The Pasha of Cuisine

by Saygin Ersin

  The courtyard was soon completely full. With their red robes and white headgear, the Janissaries stood completely still, and the deafening silence of that crowd numbering in the thousands was unnerving.

  The silence was interrupted by the Gate of Felicity’s Chief Gatekeeper when he shouted, “Attention!” which meant that the Grand Vizier and members of the Imperial Council would soon be passing through the gate. The Grand Vizier appeared, followed by other state officials. The cook was surprised to see the Grand Vizier walk in such a self-assured manner, his head held high. He looked at the others. Even the Treasurer, who was walking behind the Viziers of the Dome, seemed rather dignified. The cook attributed their poise to the statesmanship that had become ingrained in them. After all, each of them had vast experience, and none would dare show their fear, even to their executioners.

  The Grand Vizier received the Janissaries’ greetings and as soon as he took his place under the dome with the members of the Imperial Council and the troop aghas, Master İsfendiyar gave the sign to Master Bekir: “It’s time!”

  Master Bekir rushed downstairs. Kitchen assistants bearing trays poured out of the three gates of the Imperial Kitchens toward the Janissaries.

  The cook watched the saffron rice being distributed while also keeping an eye on the dome. He was nervous. According to custom, as the foot soldiers ate their meal outside, a gathering would be held inside. Nothing of importance would be discussed at the gathering, but the Chief Janissary and the troop aghas would kiss the hem of the Grand Vizier’s skirt, and upon the Grand Vizier’s command the soldiers’ payments would be carried from the Treasury chamber into the courtyard. Afterwards, the meal would be over, and one of the troop aghas, the Chief Lieutenant, would go out and direct the military march, after which the payments would be distributed. Of course, nothing would follow tradition that day, and what frightened the cook the most was the possibility of an early rebellion, that is, one that broke out before the Janissaries could eat the saffron rice.

  Thankfully, the cook’s fears were unfounded. The assistants finished distributing all the plates and returned to the kitchens in the same order they had emerged. The deathly silence in the Second Courtyard continued. No one moved. Not even the Janissaries.

  That was when the cook realized he had overlooked a small detail. That oversight had proven to be a deadly mistake. And now, alas, it was too late.

  Master Bekir must have noticed the same thing, because he whispered, “They’re not eating.” And then he added, “They won’t eat.”

  The cook’s oversight had to do with the Janissary Guild’s tradition. He had forgotten about the soldiers’ loyalty to one another and their obedience to their commanders. If the guild had decided that no one would touch their food, no force on earth could compel any of the soldiers to eat even one spoonful of the rice. Besides, the food was already cold, its inviting steam long gone.

  Master İsfendiyar clutched the cook’s shirt and whispered, “Run, quick! The capital will be thrown into confusion for a few days, so they won’t come after you. Run, save yourself!”

  The cook couldn’t reply, because he didn’t hear what the master was saying. A voice howled in his mind, shouting, “You have killed Kamer. You have killed her while trying to save her!”

  Soon the Grand Vizier would come out to ask why the offended soldiers were refusing the palace’s offering, and then the tumult would commence. The Janissaries would demand to see heads roll. The cook couldn’t imagine what would happen after that; no one could. The one thing he knew was that Haseki Sultan would keep her word. He remembered the look in her eyes, and he knew Haseki Sultan would do exactly what she said she would do. She would tear out Kamer’s heart, throw it at his feet, and make sure he lived with the memory of that moment.

  The last thing the cook saw was the opening of the dome’s gate. The officials were stepping outside. He closed his eyes and waited. There was nothing he could do but await his fate.

  Suddenly, a voice rang out in the Second Courtyard. “Aghas!” it announced. “Your payments will be made in full. Eat up!”

  The cook opened his eyes. The person who made the announcement was none other than the Chief Janissary. He surveyed his troops in the courtyard.

