Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar (20 page)

Soon the need for shipments became less acute. The end of dictatorship meant we could move into a hotel with a decent kitchen, and then into a comfortable house a block from the Tigris River. I hired a chef named Munther, who scoured the markets for ingredients to indulge his experiments with Western cooking. One day we got a Waldorf salad. There was crème brûlée for dessert, albeit a little too sweet and runny. When a young reporter in the bureau came back with a Whopper and onion rings from the new Burger King at the military base next to the airport, Munther decided to copy the meal. The burgers, made from sheep that had been grazing on garbage, were a bit gamy, but the onion rings were perfect—crunchy, perfectly circular, and the size of half-dollars.

I put on fifteen pounds that first summer. Munther served up a three-course feast every night, donning a white jacket as he brought his creations into the dining room. I gave him carte blanche to buy whatever he wanted—figuring that with Malik closed, he couldn't get into too much trouble—and he managed to find a seemingly endless variety of produce. The lack of supermarkets meant everything was made from scratch. He baked the bread and trimmed the meat and simmered the sauces.

In idle moments, over cups of tea and cigarettes, I came to learn about the lives of the Iraqis who worked for us as interpreters, drivers, and guards. One had been a pilot for Iraqi Airways. Another was a mechanical engineer who had a master's degree from UCLA. And yet another had worked as a
driver for the general security directorate before the war, no doubt shuttling people to torture sessions. But Munther remained a mystery. He spoke little English, so every conversation required an intermediary. Every interaction was transactional: What do you want for dinner tomorrow? Can I buy a new meat grinder? My efforts to engage always seemed to fall flat. After a few months, all I knew about him was that he was in his thirties. He was lanky and had close-cropped hair. He arrived in the afternoons with a stack of Arabic books and kept to himself in the kitchen. He left as we tucked into dessert. Where did he learn to cook? How did he feel about making sumptuous meals for a bunch of Americans while millions of Iraqis were still living hand to mouth? I had no idea.

One day I walked into the kitchen as he entered from the back door. He placed his books in two stacks, and I pointed to them with a quizzical expression. He gestured to one pile. “Shia books,” he said. Then the other. “Cookbooks.” I beckoned an interpreter to join us, but we were able to wrest only the most meager details about his life. He had grown up in the overwhelmingly Shiite south, and by the time he was in his late teens, he was torn between his desire to train as a cook and his desire to rebel at the oppression of his fellow Shiites by Saddam's regime. His religious activism soon landed him in prison, where he was tortured so brutally that he lost hearing in one ear. When he was finally released, a few years before the war, he managed to land a job as an apprentice in a Baghdad restaurant. When the restaurant closed after the invasion, the owner sent him my way.

That's all I got. Despite the white jacket and Waldorf salads, I could tell he was ambivalent about working for a bunch of foreigners. Sure, the money was good, and he got to experiment in ways he never could in a kebab restaurant, but he was cooking in a house where the occupants drank wine and the women let their hair flow freely. Of the three dozen Iraqis who worked for me, he was the most conflicted. At the time, I thought him an anomaly. I blithely assumed most Iraqis were like the rest of my staff—guys
who liked to sneak a beer and check out pornographic sites on the office computers; one young interpreter was so enamored of the United States that he took to wearing an American flag T-shirt. Munther never socialized with them. He holed up in the kitchen.

In the following months, I tried to win him over. When I was in California for a holiday, I bought him a ten-inch Wüsthof chef's knife and a cookbook with photos so he could pick out recipes he wanted translated. Our vegetables were chopped a little finer, and the menu became more varied, but he didn't become any less standoffish.

In mid-December, U.S. forces found Saddam hiding in a hole, and any hopes I had of spending Christmas with my family in California were shot as quickly as the celebratory gunfire that lit up the Baghdad sky. I decided to host a secular Christmas Eve dinner at our house. It would be a chance to see friends in Baghdad with whom I had lost touch because of hectic work schedules. It would be a way to expose our Iraqi colleagues to new traditions. And it would give me a chance to challenge Munther with his most complicated meal yet.

