The Pasha of Cuisine

by Saygin Ersin

  By the time the ship passed the island of Rhodes and entered the Aegean Sea, the cook grew worried about the consequences of what he was doing. The oarsmen were still rowing vigorously, but the captain had become enamored with the idea of those lands to the west of the Great Sea which were said to have been newly discovered, so much so that he tried to steer the ship toward the strait of Gibraltar once. Thankfully, the Chief Captain, an experienced elderly seaman, stepped in and managed to talk the captain out of it.

  The navigator was in the worst state of them all. The cook never understood exactly what he had used in excess in a dish of couscous he had cooked for the burly man, but the resulting situation became more and more precarious with each passing day. The navigator seemed to have fallen in love with the cook. He visited him in the kitchen every other day and told him how, “if he so wished,” he would immediately slit the throats of the captain and the other officers, seize control of the ship, and steer them toward whichever destination their hearts desired. Needless to say, the cook was in a difficult position. He tried to keep the man’s wits about him by carefully choosing his words and steering his mind from the passions that burned in his breast, and at the same time he pored over the book of recipes, looking for a remedy to quench the raging fire he had ignited.

  The journey soon came to an end thanks to the vigor of the oarsmen. As soon as the ship approached the pier at Unkapanı, the cook did not even wait for the gangplank to be lowered and jumped off the deck, disappearing into the crowd as the captain and navigator called out after him.

  It hadn’t been difficult for him to get news of Kamer. Through conversations he had with a few regular customers of the House of Pleasure with whom he was acquainted, he found out that she had been sold off to the owner of the Zümrützade mansion. They explained with astonishment how suddenly the light had gone out in that beautiful young woman’s eyes, and neither her dancing nor singing had their previous allure. As she fell out of favor with the customers, Sirrah had no choice but to get rid of her as quickly as possible.

  After his stay in Alexandria, the cook set his sights on a wealthy mansion once again. But this time his eyes had a different glow. He had a plan.

  It was easy enough for him to get on friendly terms with a few of the servants working at the mansion. Through those new acquaintances he challenged the Zümrützade cook to a contest. Naturally the cook won the contest, which was held at a small kebab shop near Sirkeci, by the unanimous vote of a jury; not only that, but he also managed to make the Zümrützade cook decide to set out on a long journey. One of the dishes he chose to prepare for the contest was the priest’s stew he had cooked for the captain of the ship that had brought him to Istanbul.

  The rest simply fell into place. When the kitchen was left without a cook, his new acquaintances recommended him to the patriarch of the mansion, Hüsnü Bey. Faced with such pressure, Hüsnü Bey did not know what to do, and one day he let the cook make just one dish for lunch. Of course, before the dirty plates could be put away, he sent word to the cook waiting in the courtyard that he had decided to employ him with a daily salary of five silver coins.

  Another disappointment, rather than Kamer, awaited him at the Zümrützade mansion. She had been sent to the Imperial Harem as a gift.

  According to whispered rumors, Zümrützade Hüsnü Bey had gifted Kamer, who had destroyed the peace and quiet of the mansion when she arrived, to the Chief Gatekeeper of the Imperial Palace. The Chief Gatekeeper was an educated but rather naïve man, and unaware of the animosity Zümrützade Hüsnü Bey felt for him, he accepted the present. He in turn was planning to give the odalisque with a penchant for dancing and a voice like a nightingale to the Harem, and thereby heal the rift between himself and Haseki Sultan. But things didn’t go as planned. Soon enough it came to light what a handful Kamer was, and the poor Chief Gatekeeper was sacked from the post he had worked all his life to attain.

  The cook listened to all these stories with a smile. He didn’t ascribe it to cruel fate that Kamer seemed to be hidden behind higher and more insurmountable walls each time she vanished, nor did he despair or feel even the slightest hint of dejection. “This is it,” he said to himself. “That is her final destination. She can’t go any further.”

