The World in My Kitchen

by Colette Rossant

  I saw the ancient chefs making incredibly long noodles in minutes, deboning ducks in a flash, and making dough for dim sum so thin that I thought it would fall apart when stuffed with meat or seafood. It never did. The camera men were always there, just behind me. Jimmy and I would tell them what to film;Peter would translate. At night we sat down to fabulous banquets. Then after dinner, the old chefs and I would sit down in the garden behind the school, and they would reminisce about their years in exile. Life had been very tough for them. They had been sent to far away villages, far from their families and the restaurants where for years they had toiled. They told me how they had learned to cook at a very early age and how famous their restaurants had been. It was all very sad, however, now they were proud to be back cooking again.

  When after several days of filming and eating, we left to go back to Beijing, Peter told me that just before we left for the States, we would be given the cut and edited films.

  Jimmy returned to Bhutan, and I continued my trip, first to Xi’an, a predominantly Muslim city. The market was similar to the one in Guangzhou, but it smelled like a Cairo market. The smell of cumin and coriander was in the air. There were piles of pita bread. But everything was different from Egypt. Pita, which are soft and round in the Middle East, were here round but dry and thick. They were used to mop up the sauce of lamb stew or were added to thicken lamb and vegetable soup. There was fried falafel as in Egypt, but here in China, you got small, round balls served with a spicy soy sauce. We went to a restaurant where I ate snake. A man brought us live snakes in a cage, and we were to choose, each of us, one that we liked. The snake meat tasted something like a sweet fish or chicken. They offered me the bile, a great honor I was told. If I drank it, I would stay young forever. I said yes. They added it to a glass of Matai, a very strong alcohol drink. My host smiled and was very pleased to see me enjoy the food.

  The next day we ate in the largest restaurant I had ever seen. There must have been at least 100 tables that sat ten people each, like in Chinatown. The restaurant only served steamed dumplings, hundreds of varieties of them. All very small and of every possible shape: round ones, some triangular, or looking like buns; some were shaped into swans, others like jumping rabbits. They arrived steaming at the table in immense baskets and were usually served with three different sauces. One could eat 100 of them in the blink of an eye. I never had eaten anything so enchanting. We drank lots of tea and ended the meal with a chicken broth with some vegetables floating in it. Later Peter, Henry, and I flew to Harbin. I was still quite angry with Peter. I hadn’t quite forgiven him for not being honest with me. But I was not only having a great time but also I was learning a lot.

  In Harbin, we were met by Mongolian Chinese dressed in traditional costumes. We were housed in yurt huts, and ate with our hands, cross-legged on the floor with male members of the tribe. As in the Middle East, the women’s faces were veiled, and they ate separately; young girls served us. We ate shish kebab, crisp cucumbers with mint, broiled lamb chops topped with goat yogurt, and steamed rice with chopped mint and yogurt. Desserts were pastries laden with honey and stuffed with nuts. At night, we sang songs and slept on the floor, covered with thick carpets.

  A few days later, we flew back to Hong Kong. I constantly asked Peter where the tapes were. I was desperate to see them and frankly petrified. How did we do, Jimmy and I? Would the videos be interesting? Why was no one willing to give them to me right away?

  “Don’t worry,” Peter kept on saying, “we will get them before you leave.” The day of my return to New York, just before I left for the airport, Peter handed me six videotapes. He informed me that he was staying behind in Hong Kong for business.

  On my return to New York, after a few days of rest, I had an appointment with PBS to review the tapes. I still had not seen them because they were professional tapes that did not fit in my small VCR. We all sat in a viewing room with Jay Iselin, the president of Channel 13, and several producers. I was anxiously waiting to see if we had something Channel 13 could show. From the first reel, I knew we had a disaster. The tapes were about me and not the school. They were also a sort of publicity film for China. The camera was following me; there were close-ups of my face, trying some food or talking to students. There were practically no images of the chefs, no pictures of students working in the kitchen, or for the banquets. No images of the food; nothing we could use. It was all about me!

