“Zafir’s Kitchen”

Zafir’s Kitchen is a loving portrait of Yasmeen - my teenaged boyfriend’s mother, a half-Japanese half-Indian matriarch who measured just over 5ft. 

In the reference photo, dated as a Tuesday in January, she’s preparing a beef-cheek biryani supper for us. If my memory doesn’t deceive me, I recall Zaki and Farah (his younger sibling) playing Legend of Zelda two rooms over as she chopped, peeled and stewed.

Over the last years of my adolescence, I grew extremely attached to Yasmeen, and I believe I may have acted as a sort of surrogate daughter for her. It was a part that I was honored to play: her sons loved and respected her, although I always felt her yearning for familial, female connection. Someone to acknowledge her as a woman before a mother. And so I did.