kirkuk; vast reserves that promised riches but delivered conflict.
Until the summer of 2014, the federal government in Baghdad controlled Kirkuk, but when the Iraqi army fled ahead of an advance by Islamic State militants, the Kurds, many of whom had long claimed the city as their Jerusalem, sent in their peshmerga fighters. The Kurds defended Kirkuk from the extremists and retain control today.
The issue of who—or what—is authentically Kirkuki is therefore as sticky as a syrup-soaked pastry. It’s a question I’ve come to ask. But before we start working, Abdullah, our fixer, is adamant we eat kahi. And if you’re going to eat kahi, Snunu is the place to get it.
Five traffic officers blow their whistles shrilly outside the bakery. I assume they are attempting to thin the traffic jammed in the pot-holed street until Abdullah tells me they are renting out the limited parking spaces. Rain from the roof cascades in a waterfall over the entrance, and inside the tile floor is slick and the warm air heavy with the scent of rosewater syrup. In the back, a man works frantically to shuttle folded pastry in and out of a gas-fired oven before it burns. The crisp sheets are quickly sliced on trays by another man, who completes the dish by ladling over hot syrup and a dollop of geymer, a kind of heavy cream. Men queue at the counter to order takeout and more stand at benches around the walls, hunched over steaming plates, eating in silence.
Such is the renown of Snunu (which means swallow bird in Arabic) that in 2010, during the American occupation of Iraq, soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, would stop by on patrol to sample the breakfast that was said to be better than pancakes or waffles or even French toast sticks.
It’s the kind of dish that develops its own mythology. One tradition is for the mother of a new bride to bring kahi to the home of her new son-in-law the morning after the wedding.
Kahi is said to be a legacy of Iraq’s Jewish community, another minority which once called Kirkuk home. On the festival of Shavuot, when Jews commemorate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, Babylonian Jews would celebrate with kahi.
For hundreds of years, a community of some 200 Jewish families lived in Kirkuk’s citadel. Their population peaked some time in the 1940s, after Kirkuk became the center of Iraq’s petroleum industry. The 1947 census recorded 2,350 Jews in the city, but after the formation of the state of Israel increasingly persecuted Jews gradually left Iraq. By 1957, the census recorded just 123 Jews left in the city. Today there are none. Their synagogue and homes are rubble—like the rest of the citadel—and Kirkukis picnic among the ruins.
But the kahi abides. Although, like most things in Kirkuk, its origins are contested if not entirely lost to history. As Iraqi food historian Nawal Nasrallah points out, “It is a very popular pastry, and everybody—regardless of ethnicity or religion—has been eating it for centuries.”
Her research into medieval Arabic cookbooks reveals numerous recipes for pastries, flattened into sheets, folded, fried or baked, and drenched in syrup. In modern-day Egypt, the popular fateer is similar. “But it is true, kahi did have a special place in the lives and festivities of the Iraqi Jews,” says Nasrallah, who has authored books on Iraqi cuisine.
We eat our kahi and leave satisfied. Back in the street, the rain has stopped and the officers still run their parking racket. There are more pedestrians now and street vendors display plastic belts and cigarette lighters shaped like pistols. Abdullah stops to admire a tray of lethal-looking folding knives, but we’re late to our first meeting and I step out into traffic past the policemen, fueled by a winning combination of sweet carbohydrate and just enough grease.
I won’t find answers today to the big questions about Kirkuk. But everyone—whatever their background—will agree that kahi has a special place in the city.