My Bourak, My Self
My Bourak, My Self
Bourak have been an established part of writer Renee Eliah's cultural identity for as long as she can remember. After deciding to write about them, things got a bit more complicated.
Welcome to the Above the Fold! The below feature by Renee Eliah is excerpted from the 2024 print edition of Above the Fold. For a hard copy that you can revisit from your coffee table/backpack/bookshelf whenever the mood strikes—plus much more!—order Issue 1 today:
WILL THERE BE EGG ROLLS?
It’s a question I receive often from my Amrikaya friends after they’ve been invited to one of my big family functions. I know what they are referring to: the crunchy, hot, beefy show-stealing side dish that my mother will inevitably talk me into helping stuff and roll. The ever-so-careful pulling apart of the wrappers, separating each paper-thin sheet from the stack—the part I always dread the most. Slowly, slowly. They’ll tear. And not too many at a time—they’ll dry, she’ll say, adding the final dash of spice to the filling.
I was never as invested in the “egg rolls” as my friends were. The egg rolls, or bourak as we call them in my house, were always just there—something to be assembled and fried and given to a large group of people to keep them busy before the main courses or to keep them happy during them, eaten by their makers only when taste-testing the initial batch, scald-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot straight from the stock pot of oil. The test is pure ritual—it’s too late to make any modifications—but also necessary. There won’t be any left after the people come.
Will there be eggrolls? Yes.
They’re egg rolls, but they’re also not. And I’m not of Asian descent, though, continentally speaking, I am. I don’t classify as Arab, though White doesn’t quite say it, either. Middle Eastern? Mediterranean? I’ve used all these terms as shorthand for my heritage, and I’ve also shied away from them, as they’re still incomplete.
I’m Assyrian. Syrian? No, no. Assyrian, goes the script. What country is that? Sigh.
Throughout my entire life, I’ve had to explain what “Assyrian” means to other people, which—beyond being tedious for all parties involved—leaves little room for discourse beyond the fundamentals. Attention is a precious commodity in a highly globalized and unjust world. Every Assyrian knows it, and we also know the job of schooling is ours alone, so we’ve honed ours to a punchy 60-second elevator pitch for anyone who will listen.
Mine goes something like this: Assyrians are an ethno-cultural indigenous community originating in the Mesopotamian region now occupied by Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. We speak Assyrian (Sureth, as we refer to it among ourselves), an Aramaic-based language with Akkadian influence that too few of us can read or write. Many Assyrians predominantly identify religiously as Christian and can trace their churches back to the first few centuries of Christianity.
And while we’re mostly mentioned in historical texts in reference to the ancient
Assyrian Empire, we have held on for centuries through invasions, massacres, and attempts to destroy our art, language, and places of worship. Assyrian customs have survived the journey to the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe. There’s a homeland trip now to our most important ancestral sites (in and around the Nineveh Plains region of Iraq), language classes for the younger generations, and annual conventions.
My mother was born in Amedi, Iraq, the youngest of six. Her parents died before she reached the age of 10, and her grandmother and older siblings took over the duties of raising her. She first learned how to make bourak from one of her sisters-in-law, who learned from her mother, and her mother before her, somewhere near Mosul. Likely around the same time, in another part of Iraq called Habbaniyah, my paternal grandmother was teaching her daughters—my aunts—the way she learned to make bourak in Northern Iran. Every Assyrian I have ever met has inherited bourak in a similar way.
Assyrians have long been in a state of diaspora, most notably during the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century when they were killed or forcibly displaced en masse during the genocide usually referred to as the Armenian Genocide—Assyrians know it, simply, as Seyfo. There would be another in 1933: the Simele Massacre, perpetrated by the Iraqi army alongside certain Kurdish and Arab tribesmen. My parents left Iraq in the early ’70s, when it became clear that rising nationalist sentiment would mean deeper marginalization of Assyrians. There was another wave in the ’90s during the Gulf War, and most recently during the ISIS reign of terror, when terrorists spray-painted markers1 on every Assyrian home, meant to grant militia members license to tax and torment the families who lived there.
