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In the pantry she found a jug of olive oil, several bulbs of garlic and onion, some ripe tomatoes, half a lemon, several dates, a big cabbage, some rice, jars of cardamom, tea, pepper, green wheat, sugar, turmeric, salt, nutmeg, fenugreek, dried mint, saffron, cinnamon, oregano, sumac, lentils, and powdered coffee. And behind all this, glowing and sweating, smooth and satiny, black as onyx and fat as a baby, she found an eggplant.
Aunt Camille held it up high in the air with both hands like a midwife holds the newly caught infant and announced, "The answer to our prayers!"
Thus ensued some scooping and scraping, some slicing and dicing, some stuffing and some baking. She found a few raisins here, a few pine nuts there, did some frying in aliya- the fat of the lamb's tail. She had to experiment a bit with the heat in that fire-hold- and before you knew it, there was a magnificent dish of stuffed eggplant presented on a cobalt-blue glass platter.
The fragrance of the dish filled the kitchen and wafted around them as she carried the platter through the forest to the jinn. He hadn't stopped his prayers once in all this time, but as Aunt Camille drew closer, the rich, garlicky, buttery, nuttery, eggplanty flavor swirled around his head until he felt his senses would be lifted right out of his body.
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