Palestinian chef Hasan Titi, 56, helps his wife Samar Titi in cooking and preparing homemade meal inside their house kitchen in the West Bank city of Nablus, March 30, 2020. Normally, it's the women who do the cooking and kitchen chores in Palestine. However, this is changing amid a lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, or novel coronavirus. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua)
NABLUS, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Normally, it's the women who do the cooking and kitchen chores in Palestine. However, this is changing amid a lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, or novel coronavirus.
In the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Hasan Titi, 56, has recently been helping his wife, Samar Titi, cook meals and make sweets, as part of his daily routine.
As the couple join hands in the kitchen, their daughter Dina Titi record their cooking with a smartphone and post the videos on the social media, especially on Facebook.
Dina has been trying to share positive and entertaining ideas that may help other people forced to stay home to cope with the difficult time.
"It makes me happy," Hasan said. "Since we are staying at home, our daughter Dina decided to encourage others to do the same and help them spend their time while staying at home."
"We received a lot of support and positive reaction from the first video, and people started to ask us for the recipes and advice," he said.
Meanwhile, Samar enjoys working with her husband at the kitchen, as it can create a different taste of the meals, in addition to stirring up jokes.
This even has brought the couple much closer, she said.
"We didn't mean for it to go viral, but it caught the attention of many people and so we decided to go on," said Samar, who runs an event management company in the West Bank.
"This is a chance for people to share jokes, new recipes and new ideas, especially for men, on how to spend their days under the lockdown and social isolation, which could have a bad psychological effect," she said.
To reduce the boredom and the psychological impact of the lockdown, the couple decided to only listen to news once a day.
Dina, 24, who studied marketing and human resources, said she posted the videos online in order to help fellow Palestinians ease the anxiety during this pandemic.
It's a way to turn on the passion for making food and sweets and teaching healthy recipes, she said.
"I just saw them (parent) working together on one of our family's favorite dishes that we don't often do because we didn't have time before. At that moment, I decided to record it," Dina said.
The videos were first shared on her personal Facebook page, but many of her friends later shared it, so they were even reported by local news outlets in Nablus and elsewhere in the West Bank.
"When people started to share my videos on their pages and tag other men to show them the videos, we realized that sharing our dad's role in the kitchen would have a positive impact on the society," she explained.
Hasan said that, through the recent experience, he believes that men and women in today's world, especially those who have jobs outside their homes, must cooperate at home to overcome life challenges.
"I hope that I'm encouraging more men to do the same and use the coronavirus lockdown to change social stereotypes for the better," he said.
In Palestine, so far there have been 117 reported cases of COVID-19 infection. On March 5, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency, after the first cases were discovered in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
With a spike in the confirmed cases, the Palestinian government imposed a 14-day lockdown on the West Bank on March 22, including closure of schools, halting public transportation, restricting people's movement between cities, and requiring citizens to stay at home.
