The Sultan's Sweet Tooth

Words and Art by Jonathan Neil Smith

Topkapı Palace, Istanbul

1558, the 38th year of the glorious reign of Suleiman, the Shadow of God on Earth, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of the Khans

I can see almost nothing. The rattle of keys and the clatter of the bowl as it’s shoved in front of me are the only sounds I hear these days. Well, they’re the only sounds which are near at hand. The muffled hubbub of palace life, the mewing of seagulls looping over the Golden Horn: those sounds are just echoes of my former life as a free man, and might even be imaginary.

Do you know, rattler of keys, what’s even more painful than my incarceration is the way you just slam the broth I’m supposed to live on in front of me. When I think of how much forethought went into the presentation of my creations! And maybe I ought to thank God that my cell is too gloomy for me to actually see the broth I’m given! If broth is what it is, and not the discharge from the palace gutters that’s dripped into my bowl.

I’m sorry—please, forgive my outburst! Don’t go, I need to speak to someone. Rattler of keys, you could say that working as an underling in a large kitchen—as I once did—is little different from the prison sentence I’m under now. Fresh air and daylight become luxuries; you forget how to do things unless they are instigated by commands barked in your direction. But I’m no thug, as I’m sure even in this dim light you must have realised. My only crime is the pursuit of perfection in my art: by the same token, the Sultan should have had Mimar Sinan imprisoned, when he finished the mosque named in his honour.

Rattler of keys, give me a few minutes of your time and let me explain to you why I’m here. And then you can decide if I’m guilty.

I was apprenticed to the Imperial Kitchens when I was still a boy. Having lost both my parents before I was twelve, my uncle, who was already working there, used his influence to get a position for me. I remember the first time I approached the Gate of Salutation, which didn’t appear very welcoming, whatever its name. I remember the twin arrowhead towers pricking a cold sky and either side of them, the walls of the palace stretching, like arms shielding from view all the conspiracies, the strangulations, the disappearances that were rumoured to go on within. For even a youngster like me was already acquainted with such tales. I knew that admission was only granted to members of the royal household and those dignitaries who had pressing imperial business with the Sultan. But did I feel privileged? No, I was far too overwhelmed for that.

My uncle was waiting at the gate to verify who I was to the guards, and I was reassured by his presence—in the same way I’m reassured by the rattling of your keys every day. But my nerves were also forgotten as soon as I crossed the Second Courtyard. This was something akin to a man discovering God and deciding, in an instant, that he will devote his life to religious duty. I entered the Imperial Kitchens and knew immediately what my calling would be.

Although I was well-used to the streets and bazaars of Istanbul—where it seems half the populace of the empire and beyond is busy buying, bartering, brawling, baking, butchering and beating things into shape—nothing could prepare me for the clamour of this place. That and the heat would have made Satan himself feel at home, I thought. However, it wasn’t what my ears or eyes perceived but rather what my nose did that left me enthralled, as my uncle tried to hurry me along. For, steaming out of monstrous copper cauldrons, or issuing from cavernous ovens, or from vast metal trays, the aromas of food being prepared were nothing short of sublime.

Don’t laugh at me, rattler of keys. I was just a boy, and most of the smells I’d grown up with in the streets of Istanbul were of a rather unsavoury kind. But as we passed through the different sections of the Kitchens, I inhaled everything from the smell of spiced meat being roasted on a spit, or the honeyed infusions of newly-made baklava, to the golden scent of flour being toasted in butter to make halva, or the sour whiff of yoghurt, or the glutinous bubbling of jams and preserves before they’ve set, or the acid pungency of vegetables being pickled in vinegar ... You laugh, rattler of keys, but like visions to a saintly man, as soon as I smelt these things, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

My uncle left me to attend to his own duties, and I began my initiation as an apprentice. Having been issued with a crisp worsted uniform, the first time I’d worn any garment that wasn’t a hand-me-down, I was assigned to one of the six master chefs, the ustads. What I didn’t immediately appreciate was the amount of cajoling, coaxing, perhaps even a crafty bribe or two that it must have taken for my uncle to obtain for me a position not merely in the kitchen of the royal household—which fed everyone from the janissary guards to the keeper of the Sultan’s menagerie—or even the harem kitchen. I was working in the Sovereign Kitchen itself. Food that I, however marginally, was involved in making would reach the mouth of the Shadow of God on Earth, Sultan Suleiman Han, Sovereign of the Sublime House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of the Khans, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Custodian of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem … I could go on, rattler of keys, but even the amount of time that I have prevents me.

