Food for Thought

The market near the center of Oaxaca City filled the belly of an old colonial building. Making our way through this maze became an olfactory experience, from the simple smells of stands selling clothes and perfumes to the more zealous scents of the velas and incense available for worship at the cathedral up the street. We suffered attacks launched by barrels of mole seasoning and blocks of chile-infused chocolate, were soothed by the earthy smells of potatoes, avocados, tomatillos.

My companions and I peered through the smoke that billowed in the tunnel-like corridor ahead of us, swallowing against the cloying sweetness of the scent of raw meat that now filled the air. Flies swarmed over cuts of beef and pork, the links of chorizo sausage that, like us, sweat in the heat of a dozen open grills on which meat was being cooked with green onions and spicy peppers. A fierce young woman yelled at us to take a seat, indicating a few stools at a long table. “What do you want?” she asked abruptly, as she herded a family to an adjacent table. It was time for dinner.

We ordered a sort of meat sampler: carne asada; the remarkably orange-colored cecina or cured pork; and a few links of greasy chorizo sausages. Our food was thrown onto a grill with a fistful of vegetables; a few things dropped to the grimy floor, were scooped up, and were tossed again onto the grill. When our food arrived, we ate ravenously; but minutes into our feeding frenzy, we realized: we had run out of tortillas.

I called our terse little hostess over and asked her for more. To my complete surprise, she raised her hands over her head and began clapping; up and down the aisle, other women working for the food stalls did the same, and even customers at nearby tables joined in. My companions and I were at a loss: was this entire crowd of people somehow impressed at these gringos' abilities to devour tortillas? Or was mockery, one of the many subtleties I am slow to pick up on in other languages, somehow at the foundation of this impromptu round of applause?

The ovation ended suddenly as an old woman rushed to our table. “How many?” she asked, opening the package under her arm and revealing dozens of freshly cooked tortillas. And then the clapping made sense: this woman was an example of the innumerable old ladies constantly crowding on street corners, standing or sitting on little stools by a giant comal, a sort of cast-iron griddle, clapping out masa or corn dough between their hands to shape tortillas. As we fell back to our food I savored my tortillas, so completely central to a culture as to have its own gesticulation, its own sound effect.