أكل العيش والملح مع شخص (Akal al-'aysh wal-milh ma'a shakhs)

Literally: Ate bread and salt with someone.

Example: “لن أخونه أبدًا، فقد أكلنا العيش والملح معًا.” — I'll never betray him; we've shared bread and salt together.

Origin: Grows out of an old, widely shared Arab and broader Semitic tradition treating bread and salt, eaten together under the same roof, as a near-sacred marker of trust and alliance between people — the closely related expression "baynanā ʿaysh wa-milḥ" (there is bread and salt between us) is still used today specifically to signal a friendship deep and binding enough to be treated as an unspoken pact. Salt in particular carried outsized symbolic weight across the ancient Near East generally, standing for permanence and covenant because, unlike most other foodstuffs of the period, it resisted decay — a bond "sealed with salt" implied one meant to last. Sharing a meal that included both bread and salt with someone was accordingly understood as a quiet but real declaration: whatever comes next, an obligation of loyalty and mutual protection now exists between the people who shared that table.