  I was upset and angry with Peter. I had wasted so much time and effort for nothing. I called David Low, a friend of Peter’s that I had met before going to China. David explained that this was typical of Peter. He needed contacts in China and had used me as an excuse to enter China. It had all been a ruse.

  At least I had had an exciting trip, learned a lot about China and Chinese food, made many friends, and hoped that one day I would go back. Jimmy had had fun, and I was proud of my article on Chinese Muslims and their food that was published in The New York Times Magazine.

  I returned from expanding my horizons to take stock of my family and try once again to find my own place in the world.

  Thomas graduated from Dartmouth and went on to Harvard to study architecture. There he fell in love with a fellow student who was studying law. Thomas and Rebecca waited until they both settled in New York before announcing that they were getting married.

  After graduating from NYU, Marianne decided to make a film illustrating a poem of Edgar Allan Poe. The film was awarded a first prize for young directors in Paris, and she elected to stay there and make another film. Soon she announced that she was in love with a Frenchman. They got married in New York and settled here. It wasn’t very long before she announced to Jimmy’s and my delight that she was expecting our first grandchild. We were blissfully happy.

  Jimmy had dissolved the firm of Conklin Rossant and had moved his office to the two top floors of our house. Now with Thomas and Cecile, we had three architects in the family. Jimmy decided his new firm would be called 3Rarchitects, just in case any of them would care to join him and work with him.

  After finishing his studies, my nephew John had gone to work for Business Week and was living now in Rome, where he was their bureau chief. He had met a beautiful Calabrese woman who was working for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Antonella and John were married by the mayor of Rome in a castle they had rented. Their wedding, which I catered, was the talk of the town.

  And me? I was again looking for a steady job. One day I saw an ad in The New York Times. A large French bank was looking for a teacher to help their American vice presidents learn French. I was interviewed and landed the job. My work was child’s play after all my years of teaching. I taught executives who needed to learn enough French to be able to understand their French counterparts and read memos that came from Paris. The salary was high, and I had ample time left to write articles.

  One night I was invited to dinner by Karin Bakoum, an old friend who was half Egyptian like me. We always joked that we were the only two Egyptian witches in New York, as we claimed that we could read people’s futures. During dinner, at my table sat the editor of Saveur magazine. Karin was telling stories about me, how I was a witch, like her; at least that’s what I went around telling everybody. Laughingly, I told stories about growing up in Egypt, about fortune-tellers and my Egyptian grandmother’s great food.

  A few days later, I received a telephone call from Saveur. Would I be interested in writing a story about growing up in Egypt, what my life was like and especially what the food was like? I accepted eagerly and went to work. I taught in the morning at the bank, and in the evening, I wrote my story and tested the food. The story was published, and six months later, I was nominated for a James Beard award. I did not win, but the story, once expanded, became my first book of memoirs, Apricots on the Nile.

  My mother was now seventy-five, still looking as beautiful and elegant as ever. She had stopped working at Lord & Taylor, but had registered for courses at the Art Studio school. She wanted
to paint. She had painted when she was young, before she was married. All the students, young and old, loved her. If the weather was bad and she could not make her classes, they would call to see how she was or take her out for coffee or lunch. She was also making friends with the older women in the neighborhood whom she met at St. Anthony’s parish at bingo games on Thursday nights and after mass on Sundays. They loved her as well; they talked to me about the way she dressed, her hat, and her lovely accent. They thought she was a great lady.

  “You’re so lucky to have her,” they would say to me when I met them in the street. “Such a lovely lady.”

  I could not understand them. Who was this woman whom they liked so much? This woman who, when I was child, had abandoned me for five years, who never had seemed to care about me.

  My children loved her.

  The girls loved to hear her talk about the past when she was a rich young woman. She would show them photographs of her in a silk dress with pearls and a small dog on her lap. She would talk about her wedding. “It was the wedding of the year,” she would tell them proudly. “The house was full of flowers; we had 400 guests. Your grandfather gave me a diamond broach on our wedding day…. We had our honeymoon in Venice.”