There must have been a hundred of us novices in total scurrying around the Kitchen, stirring, slicing, fetching, carrying things, sweating, being scolded by our superiors and anyone who felt like it, and managing on a few hours’ sleep. Not unlike my present confinement, I never left the palace. At the end of the day, we all collapsed into our cots in the adjoining dormitories and were rewarded with the slumber that only exhaustion and the certainty that we’d served our Padishah well can bring.

Now, after a while, even the ustads grudgingly had to admit my talents in the Confectionery, especially when it came to the making of pastry for baklava. You see, I’d been given the nickname Örümcek from an early age. And what was my resemblance to a spider, you might ask? Of course, you can’t see in this light, but I’ve always had slender fingers that when splayed looked like the legs of one and moved just as nimbly. Not that this light-fingeredness led me to a life as a thief, rattler of keys, unlike some here. No, this physical quirk, for which I’d previously been mocked, was perfect for rolling out pastry. Gently, delicately, to ensure the perfect lightness. And let me tell you this. You might have the most fragrant honey or rose water to pour onto your baklava. You might have the tastiest walnuts or pistachios that the empire can offer to sprinkle on top, but if your pastry is of the wrong consistency, you might as well serve up a tray of soggy bread. Making baklava with inferior pastry, rattler of keys—well, that is a crime that deserves to be punished!

Maybe I innocently thought that, especially as I was working in the Sovereign Kitchen itself, I would have some sort of contact with the Shadow of God on Earth himself. I soon understood, though, that this was not to be the case. Access to the Sultan was barred by a succession of doorways, gates and courtyards; of eunuchs, guards and pages. If the harem was the enmeshed heart of the imperial web, I was a peripheral thread. But why am I telling you this, rattler of keys? You know this to be true.

However, I do remember when the Shadow of God on Earth was first presented with baklava which I could put my name to.

A short time after, I was summoned to appear before him. Terrified I’d committed some fatal mistake, however flawless I considered my creation to be, I remember fumbling with my sash to wrap around the dark blue uniform that we always wore in winter. Despite the cold, sweat seeped through the brim of my conical kitchen hat.

I remember, rattler of keys, being ushered from the Kitchens by the Chief Eunuch himself. I followed his bulbous white hat as it bobbed through the Second Courtyard, past the palace pantry to the Sultan’s apartments. I remember being whisked through marble cloisters, where the only sound was that of fountains whose water played to nobody. I remember passing through empty chambers, where rays of sunshine, filtering through red, green and blue glass, splashed on patterned walls. I remember thinking to myself how beautiful all this was and that, if I were about to be punished for something, I’d like to pause and fix these images in my head, to nourish me during my imprisonment. But the eunuch’s bulbous white hat had already moved on.

Finally, we reached a chamber which was occupied. A pair of guards was posted at the door, pages were standing in anticipation of orders, and, below three stained glass windows whose glaring turquoise light made me squint, stood a carved divan. This divan accommodated a middle-aged man, dressed in an embroidered kaftan whose face was only visible in profile. It was like a face in a painting: frozen in a pose and sharply outlined. At first, because of the sunlight from the windows which dazzled me, I could barely make it out. Then I saw that it was distinguished by an aquiline nose and a dark beard. So this was the Shadow of God on Earth, the Sultan Suleiman Han, Sovereign of The Sublime House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of the Khans.

Although I realised who was sitting, or rather lounging, in front of me, the guard still had to give me a discreet kick so that I stumbled into a prostrate position. I knew better than to open the conversation, but was anyway too overawed to know what to say. After a moment of silence, I gathered enough courage to peep up from the floor. I glimpsed a gold-sleeved arm, from which protruded a bony hand. Pinched between a slender forefinger and a thumb was a nugget of something. Maybe it was a precious stone to be added to the imperial treasury. If so, why was my presence necessary?

