I told you that, in southern Iraq, I discovered the delights of what our cook called murag,

“a kind of stew typically centered around lamb, chicken or fish, with vegetables such as aubergines, chick peas or lentils, together with various peppers and spices, including paprika, the whole usually sweetened by a scattering of currants or raisins.”

Well, in 1961, 10 years after my rather dramatic stay in that little village overlooking the Shatt Al Arab, south of Basra, I rediscovered murag in London. This is how it happened.

It was the year I had come back from teaching in Cannes and was studying at London University. One evening I headed to Drayton Gardens, in South Kensington, to see I’m not sure which film at the Paris Pullman, one of the oldest independent cinemas in Britain (sadly to be demolished in 1983).

Turning off the Fulham Road I was surprised and delighted to see that there was now an ‘Arab Restaurant’ in the Gardens, in place of a very ordinary restaurant that I hadn’t bothered about in my previous visits to the area.  As  I was a bit early for the 6.30 pm show, and the restaurant looked quiet, I went in and asked if I could look at a menu.  This was 4 years before I moved to North Africa, and all I knew of Arab food was what I remembered from my time as a child in Iraq. ‘I was hoping to find murag on the menu’, I told the waiter, who asked ‘What is murag?’.  When I told him how I knew about it, he said that the owner/chef was from southern Iraq and that he would go and tell him what I had said.

A minute later, a white-toqued chef appeared from the kitchen, asking “Who is wanting murag!”   And within a few minutes he had declared that there would be a table ready for me when I came out of the cinema, and that I would have the best murag I had ever tasted.

No disrespect to Abdul, our cook; but the Drayton Gardens murag was something special. Not only that; I was greeted with a glass of arak (similar to Greek ouzo and Turkish raki, with which, presumably, it is cognate), accompanied by a little plate of meze.  And, after the main course, there was a plate of delicious sweetmeats, followed by traditional coffee and a glass of what I was told was an eau-de-vie distilled from dates.

The only thing wrong was that I was beginning to wonder how I was to pay for this feast.  Murag wasn’t on the menu, and I didn’t have a clue how much the rest of it, the drinks especially, was going to cost me. So it was with some apprehension that, when the chef came out to ask how I had enjoyed the meal, I expressed my delight in the whole experience, adding that I would like the bill.

Various different expressions flickered over his face. Clearly, in a sense, I was an honoured guest, a lover of the food of his country; but he could hardly treat me as a guest, charging me nothing: I had, after all, occupied a table in his busy restaurant, consumed a variety of food and drink, been served by his staff, not to mention taking up his time putting together a one-off dish.  Finally, his face cleared and he named a sum so ludicrously low that it would have hardly paid for the glass of arak.

Adding a decent tip ‘pour le personnel’, I thanked him in the best Arabic I could remember from those years before. We shook hands warmly and I left, happy and replete.

I’ve just heard, on the one o’clock Radio Four news, that more than 30 bombs have gone off in various parts of Iraq, ‘killing at least 35 people and injuring hundreds more’. But, despite what has happened in the last goodness knows how many years I refuse to allow all the negative news from the Arab world to sully my feelings towards this warm and hospitable people.

Click here to read how my neighbours in Algeria treated me and my family during the Six Day War of 1967.