Operation Rescue

During war, it was little before dusk when Sami and I were playing out near the mosque and Sally was out at the neighbours house across the street, living as if there was nothing going on in the Kuwait. Suddenly and out of nowhere the street was filled with soldiers and the resistance shooting at each other with their lives depending on it. We, the boys, made it safe running back home but Sally didn't! she was stuck at the neighbours house. We all got unbelievably worried and Dad decided to bring Sally back to our home. I vividly remember how Dad got so worried and heroically ran out ducking across the hail of bullets. Thankfully they came back safe and I remember how Mom gave Sally a big hug after securing her indoors.

Mohammad Shalabi is great man and we will always remember him

Fisherman Shalabi

When I was fourteen or fifteen my father decided to become a fisherman. So like most over confident Arabs he set off knowing everything (sounds familiar) and bought a boat, a couple of rods, bait and dragged me with him to the open sea to bring back dinner.

We set off for approx an hour into the ocean and then dropped our rods into the sea. We waited, waited, and waited. We waited some more, and waited. Finally, my rod hooked something. We were both excited and pulled and pulled. It was a decent sized fish. Then we waited and waited and waited.

At the end of the day, we went home with ONE fish. My father had given instructions to my mom that we will be bringing dinner. However, we showed up with one fish :(. You can imagine the look on her face.

He was so disappointed, and switched from rods fishing to net fishing. In future expeditions, we would come back with hundreds of fish. That is another story :).

Falafel Al Shalabi

One of my fondest memories was of him in the kitchen. and the mess he would make as he whipped up some fantastic concoction. Nabil, I dont know if you remember this but he experimented with making his own falafel and I think that's where my love of homos based falafel comes from. He would make batches and batches and freeze them for later and then fry up some for dinner or something. He bought a special falafel scooper for his experiments and flattened out a spoon to sculpt them into the perfect shape.

My one memory

I was very little when it all happened, so I don't remember much. They say you can not form long term memories before the age of three, but I remember something. I remember a table full of crabs and me eating them! And I was told later that he was quite the fisherman. So I guess my one memory is relevant! Funny, I don't remember ever eating crabs like that as an adult though.

Nabil Mohammad Shalabi