A starch paired with another starch is an already dubious inclination, but spaghetti laced with a berbere-fortified tomato sauce and served on injera is even more so. The two carbs, one splayed flat with the other piled in a nest on top, appear to be unnatural companions on a plate. Yet the occurrence of this pairing in Ethiopian restaurants and homes qualifies this as a dish worth considering. And that consideration leads to a conversation about colonialism.
Italy’s colonial interest in East Africa spread from present-day Eritrea, down the coast of the Red Sea to Somalia and inland to Ethiopia. From the late-19th century to the 1940s, these territories were seized, ruled or occupied. Italy’s monarchy, then its fascist regime, carried out massacres and the subjugation and segregation of people whose land they sought to make their own. If spaghetti appeared in this corner of the world before, this bloody period is one that guaranteed its stay.
In Somalia, a particular kind of spaghetti dish is ubiquitous. Those noodles are served with suugo suqaar, an often meat-enriched, xawaash-spiced tomato sauce. As with other savory dishes from the coastal nation, a banana is offered on the side to be peeled, chopped and distributed throughout the warmly-spiced pasta, adding both a sweet note and a different texture of starchiness.
In both East African iterations of spaghetti, the preparation and presentation firmly bend the Italian dish towards centuries-old local tastes. The interventions at play, of spices and other starches, have no allegiance to European techniques. This defiance tells a particular story about food’s movement across cultural and national margins. Appropriation is a mode of transit we see often lamented in cultural writing—an erasure of authorship often followed by manufacturing at a capitalistic pace and design. Spaghetti on injera or with suugo suqaar are born out of a different modality: the absorption of a cultural product introduced by abject violence and forced occupation.
