The Pasha of Cuisine

by Saygin Ersin

  The man smiled slightly and eyed the dark hallway behind him with suspicion. “It was difficult,” he whispered. “It’s not all ready yet, but when you sent word to bring over whatever I had, I did what I could.”

  The cook nodded. He could wait no longer, so he’d sent a coded message to the only person through which he could reach this man, that is, Herbalist Naim Effendi, asking him to bring whatever he could get his hands on.

  “Did you get everything?” the cook asked. He was almost breathless with excitement.

  With a brief smile the man pulled from his cloak a large bundle of leather-bound papers tied tightly together. “This is all I have,” he said. “God willing, not too many are missing and they will serve your purpose.”

  “God willing,” the cook repeated. “Thank you. I have caused you great trouble.”

  “Not at all.” The man smiled. “A brothers’ wish is my command.”

  Mention of the brothers made the cook’s heart race. “Will you see them soon?” he asked.

  “Not soon, but I will go to Baghdad in the summer,” the man replied.

  The cook grabbed him tightly by the arm. “Send them my greetings. Tell the brothers I miss them very much.”

  “Of course,” the man said, and after a final salutation, disappeared from sight in the dark hallway.

  After closing the door, the cook picked up the candle and sat cross-legged on the bed. Unfastening the pile of papers, he spread them out. He gazed at the papers as if he were looking upon a sacred treasure. Each of them depicted a large circle divided into twelve, and each of the twelve astrological signs from Aries to Pisces were marked in their place, as well as the positions of the seven main planets from Mercury to Saturn.

  They were the horoscopes of all the important people who lived in the Imperial Palace.

  Each page depicted the location of each planet and what sign they were under when the residents of the palace were born. For the uninitiated, the papers may have seemed like senseless diagrams, but someone who knew how to read the signs could learn about the person’s fortunes and misfortunes, their skills and ineptitudes, what they liked and disliked, and even what they thought about or did not think about.

  Quickly scanning through the pages, the cook set two of them aside, the ones he truly needed. One of the horoscopes was for the Chief Sword Bearer and the other was for the illustrious sovereign.

  The cook read Siyavuş Agha’s horoscope first. It was just as he expected, and he realized that he could’ve taken the right course of action without the horoscope. Then he perused the sultan’s horoscope at length. He carefully studied the locations of the planets, which sign they were under, and their alignment with one another. He came up with an idea. After thinking for a while, he muttered to himself, “I’ll tell the Market Steward to get some fowl tomorrow.”

  After checking the horoscope again, he looked at the others. He had the horoscopes of almost everyone in the palace, from the Grand Vizier to the Chief Gatekeeper. The amount of power at his fingertips made him shudder. Just then another horoscope caught his eye. As he picked it up to study it, his eyes widened in terror.

  “My God!” the cook whispered to himself. The horoscope he was holding had been done for Haseki Sultan, and the zodiac confirmed what Neyyir Agha had just been saying about her.

  The stars had graced Haseki Sultan with such intelligence, ability, and power that, had she been born a man, she could have conquered the whole world. The cook felt quite uneasy for the first time since he had come up with his plan. Haseki Sultan was indeed dangerous, but it was out of his hands now. There was no turning back.

  After tidying up the horoscopes, placing them back in the leather binding, and stuffing them under his mattress, he blew out the candle. He knew that he should sleep, but he kept seeing visions of stars. It was as if he were gazing at the billions of stars that could be seen on a clear moonless night. A cool desert breeze enveloped his body and his mind wandered to the el-Haki brothers’ house in Baghdad, where he had first learned about the art of the zodiac.

  5

  The Doctor and the Astrologer

  THE COOK WAS seventeen years old at the time. In those days, everything in his life seemed to be shrouded in fog. When people spoke to him, their voices were either the slightest of hums or ear-splitting screams. Scents and flavors made no impression on him at all. Time seemed to have stopped; the difference between day and night was meaningless.