  A high-ranking member of the cavalry summoned the courage to stand up. “My lord,” he called out. “This is not about whether the payment will be made in full. The condition of the state is obvious. For a long time now—”

  The Chief Janissary interrupted him with a roar: “Aghas! The payment will be made. The empire will endure hardship just as well as it has enjoyed abundance. The lot that falls to us, the subjects of the empire, is to stand by the state in these hard times. Cast off your impudence!”

  His fiery stare was directed at every soldier congregated in the courtyard, and he repeated a final time: “Eat up!”

  The Second Courtyard repeated in unison: “Thanks be to God!”

  The soldiers’ loyalty to their guild and officers had triumphed. The Janissaries in the courtyard removed their spoons from their field bags and started to eat. Unable to stand on his feet any longer, the cook slouched down. Master İsfendiyar’s fingers were still curled around his arm. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  The cook sat beneath that window for hours. He listened to the prayers of gratitude the Janissaries recited after they finished eating as they vowed their dedication to the Ottoman Empire, the officials of state, the sovereign, and Haseki Sultan. Even after the ceremony was over and the palace returned to its usual daily routine, he did not get up. He didn’t know what would happen, nor could he tell whether he had succeeded or ruined everything. The cook could not think. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if something went wrong, because he did not have the strength to fix anything anymore.

  Shortly after the afternoon call to prayer, the door to the Tinsmiths’ Lodge opened, and a large shadow fell across the room. “Haseki Sultan awaits you in the same place after sunset,” Neyyir Agha announced from the doorway. He glared at the cook like one would look down on a cornered insect.

  The cook nodded weakly.

  After the evening call to prayer, he made his way to the confectionery. He didn’t know whether Haseki Sultan would want it or not, but he took the sherbet with him just in case and began making his way toward the Tiled Mansion.

  She was waiting for him in the same place where they had parted ways three days earlier. The door to the mansion was open. Light from the newly risen moon illuminated the marble of the courtyard, filling the landing and the vestibule covered in tiles with an icy blue light.

  As the cook approached, Haseki Sultan was smiling mockingly, triumphantly. “You failed,” she said, stepping toward him. “And what is to happen now?”

  The cook said nothing.

  She said, “You’ve roused the Treasurer from his sickbed, which is all well and good. But the Janissaries? You couldn’t stop them. Thankfully, the Chief Janissary and I have an understanding. It has cost me dearly, and I would have preferred that your plan succeed instead. But you failed!”

  The cook had no reply to offer. Haseki Sultan’s smile faded as she sneered, “I am the master of an art that is much more powerful than yours. I am a master of politics! I have no need of your rice to calm disgruntled troops. And I do not need your sherbet to have power, believe me.”

  She paused, looked at the cook at length, and asked again, “So tell me. What is to happen now?”

  She was sure he would not reply, so she continued, “Tell me, what shall I do to you? Shall I force you to your knees and make you beg? Shall I make you my slave for forty years in exchange for a single look at Kamer once a year? No…. There are many people around me to whom I can do such things, and I wouldn’t want you to become one of them. Do you know why? Not because I need you or because I am fearful of your art, but because I have respect for your love, for your intellect, and for your travails. I don’t care if you’re the Pasha of Cuisine, but your love is admirable. That is why I
am going to be fair to you.”

  Haseki Sultan took a deep breath and began to recite her decree: “You asked me for three things in exchange for three promises. You failed at one of yours. But I shall not go back on my word. For two of your services, I shall grant two of your wishes. Is that fair?”

  The cook nodded.

  “Forget about us not seeing each other ever again,” Haseki Sultan said. “You can go and live wherever you like, and for as long as I live you will not be harmed. But you will come to me every time I summon you and you will be at my service. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” the cook replied quietly.

  “The other two promises still hold,” Haseke Sultan continued. “Now, do whatever it is you said you would do!”

  The cook pulled the velvet cover from the silver pitcher of sherbet that was sitting by his right foot. “It’s not ready yet,” he said as he raised the pitcher. “I haven’t whispered one of the names over it yet. You will drink it from my hands. Each sip will be a sworn seal to your promises.”