When Assyrians meet other Assyrians, we ask “what is your tribe or clan?” My mother is “Tyareta,” indicating her ancestors are from a region once known as Tyari, which spanned the Hakkari region of Turkey and the mountains of northern Iraq. My father’s tribe is Urmigenayeh, which means his ancestors originate from Urmia, Iran.
For a long time, I was content with having a robust family history, proudly sharing Assyrian bona fides like we’re cool because we used tahini in everything before it was a thing, our language is so old and obscure it’s not even on Duolingo, or our weddings feature spirited line dancing accompanied by bedazzled sabers and loudly shrieking aunts!
I felt secure in my Assyrian knowledge, in fact, until Leah and I began digging into the origins of Assyrian bourak for this article. I had always framed bourak as inherently Assyrian, and one of the defining dishes of the diaspora—but the research told a different story.
Was I wrong? Or were they? And why did I feel left out?
Börek. Burek. Bourekas. Boreg. Boreki. Buğatsa. There are as many spellings as there are varieties of what I know as bourak devoured throughout the Levant and Mediterranean, everywhere from Turkey to Algeria, Israel, Greece, Albania, and more. Some are filled with cheese, some potato, some fish, some spiced meat. Some are layered like baklava and baked; some are wound into tight coils; some (like the ones I know) are rolled into cigars and fried.
Historians debate over an exact point of origin for this group of dishes. Careful not to be too assertive, their educated guesses point to Turkic nomads, the Medieval Arabic sanbousaj, or layered ancient Roman placinta as potential starting points. Most real estate on the topic is devoted to the Turkish variety, as the dish was widely popularized during the Ottoman Empire using yufka, a flaky, ultra-thin Turkish dough akin to phyllo.
In all of our obsessive link-sharing and research, Leah and I found barely anything that explained the connection of all of the above to my bourak, a dish made by every Assyrian and their grandmother (that I’ve met, at least). There’s a fleeting Wikipedia mention, recipe blogs written by those in the Assyrian diaspora, and an academic paper published via Charles University in the Czech Republic2 linking ancient Assyrian bread-baking traditions to the creation of yufka. (Many, many more academic papers exist on the topic, to be clear—yet none mention Assyrian culture at all.)
There is, however, plenty of evidence of culinary traditions that originated during the Assyrian Empire. The oldest known cookbook was written in cuneiform on clay tablets, known in academic circles as the Yale Tablets. Its authors were the ancient Mesopotamians, and they introduced dishes like gubibate (one of the world’s oldest dumplings and the predecessor for kibbeh, a dish consumed in a variety of Middle Eastern cuisines today). There’s also evidence that baklava and lavash date back to Assyrian Empire times. “There is some likelihood that this venerable cuisine may have inspired, from an early time, a whole tradition, whose long course, difficult or impossible to follow at first, has merged into the vast
‘Arabo-Turkish’ culinary complex that still delights us,” wrote the French Assyriologist Jean Bottéro in a book3 that aimed to translate the tablets
in the mid-’90s.
As for how those traditions were preserved and credited in the ensuing millennia, well, that’s a whole different story (or lack thereof). In addition to experiencing forced displacement and genocide over the centuries, modern-day Assyrians also struggle to get broad acknowledgement of not only their connection to the ancient Assyrians, but also of their modern culture existing at all. There have been projects that aim to recreate the dishes from the tablets—Assyrian Kitchen in Chicago, for example, and the forthcoming ambitious cookbook Table of Gods, by Swedish-Assyrian writer and researcher Arim Hawsho—but their works haven’t broken through to large audiences (yet, at least).
“Unfortunately, as Assyrians are not an accepted entity—meaning that they neither occupy physical land nor literary nor media nor political space, nor are they or their language recognized officially in most countries around the world—some Assyrians defer to their country of origin as a point of recognition,” says Sargon Donabed, a friend and professor at Roger Williams University who specializes in Assyrian studies and Near and Middle East history and culture.4 “Most people may not understand this, but when surrounded by many competing identities where the one you espouse is neither respected nor accepted, in many cases you begin to simply try to fit in.”
