The Pasha of Cuisine

by Saygin Ersin

  Just as he was about to return to the door, he stopped in his tracks. He felt that something was missing, but he wasn’t sure what it was. His instincts, which always whispered to him in a strange language telling him what was wrong and what was right, were telling him that the apple alone simply would not do. The apple needed more flavor, a different scent, one that was spicy and burned the throat ever so slightly, but also smelled of calmness and joy, like the spring sun.

  Mentally he went through all the scents he’d gotten to know, thinking about how difficult it was to translate his emotions into another language. None of them were quite right. Finally, the cook came upon the answer.

  Running the risk of making some noise, he reached toward the jars of spices on the shelf and grabbed a pinch of cloves. Placing them on the piece of cloth, he crushed them with the handle of the knife. He sprinkled the crushed cloves over the apple slices and inhaled the smell: the sour scent of the apple mingled perfectly with the sharp but refreshing clove.

  Quickly he went back, pushed the small bundle under the door, and sat down to wait. At first there was no movement. A little while later, he heard a brief crunch and he lay down on the floor to listen. He was not mistaken. He could hear the sound of chewing behind the door, and with increasing speed. A smile spread across his face.

  He whispered, “What’s your name?”

  The crunching stopped. The girl replied, “None of your business.”

  Those quiet words slipped through the gap under the door and struck the cook like a slap across the face, wiping away his smile. He was frozen in place, kneeling as if he were bent down on a prayer rug. Then another whisper floated under the door, this time friendlier. The voice seemed to caress his face before reaching his ears. The cook closed his eyes and listened. He wanted the sound of her voice to echo for all eternity: “My name is Kamer.”

  Another whisper brought him to his senses. Her voice was slightly stern, perhaps because she was asking for the second time. “What’s your name?”

  The cook paused. He didn’t know which one of his names to tell her. Master Adem had given him a new name and told him to forget the name his mother had given him. That was easy to say, but difficult to do. Years had passed and still he wasn’t accustomed to his name.

  But he knew that wasn’t how a name should work. Your soul had to respond to it before your ears. He had thought about the fact that there were perhaps tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people on earth who shared the same name, but even though they consisted of the same syllables, every name was unique and merged with a particular soul. If you lost your name, it was like losing your soul.

  The cook whispered his name under the door—his new name, the one everyone called him. The girl repeated his name. He heard her. Perhaps for the first time in all those years, he actually heard his new name. When the girl’s lips whispered his name and it reached his ears, it took on its true meaning.

  When people’s names are spoken, it is just sound, and nothing else. Sometimes, though, someone comes along and says your name in such a way that both the speaker and the listener are moved. That utterance begins not in the mouth, nor does it end in the ear, but both begins and ends in the heart, freeing itself from the fetters of language, purifying itself and remaining a pure sound that echoes in the hearts of both people. When your name finally assumes its meaning, your soul is freed from being a mere ghost and settles into the body that is its shrine, sparkling inside the eyes which are its mirrors. That doesn’t happen to everyone, but if it does, it means you have managed to live life a little more. And if you lose it, it means dying a little more.

  On that day, as young as he was, the cook may not have realized all of that. Like so many others, he would realize what he had only after he lost it. But one thing was for certain: From that day onwards, the cook never felt like he was a stranger to his new name again.

  Of course, that magical night didn’t only change the cook; Kamer’s soul also danced with life. Afterwards, she smiled more and started to eat. She knew that if she grew and became prettier, Sirrah would have her dancing in front of the guests all the sooner. But Kamer was no longer so afraid. Something inside of her always felt warm. However alone or helpless she felt, a part of her felt safe. She kept dreaming and didn’t yet know that hope was the name of the unexplainable joy that pulsed inside her even during her darkest moments of despair.

  Master Adem started preparing special dishes for the girl every day. That was on Sirrah’s orders, of course. With her young but keen intellect, Kamer had figured out how much value her mistress placed on her and began to use it to her advantage. Every morning she would tell the kitchen what food she fancied that day, and the master would cook the dishes the young lady desired. That meant a little more work for the already busy kitchen, but Master Adem didn’t mind, and the cook was thrilled.

  In the first few days of this arrangement, the cook took advantage of the chaos of the kitchen and tried to prepare Kamer’s food by himself, but Master Adem, who had one eye perpetually locked on him, noticed what he was trying to do and once again prevented him from making an entire dish on his own. He raised no objection to the cook preparing the finished meal for presentation, however, and that was all the opportunity the cook needed.

  The cook had started placing small gifts for Kamer on the bottom of the plate before spooning in the food. At times it was a few walnuts he secretly boiled in sugar water, a few meatballs he cooked up when no one was looking, or if he was really pressed for time, a crushed bay leaf.

  After every meal, Kamer would sing a song through the window of her prison-like room on the top floor of the mansion.

  About ten days after the first night they had whispered their names to each other under the door, all hell broke loose on one of the floors above the kitchen. Sirrah was shouting again and then suddenly she appeared in the kitchen, face bright red, with Kamer in her clutches. No one dared ask what she had done wrong.

