Chewing on seeds

Solving the world's problems, and the right to snack

Sunflower Seeds, 2010. Ai Weiwei b. 1957 (via tate.org.uk)

One of my favourite [sayings] is ‘ajîl-e Moshkel-goshâ’ (‘problem solving nuts’). I always integrate this into our supper clubs. You have nuts, dates, apricots, dried melon seeds. The more you eat them, the more you talk. But the more you talk, the more you eat. And the saying is that whilst we eat them, we solve our problems and put the world to rights.

From my interview ‘Women, Life & Freedom’ with Jojo Sureh, as part of the Asian Slaw Alliance series.

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Seeds of bliss

In 2012, Israeli artist Noam Edry embarked on Seeds Of Bliss — גרעינים – بذر, an ongoing interactive event that took place in neighbouring Middle Eastern cities: Aqaba and Eilat, Nablus and Haifa, Bethlehem and Umm El Fahm, Jenin and Afula. Edry invited the general public to travel to these locations to chew sunflower seeds with their neighbours. Her aim for her participants was to altogether chew 10 tonnes of sunflower seeds, spitting the shells on the ground to form a giant heap that would then be exhibited in London.

Ironically, the project was halted twice; first in November 2012 with the outbreak of the Israeli ‘Pillar of Cloud’ military operation in Gaza, just a few weeks before a planned ‘mega-chew’ in Nablus with the participation of hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians. Then again in 2014 with the Israeli ‘Protective Edge’ military operation. Nevertheless, Edry restarted the project after four years of disruption — her ambitious, Sisyphean 10 tonne goal perhaps more realistic than hopes for Palestinian-Israeli peace.

Seeds of Bliss, 2012. Noam Edry

嗑瓜子

Why did Edry choose seed chewing in this symbolic relationship building experiment?

When I think of seeds, I think of the dusty old watermelon pips languishing in the ‘tray of togetherness’, a lacquered candy box that is presented to guests when visiting other people’s houses during Chinese New Year. While the candied winter melon and White Rabbits would disappear within seconds into pilfering young hands, watermelon seeds were dismissed as the old-fashioned choice of old folks.

Walk around any of the leisure parks or public resting areas in China and it’s not unusual to see the elderly relaxing and chatting, playing chess or cards while chipping away at a heap of seeds. The scene is the same around the world, for any seed-bearing agricultural society is also a seed-eating culture. That it is a preference of older generations is partly to do with seeds’ association with simplicity and frugality; after all, seeds are both E-numberless snacks and high-density nutrition before ‘zero waste’ was a buzzword.

Seed eating has at times carried something of a moral stigma too; class warfare was historically declared against seed-eaters and their trail of debris. According to RBTH (sorry for the Russia Today source 😬) Peter the Great first introduced sunflowers to Russia, where eating fried sunflower seeds became an addictive habit among the rural peasant class, until after the 1917 Russian Revolution when ‘Bolshevik soldiers, former nobodies from nowhere, walk[ed] down the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg eating their favorite seeds and spitting the shells all over the place… The image became ubiquitous - and seriously upset the old-school Russian intelligentsia.’¹

Poor man’s cocaine

In Turkish there is a saying ‘çekirdek çitlemek izlemek’, which translates to ‘watching something while eating seeds’. My friend Berkok dropped me a seven minute WhatsApp voice note — which you must listen to above — to explain the onomatopaeic origin of çitlemek, and why eating sunflower seeds is sometimes dubbed fakir kokaini, ‘the poor man’s cocaine’. Sunflower seeds are more beloved than their tastier pumpkin counterparts because, as Berkok observes, ‘the visceral experience of the salty, crunchy texture and getting that little seedling’ is much more gratifying. In other words, the extraction of pleasure — or perhaps the pleasure of extraction — is a key reason to eat seeds.

In Chinese we talk so much about mouthfeel in food culture (in this case, I wish there were a word for toothfeel!), and how the physical pleasure of eating is just as important as the taste itself. This might explain why, like the Turks, we also have a specific verb for the cracking of melon seeds: 嗑 / kè, used in the phrase 嗑瓜子 / kè guā zǐ where 瓜子 = melon seed. This word 嗑 coincidentally originally means ‘chatting’ to the point of over-talking — an apt onomatopeia for both the sound of chitter chatter, and the cracking of hundreds of melon seeds. As Berkok points out, seeds are the popcorn of Turkey; a snack for both watching and chatting. The symbiosis of seed munching and small talk is crucial. Because seeds are not just an austerity food. They are a leisure food, to be enjoyed in company. To snack on seeds is a pastime; they are social lubricant.

