One book, one place, one idea
Just a few things I picked up along the way this month.
February has flown by, but its been eventful. I’ve managed to read more than usual, collect a shoulder injury playing soccer, host visiting friends, catch the Dutch speedskaters collect gold at the Olympics, and stay up way past bedtime to watch the Super Bowl (and Bad Bunny’s spectacularly bold halftime show). I also traveled a bit, cycling down to Rotterdam and hopping on a train across the Dutch Bible Belt. Throughout it all, a few things have stuck with me.
Here’s one book, one place, and one idea.
Zaitoun by Yasmin Khan
I finally bought Zaitoun, Yasmin Khan’s celebration of Palestinian cuisine, and a book that had been on my radar for years.
Similar to Khan’s other cookbooks, it reads as much like travel writing as it does a collection of recipes. Guided by her past life as a human rights campaigner, Khan doesn’t just share and teach recipes; she shows how deeply food connects to history, culture, and belonging. I love the power in this book and her profiles and anecdotes. What has stood out to me most is how naturally it moves between food, memory, and national identity. It’s a celebration of the Palestinian kitchen, inspired by the old Jewish adage, as Khan reminds us, that “an enemy is just a person whose story you haven’t heard yet.”
If someone asked me where to start learning about Palestinian cookery and everyday life, I’d say track down a Palestinian grandmother. But this book would be my second recommendation — alongside The Palestinian Table by Reem Kassis — and honestly, before Ottolenghi or Tamimi.
Flevoland (on the way to Zwolle)
To reach the beautiful medieval city of Zwolle from The Hague, one can take the train cutting straight through Flevoland — the Netherlands’ youngest province, and perhaps its boldest experiment.
While staring out the window, it’s easy to forget that this entire part of the country was nothing but sea until a few generations ago. Today, it’s reclaimed land filled with modern housing, growing cities, farmland, and long stretches of open sky. Flevoland is a reminder that the Dutch treat geography almost like a design project.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the space between Almere and Lelystad, where the scenery suddenly shifts. The expanse between both cities feels emptier, wilder, even un-Dutch. The Oostvaardersplassen is a vast nature reserve project where hundreds of migratory bird species, large grazing highlanders, and semi-wild horses roam land that didn’t exist until the late 1950s. I would describe it as a sort of northern European version of the Serengeti.
Running along its southern border, the train underscores the quiet surrealism of this Dutch savanna. And adding to the mystique is a fact—shared by a friend—that Flevoland’s soil is so rich that just south of the protected area stand the Netherlands’ tallest trees (again, on land that is less than 100 years old!)
All this to say, Oostvaardersplassen is a beautifully strange patch of land in an already unique province.
And it epitomizes the centuries-old saying, “God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.” This video does a pretty good job of explaining how that came to be.
Surrealism (in everyday life)
Talking about surrealism…a recent exhibition at Rotterdam’s Boijmans Museum sent me down a rabbit hole. Turns out surrealism is more than melting clocks. Beyond Surrealism opened the door to what it might mean in our everyday life: not just art, but a way of paying attention to people, things, and moments around us.
I was surprised by how much we can apply from surrealist thought into daily life — and many of us probably do, without realizing it. A few ideas I’ve started experimenting with:
Spontaneous writing. Spend 10 minutes writing continuously. But here’s the catch: do so without backspacing, re-reading, or analyzing. Don’t try to be interesting. Just write.
Disrupt routines on purpose. For example, follow an arbitrary rule on your next walk. Or listen for a sentence someone says at the checkout or in a cafe and write it down. Ask why did that grab my attention. The point is to study how our minds select meaning.
Embrace chance encounters. I like this one. Open a book to a random page and treat the first sentence as a prompt for the day. Or, let an overheard conversation seed a thought, and write about it.
Make space for playful seriousness. I’m still warming up to this one, which probably means I need it most. For example, give mundane things secret names. Or ask absurd but revealing questions, such as “If this week were a room, what’s in the corner I’m avoiding?” The point is to invite an emotional honesty that might not arrive any other way.
And perhaps my favorite…
Resist productivity logic. I loved learning that surrealism is anti-utilitarian — that not everything needs to be optimized. So, do something with no goal for 20 minutes. No, doom scrolling doesn’t count. But doodling does. Or rearrange a room just for the look of it. Write nonsense poetry. Most importantly, do not share it or improve it. The point is to break the brain’s evaluation mode.
That’s it. One book, one place, one idea — and maybe a few new habits in the making. Now time to go make some maqloubeh.
— People Under the Stairs, “Acid Raindrops”
52.4573° N, 5.4194° E