  Just like his world, the cook was also quiet. Habitually he spoke little, but there had been no other time in his life when he had been silent for so long, and he didn’t know whether there would be another. Notions about things such as the future meant nothing to the cook, nor did hopes, desires, or dreams. He was trapped in a cursed, turbid present lived out under the gloomy shadow of the past, merely breathing.

  Before Master Adem turned to leave, they silently hugged. The cook remembered watching him walk over the hill, getting smaller with each step until he finally disappeared into the horizon. He recalled wondering if he would ever see him again. He remembered that because it was the only thought he had about the future in those days.

  The cook wanted only one thing from life. He had a single hope and a single prayer: to forget.

  Only by forgetting did he think he could be free of the acrid taste in his mouth and the gloom that weighed down on his chest.

  What he desired was oblivion beyond death, as if he had never lived, never existed.

  Even the sweetest memory pained his heart, as it was being torn from his chest, and mere mention of the future made his blood run cold because there was always the possibility he might experience the same pain yet again.

  But oblivion never came. Kamer was always in his thoughts. He grew angry at himself and tried to banish such thoughts from his mind; he drank, he wept, but it was all in vain. He could neither stop the memories nor alleviate his anguish. He wondered if sleep could be his salvation, at least for a while, but the insidious darkness seeped into his dreams. He had nightmares every night and woke up drenched in sweat, breathless. Over time, the thought of sleep became terrifying.

  Constant thinking, and getting lost in those thoughts, was comparably better since he at least had a modicum of control. Dreams, on the other hand, were cruel. Freed from his willpower, they went their own way, catching him unawares at his most vulnerable moments and inflicting still worse pain. He considered the idea that regardless of how silly it seemed, waking up in the middle of a story that was soothing yet brief and as deep as the ocean, then realizing it was naught but a dream must be one of the few things in the world that had the power to make a person feel utterly helpless, powerless, and pathetic.

  He tried to figure out exactly when the world had started to go awry, but it was futile. He wondered if perhaps it had always been that way, if the happy memories he now barely remembered were also mere dreams.

  His sole desire was to remain in that dream forever. Life could have gone on with all its fallacies without ever touching him. He and Kamer would have gone on living forever between the chimneys on the roof of the kitchen without ever growing up, without ever knowing unhappiness.

  When the cook was fourteen and Kamer thirteen, they had met every night for a year on that roof, creating the happiest moments of their lives.

  There had been a half-moon in the sky when Kamer’s hair first touched his face, and a crescent moon when his hand brushed against hers, which sent a jolt of electricity through them. And there was a full moon when they realized that the song Kamer whispered into his ear described them perfectly, and that what they were experiencing was love.

  He remembered that song, and would always remember it, as if he’d been forbidden to forget it:

  So drunk am I,

  I no longer comprehend the world.

  Who am I?

  Who is the cupbearer, where the wine?

  And Kamer’s dancing, which became more beautiful every day under the light of her namesake with her a
rms gliding above her head as if composing a new melody, her hair flying in the wind as if drawing a veil over the night, her steps caressing the ground, and her gaze—from which the cook couldn’t take his eyes for a second—sometimes embarrassed, often mischievous, and occasionally aglow with a naïve flirtatiousness. Kamer was becoming more and more breathtakingly beautiful with each passing day, her dancing more elegant. Over time the cook began to worry that she would slip from his life like a stream of light, starting with her delicate swaying arms.

  He also remembered the night when Kamer had danced so wildly. She circled around him with rhythmical steps, spinning on every third. The cook turned around and around, trying to keep up, but Kamer was feeling mischievous as usual and sped up. Since she was so used to dancing, she never missed a beat or felt light-headed, but the cook was already staggering and losing his balance. When Kamer began to spin even faster, he called out with a laugh, “Stop spinning!”

  Kamer suddenly stopped and looked at the cook through her hair, which was blowing in the wind.

  “I’m Kamer; spinning is what I do,” she said coyly and spun ever faster.

