I Think I Ate the "Bef"

I know, the post title makes you curious, but I'll get to it.....
My husband has a visitor that has come to town to work with him for a few days, and he has brought his wife and son. They couldn't have picked a worse time to be in Jerusalem! Wednesday started the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, and Thursday began the Muslim's holiday of Ramadan. Being a city that is, for the most part, split between Jews and Muslims, that means the entire city is virtually shut down for the better part of a week; with more holidays to come around the corner. So a couple of days ago we had our first guests to our home! They are a lovely family and we had a nice time together. The next day the wife and 2 yr old son came over to the house for lunch and to play. It was very nice to have some company and the kids loved having someone else to play with. They were going to come over again today, but I think the toddler needed a break from so much excitement---his mom was getting pretty overwhelmed. Since this family is in town, each night we've been getting together with some other people from my husband's work to all eat dinner together. Some of the single guys that live together have hired a cook, so we've all been eating at their place and letting the cook do the work. The cook is Arabic and doesn't speak very much English, so sometimes there are miscommunications. Last night was spaghetti and that was very good, but tonight was a different story! I believe he was asked to make steak, and then he's given liberty to come up with side dishes. The "steaks" were on a platter all covered in some kind of mushroom sauce; they didn't look too bad, but not like the steak we were expecting. I cut into my portion and thought, "Hmmm, this slices very easily for steak." I was a little worried, but I took a small bite. The flavor wasn't too bad, but it had a silky smooth texture and a rubbery feeling----none of which are characteristics of beef. But, unfortunately for us, they are characteristics of "bef". I'll never be sure of what exactly this was, but I could not eat any more. Looking around the room at the other 12 guests, I was very relieved to see that I wasn't the only one who couldn't stomach this food. It was a good thing that someone had made cookies and I brought a jelly roll and a cream roll. I think most of us filled up on desserts this evening. Healthy, huh? ;)