tabouli in the past tense

TABOULI PERFORMER I
The Tabouli tale was born while I was living in Jeddah. It grew out of a long and difficult struggle that I had experienced as a un-Australian child in Sydney and as a un-Lebanese adult in Beirut. Tabouli gave me hope for a brighter future and I embraced it wholeheartedly. Facing a very 'cool' Danish audience, who were sitting in beanbags and sipping on natural energy drinks I started to prepare Tabouli. I chopped badly all my ingredients, homemade slides of me waxing in the background. What was I going to tell them? About my identity crisis, or about the Qana massacre that took place the day before? Reciting the name Qana and all the other southern villages bombed that day, took my breath away. That evening, my Tabouli tasted as bad as I felt. Hooray for the brave Danish girl on roller-skates who was daring enough to try it!