Do We Live to Eat, or Eat to Live??

The eye winks at sweets and applauds; the heart flutters for sweets; the soul opens up to sweets... so why should the tongue not water for sweets as well?...

Were you taught, as I was, from childhood that a person must eat only to live, and not live to eat?... And were you taught that a bashful mouth is one of the marks of good breeding?... I used to go with my mother on her visits so as to fill my pockets with sugared almonds and chocolates, despite her reproachful looks and her threatening glare — and then return in the evening to divide with my brothers and sisters what I had gathered in the day by the sweat of my brow!!...

That was when I was little. Today the situation has not changed much — and why should it? What is good stays good!!...

"Arlequin," the solace of banquets and their jesting bridegroom — that is in Paris; and in Italy it is one of the most delicious of cakes... But in Lebanon it is a charming corner in which everything tasty and delicious has been gathered. It is enough for this delicious place that it is the work of artistic Lebanese hands — the hands of the Three Musketeers: Fares and Maurice Faghali.

One receives the goers and comers with a beaming face; one helps here and there, in the shop and in the workshop... and one kneads sugar into sweetness... with twenty-five assistants!...

Arlequin is a name with much behind it... There wedding banquets and the tables of parties are prepared with amazing speed, and there the visitor indulges his gluttony... and is filled! Fifty hands work by day, and sometimes by night, to please the tastes of all — and he who tries to keep pace with every whim can die of grief and torment sometimes!!

One of the three Faghali musketeers told me the tale of the wonderful airplane that was loaded with their marvels of every color and shape and flew off with them to the Hijaz... to Kuwait, to Iraq, and even to Jordan... Very well... sweets must be exported!

Truly astonishing are Arlequin's ovens, which bake a thousand pieces an hour — every one of which the Beirutis devour, on the narrator's authority! And Arlequin's wheel turns and turns...

The story of the Faghalis is the story of Lebanese self-made men... Let me sing the praises of that self-making which has spread our fame here and there — a handful of laurel!

These men spent years of proving labor at "Massoud," making ready for the bold leap: their "little shop" came in 1950, and then came their workshop. And the main thing is that yesterday they were builders of castles in the air, while today they build castles of sugar — white and yellow and brown — for bridegrooms, or those with feasts to celebrate, to inaugurate!

There is no doubt that the shadow of art refuses to shrink away from kitchens... and that taste in the preparing of dishes is salt and spice of the precious kind! That is what I say every time I visit Arlequin — and how I wish I could spend days and months there with my friends, my colleagues, and my sisters, drawing from the spring of an art not far removed from the other arts! An art that was ours and of us — and then we gave part of it away, against our will, as a tax paid to the age of speed!

I invite you to a visit... To the barber's? No... To the hairdresser's? No! To the dressmaker's? No!! I invite you to visit the kitchen...

As for the traditional question — do we live to eat, or eat to live — I have no answer to it, and don't you go searching for one; for in either case we eat... So let us eat what is delicious. Good... sweet!