  The cook found it hard to even follow her with his gaze, but then his expression of awe was replaced by concern because with every turn, Kamer was getting closer to the edge of the roof. The cook called out to her again and again, but Kamer responded with a laugh and a small leap.

  When he realized he couldn’t stop her with words alone, the cook jumped forward and pulled her toward him. And as if his gesture was blessed by the night, she fell into the cook’s arms with a small cry.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she’d asked, mock anger in her voice. Still, she twined her arms around the cook’s neck as if scared she might fall.

  “You almost fell,” he said, trying to appear annoyed. He had one hand on Kamer’s arm and the other on her waist. Kamer was out of breath, and just watching her had exhausted the cook as well. Sweat was beading up on their foreheads as they stood there together.

  “I wasn’t going to fall,” Kamer objected.

  “You were,” the cook insisted. “You were on the edge of—”

  Kamer interrupted him with a smile. “I wasn’t going to fall. You were there, you wouldn’t have let me.”

  The cook’s heart seemed to stop beating once again. He couldn’t feel his legs and at that moment he felt as though he would never breathe again. He was looking into Kamer’s eyes, trying to find the right thing to say. She leaned forward and put her head on his shoulder, rendering all words pointless. The sole meaning of all existence at that moment was to feel Kamer’s hands on his shoulders, her eyelashes on his neck, and the warmth of her breasts on his chest. He caressed her hair and looked up at the sky, longing for the moment to go on forever. But then from the corner of his eye he saw disaster approaching.

  One of Sirrah’s slaves was at the top of the ladder.

  But the cook didn’t care, and he wasn’t afraid in the slightest. His only concern was the fact that Kamer, whose head was still on his shoulder, would be upset. He glared at the slave with such ferocity that he quickly disappeared from sight.

  Later he wouldn’t be able to remember how much longer they’d stayed there that night. But before they parted, he told Kamer they’d been caught.

  Kamer laughed. “Of course the slave will tell Sirrah, but we haven’t really been caught. Only people doing something bad, or running away, can get caught.”

  The cook fell even more in love with her when she said that.

  The disaster they had been expecting did not happen the next day, nor in the days that followed. Sirrah was a clever woman, and she knew Kamer. If she put any pressure on her, or forbade her from doing anything, she knew Kamer would become even more obstinate, so she made do with small precautions. Even when there were no customers, she would send Kamer from one mansion to the next, and during the rest of the day had her practice until she was exhausted. Her door was doubly locked, and all the passageways leading up to the roof were barred.

  It fell to Master Adem to warn the cook. He constantly reminded him that the House of Pleasure was a temporary stop for him, that he would become a great cook one day, the greatest cook of all time, and that he must remember it was his destiny and dedicate his life to the art. The cook wearied of listening to the sermon, but out of respect for his master he remained silent and nodded in agreement. But when Master Adem made a disparaging remark about Kamer, the words pierced his heart and made his blood boil. His master repeated, “Has anyone decent ever come out of the House of Pleasure? Do you think you deserve an ordinary dancer?” The cook clenched his teeth and prayed for patience.

  Of course, neither Sirrah’s precautions nor Master Adem’s words were enough to keep them from seeing each other.

  Either the cook, who was discovering the power of the dishes he prepared, would convince one of the slaves or customers to help him, or Kamer would sweet talk or force one of Sirrah’s servant girls to arrange a place for them to meet. If that failed, the cook would send messages to Kamer through the dishes he cooked. When her longing grew too strong, Kamer would sing so loud the windows rattled, and the cook, whether he was working or tossing and turning in bed, would feel the despair within him dissolve only to be replaced by an urge to both laugh and cry.

  Weeks and months passed. Their small moments of joy were like mirages in the desert, offering only the slightest comfort. They had never broached the issue, but they both knew that things would not—could not—go on forever. And they knew that they needed a future to look forward to, no matter how distant or difficult to attain. However, they weren’t the only ones thinking about their futures. The years ahead of them had already been pledged to the House of Pleasure.