  The cook devised his plan with meticulous care as he worked in the kitchen of the Zümrützade mansion. The owner and the palace were on amicable terms, and the rustling of a leaf in the Inner Palace, or the sound of a pearl dropping onto the floor of the Harem, would echo in the Zümrützade mansion. He listened intently, crafting his plan by molding his ideas with his science, knowledge, and art.

  Then it was time to take his final step on that path.

  The cook had been hiding out in a dingy room at a bachelors’ lodging house at the far end of Melekgirmez Street for three days. Hiding out was perhaps not the best term. For three days and nights he had been wandering around, drinking at taverns, playing dice at gambling dens, and, contrary to his usual habit, talking to people he happened to meet and telling them that he used to work as a cook at the Imperial Kitchens until recently, but quit because he’d had an argument with the Head Cook and planned on leaving the country to go to Venice on a ship passing through Morea in two days’ time.

  He also listened.

  Constantinople was shaken by an endless string of rumors. The fact that Darıcızade Mahmud Bey changed his mind at the last minute and abandoned the idea of marrying a woman from the Imperial Harem shook the capital to its core, as if a thousand cannonballs had been volleyed at the city at once. Hearsay abounded, and those with at least a little common sense said that Mahmud Bey had been offended at being presented with an odalisque from the Harem as a bride when he was expecting at least a second-generation member of the royal family, and that was why he broke off the engagement.

  Those with a bit more cunning said that the doge of Venice had talked Mahmud Bey out of the marriage, either with direct threats or by promising him privileges in trade, thus preventing the groom-to-be from making a massive contribution to the Treasury and plunging the Imperial Treasury into even worse circumstances.

  Some said that the Darıcızade heir had fallen in love at first sight with a young woman named Nihan, also known by the nickname “wrecker of mansions,” who hailed from the House of Pleasure, and ultimately went back on his promise to the palace because of his newfound love; it was said that as soon as he’d bought the girl from Sirrah, he’d set off to Alexandria with her. No matter how many times they swore up and down that the rumor was true, people who told that story were inevitably subjected to the condescending looks of their audience. No one could believe that a member of an aristocratic family like Mahmud Bey would risk drawing the ire of the great Imperial Palace just for the sake of a woman from the House of Pleasure.

  As varied and effervescent as the rumors were, truths were few, yet as strong as the walls that had surrounded the city since ancient times.

  Seeing how Mahmud Bey had broken his promise and his money had gone back to Alexandria with him, the Treasury, which had been on the verge of collapse since Treasurer Halil Pasha had fallen ill, was in an even worse state than before. The Janissaries’ salaries, which were due in three days’ time, would not be paid in full unless a miracle occurred. Rumors of an uprising spread like wildfire. Those with connections to the Janissaries’ Guild spoke of how members of the Janissaries had already started to polish their symbolic copper cauldrons. On the day of payment, they would touch neither the bags of money given to them nor the saffron rice laid out for them, and then they would gather in Et Meydanı and raise their cauldrons above their heads in a gesture of defiance. Many heads would roll, the Grand Vizier being the prime target, and even the sovereign’s throne would be under threat during such an earthquake of a rebellion.

  The capital was on edge and shrouded in gray, as if a veil of gloom had been pulled over it. The dark clouds blanketing the skies for days hadn’t turned into rain or been blown away by the wind. Everyone
was in a state of quiet panic, commoners, aristocrats, and merchants alike. The bankers of Galata had stopped lending money and were collecting their debts one by one. Because of this shortage of cash, interest rates soared, and ships carrying provisions to Istanbul anchored off shore beyond the harbor as the captains heard rumors that there might be an uprising. Vendors stopped selling goods on credit—even if the customer was a member of their own family—and locked up their goods in secure storehouses. In short, everyone was waiting for the day when the payment would be made, whispering prayers and asking for God’s mercy through clenched teeth.

  The cook’s inner voice told him that he would achieve the result he desired very soon. It was almost dusk, and he made his way toward a kebab shop near his lodgings. Despite the chilly weather, he asked for a small table to be brought outside so he could sit there and eat. The apprentice who brought the table outside—and who happened to be about the same size as the table he was carrying—asked him what he wanted, and the cook replied, “Kebab with vegetables, and some roasted liver on the side. Bring some ayran, too, but with lots of coriander in it. Add some pepper to the liver after it’s done cooking, and don’t forget to bring some sumac and oregano.”