Of course, rattler of keys, you’ve already worked it out. Don’t make fun of me—I was panic-stricken and hardly dared look up for more than a second. It was a square of my baklava. When I realised this, though, it was of little consolation: in fact, my sweating increased. Didn’t it meet his requirements? Wasn’t it to his taste? What did he do to cooks who disappointed him?

He beckoned with a flick of his hand for me to get up and seemed to be assessing me as if I were merchandise.

“You’re young,” he concluded. “How long have you been working in my service?”

“Twelve years,” I replied. “I started my apprenticeship when I was thirteen, my lord.”

“Well,” mused the Sultan, popping the baklava into his mouth and licking his fingertips with what looked like relish, “When I was a couple of years older than you I was placed in charge of the largest empire in the world, so I suppose it isn’t too great a responsibility to make you Head of the whole Confectionery, despite your youth. This is unquestionably the finest baklava I’ve ever tasted, young man. I think you have an old head on young shoulders to create something of this quality, and so I’m putting my trust in your knowledge and skill. Don’t disappoint me.”

“Why—padişah efendim, sultanım. I—I don’t know what to say,” I stammered. As if to save me my embarrassment, he held out a gold-embroidered sleeve for me to kiss.

“There is only one condition to your promotion.”

“Yes, padişah efendim?”

“You and only you must make my baklava.”

“Of course, my lord, it—it would be an honour.”

Before I followed this with anything inept or ill-advised, I bowed and was then escorted back to the kitchens, my head still reeling at what had happened.

I was soon provided with the dark green uniform of a senior member of kitchen staff and then had to get acquainted with the enormity of my new post. Certain things were already known to me, such as the preparation of halva or baklava and which ingredients were needed for these recipes. But the making of jams, preserves, compotes and sherbets were alien arts, and I often had to defer to people who were much older than me but now inferior in status, which made me feel uneasy. Likewise was the production of syrups and pastilles administered for sore throats, which somehow came under my jurisdiction. As well as that of all the different pickles that sustained the palace, especially during the winter months. There was everything from capers and cucumbers to bitter oranges and aubergines, soaked in a particular vinegar that had to be ordered from Bursa. Other ingredients came from much further afield: grain, barley and salt from the Black Sea coast; dates, rice and spices from Egypt; honey from the Balkans; and olive oil from the Aegean. Indeed, much of my working life was spent at a desk, itemising provisions, listing what I had to get to satisfy palace appetites, where it would best be obtained and at what cost.

So, rattler of keys, you might now, with some justification, claim that I’d become nothing more than a clerk. And to be honest, I’d rather have been working with pastry than paper. But such is life. I periodically enjoyed sampling the produce which different smallholders and farmers would beg me to order from them. A firman from the palace, of course, could make someone’s fortune. I was Örümcek, at the centre of my own web now, drawing on threads from across the empire.

But I was still at my most content when I was making baklava for the Sultan, creating pastry that was almost as fine as silk that a spider would spin. I rarely saw him at close quarters, but rather as someone glimpsed on his way to the mosque for Friday prayers, preceded by dignitaries that I didn’t know, and walled in by a phalanx of guards. Still, I convinced myself that there was a bond between us. A bit like you and me, rattler of keys, for I feel I know you even if I’ve hardly seen your face. But I really believed that, through his stomach, I’d befriended the man.

I was sure that my post was secure so long as my baklava still pleased him, as any reasonably competent clerk could have fulfilled my administrative duties. But who could have guessed what would bring him down? He, who had defeated the most powerful infidel armies, he who had so nearly brought the empire to the gates of Vienna, he who had—if gossip is to be believed—decreed that his own son should be strangled. Grief, loneliness and despair were enemies that couldn’t be dispatched by cannon, gunpowder or even a silken thread tightened around the gullet.

* * *

Now, when I heard what the mood of our Padishah was after the death of his beloved Roxelana, I knew what I had to do, rattler of keys. If I could remind him that there were still traces of sweetness on the earth, it would assuage the bitterness of his soul. Through food, after all, you can regain your equilibrium should one of your four humours be out of kilter. And that is scientific fact, pure and simple.

