by Saygin Ersin
“I … I couldn’t sleep,” the cook said.
But Master Bekir laughed. “We were waiting for you. Master İsfendiyar said you would be coming. I know everything.”
A cold sweat ran down the cook’s back. “What did he tell you?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling.
“He said the Pasha of Cuisine needed our help,” Master Bekir replied.
A familiar voice arose from the darkest corner of the kitchen: “That’s exactly what I said.”
There was the tapping of a walking stick and then Master İsfendiyar appeared in the dim light. “You wanted capable cooks? Well, here are some capable cooks. Eight of them, in fact. Does that suffice?”
“It does, Master,” the cook said. “But, Master Bekir … how long has he known?”
Master Bekir himself answered. “Right from the start. Master İsfendiyar told me the day you walked into the kitchen. He wanted me to watch out for you.”
The cook glanced at Master İsfendiyar.
“Now, leave off such useless questions,” Master İsfendiyar said, “and tell us, how may we help you?”
“With your cooking of course, Master,” the cook replied. “We have to prepare a magnificent banquet. One that will please the eye before the mouth.”
“Nothing we haven’t done before. How many people will the banquet be for?”
“One person.”
“And where will this banquet be?”
The cook smiled. “At the House of Pleasure.”
“Understood.” Master İsfendiyar nodded. “But will they let us use the kitchen?”
“We’ll need some help with that,” the cook said. “But I have arranged for a few friends of mine to take care of such matters.”
When Master İsfendiyar heaved a worried sigh, Master Bekir pulled a large knife from the sash around his waist. “Don’t trouble yourself, Master İsfendiyar,” he said. “You know, this isn’t only good for slicing onions! Aside from the fact that he is the pasha of our art, when a brother from the kitchens tells us his troubles and asks for our help, we’ll put our lives on the line if need be.”
“Well said,” Master İsfendiyar murmured, which was echoed by the six assistants behind Master Bekir.
The cook was at a loss for words. In the end, he merely said, “Thank you.”
Master İsfendiyar got up, tapping his cane on the ground. “That’s it then, let us pray for success. When are we leaving?”
“Tomorrow, before dawn,” the cook replied. “The boats will be waiting for us. We’ll leave the palace separately and meet up at the boaters’ pier in Kasımpaşa.”
Master İsfendiyar nodded and said, “Very well,” and started to walk away. Master Bekir picked up the candle and headed out.
The cook caught up with Master İsfendiyar, who was about to disappear into the darkness, and took his arm. “What is it now?” the master asked.
After waiting for Master Bekir and his assistants to leave, the cook said, “Master, you asked whether eight cooks would suffice.”
“And?”
“Eight is too many. Seven is enough.”
Master İsfendiyar turned toward the cook. As the light of the receding candle grew dimmer, the anger in the master’s eyes seemed to grow brighter. “What ever do you mean?” he hissed.
“You need to stay here,” the cook replied.
“No chance! I can’t send you away on your own.”
“For God’s sake, listen to me!” the cook pleaded, tightening his grip on his arm. “You have to stay here because there are a few more things I need you to do after I’m gone.”
“What do you mean, after you’re gone?”
“I’m not going to come back to the kitchens,” the cook said. He pulled a small flask from his sash and placed it in Master İsfendiyar’s hand. “Keep this safe. When Master Bekir returns and tells you all is well, mix the contents of this bottle with a glass of tamarind juice and have Mahir drink it. That same night, visit him while he’s sleeping and whisper into his ear my true identity and everything I’ve done here. Don’t worry, he won’t remember your voice. He will think everything you tell him was his own sudden realization. A few days will pass and the palace guards will come looking for me, but I will be at the bachelors’ lodgings on Melekgirmez Street. You are to report me anonymously. Do you understand?”
Master İsfendiyar swallowed a few times. “Then what will happen?”
“Only God knows,” the cook replied. “If everything goes as planned, I’ll have to do a few more things here, so I will come back. If things don’t go as planned … please remember me with kindness.”
