Squash Appears Filled With Letters, Symbols
BY KATHY STEPHENSON
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Cutting into a 15-pound banana squash Thursday, Kasim Barakzia thought perhaps he had lost his gourd.
The owner of Salt Lake City's Baba Afghan Restaurant, 55 E. 400 South, noticed strange white etchings on the normally smooth seeds, which resemble those from a pumpkin, inside the thick-skinned winter squash.
"I looked at one seed, and then another," said Barakzia, soon realizing that almost all had unusual white markings. The restaurateur said he thought the squash was rotten or diseased, but after inspection and a tasting, Barakzia declared "it was perfect."
Barakzia said his restaurant has cut into two or three banana squash every day for the past nine years and he has never seen anything like this. Two other banana squash also supplied to the restaurant were filled with the usually smooth seeds.
"It's a bizarre situation," he said, pointing out the etchings, some that resemble the letters A, T, E and F and the numbers 4 and 14. Other seeds had markings that looked like a tree and bird. Barakzia said a few of the seeds had the symbol for Allah, the Arabic word for God. One seed had the Arabic letter baa, a kind of "u" with a dot underneath.
