FRIED CHICKEN, Fried Kibbie Clarksdale is known for being black and white. But don’t forget the Lebanese. And their food. Especially their food. Story by John Bobo
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orks and knives clattered against china from the old country on the night Dad’s soul went to The Underworld (or maybe great-grandma Mamie was just being dramatic). A mere month into my parents’ courtship, my mother invited my twenty-something father to family dinner. His first Lebanese feast. Mom’s faint olive skin began to explain itself in the overtly ethnic picnic that Mamie Abraham Meena had strewn across the dining table. The entire family, plus guest, reverently lowered themselves into their chairs. Dinner was served. Murmurs and gathers of comfortable chatter filled the space above their heads. “Mamie,” my father asked. “You got any ketchup?” As silent as the many darting eyes that shot across the table, the room turned to ice. He knew he had misspoken. From the bounty of unfamiliar Mediterranean food, Dad—a descendant of the first white family to settle in Coahoma County—had piled his plate with a dish that seemed recognizable enough. These discs of fried meat, like chestnut-colored hockey pucks, auspiciously sat in the middle of the table. Wasn’t this fried patty akin to the many burgers he’d gobbled beneath the mosquitoed white light of Spruce Street baseball park? Was natural law not on his side? How sinful his assumptions were. Mamie fetched the Heinz from the back of the cabinet and, stoic, she slammed it next to him not unlike a judge banging her gavel. His face was as red as the errant bottle. Yes, it was meat. Yes, it was fried. But this was kibbie, and you do not put ketchup on kibbie. My dad has two story-telling voices: one for normal recollections and an extra syrupy drawl for the stories he loves. Stories like this one. Jesting at his oblivion to the sin he committed, Fincher Gist “Jack” Bobo uses this savory Delta accent to hammer out his
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