“Of course I will, son, but—”
“There are no buts, Master! Either I will claim Kamer, or this palace will claim my life.”
A tear gleamed in the corner of Master İsfendiyar’s eye.
They embraced.
When he returned to the lodgings, the cook quietly opened the chest by his bedside and took out the horoscopes and the two books. After grabbing one of his spare towels, he went out again and sat down beneath one of the oil lamps burning on the stairs.
He quickly rifled through the pages of the black book. “Sorry, Master,” he murmured as he tore off the three pages he would need and tucked them into his sash, and then he wrapped the books and the horoscopes in the towel.
Now ready, he went back to bed and placed the bundle under his mattress. The morning call to prayer was but moments away, so sleeping would be pointless, but the cook lay back and closed his eyes anyway.
The day got off to a swift start as the cooks and assistants going on the expedition prepared for the journey. There was a small ceremony in the courtyard outside the lodgings and they said their farewells with prayers.
Amidst the bustle, the Privy Chamber Page found a chance to bid the cook farewell. He expressed his condolences for the cook’s removal from the Aghas’ Kitchen and asked if he wanted him to bring him anything back from Edirne.
“I shall definitely let you know if I think of anything,” the cook replied. Regardless of how fondly he would remember Firuz Agha, he swore to himself that he would never request anything from a denizen of the palace for as long as he lived.
After the ceremony, everything quickly went back to normal in the kitchens, and the centuries-old wheels of the kitchens began turning in faultless fashion once again.
That day, the unhappiest person not just in the Imperial Kitchens, but the entirety of the palace itself, was undoubtedly Mahir. He was deeply offended that they had been moved from the Aghas’ Kitchen to the Odalisques’ Kitchen. He wandered around, a restless soul whose future and dreams had been wrested from his tentative grip. He gazed with disgust and disdain at the bulky iron cauldrons of the kitchen, the copper pots, the ordinary dishes, and the assistants who poured food straight from the pots into serving bowls
And then there was the way his master said “As you wish” to Master Bekir’s every request. It tore at Mahir’s heart.
When Neyyir Agha arrived to pick up the food, Mahir cornered the huge eunuch and whispered his troubles to him. That young assistant, who had long since abandoned himself to the clutches of ambition, was so engrossed in his own problems that he didn’t even notice the myriad gestures and whispers around him that day, nor the fact that Master İsfendiyar had visited the kitchen a few too many times.
As Mahir built up in his mind a distant and imaginary future, the cook, Master Bekir, and the six assistants had already laid the foundations of a future that was already at hand. Master İsfendiyar prepared documents for the cook and three assistants so they would be able to exit the gate. They were to leave the palace at sunset and Master Bekir and the other assistants would go through the back door late at night when no one was around.
The cook left the kitchen without his assistant, who was still talking to Neyyir Agha, and went to the lodgings, sat down on his bed, and waited. Exhaustion was pulling at his eyelids but soon enough he heard his assistant’s plodding f
ootsteps.
Opening his eyes, he sat up. “Come over here.”
Mahir approached the bed and crouched down. The cook reached under his pillow and removed the bundle. “Take this,” he said.
After staring at the bundle for a few moments, Mahir took it. “What is this, Master?”
“Let’s just say that there are some very important things inside,” the cook replied. “I will be gone for a few days. I’m entrusting them to you. Whatever you do, don’t look inside.”
“I won’t, Master,” Mahir promised.
The cook smiled and closed his eyes again, but his assistant remained by the bed. “Is there anything else?” he asked, eyes still closed.
“I spoke to Neyyir Agha,” he said. “If I could become a master, he said that he’d try to have me reassigned to the Inner Palace. What do you think? I know I asked only recently, but … have you thought about the possibility of me becoming a master?”
The cook opened his eyes and looked at Mahir. “Still thinking about that?”
Mahir nodded. “Yes, and you told me you would consider it.”
