Algerian Frite Omelette

There is a word barakah in the Arabic language–and in Hebrew and Swahili–that is usually translated as “Blessings” in the English language. The concept of Blessings is among the most universal of human ideas–and among the most alien to me. When someone around me sneezes, I’m grateful that the German word “Gesundheit”–a simple wish for a person’s good health–exists, because I’ve never felt comfortable saying “Bless you.” I just don’t know what it means to bless someone, and it seems like a spiritual matter better left to people holier than I am, people who traffic in religion, in spirituality, in uncanny things outside the tactile experience of the world I know. Yet blessings are asked for and granted in matters both great and trivial, for everything on down from births and deaths, weddings and graduations to baseballs games, family dinners, and sneezes. But descriptions of the concept of Barakah in Arabic–and in the Muslim faith–seem to characterize something of more substance, more…