  Haseki Sultan approached the cook and brought her lips to the pitcher, which he was holding up.

  The cook spoke gravely, as if he was performing a religious ritual. “Are you aware that this sherbet will course through your veins as poison if you ever go back on your word, be it today or in the future?”

  “I am,” she replied.

  The cook asked, “From today onwards, do you swear to ensure that no children will be murdered within the walls of this palace and to never issue a decree commanding the death of a child, no matter what the cause?”

  “I do,” she said, taking a sip from the pitcher.

  The cook moved on to the second promise, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Do you swear …” he stammered, “to give Kamer to me before sunrise?”

  She smiled. “I do.”

  After Haseki Sultan took a sip to seal her final vow, the cook handed the pitcher to her. He felt that at that moment it wasn’t only his own fortunes and story that were changing, but the fortunes and stories of the entire Ottoman royal family, even the world. He wasn’t entirely wrong. That intelligent and ambitious woman, who truly did not need much of the Pasha of Cuisine’s art to acquire power in the first place, was now drinking deep of the Sherbet of Power.

  When she pulled the empty pitcher from her lips, a strange look came into her eyes. She looked around, as if nothing in the world mattered to her anymore. She trained the same cold stare on the cook. “Wait here,” she said and, leaving the pitcher by his feet, left the room.

  When he could no longer hear the footsteps of Haseki Sultan and her retinue, the cook stepped outside. The full moon was now high in the sky. He began to pace up and down in the courtyard, his shoes clacking on the marble paving stones washed by the white rays of moonlight. He felt like he was dreaming. “Wait,” Haseki Sultan had told him, and she had sworn.

  The only thing that told his mind, which was experiencing an altogether different kind of drunkenness, that what was happening was real was a terrible tightening in his chest. It was so powerful that he could barely breathe.

  He walked toward the left corner of the courtyard and looked up at the Harem. He knew that Kamer would be approaching from that side, but when? His soul could not endure such waiting. Even the ceiling of the portico high above began to feel suffocating. Unable to bear waiting any longer, he went down the steps and walked in the direction of the Harem. The closer he got, the more clearly he could make out the outlines of the palace. The cook looked at the dark shadows of the walls, the latticed windows, the minarets, and the domes rising up, their roofs gleaming in the moonlight. The sight of the Harem frightened him. Yet that was where he had been born. He had learned to walk and talk on the other side of those walls. He had never dreamed he would return to that place where he had nearly lost his life, but life had tough wiles. Once again he was on the palace grounds, all these years later, on another day as important as the day he was born.

  Once upon a time, he had been there, and now the past was embedded within the present.

  The cook remembered. He remembered the Harem, his father, his mother, compassion, fear, Master İsfendiyar, the House of Pleasure, Master Adem, Sirrah, love, betrayal, hatred, and loyalty. He remembered separation. Longing, nightmares, endless roads, Brother Sadr and Brother Sa’d, stars, books …

  He would never forget the Lady of Essences, nor would he ever forget Master Bayram and Levon.

  Mahir, Neyyir Agha, the Privy Chamber Page, the late Siyavuş Agha, Master Bekir and his assistants … he would never forget any of them.

  The cook had become the master of remembering, and the only person he had always remembered and would always remember was coming toward him from the Harem like a light piercing the darkness.

  He was stricken. All he could do was blink. Nothing had changed. She was there, she was Kamer, and she was walking toward him. She was wearing an ivory dress. Her black hair fell in waves to her shoulders beneath a white silk veil held in place with a silver headband.

  As she got closer, he could see her face more clearly. Her dark brown almond-shaped eyes, her strong jawline. She was still beautiful. She had grown up, and perhaps life had graced her face with a few thin lines, but what did it matter? She was eternally Kamer, and she would always remain so, regardless of time.

  He saw her trembling lips, and as she took the final two steps toward him, the moonlight sparkled in her damp eyes.