The essential ingredient, of course, was an
aliseesh
. But with Malik still closed and my supply convoys from Jordan suspended because of banditry on the highway from Jordan, I had to find a new smuggler. I approached a few shopkeepers, but none of them was willing to try. Then, on the advice of a friend, I went to a market in the city's Christian quarter that was so secretive it had no sign or door from the street. To get in, I had to go through an unlit adjoining building. When I entered, I discovered why: there were cases of whiskey, gin, and beer amid a Maliklike assortment of foreign foodstuffs. I inquired about a turkey. “Come back in three days,” the man said. I thought about asking whether it would come from Jordan and, if so, whether it would be kept cold. Or would it be packed into the hot trunk of a taxi with a dozen boxes of Cheerios? Or did he have a connection on a military base who'd slip him a bird under the barbed wire? I kept silent and purchased a bottle of whiskey.

When I returned home, I asked Munther whether he had ever cooked an
aliseesh
. Never, he said. Did any of his books have instructions for how to prepare one? Not that he had seen. Since these were the days before one sought answers to every random question on Google, I did what I always do when I find myself in a culinary fix: I called my mother—on a costly satellite phone—and asked her to e-mail me her turkey recipe.

On December 23, we got word from the market:
Come get your turkey
. There, in a waist-high chest freezer, was a genuine Butterball turkey. Fifteen pounds. Frozen as a rock.

Munther showed up early the next morning to prepare the feast, which would also include roast beef, potatoes au gratin, sautéed peas and carrots, fried zucchini, rice, and a
fattoush
salad. I printed out my mother's turkey recipe, gave it to one of my Iraqi colleagues to translate for Munther, and then settled down to write a story.

An hour later, there was a knock on my room door. I opened it to find one of my interpreters and a grave-faced Munther.

“Munther cannot cook your turkey,” the interpreter said.

“Why not?”

“The recipe calls for wine,” the interpreter said. “He cannot touch any alcohol.”

“It's just for the broth and to baste the turkey,” I said. “All the alcohol will evaporate in the heat of the oven and the stove.” But Munther was adamant. He wasn't going to touch the turkey or the broth. “Fine,” I huffed, “I'll do it myself.” And I walked down to the kitchen, uncorked a bottle of Chablis, and set about preparing the turkey.

As I was assembling the ingredients for the broth, Munther came up to me with the interpreter. He cracked a smile. He noted that I had thrown a large party for the Iraqi staff and their families a month earlier to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday after the monthlong Ramadan fast. Because of that, and because the recipe was from my mother, and because I promised him that the alcohol would evaporate, he said he would cook the turkey. “You
respected our traditions, so I will respect yours,” he said. And with that, he shooed me out of the kitchen.

It was the sort of grudging, uneasy accommodation that came to define the American presence in Iraq. The rest of the staff were like the exiles who sought power in the early days: unabashedly pro-Western and modern, eager to please and happy to change. But Munther was the real Iraq: strong, proud, conservative, tradition-bound, and more than a little bit stubborn. There was common ground to be had, but it wasn't going to be achieved easily.

I hate oven-roasted turkey. Thanksgiving is my least favorite meal of the year. At Christmas, I always lobbied my mother to make fish or lasagna or even Indian food. Why I sought out a turkey in Baghdad that year is beyond me. Perhaps I was going a bit mad after all those months in a war zone. Perhaps I just wanted a Butterball because it seemed so crazy and unattainable. Whatever the motivation, Munther's turkey looked as perfect as the fake one Bush carried when he visited the troops on Thanksgiving. Golden brown. Crispy wings. Juices oozing down the sides.

He put it on a silver platter and placed it on the table, next to the potatoes and rice and all the trimmings. Munther was beaming as we walked in from the living room.

“Merry Christmas,” he said. And then he began slicing the turkey.

It was, everyone agreed, the best meal they had eaten in Baghdad. When we finished, I walked into the kitchen to thank Munther, but as usual, he had departed as soon as we began dessert.

“Did Munther eat before he left?” I asked the young man washing dishes.

He did, I was told. He ate the roast beef and the potatoes and the rice. He ate everything, the young man said, except the turkey.