  As the cook helplessly watched the familiar scene unfold once again, he saw Kamer cast him a mischievous grin. Her eyes spoke one sentence: “I’ve missed you!”

  The smell of sour apples filled the cook’s nostrils and his emotions were in turmoil; on the one hand, he felt joy, but on the other, despite everything, he felt rage, and there was also the terrible burden that such a sacrifice placed on his heart.

  The cook waited impatiently for nightfall. When everyone withdrew, he once again made his way on tiptoe to the small room, lay down on the floor in front of the door, and whispered her name. They talked until morning; to be more precise, Kamer talked and the cook listened. And she told him so much: where she had been born, the house she’d grown up in, how she was sold to slave merchants, how she arrived at the House of Pleasure, Sirrah …

  But in all truth the cook didn’t hear much of it. Her voice was like a melody for him rather than a means of conveying ideas. As long as he heard her voice, it didn’t matter to the cook what she was telling him. He wasn’t old enough to realize that in addition to being a magical kind of joy, what he was experiencing was also a sinister curse. However, even as he got older he wouldn’t be able to shake that off, and he didn’t learn the error of his ways until years later when a woman finally told him; even then he didn’t listen. If he could’ve released himself from the grip of that curse and actually listened, he would’ve been able to understand how much he mattered to her. He would learn far too late how precious the feeling of missing someone was for a girl who had never missed anything or anyone in her entire life.

  After talking for hours on end, Kamer stopped and said, “Tell me about your life.”

  The cook returned from his reverie. He felt anxious, the cause of which he couldn’t pin down. He muttered a few incoherent words like a child who had just awoken from a dream. He knew that he couldn’t talk about his past. He couldn’t have even if Master Adem hadn’t told him to stay silent. Not because he was afraid of what would happen, but because he was afraid of the wor
ds themselves. He hadn’t truly thought about what happened that night in the Harem. The idea of putting into words what he had experienced, what happened to his father, and especially what happened to his mother, caused a terrible fear to take hold of his heart. But he couldn’t lie, either. Even though a voice deep within was screaming at him to make up a different past for himself, the cook couldn’t risk lying, no matter how small the chance of the truth eventually coming out. Even if his young mind wasn’t consciously aware that even the worst truth was more forgivable than a lie, he knew it in his heart.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he replied.

  Kamer’s voice took on a sharper edge. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” the cook repeated, and added, “But you mustn’t tell anyone.”

  Kamer’s whispering voice was tinged with anger. “What is there to tell? You haven’t told me anything!”

  The cook’s voice assumed an anxious seriousness. “Don’t even tell anyone that. You mustn’t tell anyone that I said I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Kamer fell silent. She didn’t broach the subject again until years later when the cook told her about his past.

  That night, the cook stayed by the door until early morning. He didn’t care that it was cold, nor did he feel the ache of having stayed on knees on the hard floor for hours on end. He started to miss Kamer the moment he went back to his own room. But he was also happy, because he knew Kamer would find a way to be sent to the storeroom room again.

  Which is exactly what happened.

  Not even a week had gone by before Kamer found another way to infuriate Sirrah, and she was locked up in the storeroom again to suffer her sweet punishment. The same pattern continued in the following weeks and seemed to be set to continue until someone noticed. But the cook had had enough and wanted to take matters into his own hands.

  Of course, every night of punishment for Kamer meant a night of joy, but cruelty and pain were also a part of it. The cook could no longer endure the way she would be beaten. The torment grew with each day until it became insufferable. Knowing that Kamer’s cheeks were still stinging with the pain of Sirrah’s slaps hurt him, and talking with her knowing that she had suffered to be there with him wounded his pride.

  For nights on end the cook tried to come up with a solution but his efforts were in vain, so he started to wander around looking for another way to be able to see her. The solution came to him, as it often did, in the form of the most obvious place: the roof of the kitchen.

  The small kitchen was built up against the back of the Great Mansion. To ensure that the smoke from the four large chimneys on the roof didn’t get into the mansion, there were no windows on that side of the building. Kamer’s room was at the very top of the building, and he figured she could easily reach the rooftop from there.

  The cook made two rather unsightly but sturdy ladders using some oak planks that were sent to the kitchen. One was for himself, so he could climb up to the roof of the kitchen, and the other was for Kamer, so she could climb down to the roof.

  On their last night whispering to each other under the door, he explained his plan to Kamer, and he felt her heartbeat become one with the beating of his own heart.

  “Will you be able to get down onto the roof?” he asked. She gave him a bright laugh in reply.

  On the night they decided to meet up, the cook first climbed up to the roof using his own ladder and then he pulled Kamer’s ladder up with a rope. He leaned it against the wall of the mansion. It was toward the end of April and there was a huge full moon. The cook waited breathlessly, his gaze fixed on the ladder as he prayed nothing would go wrong.

  At last Kamer appeared on the edge of the roof. They looked at each other, one looking up from below, one looking down from above. They were free of Sirrah and Master Adem, and their time was their own. Kamer began to climb down the ladder. She was wearing a dark blue frock the cook had never seen before, and her hair was blowing in the gentle breeze.

