Bedouin fire cooking — a three-hour family workshop at the Abu Hashem camp.

The three-hour structure.

The workshop starts at 17:30 in winter and 18:00 in autumn and spring, timed for the family to arrive at the camp in the last hour of daylight. The first half-hour is welcome at the camp — tea on the carpet outside the main shade structure, introductions, and the workshop's only theoretical bit: a short conversation about why this kind of cooking exists, what fuel is used at what stage and why, and what the safety rules at the camp are. The first cooking begins at 18:00 with the bread.

Bread on hot stones.

The flatbread is made from local stone-ground wheat from the Issawi farm, mixed with water and salt only. The dough is rested for ten minutes, divided into rounds, and laid directly on a bed of stones that have been heated by the cooking fire for an hour ahead. The stones range from forty to fifty degrees Celsius; the bread cooks in two to three minutes per side and is removed with thin wooden paddles the family makes from local acacia. Children handle the dough preparation entirely and most of the placement on the stones; Salma handles the removal because the paddles are heavy and the wrist motion is awkward. The bread is eaten warm with olive oil from the Issawi pressing and a small bowl of za'atar.

Sand-pit lamb.

The slow lamb (called zarb in the family's Bedouin tradition) starts before the family arrives — the cooking fire is built in a pit two metres across, dug fifty centimetres into the sand the previous afternoon, with the fire built up to high temperature for two hours. The marinated lamb (cumin, garlic, salt, lemon, olive oil) wrapped in a clean cotton cloth is lowered into the pit on a galvanised steel platter at the moment the family arrives. The platter is covered with another layer of cotton and then with a layer of sand. The lamb cooks for two and a half hours. Children participate in the covering ritual and in the un-covering at the end; the unveiling at the end of the workshop is the workshop's theatrical climax. The lamb falls off the bone and is eaten with the bread baked an hour earlier and with the rice that Salma has prepared in parallel.

Juniper-wood tea.

The tea ritual runs in parallel to the cooking. Three small kettles sit at the edge of the cooking fire; one for the green tea that opens the evening, one for the heavy black tea that goes with the food, and one for the herbal infusion of dried mint, sage and rosemary that closes the workshop. The fuel is juniper twigs from the family's stock of trimmings from the Issawi orchard; the smell of juniper-wood smoke is what carries the workshop's memory afterwards. Children pour the tea from the high pourers into the small glasses; the table-side height is high (around fifty centimetres) to make the slight glass-and-pourer separation visible.

The safety practices.

The cooperative follows a written safety protocol for the fire-cooking workshop, reviewed annually. The cooking fire is fenced with a one-metre exclusion zone marked with stones; children may step inside the zone only with an adult next to them. The hot stones for the bread are placed on a low wooden frame so the children stand at a comfortable working height without leaning over the fire. The sand-pit lamb requires no child intervention while it is buried; the un-burying involves a careful sequence with Salma in charge. Each child wears a long-sleeve cotton top during the active cooking — we ask families to bring this as part of the kit. A bucket of water and the camp's first-aid kit sit at the edge of the cooking area at all times. In eighteen years and over four hundred workshops the cooperative has recorded one minor burn (a finger, treated on site, no further consequence).

Dietary accommodations.

The workshop's central dish is lamb. Vegetarian families are welcome and the family substitutes a vegetable tagine made in parallel — aubergine, courgette, tomato, onion, chickpeas, with the same spice profile as the lamb marinade. Vegan families are accommodated; we omit the white cheese that normally accompanies the bread and substitute extra olive oil and za'atar. Halal preparation is the standard; the family does not handle pork or alcohol on the cooking premises. Allergies — tell the cooperative office in advance and Salma will work around them; we have safely catered for nut, shellfish, dairy and gluten allergies in past workshops.

The evening's closing.

After the food the family sits around the cooking fire for the closing tea ritual; Hassan tells two short stories from the Bedouin oral tradition — usually one about the family's grandfather's caravan years and one with a folk-tale structure that the children find easier to follow. The evening ends between 20:30 and 21:00 depending on energy levels. Families return to Tunis Village by the camp's pre-arranged transport (a short ten-minute drive) or, for families who prefer, walk back along the village edge with one of the family children as guide.

The fire-cooking workshop is most often combined with the Lake Qarun day walk on the same day or with the Tunis pottery loop on the following day. The same fire-cooking approach scales up to dinner on the White Desert overnight. The kit list, including the long-sleeve cotton top, sits in the kids' trail essentials file.