At the tawlet

On a warm spring evening in Beirut, I’m sipping a champagne cocktail with Kamal Mouzawak at La Magnanerie, a gorgeous event space with an old stone façade repurposed from a 19th century silk factory, and courtyard, located in the suburbs of the city. Cooks from Mouzawak’s Beirut restaurant Tawlet, part of the larger Souk el Tayeb organization that seeks to reopen the channels between those who produce food and those who buy it, are preparing traditional Lebanese dishes — food typically consumed in the home — as part of the Common Fest, a four day cultural exchange between Berlin and Beirut. In the fading daylight, Mouzawak, an Inspector Poirot-type in a Mao-style blue canvas jacket, tells me the story of traditional silk production in Lebanon. “In the old days,” he says, “women from the villages would grow the silkworms in mulberry trees. When they had woven their cocoons, they would