Kapka Nilan: How to prove you still belong

Make your own Easter bread, kozunak, every Orthodox Easter

it’s a recipe you found on the Internet that worked the first time but never again, and you even managed to braid the dough like they sell it in your home country all year round, which is no longer your home, but you refuse the silent accusations of betrayal or when your friends ignore your posts in English, your adopted language and home

unlike

when you say something in your native language or when you make the bread following that unreliable recipe or maybe it’s you who is unreliable when it comes to your own dough, to make it soft and supple, malleable, like you did the very first time, but since then it doesn’t hold in your hands, your hands being through a lot of kneading and you just can’t knead any more or braid, sticky dough all over your fingers and on the floor in your far away kitchen but the lemon zest and vanilla take you back home where you don’t seem to belong, and someone might say ‘well done’ when they see a photo of your labour, hopefully, well risen and authentic and beautiful enough, and you’ll know, even if no one says it, that you still belong, and finally see

the basket full of fruit that is now your life