  “Grandmama, tell us, how did you met him?”

  “Well, my best friend at the lycee was an Egyptian girl. She was engaged to Mendès-France. You know he would become prime minister of France. I was invited to the wedding, and your grandfather was there. He was asked to choose which of the young bridesmaids he would like to walk down the aisle with. Guess who he picked? Me. We were married six months later.”

  My daughters enjoyed her stories and spent hours looking at her wedding pictures.

  And I would be ignored!

  I started to notice that my mother was losing weight. My mother, who had been on diets most of her adult life, suddenly now looked too thin. She tired more easily, and often when I came to visit, she would be either asleep in her chair near the window or sleeping in bed. It wasn’t like her. I was still often angry with my mother because she kept on refusing to talk about the past, but I wanted her around me despite everything. I insisted that she see a doctor.

  After a series of test, the news came in: She had advanced ovarian cancer and was dying. I wanted her to live. She was my last tie to my past. She had the memories; I didn’t. She was going to die, and still I did not know why she deserted me years ago. I wanted to know what her life had been like those years when she had left me. What had happened to her to change her to the way she was now? I tried to talk to her, but to her last breath she refused. She had built a past that existed only in her mind. She kept on talking about my children, not me. The only personal thing she confided in me was what should happen when she died. She told me that she wanted her ashes to be thrown in the ocean so that they would float back to France. She died one night alone in the hospital. Strangely, I felt relieved. There were no more questions to ask.

  For weeks, I procrastinated fulfilling her last wishes. Then one day, alone, I took her ashes and boarded the ferry to Staten Island. In the middle of the trip, I went on deck, looked around and threw the box in the water, hoping it would float toward France.

  That night my friend Alan Buschbaum came to visit. Alan was my best friend. He was always there when I needed to talk about my problems. We talked about my mother. Like everyone else, Alan liked my mother. That night he made me laugh, recalling how the two of them would share recipes or talk about opera.

  “Let’s have dinner,” Alan suggested cheerfully. “When I am sad, it is food I need, comfort food.”

  We ended up in the kitchen to cook dinner. Alan prepared his favorite dish, baked grits with cheese, and I sautéed chicken breast with lots of garlic and parsley. As the cooking aroma wafted through the kitchen, I felt better. As when I was a little girl, food, once again, was helping me cope with my pain.

  However an unexpected loss would come and shatter our lives.

  One night, Alan who had recently returned from a trip to Senegal with a friend, came for dinner and brought me a lovely present, a set of ivory bracelets. He looked tired, but then I assumed it was just jet lag. We chatted about his trip, my work, and the cooking school he had help create. He talked about Senegalese food, soups and stews he had loved and would cook for me in the following weeks. I did not see Alan for a few months. I kept on calling him, asking to come over, but he kept on getting the flu, or at least this is what he said he had. I asked him to come and live with us for a while so that I could take care of him. He refused. “I’ll be fine. I have friends who help me, and I have to work. Let’s have dinner together here as soon as my cold is over.”

  A few weeks later, when I called his office to invite him once again for dinner, I was told that he had pneumonia and was in the hospital. I went to see him, but when I got there, I was led to a special hospice-like part of the hospital. Alan was segregated with other patients who, like him, had pneumonia. Alan was lying in his bed, pale, his eyes closed, looking so sick. I wanted to cry.

  I heard him say in a very low voice, “Water, I’m thirsty.” I saw no glass, only long, very large Q-tips. I went out and ask the nurse what to do.

  “With AIDS patients, you take the Q-tips, soak them in water, and wet his lips. Don’t touch anything; don’t touch him and wash your hands.”

  I was aware of the disease that had been spreading, but AIDS hadn’t been made real for me until that day. This is how I learned that Alan had AIDS. It explained his flu symptoms and his tiredness. I was horrified and sad.

