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- A few years ago, at a party in Washington, D.C., I started a conversation with a small, dark-haired, middle-aged woman standing next to me at the dessert table. She said her name—Najmieh Batmanglij—and I recognized her as the author of one of my favorite cookbooks, “Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey,” the dog-eared paperback from which my husband had just that week cooked a cumin-scented rice polow with lentils, dates, and currants. Najmieh and I talked a bit about the Persian cuisine she’d been studying, writing about, and preparing for years, and eventually the conversation turned to our kids. I mentioned that mine, then ten and thirteen, were into music. She mentioned something about her son playing in a band in New York. “What’s it called?,” I asked. “Who knows? Maybe I’ve heard of it.” “Vampire Weekend,” she said. Uh, yes, I ‘d heard of it.