Near midnight, AT the top of a lighthouse in Dakar, the westernmost point of the African continent, I sat before a grilled whole fish as long as my forearm and accompanied by a dome of rice. Thiof, a white grouper, is such common Senegalese restaurant fare that the Wolof word itself is slang — a handsome man is also a thiof, a “good catch.” I’d eaten beachside thiof south of Dakar in the vacation area of Saly, and cliffside thiof at breezy restaurants in Les Almadies, the Dakar neighborhood known for its nightlife. This thiof, though rubbed with spices like the others — I tasted ginger, garlic, cardamom, maybe turmeric — was served with a tiny cup of warm tamarind glaze. If there were vegetables on the plate, I have banished them from my memory; only the sauce, fish and rice were in conversation. The skin of the thiof was crisp and juicy, the sauce tangy and rich. The rice was not as long as basmati, nor as short as sticky rice, but a size in between, round through the middle with little adhesion and a firm but pliant texture. If food encapsulates pleasure, innovation and community all at once, then tasting the Platonic ideal of a simple dish can bring a place and its people into focus, even if you encounter that ideal in an unlikely setting — a lighthouse restaurant known for its brunch.
I asked to see the menu again, to verify that I had indeed ordered the same dish I’d eaten at so many restaurants in town. It was late June, and being this close to the ocean at such a late hour meant that the steady heat of the day had faded to a light chill. Nearby, along the coast, was Africa’s tallest statue, the African Renaissance Monument, hulking in the semidark: A cartoonishly muscular man gripped his woman by the waist with one arm and held his child with the other, all three of their colossal copper bodies leaning out over the water. My dinner date, a Senegalese nonprofit executive in town from Paris to co-host a fashion show, read the menu alongside me. “Ooh, riz de la vallée,” she said. “Interesting to see that mentioned.” “Rice of the valley” is a phrase used to refer to rice grown in the Senegal River Valley, one of the country’s main areas of cultivation. It was my first and only time seeing the phrase on a menu, but by then — my final evening in Senegal, which is among the largest consumers of rice in West Africa — I had come to understand that rice, for the Senegalese, is often the subject of interest, and sometimes the subject of debate.
You are invited to a party. And not just a party, but the greatest party of all time.
But there’s a catch: There is no chance that you’ll actually be going to this party, because it starts at noon on June 6, 2269.
Huma Qureshi has the perfect title for her short story collection. Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love strikingly encapsulates a major theme of the book: the inability to communicate honestly with the most important people in your life. Qureshi’s stories keenly identify the everyday tragedies of feeling profoundly unknown or unheard, of holding secrets and misunderstandings.
Meyer paints a vivid picture of a former and less-established Egypt, acknowledging the pillaging of artifacts by Western countries like Britain and France. Written in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's original books, Meyer's take on the Sherlock Holmes adventures blends old with new, giving readers familiar stories with parallels to and hints of more modern takes.
through uptown manhattan
to a suicide center