The cost of this assimilation can be the erosion of a dish’s origin story, as subcultures are lost or appropriated by the dominant culture over time5. “Today, what the Assyrians cook and what Iraqis cook is similar in many ways…there are similarities across the whole Middle East. Everybody has hummus, for example, even in Turkey. Do we mean Assyrian cuisine today? Or do we mean like 3,000 years ago?” says Arim Hawsho, whose book delves into how much cuisine varied from city to city and century to century throughout the expanse and duration of the Assyrian Empire. “My mother has made bourak since I was a child, but I’ve never thought about it as super Assyrian, because I’ve seen it in so many different
cuisines as well.”
There are also, according to Sargon, semantic challenges. Up until somewhat recently, Assyrians were referred to as “Syriac” or “Syrian,” referring to their identification with the Syriac Orthodox Church, and we still often get confused for Syrians as the name is so philologically similar.
Etymologically, there are slightly varying accounts as to the origin of the word borek, though many cite the Turkic verb burmek, which means to “roll” or “twist.” Sargon offers up another possibility: the root “brk” in the Assyrian language, which means to bend or to fold. Sargon suggests it is possible that the act of folding, in this case the folding of a bourak, is similar to the act of kneeling, of folding one’s body, and perhaps there was no term in ancient Assyria to distinguish folding food and folding one’s body into a kneeling position.
“Could not many of these words or foods or practices be linked to Assyria and Mesopotamia? Why not? [Assyrian culture] is older than most of the cultures in the region, if not all, and also influences most cultures in the region,” he says. This information may not have been documented and shared via the Western establishment in the past. But that doesn’t mean it might not be true. “People who have the most influence get to write and rewrite the narrative,” Sargon says. “Something so small as bourak has the power to remind the world of a living culture, a community that has and continues to contribute to the larger world.”
My mother, now retired, worked as a nurse for the Department of Public Health in Chicago for 20 years, when the city operated public clinics that provided healthcare for refugees and underinsured residents and served as community mainstays (they’ve since been privatized). She worked with other nurses, doctors, social workers, and translators, many of whom were immigrants themselves from India, Korea, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Vietnam, China, Iran, Poland, Mexico, and Guatemala—to name a handful.
They all ate lunch together in a room with plastic chairs, round tables, and pink, seafoam-green, and beige wallpaper designed to look like a seascape. I remember it well, because that’s where I’d sit, waiting my turn to be immunized for school. Here, my mother and her co-workers would have potluck lunches, the contents of their Tupperware doubling as cultural conversation-starters. My mother learned about lumpia and spring rolls—and where to find the Asian markets to buy the wrappers that would streamline the Assyrian family meals she cooked in her limited free time.
Instead of making dough from scratch or spending extra time carefully peeling layer after layer of phyllo, she began experimenting with spring roll wrappers (and to this day is extremely loyal to the Spring Home TYJ brand) to make her bourak. She loved what she tried from the different cuisines at work, and she wanted to maintain some of bourak’s traditional components. So she used the traditional ground beef (sometimes lamb), onions, and curry spices (allspice and bharat to be exact), but added shredded carrots and cabbage, inspired by lumpia. Thus a hybrid recipe—and the version of bourak that I grew up with—was born.
I recently typed the recipe into my iPhone notes during a bourak cooking session, struggling to keep up as my mother rattled off ingredients in their correct proportions. Every time I document her recipes in this way, especially if I ask her to slow down, she reminds me that she has never written a single Assyrian recipe down, because in her day, we paid attention. She’ll then tell me stories about the ways in which her grandmother cooked in her village, or “mathwata,” which entailed baking lavash in a clay tannura, making cheese in clay pots and burying them underground, and slow-cooking rice and beef inside sheep intestines.
I read some of my investigative research notes to my mother and asked if she thought Assyrians created bourak. She answered with such a dismissive who cares? in her accented English that it startled me into laughing. This woman, along with my father, took pains to raise her children to revere and remember their Assyrian heritage. But I got her point.