“I did think about it,” the cook replied. “It depends on you, actually. What I mean to say is that the sooner you can eat forty ovens’ worth of bread in one sitting, the quicker you’ll advance.”
He closed his eyes again. His heart couldn’t bear the expression on his assistant’s face. Mahir was already walking toward the door, not dragging his feet but stomping out of rage.
After drinking the tamarind juice mixed with fermented violets, Mahir himself would be surprised at the thoughts teeming in his mind and the courage filling his heart, and he would quickly sever the last ties he had with his master.
Mahir would do it even if he didn’t want to because he was going to open the door that would lead to the Harem.
The cook spent an hour in bed, resisting sleep, before getting up and leaving the palace. First, he stopped at a soup restaurant near Tahtakale and ate, and then he headed down toward the sea. He saw a large inn near the pier in Unkapanı and took a room so he could get some sleep.
When he opened his eyes, the muezzins were reciting the call to prayer, which said that prayer was holier than sleep. Quickly he got up and went down to the pier, weaving his way along back alleys. He woke up the oarsman of the first boat he came across and asked him to take him to Kasımpaşa.
As they swiftly glided over the still waters of the Golden Horn, a galley docked at the Imperial Shipyard caught the cook’s eye. It was a huge ship with three masts, two decks, and fifty-eight cannons. It looked ghostly in the twilight. But as the rays of the rising sun illuminated the scene, he imagined the ship taking on bodily form and becoming a sea dragon yearning to get back to the open sea.
The cook saw Master Bekir and his six assistants waiting for him. He paid the oarsman and joined them. They greeted each other with nods. “Your men are running late,” Master Bekir murmured. The cook turned his gaze in the direction of Kasımpaşa.
As his patience dwindled, time seemed to move ever so slowly. At last, the silhouette of Mad Bayram appeared on one of the streets leading down to the shore. Levon was with him, as always, and a few paces behind them were about half a dozen men with peculiar gaits. One was limping, another stopped after every few steps and turned around, one seemed to walk sideways like a crab, and one walked leaning forward as if he was going to start running any second.
The cook was displeased, not because of the strange appearance of the men but because he wasn’t sure if there was enough of them. As he greeted each with a nod, he cast a pointed look at Master Bayram, who understood what the look meant. He grinned and blew a shrill whistle. When the high-pitched sound echoed across the water, five rowboats took to the waters of the Golden Horn, rowing toward the shore.
As the five pairs of oars silently cut through the water, Master Bayram introduced the shortest of the men whom he’d brought along to the cook: “This is Tekir.”
The cook’s eyes lit up. He had never seen him in person, but he’d heard much about Tekir. A swift and silent thief, he had burgled the House of Pleasure twice.
“Do you know the Great Mansion?” the cook asked.
Tekir grinned. “Like the back of my hand.”
“The lodgings of the guards, Sirrah’s room?”
“One needn’t know where Sirrah’s room is, sir. Follow the scent of gold and it shall lead you there.”
“Good,” said the cook. “Then you can show our friends here the way. Once the Great Mansion falls, the House of Pleasure is ours. There’s only one condition: Sirrah must not be harmed in any way. After the deed is done, you can take whatever you like.”
Tekir bowed his head in gratitude and placed his hand over his half-naked chest. In the meantime, the rowboats had reached the shore. The oarsmen stepped ashore and lashed the painters of their boats to the rocks. Two of them looked very similar, and just as Master Bayram had said, they were a pair of tall, well-built young men, strikingly handsome.
“Are these the Slow Brothers?” the cook asked.
Master Bayram nodded. “Don’t be fooled by their looks. They are wanted in nine different provinces.”
The cook looked at the Slow Brothers. Truly, with their solemn handsome faces worthy of palaces, they stuck out amid that crowd of degenerates. “In that case, let’s go,” he said quietly.
As the men were making their way toward the rowboats, Master Bayram’s voice froze them in their tracks. “Whatever my brother here says,” he said, pointing at the cook, “do it!”
