A tale of melancholy

“When you want to make someone fall in love with you, you put cinnamon in the meatballs. Not cumin. Cumin is strong and makes people keep to themselves. Cinnamon softens them up. It makes them want to open up and look at each other’s eyes.” That’s what my uncle’s second wife once told me about the land she comes from and its people. “We call it Polis with a capital P because it is the most beautiful city in the world.”
Nowadays, by Polis we mean Istanbul, a city with a glorious Byzantine past and thousands of years of illustrious history. It was in this city that hundreds of Greek families put down roots for many centuries and made Constantinople their home, until history and politics had other plans for them.
When my aunt talks about her people, I can feel how difficult it must have been for her to leave her Polis behind. Her kitchen is a safe abode where I can always find shelter in the exotic smells of the hunkar begendi (smoked aubergine), the strong spices of the yogurtlu kebab (Kebab with Yogurt) or the sweet, pacifying aroma of the syrup on the sekerpare (a sugar syrup coated dessert with almond). It won’t be long before our olfactory senses get the best of us and our conversation shifts to food again. “Food is a means of communication for us; months of bitterness with a friend can end on the spot with a pan of sweet ekmek kadayifi.”
My aunt is 73 years old. She speaks the words of a wise woman who fell deeply in love with her city and lost everything overnight. Her dishes are deeply imbibed with the rich flavour of melancholy. She was only 15 when her family was deported and today, food is the only thing that links her to her people. “Spices are at the heart of our cooking. The best pepper is always strong and fiery like the hot sun that shines over Polis; salt is the spice of life in the neighbourhoods of Pera and cinnamon is sweet and deceiving like the women of Tarlabasi.”
One Sunday afternoon, over a light aperitif and a slice of malebi (cream custard), my aunt summarised the meaning of life in just a few sentences. “Food is a world philosophy to us. It governs our entire existence…just like the stars above us. Do you think it’s out of mere coincidence, after all, that the word gastronomy includes the word astronomy? “