  Kamer embraced him. Without saying a word, without a pause, without a look.

  Even that sharp line dividing life and death no longer meant anything to the cook. His nostrils filled with the scent of apples and clover. Kamer’s hands clutched his back tightly, her hair brushed his face, her tears fell on his shoulder.

  With the last of his strength the cook hugged her and said, “Forgive me.”

  Kamer replied with a sound that was something between a laugh and a sob. “I was never angry at you,” she said in a frail, trembling voice. “I always missed you.”

  The cook wanted to say something. His mind raced. There were a thousand words in his thoughts, but all the sentences in the world, all the words, and even all the meanings and ideas ended up translating themselves into the name of the girl who was now in his arms.

  It was the only word that existed for the cook now, representing every other word and all meanings. The cook whispered that name which for him sufficed to express everything in his life: “Kamer.”

  Then he fell silent.

  He had said the one thing he knew, the one thing he could utter. He’d done everything he could, and that was the final step. He waited.

  Then he heard a whisper. Not just any whisper, but the one he had been yearning for all those years. He had heard it millions of times both when Kamer was there and in her absence, but hearing it fall from her lips…. It reminded him of his own existence, it spoke of the fact that he was alive, breathing, that his heart was beating. It told him of a past, promised a future, reminded him of hope. It was joy and pleasure, a single sound. Just one name. His name.

  Kamer’s voice started to complete the missing part of his soul which had been wandering incomplete for so long.

  Kamer whispered once more, “Cihan.”

  8

  And So It All Comes to an End

  AND ONCE THE story was over …

  Cihan did not tarry long in Istanbul. Being in the capital had become unbearable for him. He and Kamer settled down not too far away, but the farthest they could go while remaining close, or the closest they could remain while going afar. They moved to Antakya on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and opened a small kebab house just outside the city. A few years later, Master İsfendiyar retired and joined them. Together they cooked, they ate, and they sang, enjoying a content life together.

  Kamer and Cihan had two children, a boy and a girl. Neither of them inherited even the slightest trace of either parent’s talents.

  Their son was extremely
fond of books. When he turned fourteen, the cook sent him to the el-Haki Brothers’ house. The boy liked Brother Sa’d but had a fondness for medicine, so he became Brother Sadr’s student.

  Their daughter was also talented in her own way. At the age of six, she was able to look after the restaurant by herself, and by the time she was eight she haggled with merchants like the best of traders. The cook took her to the Lady of Essences’s mansion. The Lady was pleased and trained her as if she were her own daughter, teaching her about spices and trade.

  Cihan also kept his promise to Haseki Sultan. Every time she summoned him, he went to the capital and helped her in her political wiles with his dishes and enchanted whispers. And soon enough she became renowned throughout the world. However, over time Haseki Sultan began to forget about the cook. She had reached such heights and attained such power that she refused to stoop so low as to ask for anyone’s help.

  Haseki Sultan enjoyed a reign that was longer and more powerful than many sultans’. When her son acceded to the throne at a young age, she ruled over the empire herself for fourteen years as regent. The promises she had made while drinking the Sherbet of Power were always in her thoughts, and not once did she break any of them. She even convinced the sovereign to annul the fratricide law. Not a single child of the palace was killed during her reign. That is until one day, thirty-five years later, when Haseki Sultan fell victim to her own greed and wrote a decree commanding the murder of a child, her seven-year-old grandson.

  The cook had warned her. Oaths taken with the Sherbet of Power were lasting and cruel.

  On the night she broke her promise, Haseki Sultan was strangled by a greased noose in the place where she felt the safest: the Harem.

  On one of his final visits to Istanbul, the cook got news that Master Adem was on his deathbed and had asked for him. The cook knew he couldn’t refuse. After all, he was Master Adem, the man who had raised him.

  He found Master Adem on his deathbed in an abandoned building outside Üsküdar. He was gravely ill, and had only one final wish: to die with the most wondrous of flavors lingering on his palate.