I was warned about the wisdom of my plan, however. When I announced my intentions, one of the courtiers told me:

“I know of your expertise in the culinary arts, especially sweets, but you have limited experience of our Padishah. He shuns everything these days, every amusement and diversion that he used to love. Even the well-being of the empire seems not to concern him. He sits in silent thought, eating only the most basic food to keep him. He won’t eat off gold, silver or porcelain anymore, but just wooden dishes like a peasant farmer, and his wardrobe is now as plain as a street peddler's.”

“I know what to do,” I replied loftily. “And I’ll present it to him myself. Leave it to me. The way to repairing a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

“On your head be it,” said the courtier without irony, leaving me to my kitchen.

What did he know? I knew that our Sovereign’s appetite for my confections was the best means of returning him to normality. Besides, maybe the courtier had said what he had because this self-serving mandarin didn’t want anyone else to get credit for his recuperation.

This is what I was thinking, as these spindly fingers of mine rolled out the pastry on my marble counter with well-practised ease and a wooden oklava—stretching it, dusting it with flour, stretching it again until it reached that gauzy stage. Then, a scattering of walnuts, laying more sheets of pastry with the care of someone turning the pages of a sacred book, baking, and a final drizzling of rose water. I was sure that I’d done the best that God would permit me to do. It was the moment, in the crucible of a baking tray, that I’d forge gold. I felt as Mimar Sinan must have done when a crescent finally crested his mosque. In short, I knew I’d made a masterpiece. And I could do no more.

I delivered the baklava myself, on a tray the width of a soldier’s shield, and I was so proud of myself that I managed to ignore the sceptical glances and even cringes of everyone I passed on my way to the Sultan’s apartments. I, and only I, could save our ruler from his sorrow. I was sure of it.

Eventually, I reached the chamber where I knew he would be. A single guard stood at the door, staring as if in a stupor towards the end of his watch. I’m sure you have days like that, rattler of keys.

Unlike when I’d visited the Sultan two decades before, the room wasn’t ablaze with sunlight but cold, cut off from the world. A shard of brightness speared the gap between closed shutters. The divan had been removed, and instead the Sultan was sitting cross-legged on the floor as if in contemplation. The face looked as if it had aged far more than the twenty years since I’d last seen it close up. Bones and veins rumpled its pale flesh, and it wasn’t raised in proud profile as if he’d been sitting for a portrait. Instead, the eyes were downcast. The beard was a wisp hovering about his chin. His body, once clad in embroidered kaftans, was now so emaciated that the rags he wore hung from it like a poor man’s laundry out to dry. What had become of him? The Shadow of God on Earth reduced to a shadow himself. Would my offering be enough to remind him of the finer things in life? I couldn’t withdraw now, though. It was too late for that.

I waited for him to speak, as is customary, or even raise his head to acknowledge my arrival. Such was his proximity to the floor that I wondered how I could possibly get any lower, as etiquette required. No sleeve was extended for me to kiss. I put the laden tray down, a metallic clank filling the marble silence.

The royal taster took a slice from the latticework of pastry, as his duty dictated, and despite the darkness of the chamber, the fact that I heard him lick his fingers afterwards I took to be a good omen. Then, like someone who was gravely ill, the Sultan summoned up enough energy to raise his head and look at what had been placed in front of him.

What happened next caused me to recoil and the guard to dash from where he’d been posted outside the door, alarmed at all the noise. The Sultan had sprung up, and in a fury, kicked the platter so that it skidded across the floor. Flakes of pastry were sent hurtling through the air like a volley of tiny missiles. A plume of syrup trailed each one until they landed, scattered all over the chamber. Then the only sound was the fading crash of my tray. There was a flash as it landed on the other side of the room, like a storm glimpsed on a far-off hillside.

Well, rattler of keys, I thought that the most prudent thing to do was to fall to my feet in supplication. Meanwhile, the voice of our Padishah, the Shadow of God on Earth, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of the Khans, had started thundering across the room towards me. It seemed as if all his stifled grief had suddenly exploded into rage.