The men placed their hands over their hearts and then they all set off in the boats. Master Bayram watched the five boats move away from the shore as they steered toward the mouth of the Bosphorus toward Üsküdar at the mouth of the Golden Horn.
They arrived in Üsküdar and started walking. After passing by a few fields, they crossed a small stream and then, as they reached the middle of the woods, they quietly approached the House of Pleasure.
The cook hid under a tree and looked up at the towering wall. On instinct he turned and saw Tekir standing beside him with a small bundle on his back. So, the cook thought, the rumors were right. He walks so quietly that his feet don’t seem to even touch the ground.
From his bundle, Tekir pulled a long length of rope with a hook attached to one end and, after a quick glance around, he flung the rope over the wall. It landed with an audible clang but the hook set. Tekir scaled the wall and disappeared in a matter of seconds.
The cook and the others waited a safe distance from the entrance. About five minutes later, they heard a sound like the call of a nightingale—that was the sign.
Trying to walk as silently as he could across the leaf-strewn ground, the cook made his way toward the entrance and saw that the massive iron gate was ajar. At that time of day, the House of Pleasure, which lived and breathed at night, was at its quietest. The cook and the others approached Tekir and as they passed through the gate, they saw two guards lying face down on the ground.
They gathered in two groups on each side of the gate. Master Bekir and his assistants were standing behind the cook, while Master Bayram’s men were standing behind Tekir.
“We’ll meet in the kitchen,” the cook said. Tekir nodded.
As Tekir gave his final instructions to his men, the cooks slowly made their way toward the kitchens. The cook was seized by bittersweet excitement. When one of the assistants lifted the latch on the kitchen door and pushed it open, the cook felt a pang in his heart as memories washed over him.
The cook quickly composed himself, knowing that it was not the time for emotions. He walked toward the small kitchen and motioned to the others to follow him.
Quietly, they walked through the kitchens and reached the hallway which led to the lodgings. After showing the assistants how many people slept in each room with his fingers, the cook approached Master Adem’s room. Master Bekir and one of his assistants were standing beside him, each with his knife at the ready.
&nb
sp; After exchanging the briefest of glances with the cook, Master Bekir pushed the door open. Master Adem was asleep in bed. He had aged; the lines around his eyes were much deeper, and his hair and moustache were almost completely white.
As the cook looked at his master, he was overcome by a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, he wanted to grab the knife Master Bekir was holding, while on the other hand he wanted to throw his arms around Master Adem’s neck. However, timing and the events unfolding at the mansion allowed the cook to do neither of those things as his old master was stirred awake by the muffled screams coming from the other rooms. Just as he was about to open his eyes, Master Bekir and his assistant jumped on him. As the assistant pinned him down, the master covered his mouth tightly with his hand.
After struggling with all his might for a few moments, Master Adem realized he was fighting in vain and he lay back. Eyes filled with surprise and fear, he looked at the cook, who was approaching his bedside, and for a second his features were twisted with an expression of regret.
The cook whispered, “Don’t be afraid. I have no intention of taking your life. Just keep quiet.”
He nodded meekly. After the sounds of tumult coming from the other rooms had died down, Master Bekir removed his hand.
Master Adem shakily said, “Son …”
“Don’t say a word,” the cook said. “Get up and come with me.”
They helped him to his feet and together went up to the large kitchen. The assistants joined them one by one. “Any problems?” Master Bekir asked.
The highest-ranking assistant said, “No, Master. We put the lot of them in that room in the corner.”
There were a few short screams upstairs and then the mansion was plunged into silence. A few moments later Tekir appeared in the doorway along with the Slow Brothers. Sirrah was standing between the brothers, her hair tousled. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and her face was pale with fear. They had tied her hands behind her back and stuffed one corner of her veil into her mouth.
The Slow Brothers pulled Sirrah toward the cook.
“How are you, Sirrah?” the cook asked. Like anyone who thinks they are untouchable, she could not believe the brazenness of the person standing before her.