  The cook went downstairs to the kitchen one morning and saw Master Adem sitting with two men he’d never seen before. His master did not introduce his guests, and the cook was too shy to ask. The men carefully watched him work from morning till noon, and after tasting the dishes he’d prepared, they had a brief conversation with Master Adem outside the door and left. The cook wondered what was in store for him, and soon enough he would find out.

  Master Adem woke him a few days later at the crack of dawn, even before the call to prayer. He offered no explanation, but merely told him to get dressed. The cook did as he was told and followed Master Adem outside. They walked to Üsküdar and made the rather long journey to Unkapanı by rowboat. Once ashore they began to walk up the hill toward Etmeydanı. On the way there, the cook glanced at Master Adem and noticed that his face was pale, as if he was feeling uneasy.

  At one point they turned right, entering a street where there were shops selling kebab, tripe, liver, boiled sheep’s head, halva, and pickles. Master Adam knocked on a small door between the halva maker’s shop and the kebab seller. Shortly afterwards the door opened. The cook recognized the man who invited them inside as one of the two men who’d visited the House of Pleasure to watch him work a few days earlier.

  After passing through a short corridor they entered a large room. When the cook saw an elderly man sitting on a sheepskin rug draped across a bedstead in the corner of the room, he surmised that they were at the cooks’ guild. He guessed that the elderly man was the guild’s sheikh, the man on his right was the registrar, and the other, the man who had gone to the House of Pleasure’s kitchen to watch him, was the scout.

  The cook had never given a thought to achieving the rank of master until that day. But despite his age, he was already a superb cook, a fact to which his own master attested as well as anyone who tasted his cooking, even the cruel Sirrah. All the same, he was excited, and his heart was pounding. But he sensed that something was amiss. As far as he knew, the ceremony for awarding mastery took place in the spring with the Guild Council, with all the members of the guild, and even the Judge and the Chief Constable of the district, in attendance. Master Adem’s anxious expression had been replaced with a look of morbidity and he avoided locking eyes with anyone
in the room. He introduced himself to the members of the council and vouched for the cook, whereupon the agent attested to having witnessed the cook’s abilities. The guild sheikh then declared him to have obtained the rank of master. The registrar handed Master Adem a red apron, which he tied around the cook’s waist with trembling hands, and the agent handed the cook his certificate. There were no prayers, and contrary to centuries of tradition, the sheikh made no comments. Thus the cook attained his rank at perhaps the strangest ceremony the guild had held in its thousand-year history.

  They were about to leave as quickly as they’d arrived when the sheikh called out to Master Adem. He hesitated for a moment but guild tradition forced him to turn around. “Wait for me outside,” he told the cook.

  “Of course, Master.” The cook left the room, but his curiosity won out at the last moment, so he stood just outside the door so he could hear what they were saying.

  “Haven’t all these years of self-imposed suffering been enough?” he heard the sheikh tell Master Adem. “Let us pay your remaining debt out of the Guild Fund so you can return to our ranks.”

  “That I cannot do,” Master Adem replied. “I must reap what I’ve sown. I can’t make the guild pay for my erring ways.”

  The sheikh insisted, “Think about it, my son. If you have no pity for yourself, then have pity on your skill as a cook. The world has never seen the likes of you.”

  “Soon it will see better, God willing,” Master Adem replied.

  After leaving the guild, they quickly retraced their steps back to Unkapanı, and as they drew closer to the sea, Master Adem’s anxiety seemed to lessen. As they were passing by a boza shop, he stopped.

  “Come,” he said to the cook. “Let’s sit down for a while.”

  The boza shop was small and dusty. In front of the shop was a charcoal stove on which a few meat kebabs were sizzling and a few wicker stools. Sitting down, Master Adem asked, “Albanian or Circassian?”

  The cook smiled shyly. “You decide, Master.”