“What do you mean by this? Beguiling me with these confections, when all that truly meant something has now been denied me? Any pleasure is merely a reminder of the greater pleasure of which I’ve been robbed! Like having brass where once there was gold, paste where once there were diamonds! Did you think, when God has taken away my beloved, that it could be remedied so easily? Do you really consider me so easily swayed? How can this be seen as anything but an insult to the Shadow of God on Earth, and so little short of blasphemy? Guard, remove this person! Remove him from my sight! Cast him into the deepest dungeon at the palace! Then he can consider his folly and know what it is to have all delight and comfort snatched from him!”

“Yes, padişah efendim. At once.”

So, rattler of keys, that is my story and that’s why I’m here. I’m surely guilty of poor judgment—this I readily accept—and even foolishness. But I honestly believed that I was doing good; that in a small way, I might have been able to save our Sovereign from his sorrow. I do hope that sometime, he’ll remember that I’m here and pardon me. Do you think he might, rattler of keys? Do you think that one day, I might recover my freedom? Has an artist ever been so harshly treated for practising his God-given skills? Rattler of keys, where are you? Are you still there?

* * *

A Quarter of Istanbul

June 1574, the 8th year of the glorious reign of Selim II, the Shadow of God on Earth, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of the Khans

I wonder if you still work at the palace, rattler of keys. My cell received so little light that I never really saw your face. I wouldn’t know you if we passed in the street, and I wonder if you’d trouble to acknowledge me. I’ll address this to you anyway, for old time’s sake.

I don’t even know if you were the one who led me to my freedom when that day arrived. I was so disoriented by the flood of sunshine that I could barely distinguish anything as I was hauled out of my cell. It was all whiteness and noise.

Life moves in circles, rattler of keys. Like the spider circling its web, ending up at its origin. I was escorted to the arrowhead towers of the Gate of Salutation by you or one of your comrades. This was where my life at the palace had started, when I was just a child and had nothing but the clothes on my back. Now I had only the clothes on my back, and my freedom. But now, what lay outside the perimeter walls of the palace scared me more than the intrigues and machinations that went on within them. The palace had been my life, whether as kitchen boy, Head Confectioner, or prisoner. I knew nothing else.

What was I to do? My uncle, who had provided my introduction to the palace, had passed away some years before and he was the only one of my family I’d been close to. I was a mariner who’d been at sea for years, and had suddenly been dropped at a foreign port: my sea legs had to adapt to being on land again and I had to navigate myself around a city where I had barely a word of the language. After a while stumbling blindly outside the Gate, lurching in one direction and then the other, I adjusted to the glare of day and people no longer eyed me as they would a drunkard making his way through the streets. I also decided to try and find the neighbourhood where I’d grown up, as I vaguely thought that some members of my family might still be there.

After the deadened sounds of a prison cell, the streets of Istanbul hit me hard. It felt as if everyone was yelling in my earhole, jostling, elbowing me, trampling on my toes. But I had no choice other than to carry on, rattler of keys, until I’d located the street where I’d spent the first decade of my life. An alleyway which looked almost as cheerless as the cell I’d just left.

In a house once owned by my uncle, God rest his soul, and paid for by his years of service in the royal household, lived his son, my cousin, and his family. He hadn’t followed his father into service, and I now wondered if it was my own fate that had guided his decision.

I had nowhere else to seek shelter but with them. Kin, as the Sultan himself would surely agree, comes before anything, and their welcome to someone who was, for them, a virtual stranger proved it. A feast of mutton and rice was assembled with as much excited chatter and sense of occasion that accompanies the breaking of the fast in Ramadan. Of course, I’d seen far more sumptuous dishes being prepared in the imperial kitchens, but this was the first time I’d had anything but thin broth to dine on in ages, and as I sat there filling my stomach, wearing borrowed but freshly-laundered clothes, all seemed well. Until my cousin enquired, as casually as he could:

“So what are your plans?”