  I tiptoed back to his room, did what the nurse had told me to do, and as I was wetting his lips he opened his eyes, looked at me and murmured, “Go, go, leave me.” After a few minutes, I did.

  I realized, thinking of the past, that Alan had never wanted me to know he was gay. Despite our lasting friendship, he did not think I would approve. He was so wrong. I had known for years and was completely comfortable with him. We flirted, but I knew it was all a game. I trusted him; he was my best friend. I felt sad and also betrayed that he had not trusted me in return.

  I called the hospital every day to see how he was, but he never wanted to speak to me. Once he was back home and feeling better, he came by to see me. Once again we cooked together, talked together, but never did he mention my visit to the hospital, and I did not know what I was supposed to say or do.

  A few months later, Alan was back at the hospice. This time both Jimmy and I came right away. When Jimmy left the room, I sat down near him and told him I knew he was gay, that it made no difference to me, that I was his friend, and that he had to trust me. “I am sorry, Colette; you must forgive me. This is very hard. I hate what this disease is doing to me. I don’t want to die…”

  I was broken hearted to see him like this. We had been so close to him. We knew his mother and his sister. Years ago, when I wanted to write about Savannah, he had helped me. We stayed with his family. I felt he was like my brother. I was loosing my best friend to this horrible disease that would take so many lives in the years that followed.

  A few days later, Alan died. There was a memorial for him. Half of Soho came, also celebrities for whom he had designed apartments or lofts. Both Marianne and Juliette wrote and read poems. Of all our children, Marianne was the most affected. They had been close, and when she had a problem with a relationship, instead of talking with us, she went to him for advice. He then would help me to understand what was happening to Marianne. Alan’s death was a great loss for the whole family.

  Once again we redoubled our efforts to protect our children from the outside world. We became more involved in their lives, trying to help them avoid being too hurt when joining the adult world. We didn’t always succeed.

  Looking back, I realized that I was then too involved in their lives and often interfered by trying to solve their problems when I should have let go of my children. Despite that, like many other couples in these troubled times, we sometimes failed but still managed to r
emain a close knit family.

  Juliette, always the most adventurous, had gone to Istanbul, Turkey to teach. While teaching in Istanbul, Juliette, very entrepreneurial, managed to get Jimmy an exciting new architectural job: the design of a new gymnasium for her school. While the gymnasium was being built, we went several times to Turkey to visit.

  On her day off, Juliette and I explored the bazaar, ate in a small restaurant, and visited markets. My Egyptian grandmother was born in Istanbul, and I felt very at home there. However, Juliette soon grew bored with teaching English to wealthy Turkish girls, and later college students, and decided to become a journalist. It was during the time of the first Gulf War. Because she was fluent in Turkish, she was hired by Business Week. Her first big break came when she covered the Gulf War on the Turkish-Iraqi border. She wrote from Cizre about the plight of the Kurds who were crossing the border from Iraq into Turkey. When the war was over, she reported on the Kurdish refugee camps where hundreds were dying. She also had a by-line for The New York Post. I learned about her exploits by reading the paper. When the war was over, Juliette continued to write for Business Week. She covered the war in Azerbaijan, one of the former Soviet Republics in the Caucasus. She sent dispatches about a fierce battle between Armenians and Azerbaijanis as witnessed from a helicopter also under fire. We learned all of this through her articles, living in fear that something terrible might happen to her.

  Later, she wrote about the effect of the war on the Turkish economy, and at the same time, she was also falling in and out of love. First she fell deeply in love with a Turkish teacher, but this did not work. Later she fell in love with a French journalist who whisked her away to Moscow. This did not turn out either, but Juliette, still the great adventurer, learned Russian and was a witness of the Russian uprising in Moscow and the burning of the Russian “White House.” From Russia, she took many trips to Central Asia, to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. To our great relief, she came back to New York in one piece and started to work for Forbes. She had fallen in love with a bright American who was working in Saudi Arabia. David spoke Arabic and loved the Middle East. Marriage was in the air, and we felt very happy for her.