Homesickness is Cured in the Kitchen

When I moved to Baltimore in the spring of 2024, I found myself quite unprepared for the homesickness that was to follow. By week 4, I could not sleep. The only thing that could comfort me was a steaming hot plate of biryani.

I am from Karachi, a vibrant, sleepless city, also known as Pakistan’s food capital. Life in my beloved home was unimaginable without biryani, a celebratory rice and meat dish found at the dinner table in every household. My mother made it every Friday to mark the start of the weekend. So naturally, life in Baltimore felt incomplete without it, and no restaurant could replicate the comfort of her cooking. One night at 2 a.m., I texted her: “I need your biryani recipe.” I tossed and turned in bed till I got my reply in the form of a five-minute-long voice note that contained the antidote to my homesickness.

The next morning, I set out on a mission. I headed to the grocery store, roaming the aisles in the order my mother had listed the ingredients in her note. Every so often, I’d pause, unsure how to translate an ingredient into English. After what seemed like an hour, I returned home with a dozen ripe tomatoes, a bag of onions, jasmine rice and a neatly cut chicken.

My first order of business was finely slicing yellow onions and frying them until golden brown. After removing them with a slotted spoon, I seared the chicken before adding back in the onions along with some ginger and garlic paste, a handful of green chilies, diced tomatoes, dried plums and my spice concoction. As the curry began to simmer, the scent pulled me back to my mother’s kitchen, where I’d hover near the stove, waiting in anticipation. I smiled at the memory. Next, I parboiled jasmine rice in a pot of boiling water, fragrant with mint, cilantro, cinnamon and whole peppercorns. With each step, I moved without urgency, quite like my mother’s calm rhythmic movements in the kitchen.

The final step was the biryani’s assembly. Its layering process felt like muscle memory, etched from watching my mother do the same every Friday night. In went heaped spoonfuls of curry, followed by a generous layer of rice, then a scattering of crisp fried onions, lemon slices and fresh cilantro. I repeated the pattern, then drizzled saffron-infused milk on top, covered the pot and let it steam. By now, my mother’s voice note had come to an end and my tiny apartment had begun to smell like home.

Since then, I have made biryani every Friday. Fifty-nine times to be exact. And each time, as I sit cross-legged on the floor, eating biryani while FaceTiming my mother, I am home. More than I have ever been.

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