Çekirdek çitlemek izlemek is basically the Turkish equivalent of the Michael Jackson eating popcorn GIF…

My friend Philip recounted to me how he used to watch his Iraqi dad and his friends ‘flawlessly go through hundreds of pumpkin seeds,’ adding ‘it’s a tough act to follow’. Meanwhile my friend Maria-Louisa speaks fondly of watching her Lebanese mother’s relatives — both old and young — snack on pumpkin and melon seeds with just their teeth. ‘I’ve tried, I’ve failed,’ she laments. I wonder whether there is something in seed-cracking proficiency that somehow signals one’s own cultural fluency; you either can or you can’t. Thus you either fit in or you don’t. For diasporic kids it’s just another language to wrap your tongue around.

Melon seed eating competition. (via tvbs.com.tw)

Back to the moralisation of seed-eating; there is also the enjoyable monotony of the act itself, which can lend itself to both good and bad productivity. Seed eating has been popular in China for at least one millennia, and by the 20th century the painter and essayist Feng Zikai was making his position on the habit clear, observing in his essay ‘Eating Guazi’ that ‘except for smoking opium, there is no better way to kill time… because it has three characteristics: you can never have too much, you will never feel full, and you have to shell them first… If this custom develops, I’m afraid the whole nation will perish amidst the sound of cracking and spitting.’²

But the repetitive nature of cracking and munching has stress-relieving properties too — and surely facilitate those breakthrough ‘aha’ moments we are all seeking when we pull an all-nighter. According to the World Of Chinese, writer Quan Yanchi noted that senior members of the Communist Party, including Chairman Mao himself, had a penchant for seed munching, such that ‘when they have a meeting at night, Mao could build a Baota mountain [iconic mountain in the former revolutionary base of Yan’an] with his seeds shells, while Liu [Shaoqi] would make a Mongolian yurt.’³

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🍉🇵🇸

An emblem of the Palestinian resistance movement, watermelons currently appear on protest placards and solidarity banners, Instagram bios and lapel badges all around the world. The bold red, green, white and black icons of fruit could not be mistaken for anything other than a proxy for the flag of Palestine.

As you may have intuited, Palestine is a seed-eating culture too. In cafes and homes, bizir al-bateekh — watermelon seeds — are snacked upon while playing cards or smoking hookah. When we think of the Palestinian symbol of resistance, perhaps we also imagine its crisp and juicy flesh, its sugar-spiked water running down chins and into clavicles as sweet children quench their thirst in the summer. Let us not forget the nourishment of watermelon seeds either; the millions of insignificant morsels that, when combined, sustain a thousand conversations into the glowering embers of the night, soundtracked by the continuous crackling of a 嗑 嗑 嗑 … çit çit çit…

What a privilege it is to live in a world where chewing on seeds can be a pastime — and not mere sustenance. Does not everyone have the right to eat for leisure? To feel the sheer corporeal bliss, to use artist Edry’s choice of words, of cracking a seed between your front teeth and feeling the ripples of its aftershocks reverberate through your skull? To know the satisfaction of prising open a tiny kernel of absolute joy with one’s tongue? And have not our elders earned their right to snack at ease, rather than starve amongst rubble or flee their homeland with no certainty of return?

I believe there are two ways to chew on the seeds of life. The first is to chew through it all in a state of endless drudgery. To go through the motions to get through the day. The other option is to chew as one does on ajîl-e Moshkel-goshâ, problem-solving nuts. To grab a bag of seeds and share it with a bunch of friends and strangers, and altogether chew as if our problems and our lives — and indeed the world’s problems and its lives — depend on it.

Which option do you choose?

Image sent to me by Maria-Louisa Norris

1. https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/330874-why-russians-love-sunflower-seeds

2. https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2016/09/sowing-the-melon-seeds-of-love/

3. ibid.