In the monastery of deir mar musa

with a recipe for labne balls

This is the monastery of musa al-habashi (st moses the abasynian), a limestone building mounted in a crevice of the limestone hills of the anti-lebanon range. It faces east, towards the desert, soaking up every last golden drop of light from the golden rising sun. This place is a sanctuary, where I retreated after a week of morning paralysis where for a while after waking I could not move my body even though I tried. I know now that this is called sleep paralysis. I did not know it then. All I knew was that my body would not respond to the impulses from my brain and it was terrifying and is terrifying still to remember.

At deir mar musa I slept in a room earmarked for women. A small enclosed room on the slope of the hill across a suspension bridge over the wadi, with no furniture except a small cupboard in the wall and some simple beds. the room was square and made of limestone and though now I might find it beautiful, I could not see its beauty then. There was so much deprivation in me, deprivation of the flesh and of the body, that this room reflected the painful internal landscape of what I had become.

The first reference to its foundation is in the British Library of London in a manuscript dated to 586CE. By this time the place was occupied as a lavra or laura, a cluster of cells or caves for hermits with a church at the centre where they gathered to pray. But I suspect that the ranges have been occupied or roamed for millennia, judging by the existence of chert in the limestone, a substance used to make stone tools. In 1982, 151 years after the monastery was abandoned, Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio was in the area on retreat. During this time he fell off a cliff and almost died. I wonder what happened to him in those moments after the fall before he was found, or before help came. What was it that he heard, saw, felt, that made him return two years later, with volunteers to begin the restorations of the place as it is today?

During my stay that first time, I sat with Fr Paolo in the big room, the chapel, surround by layers of frescos on almost all the available wall space, including in the domed recesses where the mass was held and on the underside of the arches spanning the room. His body was big and so awkwardly bear-like next to mine so well defined by its bones. He sat in a way which said, ‘I will make myself small to sit next to you, so as not to frighten you out of your body’, and I felt him there like piece of dry land, like a desert, or a cluster of caves embedded in the mountains, the bare backbones of which sat like a series of tonsured heads exposed to the stars.

This piece of writing is supposed to be about food, land and nourishment, like all the rest, and I will get there I promise. We are starting from bones here and working our way into flesh.

After our conversation, one of the monks took me down into the library at my request. It was a small underground chamber filled entirely with large metal shelves on which rested hundreds of heavy tomes. The weight of those tomes nearly crushed me. I felt I would be annihilated by all that text and the complex patternings of what was in them. Old stories of conquest and dispossession and rape and warfare and old tribal families that made contracts sealed with fire and blood. And new ones of miracles and intellectual debate.

It was there, in that room that I saw something more terrible than anything I have ever seen before or since. It was not anything physical or concrete, but that room showed me a vision of my mind as an abyss, a chasm, into which I had fallen again and again, sinking deeper and deeper, until I could not get out. A gaping, black hole which I had unknowingly become.

This is not the kind of blackness that is gentle and nourishing like a womb. This kind of blackness is the blackness of desecration, of the broken off singing of the songs of the earth, of a deep grace within the body denied, of the mind given free reign to rule without consequence when all it knows how to do is destroy. That vision was the key to my becoming flesh again.

I went back again to deir mar musa, a year later, when I was in a much better place. I climbed the hills with some friends, friends who were falling in love with each other, and sat on the golden limestone in the golden light of the setting sun and breathed. I smelled the scent of goat droppings mixed with euphorbia. I felt the cut of the rocks in my newly fleshed thighs. I felt the earth with me, in me, around me, present in my breath.

At a long, low table on the stone parapet, seated on a low wooden stool, I sat among the novices, nuns and visitors and rolled labne balls. i felt the firm, wet labne grow smooth against my skin. Saw how its texture changed when rolled in paprika, or nigella seed, or wild thyme. Watched as oil was poured — oil pressed from olives grown if not here then somewhere nearby — over the balls packed haphazardly in a jar. And all this satisfied me deeply, brought me into the present moment, into relationship with air, oil, water, flesh, and spice. And those things took up residence in my body. They had resonance in my body, like a song that had been sung for generations in that place. The song of that land. A song of sacred union, of microcosms of flesh and flies.

So every time now that I make labne balls, I am honouring that song within me, the song of deir mar musa and those rugged limestone hills. Here is how to make them, if you want to try.

labne balls from deir mar musa

a quantity of good yoghurt

salt

herbs and spices of your choice

place a cheesecloth over a strainer with a vessel beneath to catch the whey. salt the yoghurt liberally and stir it through. empty the salted yoghurt onto the cheesecloth and leave it to drain overnight. check the consistency next morning. it should be slightly damp but almost dry, like a paste. if not, tie the cheesecloth, making a pudding-like parcel and use the string to hang it with the whey vessel beneath.

once the labne is ready — it should take 12–24 hours — make space at the table to sit and roll it into balls. each ball should be the size of a tombola, slightly larger if it pleases you. you can leave the balls plain like that, or roll them in herbs or spices, or make some of each. it the balls don’t hold their shape, leave them to dry out further on trays in the fridge, then pack into jars and cover with a good, cold pressed, olive oil, preferably one you have made yourself.

Originally published at https://apeasantskitchen.substack.com on February 25, 2022.