Kafta as a Tool for Palestinian Diplomacy

At the table, Noor and Kassis discovered that their parents lived on the same street in Jerusalem. Another student, named Ragad, a competitive weight lifter who wore a hijab, compared notes with Kassis on cooking in college: Kassis remembered finding cockroaches in a communal kitchen as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania. Ragad laughed about the boys on campus who flocked to her for food. “They’re mostly Egyptian,” she said. “And mostly don’t know how to cook.”