In Istanbul, Chef Forgets to Cook for his Family

This is the second installment of Hoss Zare’s overseas trip diary. For Part One — his experience in Oslo —

The mosaic of spices on the street.

The day after celebrating my 50th birthday, I flew to Turkey to reunite with family I had not seen for 26 years. My six sisters were traveling from Tabriz, one brother from Oslo, and another brother from Antalya. All together, the nine of us had not been under one roof for 37 years.

I’d secured an apartment building with six units. It was important to be together. A hotel, I thought, would feel impersonal. I arrived a couple days earlier, so I walked around the neighborhood meeting people. One thing that was really touching about Istanbul was the way they treated stray animals. There were stations on the street with a bowl and a container. A sign read if you see empty bowl, please put one  cup.

My first welcome to the neighborhood came at the market. Every block has its corner market called a baggali.

I met the owner of our baggali. He was very nice, patient. We talked for a while. He said he’d heard about our reunion. I asked him to help because I needed to fill six refrigerators. He told me not to worry, to just pick out what I wanted. Two hours later, his car rolled up in front of the apartments. He had six boxes, all perfectly organized, and he even put a few extra things for me. We became friends after that. I told him whatever new exotic product he got, he had permission to make six assortments and bring them to me. Some days he knocked on our door before breakfast. My favorite thing was the beautiful multi-colored mulberries; I hadn’t had those in a long time.

***

When it came to my family, I made everyone promise not to bring sadness. How can I explain it? If one person started crying, everybody was going to cry. It would have turned into crying all the time.

I had not been to my parents’ funeral. I didn’t want, in my presence, to have another funeral for them. I wanted this to be a celebration in their honor. That was the whole thing.

First, my brother Saeed and his daughter arrived from Antalya. The next day, the three of us went to the airport in a big bus. The whole time we were waiting for my sisters, I was fine. I was like ice. 15 minutes before they landed, it hit me. My brother looked at me. He said, “It’s about time. You’re human.”

Seeing them all in one place after 26 years is hard to describe. It’s very hard. They were all walking towards me. I was walking, but I was watching them. I was watching and feeling proud. At the same time, they were looking at me. I could see their heads lifting. My posture straightened. Our pride was showing. It was intense. We had no idea at the time, but everybody in the airport was watching us hug.

Counting the nieces and nephews, here were 24 of us. We put the luggage away and boarded the bus. There was a tense, silent moment. I didn’t know what to say. I thought I would break down.

Suddenly, I said something that I had no idea where it came from. As a joke, almost scolding them I was like, “Hey! Which one of you sisters was the one that told the secret about me being in the tree naked?” This happened when I was five or six, but by then even the youngest niece had already known about it.

[Background: Growing up, I was a bad boy. One day my mom and dad weren’t home. My sister was watching me. She decided to go to a party. I told her they had to take me too. She told me I was a kid and the party was for adults. I told her I wanted to go. She said no. I took off all my clothes and ran out of the house. There was one meter of snow outside. I ran through the snow into the garden. We had a beautiful, huge garden. I climbed to the top of a plum tree and stood there, freezing. They yelled for me to get down. I said they had to take me too. They said I was going to die. I said they had to take me. Finally, they said, “We can’t take you, but we won’t go either.” Then I was happy. I came back down.]

Boom — laughter erupted on the bus. That story led to another story about my brother crying over bone marrow. See, everytime our mother made abghoost — braised lamb shank — we’d take turns for the bone. He never waited his turn. He had this honking cry that got under everybody’s skin. One day it was my turn. My brother, Hassan, starts honking. I try to give him the bone, but my father says don’t. My father asks Hassan to come to the other room. Hassan perks up, he stops crying. He follows our dad. From the other room, we hear the real crying start. That story led to another story.

After that, we were laughing and hugging each other all the time. On the trip, my sisters had a little routine between themselves. I found this out later. I would be talking with one of them, and the next thing I know she would make the conversation short. Then another sister would come close. They were timing it so they could share their brother evenly. It was like every ten minutes, they kept shuffling.

Occasionally, of course, there were tears. We were good about not bringing it to the entire group. We started to joke that whoever brought the crying would be the one to buy the dinner.

***

One day we were having lunch. All of us were sitting there. I’d bought a hat and put it on. It was like the hats in old gangster movies. We used to call them shapo. Suddenly, all my sisters were going one by one to the bathroom. They were crying. I didn’t realize why. They were all in the bathroom. My brother came and sat next to me. He said, “Take the hat off.” Then it clicked. My father used to wear a shapo. My face, the hat — it was the image of our father sitting there.

I kept thinking that in a few days, none of this would be real. Before the trip, I had been saying that I wanted to cook for them, but we had so much fun all the time that we didn’t even think about cooking together. The last day they were like, “What happened? We didn’t even cook together.”

I told them time goes fast, and it does. I can say this though: No matter how long you don’t see your family, be it five days or 26 years, when you get together, everything is like there never was a distance. At the end, they were hugging me and not letting me go. I told them this was not going to be goodbye. This was ‘see you later’. Later is coming next month, and let me tell you, next month couldn’t come faster.