Have You Eaten? – Kobo eBook

Most of the world does not ask “how are you?”

The Chinese ask whether you have eaten. The Zulu say I see you. Persians wish you not to be tired. The Maasai are said to ask after the children. Each is a question about something a person actually needs, and each comes with a next step.

A trauma surgeon who grew up being asked the first of these by his mother in Ismailia takes twelve of the world’s greetings and asks what each one checks, what the medicine says about it, and what to ask tomorrow instead.

Short, specific and unsentimental, Have You Eaten? is for anyone who has said “fine” when it was not true, and for anyone who has let that answer pass.