From the Gitmo Cookbook: Emad Hassan’s Zorbian at Brooklyn’s Yemen Cafe

For the last 12 years, Emad Hassan has been a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay. A 35-year-old Yemeni citizen, he arrived there in 2002 after being arrested by Pakistani security forces and sold for a bounty of $5,000 to the US.

Like many members of the majority Yemeni population at Guantánamo, however, Hassan is stuck in a cruel limbo. He has been cleared for release since 2009, but because the US and Yemeni governments have been unable to come to an agreement over the exchange of Guantánamo prisoners—the US still considers Yemen a security risk—Hassan and other prisoners recommended for transfer have simply been forced to wait.

For over half of his time there, Hassan has led a hunger strike to protest the brutal treatment of Gitmo prisoners. Today, his diet consists strictly of intranasally administered cans of TwoCal, a liquid nutritional supplement. Before he began his hunger strike, however, Hassan was passionate about food, even going as far as making a variation on zhug, a Yemeni hot sauce, with the ingredients available at Gitmo. Prior to his arrival there, he loved Cinnamon Melts from McDonald’s, sweet and milky coffee, pizza, and spaghetti, but he also misses soft cheeses, yogurt, and fruit. Back in Yemen, he was especially fond of making tuna.

The thing he misses most, however, is his mother’s zorbian, a Yemeni staple consisting of rice and meat. In order to learn more about Hassan’s favorite dish, I went to Brooklyn’s Yemen Cafe. The Cafe, which opened in 1986 as something of a social club for the Yemeni immigrant community, has long been the best-known and lauded Yemeni restaurant in New York. Once inside, I was introduced to Chef Yaya, who walked me through the restaurant’s version of zorbian.

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