  The apprentice went in, muttering the order to himself so he wouldn’t forget, and returned after a while with two large plates. On one of the plates there were some roasted onions and garlic as well as sautéed red peppers, and the other was heaped with slices of bread. The sizzling of the peppers caressed the cook’s ears like a soothing memory. He ate one of them. It was just the right spiciness. It withdrew without occupying his palate for too long, and left its flavor and the remnants of its spiciness only at the back of his throat. He took a large clove of roasted garlic and spread it onto a slice of bread. The garlic seemed hard on the outside, but inside it was as soft as paste. When he took his first bite, the cook was surprised; it was as if he was relishing such a taste for the very first time. The garlic seemed to be in love with heat; as soon as it was introduced to those hot, fireless, smokeless cinders, it melted on the inside, abandoning its sharpness and assuming a soft, mild, almost sweet taste.

  He drank down the ayran with coriander, which was brought to his table at the same time as the kebabs, in a single gulp and asked for another. He then proceeded to eat slowly, as if he were having his last meal. By the time he had mopped up the last of the cumin and oregano soaked in olive oil at the bottom of the copper plate with a slice of bread and swallowed his last bite, the sun had already set, and the red veil of dusk was pulled over Melekgirmez Street, which was always busy but never safe.

  The cook made his way back to his room. He fastened the flimsy door latch and lay down on the bed without undressing. He wasn’t tired, and he did not intend to sleep. He listened to the sounds coming from the street and the floors below. Everything was as it should be. Darkness settled down over the city and the night owls started to hoot: a drunken man’s shout, the shrill clink of castanets accompanying music from a tavern farther away, flirtatious laughter that made one’s heart skip a beat, and footsteps, some timid, some hurried.

  Then he heard the sound of other footsteps approaching, but they were foreign to the street. They were determined, severe. As they advanced, the other sounds seemed to fall silent, scamper away, or stand aside. He took a deep breath but kept his eyes closed. The footsteps stopped under his window. A voice firmly but quietly asked the elderly doorman—who was sitting, as always, in a chair in front of the building—a few questions. The cook heard his name among the whisperings. When the doorman replied in a shaky voice, the wooden staircase of the building began to creak. The sound of footsteps got louder and paused in front of his door, and then a kick sent the latch of the door flying off its hinges.

  The cook quickly sat up as if he was going to try to run away or put up a fight. Two huge palace guards immediately threw themselves at him. Standing behind them was the Chief Palace Guard himself. The guards took hold of his arms and as he was dragged to his feet, the cook put up some slight resistance, to which the response was swift. The Chief Palace Guard slapped him so hard that a white flash appeared before his eyes, leaving him blind for a few moments, and then all went dark as the Chief Palace Guard pulled a black sack over the cook’s head.

  He was dragged downstairs, his feet barely touching the floor, and thrown facedown into the back of a carriage waiting at the end of the street. One of the guards pressed a foot into his back and tied his hands behind him, and the carriage began to move. The cook could tell by the sound of the hooves that the carriage was drawn by four horses, and judging by the fact that the coachman kept shouting “Stand aside!” he surmised they were in a hurry. The cook knew that so long as something unexpected hadn’t occurred, they were headed straight for the palace.

  After proceeding alongside the city walls for a while, the carriage turned right, toward the Hagia Sophia. The particular rattling produced by the large stones paving that road which lead straight to the Gate of Felicity was familiar to anyone who had grown up in the capital. But the cook did not think it likely that they would enter the palace through the main gate, and he was right. Just as he was thinking they must have been approaching the Hagia Sophia, the carriage suddenly veered left and entered a side street. The streets may have been complicated to navigate, but the cook’s mind was clear and he knew they were headed toward one of the dozens of smaller, more clandestine gates that had been hewn into the Sultan’s Wall. Just when he thought that they were somewhere near the Troops’ Manor, the carriage ground to a halt. The cook heard the Chief Palace Guard, who immediately jumped out, bang his fist against an iron gate three times in quick succession. A muffled voice from behind the door asked, “Who is it?”

