The City of the Blind: Unremarkable Stories from Istanbul by Zeynep Rade

Author:Zeynep Rade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Istanbul, Bosphorus, short story, supernatural, mystery, literature, middle east
Publisher: Discounted Literature
Published: 2025-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

A Naïve and Sentimental Baker

With respect to Friedrich Schiller.

My mother couldn’t cook. I remember her taking a sandwich up to her bedroom after dinner every night, claiming she couldn’t sleep without having a piece of bread and feta cheese. Every single night. “I must have a sandwich,” she would say. “It fills me. Not only my stomach but my soul. Gives me a warm feeling. It’s a longing for my childhood.”

This wasn’t true. Although she never liked eating and was the skinniest in the family, she’d say anything to justify her appetite for a sandwich. Much like her cooking, her excuses were weak. She cooked unidentifiable dishes, which people tried to avoid. Her soups were neither hearty nor chunky. More like water. And with halved onions or quartered carrots swimming in the broth because she could not be bothered to chop them.

She would be hungry one hour after leaving the table, so she’d make a sandwich. Her sandwiches were no great success, either. The bread was rarely fresh, and the filling was always feta. No slice of lettuce or tomato or a dash of mustard, let alone a piece of tongue or a fried egg. All the same, her sandwiches were sacred and not to be criticized. Our situation was not something you’d imagine finding in this part of the world. Even the poorer children had better food in their lunch boxes.

Also, she was proud of her lack of interest in “housework.” Not only did she speak very good English, but she also had a diploma in philosophy and understood and appreciated art. She sincerely pitied the women who proudly talked about how long they had to cook or iron.

Our cleaning lady—yes, we had a weekly home help who was paid by my grandmother—tried many times to interest her in a few recipes, but this was a waste of time. My mother would always find an excuse to be absent. During the rest of the week, everybody took turns in doing the housework. When we were in elementary school, my brother and I were in charge of making our beds, washing dishes, setting and clearing the table, and doing the grocery shopping. In return our mother cooked us consommés with big onions and celery roots that had turned black, mushy rice, a hot pot of thickly sliced leek. No salt or oil.

“Chopping up vegetables neatly is insane. You’ll lose all the vitamins’ she’d say. “My way is much healthier.”

Turkish people are very fond of stuffed vegetables or dolma (vine leaves stuffed with rice) as they’re called originally. Stuffing is always minced meat in winter and rice in summertime as they are eaten cold. Mind you, making dolma is not an easy chore, especially wrapping the vine leaves one by one, which can take hours of labour. My mother claimed that those people who cooked them had had all the time in the world.

She was practical, she said. If every ingredient ended up in our stomach, why put so much effort

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