  In the cook’s mind, Kamer looked like an angel who’d descended from the starry sky to the moonlit earth. She ran toward him and stopped a few paces away. She had pulled back her face veil and pinned it above her forehead, making her beautiful eyes even more stunning. The April wind blew a few strands of her carefully combed hair across her cheek. Her name meant “moon” and it was as if the moon was using all its light to illuminate its namesake on earth that night. The ivory light glowed on Kamer’s fair skin, lighting up her cheeks, nervous smile, pearl hair pin, and the silver embroidery of her dress.

  Neither of them said a word. No words existed that could suit such a moment, so they stood motionless, gazing at each other. The cook suddenly felt a warm, soft tingle in his fingertips and then his heart seemed to suddenly stop beating. But he could hear the wind and feel it caressing his skin. The scent of apples filled his nostrils and his fingertips were alive with that pleasant heat.

  Later, he wouldn’t be able to recall if he’d said anything. All he remembered was that they’d sat down with their backs against the chimney farthest from the mansion. Silently they watched the sky, occasionally glancing at each other, which made them break into shy smiles. That night, everything seemed to have been created for them alone. The moon had risen so they could watch it, the stars were there to decorate the sky above them, the House of Pleasure had been built so they could meet, and the roof was there so they could finally be together. Sirrah had bought the girl from a slave trader for that night, and the cook’s mother had sacrificed herself so he could meet Kamer. All the suffering and joy in their lives, everything they had lived through, had happened for that night, so they could be together.

  That was how the story of apples and cloves began.

  The longer he spent working in the Imperial Kitchens, the quicker time seemed to pass.

  The cook had been there for nearly four weeks and stores in the cellar were still dwindling. The idea of planning the dishes they would cook a week in advance hadn’t worked as anticipated, and the people who suffered as a result were the lowest-ranking inhabitants of the palace. The concubines, palace guards, novices, and servants had to eat the same dishes at least three times a week, while those from the higher ranks continued to relay their requests to their personal cooks, not caring whether there was a shortage or not. As a result, the Imperial Kitchens had to keep borrowing from the Cooks’ Union to make ends meet.

  The fact that a new treasurer still had not been appointed made matters even worse. Sadık Agha, Halil Pasha’s scribe, had been appointed as his successor, but he only lasted two days. After realizing the dire situation the Treasury was in, he begged the sultan to remove him from the post, even at the risk of losing his rank or possibly facing exile. The Interior Minister, Lütfü Pasha, was asked to step in. Everyone knew that he knew little about monetary matters. Master İsfendiyar explained it all very well when he said, “If he knew anything about handling money, he wouldn’t have agreed to take the position in the first place.” The defining quality of the new acting Treasurer was that he was one of the most loyal followers of the Grand Vizier, meaning it was unlikely he would quit.

  As the world outside went about its business and matters of state unfolded, within the walls of the Imperial Kitchens the familiar routine continued in humdrum fashion.

  Every morning with the morning call to prayer the stoves were lit, and the cooks emerged from their lodgings and got to work. Until lunchtime knives clattered and cauldrons boiled. After the lunch dishes were sent out, the apprentices would wash dishes and the masters would get started on preparations for dinner.

  The cook was teaching Mahir everything from scratch as if he wasn’t his assistant but an apprentice who was setting foot for the first time in the kitchen. The boy tried his best, but apart from his mysterious talent for making rice, he was hopeless when it came to anything else.

  One afternoon, the cook was in the Odalisques’ Kitchen again, helping prepare the food that would be sent to the Harem
. The surprises he placed under the food had become a source of great entertainment for the concubines, as they led a dull, predictable life.

  The cook tried his best to keep his notoriety at the Harem from spreading too far. He had already achieved what he wanted: the Black Eunuch who came to pick up the food every day was on friendly terms with him. He knew that if his fame spread any further, it could actually prove to be a hindrance.

  The Black Eunuch who was responsible for picking up the concubines’ food and returning the empty crockery was an Abyssinian slave named Neyyir. He was taller than three ells, and it was said that when they’d discovered a scale sturdy enough to weigh him, he weighed exactly one hundred and ten oka.

  Since Neyyir Agha had been castrated at a very young age, there was a childish softness to his face and voice, which, coupled with his huge stature, gave him a striking appearance. The manners of speech that were common to all those who were trained at the palace seemed out of place when he used them, and even when he was being his politest, one couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if that huge hand of his, gliding through the air like a swan, swung down with the intention of delivering a slap to the face.

  Just like every day, after the food was portioned out and the lids of the pots were closed, Neyyir Agha arrived with the meal-bearers trailing behind him. Gravely, he watched the meal-bearers go about their work and once he was convinced that everything was perfectly arranged, he approached the cook in two huge strides and said with a smile, “I wonder what’s at the bottom of the pots today?”

  The cook had to crane his neck to look the eunuch in the face. Smiling in return he said, “Well, I supposed you’ll have to eat down to the bottom to find out.”