My parents grew up in a constant cultural exchange with Iraqi Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, and British expats. We borrow several Arabic words in the vernacular, and to this day, Assyrians gift British Mackintosh’s Quality Street chocolates. I also recognize that my mother’s attitude may be shared among other immigrant cultures—she and my father have always been concerned with the wellbeing of family and community members, and the larger culture served as a symbol for the community. “Who cares,” then, if people here don’t know what Assyrian is, as long as the Assyrians can be Assyrians and prosper? On one hand, my parents happily assimilated to American culture, and on the other, they never lost their sense of origin—they have memories of their homelands and harrowing refugee experiences. By all accounts, they were satisfied with the outcome: What more could they have wanted? For me and many other Assyrian-Americans, our community is theoretically more connected than ever before via social networking. The entire culture, in a sense, has been packaged and passed down to us as its keepers while largely sparing us the pain from our history. In working tirelessly to preserve Assyrian language and traditions, older generations have paved the path for young Assyrians to tell our story through food, art, and education. So maybe it’s as simple as this: quibbling about credit and ownership isn’t really the point, when it’s the acknowledgement of our existence, our active contributions to and participation in the cultural exchange, that we’re really after.
My mother may not care about the origin of bourak, but I’m sure she'd be thrilled to know that there are people out there interested in its continuity. She's generously offered to share her recipe, now that I’ve finally written it down. Adapt it as you see fit with your own pantry, or with the ingredients that are part of your own cultural tradition. I just ask that when you pass it along or share it, the Assyrian connection remains part of your story.
Renee Eliah co-founded the restaurant Saus in Boston and Somerville with two friends (Chin Kuo and Tanya Walker). She's a hospitality entrepreneur by day and a real estate broker, also by day, and is based in Chicago.
INGREDIENTS
1 pkg spring roll wrappers
(medium-sized TYJ Spring Home brand preferred)1 lb. ground beef (can substitute ground Impossible Beef)
3 leaves green cabbage, finely chopped
1 med carrot, grated
1 large onion, chopped
2 tbsp. chopped, de-stemmed parsley (optional)
1 tsp. Baharat spice blend (if you don’t have any, combine 1/4 tsp. paprika, ½ tsp. allspice, 1/4 tsp. curry powder, and a dash of nutmeg)
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper
Vegetable oil (one with a high smoke point, like canola)
Cornstarch-water slurry
STEPS
❶ Saute ground beef until finely crumbled. Drain the oil! Set aside and let cool.
❷ Add chopped onion, parsley, cabbage, carrots to the cooked beef and mix.
❸ Add spices, salt, and pepper and blend well. Taste the filling mixture and adjust as necessary.
❹ Using a large cutting board or work surface, carefully peel the wrappers one at a time and place flat on the surface, point facing down. Place a heaping
tablespoon of the filling in the low-
middle part of your wrapper, and distribute the filling into a horizontal stripe, leaving some room on each side to tuck your side corners in.
❺ Fold the bottom corner up and over the filling and roll, tucking the sides underneath like a cigar. Wrap as tightly as you can without tearing the wrapper (it's a delicate balance!). To seal, dab your finger into the slurry and use to adhere the top corner to the bourak.
❻ As you work, arrange bourak in rows so that they don’t stick together. If you're not planning to fry immediately, you can freeze assembled bourak at this stage in a single layer and then transfer to a freezer-safe bag.
❼ Pour a couple of inches of oil into a pot (my mother prefers a smaller size for more even oil distribution), and fry until golden brown on all sides (a couple of minutes; slightly longer from frozen). Cool slightly before serving, but eat while they're hot!.
The Arabic letter “N” (for “Nasrani” in Arabic or “Nazarene”)
Mesopotamian Culinary Texts, quote sourced via Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and History of the Iraqi Cuisine by Nawal Nasrallah
Sargon is a Professor of History and Cultural Studies, and the author of Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the 20th Century
The former Assyrian region of Ennueh translates to “eye source of the fish;” today, part of Kurdistan in Iraq, it's now currently known as Kani-masi, the Kurdish term for “eye source of the fish.”