  “Open the gate!” the Chief Palace Guard commanded. The chains of the gate rattled and it swung open with a creak.

  The carriage was now proceeding more slowly as the coachman kept the horses at an ambling gait in the quiet of the night. The cook could hear the sound of the carriage wheels grinding across fine gravel and the small pebbles scattered by the horses’ hooves.

  They proceeded along for a while until the coachman pulled on the reins. As soon as the carriage stopped, strong hands grabbed the cook again. Quickly they guided him along, a palace guard on each side of the cook, holding his arms. While the sack over his head didn’t let any light through, the cook could smell the scents around him: earth and fresh leaves. It hadn’t rained recently, which the cook inferred to mean that both sides of the path must have been freshly hoed and watered. He rightly guessed that he was passing through a well-kept garden, and in fact it was the Royal Gardens.

  The pebbled path suddenly gave way to cobblestones, and then they passed through a short passageway and climbed eight or nine steps up. They then turned left and proceeded through an open door. As soon as they entered the room, the guards forced the cook to his knees. It was bitterly cold. The cold of the marble floor and the voices echoing against the high walls made the cook feel that chill in both body and soul.

  Footsteps approached from the left. They weren’t clad in heavy boots like the guards but soft palace shoes. Then, from the right, probably from the next room or from behind a wooden panel, came a stern female voice: “Get out! And close the door behind you.”

  The cook imagined the guards backing out of the room, and then he heard the sound of the massive door slamming shut. After the din died down, a ponderous silence reigned over the room. The same female voice that had just ordered the guards out said in the cook’s ear, “Who are you?”

  Naturally, the cook was somewhat frightened. A woman who could tread softly enough to not be heard by keen ears but whose voice seethed with anger always meant trouble. Still, he managed to keep his composure and reply, “Remove the sack from my head.”

  There was a brief silence, and the cook could hear the woman next to him grinding her teeth. “Neyyir Agha!” the woman hissed, and then a resounding slap sent the cook sprawling to the floor. His che
ek instantly went numb, and the force of the blow left his neck aching. He could barely make out the sound of the woman’s voice over the ringing in his ears. “Raise him up.”

  As the agha brought him back to his knees, the woman said, “You swine, do you think you can lay your wretched gaze on someone like me? Have you any idea where you are, who you’re kneeling before?”

  “I do,” the cook responded in the calmest tone he could muster. “We’re inside the Tiled Mansion. And you are Haseki Sultan.”

  The woman was grinding her teeth again. She reached down and grabbed the cook by the hair through the sack and began to ask in stern whispers, “Who are you? Who sent you? What are your intentions? Do you wish to bring harm to our sovereign or bring the Ottoman Empire to ruin? Answer me! Answer, or I will flay you with my nails until you do!”

  “Remove the sack,” the cook repeated, “so you can see who I am!”

  Haseki Sultan yanked the sack from the cook’s head so roughly that she pulled out a tuft of hair along with it. The cook’s eyes watered from the pain and the sudden light. The vestibule was illuminated only by two large oil lamps, but the light reflected off the blue and green tiles on the walls, becoming a thousandfold brighter.

  The cook first looked to his left. There stood Mahir, hands clasped in front of him, head bowed. He couldn’t decide whether Mahir looked more afraid or ashamed. Neyyir Agha looked straight at the cook, his eyes filled with hatred as he awaited new orders with clenched fists.

  After the cook’s eyes adjusted to the light, he raised his head and looked at Haseki Sultan. Her thin eyebrows were furrowed and her plump cheeks were red with rage. As she pressed her small but shapely lips together, her plump jaw quivered. The cook wasn’t at all surprised to see that she seemed older than she was. The Harem was not a child’s playground. Everybody there had to grow up quickly.