I replied that I hoped I could stay with them until I’d found my way, inşallah. Not troubling to hide the fact she’d been eavesdropping, his wife instantly appeared from behind a curtain to clear the wooden sofra of its well-scraped dishes. As she left, she bumped into me. An accident, I wondered, or was it to underscore how cramped the house already was?

My cousin himself said that of course I could stay, although I noticed his coda: “until you’ve found your way. İnşallah.”

Fortunately, I was able to make myself useful as my cousin’s bakery was below where the family lived, and so I earned my keep by working alongside him. And eventually, rattler of keys, I was able to set up in business on my own.

The temple where I practise my art—or I should say, the kitchen where I make my wares—is wedged at the rear of a tiny shop. I bake simple pastries: börek for working folk, eaten on the hoof. My premises hardly receive any daylight, so in some ways the place isn’t dissimilar from the cell that I was locked up in. If I look up the chimney that snakes from the back of the oven to the roof, I can see a square of sky. And if I crick my neck from the counter where I serve my customers, I can also see a distant tongue of daylight at the entrance to the han where my establishment is located. In front of my shop is a passage, usually busy with buyers, beggars, peddlers, porters and prostitutes. Barely an arm’s length away are other shops and workshops similar in size to my own. In short, rattler of keys, I’m a trader in one of Istanbul’s bazaars.

Quite a comedown, you might say. To which I’d shrug and agree. But my customers depend on me and often compliment me on the quality and lightness of my pastries, as the Shadow of God on Earth, the Sultan of Sultans, the Khan of Khans once did. I like the people I serve. They’re mostly the proprietors of neighbouring shops, or strangers who have just arrived here and crave a bite of something cheap and tasty, as well as some welcoming chat.

I’ve almost forgotten about my previous life, before my incarceration. But the other day, after closing my shop and deciding to walk to the water’s edge for a breath of fresh air, something reminded me.

It’s evening, and the sky is still luminous blue. In the sparkling water at my feet, fishermen are busy selling their catch from skiffs, whose hulls seem to be nudging their rivals for custom. The lowering sun still glimmers on the heights above Pera, the opposite shore of the Golden Horn. I can see where the buildings recede and pine trees stand in rows on a yellow hillside, like dark roosting birds. The city below, occupying the slopes either side of the Golden Horn, has already been thrown into shadow, waiting for lamps to be kindled. All seems normal, and calm.

Only now do I see the smoke. It smudges the sky, fanning up from the land like a flock of starlings suddenly disturbed. And, what really arouses my curiosity is the fact that it’s rising from Seraglio Point. I alone realise that the Palace is alight while everyone else is still haggling over the price of fish. At first, I think that the smoke is emerging from the Tower of Justice, but it’s probably because that’s the most prominent feature of the skyline, with its tall tapering roof and pinnacle. And a vengeful part of me thinks: well, how deserved, given my experience of regal jurisprudence. No offence intended, rattler of keys, I know that you and your comrades were just following orders.

But no, the source is actually behind the tower, and a little further south. I fix my gaze on the flames dancing like palm fronds from a line of chimneys. It’s the Palace Kitchens. The wind swings in my direction and the smoke begins to cast a shadow over where I’m standing. Even the fishermen have started to show an interest in what’s happening, and the babble of bargaining that filled the quayside is suspended, at least for the time being.

I inhale deeply, and my expert nostrils, trained in that very same place, pick up something other than the smell of charred timber that you’d expect. I’m sure I can detect a smell like that of bread, toasted before an open flame and held there too long. In my mind’s eye, I see squares of baklava, at first glowing orange with reflected firelight, then, singed and curling black at the edges like old parchment, flaking to ashes in the bottom of scorched trays.

I allow myself a smile, rattler of keys, and then head for home. I need to get to bed because I’ve an early start tomorrow, as always. My pastries won’t bake themselves and, without my getting up before the morning call to prayer, dozens of people in the bazaar will start their working day on an empty stomach. Cause and effect. And that, rattler of keys, is scientific fact, pure and simple.

About the author and illustrator

Jonathan Neil Smith is an English teacher who has lived and worked in Turkey for over twenty years. As well as writing, his interests include art, history and travel, which often find their way into his stories.