I Have Returned

In the summer of 2007 I came with my dear wife to Israel. We arrived with just the clothes on our backs (and in our suitcases, of course), and a dream. The same dream that my father dreamed while canning lox in a basement in Queens, and his father dreamed while being pelted in the head with rocks by angry Poles, and his father before him dreamed, probably also while getting pelted with rocks. The dream of two thousand years worth of rock-pelted fathers. The dream to eat every shawarma in Israel (I'm pretty sure they touched on it in Hatikva).

This is shawarma. It is better than sliced bread. It contains the entire food pyramid* and every other food shape worth a damn. It can cure everything from scurvy to pickled beet deficiency. But most importantly it is the most delicious food on earth. It's a living, breathing sandwich that wants nothing more than to be eaten and enjoyed by me and you, and asks for nothing in return other than maybe a drop on your shirt to remember it by. Shawarma shops are the most ubiquitous food purveyors in Israel. And do you know why?  Because Israelis are smart. They want their food to be quick, clean, cheap, and satisfying. Now, I'm not saying that if you start eating shawarma daily you will become the world leader in venture capitalism. But, as they say: correlation equals causation.

*if you replace dairy products with Tahini products, as well you should.

To make a long story short, I failed my dream. I imagined I'd travel around the country like Pac-Man; chomping up shawarma after shawarma, stopping only to snack on the occasional pretzel or blinking ghost. But it wasn't to be. I left the Holy Land beaten and bewildered. I was exiled to Washington, DC. Where the people's need for ethnic pocketed meals is fulfilled by burritos and calzones, and the benevolent shawarma is cast aside and ignored. But I have finally returned. And I'm ready to once again eat tons of shawarma. And I will record it here, as a guide for all of you. In order to do that, I must get inside the shawarma. I must become one with the it. I must become...

...The Shawarma Chameleon.