This is the e-mail from my mother containing the recipes, reproduced verbatim:

Rajiv,

The turkey should be thawed. If yours is still frozen, immerse it in water, keep changing the water as it thaws. If all else fails—extreme measures—your cook can hack it in half (saw or machete?) and then cook it!!! Do not use a kitchen knife to cut a frozen turkey.

Assuming that you have a thawed bird:

Other ingredients:
Few cloves of garlic, 2 onions, 5–6 carrots, few ribs of celery, parsley, herbs, butter, salt, and pepper

Remove the neck and the giblets. If you have a frozen turkey from the States, then check both the abdominal cavity as well the neck cavity for plastic bags with the neck and giblets. Save the neck for broth. I do not like the taste of the giblets so I throw them out.

Broth:
Put the neck (and giblets if you wish) in a saucepan, cover with water, add half of the vegetables—chopped carrots, onions, celery (if you have any) garlic, parsley and some herbs (e.g., oregano, marjoram or poultry spices, if you have some, salt, pepper). Bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours. I also add some white wine to this while it is simmering . . . about a cup. Strain and reserve the broth.

Turkey without stuffing:
This cooks faster and is safer.

Rinse the turkey and dry both inside and out. Place the remaining vegetables (above) with an apple cut into quarters plus some salt and pepper in the abdominal cavity.

Rub the outside of bird with some soft butter. I also put some butter and herbs between the skin and the breast meat. You will have to do it carefully so that you do not tear the skin. Truss the bird . . . that is, close the abdominal cavity with skewers and tie the legs with a piece of string.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Place the turkey in a roasting pan on a rack. I add more of the above chopped vegetables and herbs with more garlic and parsley. Add a cup of water and some wine to the pan. Place in oven.

After 20 minutes reduce heat to 325 degrees.

Bake approx. 15–20 minutes per pound. If you have a thermometer the breast meat should register 165 and the thigh 180. If not, the old
method was to jiggle the leg and pierce the thigh. The juices should not be pink.

If the breast (which usually cooks faster) browns too quickly, cover (tent) the turkey loosely with some foil.

When the bird is done, remove from oven and let it rest about 25–30 minutes before carving.

Gravy:
Discard vegetables (press out the juices with a spoon) and excess fat from the roasting pan. Strain and save the drippings. In a heavy saucepan melt 3 tablespoons butter and add 3 tablespoons flour and cook till golden. Watch carefully so that it does not burn. Take off the stove and gradually add the broth (2 cups) and the drippings, blending constantly with a whisk. You can also add few tablespoons of sherry, port or Madeira. Cook over medium heat till it thickens. Stir constantly while cooking. Add salt and pepper.

Potato Gratin:
Serves about 6–8 people. Increase quantity for larger group.

3 lbs potatoes, peeled and sliced in quarters

4 garlic cloves, minced

4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

1 cup shredded cheese (usually gruyere). Use what you have . . . parmesan?

Pepper and salt

1 cup of broth (from the turkey recipe if you have extra) or some half and half—mix cream and some milk

Butter

In a greased baking dish place a layer of potatoes. Sprinkle garlic, cheese, parsley, and seasonings. Continue layers ending with garlic, cheese, etc. on top. Pour broth or cream on top. Dot with butter. Bake for an hour till the potatoes are tender. Top should be golden.

Good luck! Call me if you need any clarification.

Mom

P.S. If you need any other recipes, email me with a list of items available and I will send something.

WENDELL STEAVENSON

I GOT IT INTO MY HEAD ONCE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT HAD STARTED THE
Abkhazian war. It was 1999 and I was living in Tbilisi, the capital of the post-Soviet Republic of Georgia in the southern Caucasus. It was five years since the Abkhas (with some meddling help from the Russians) had defeated the Georgian army and pushed a quarter of a million ethnic Georgians out of their homes along the pebbly Black Sea coast. The displaced families still filled every grand hotel in Tbilisi, strung up their washing on the mini-balconies, punched holes in the walls for tin-can chimney pipes. The refugees were making do with patched-up remnants, but all of Georgia was essentially camping in a shell of its former self during those limbo years. The country was in stasis: flatline economy, electricity down to four hours a day. The streets chugged with generators, a fug of kerosene hugged my apartment. Luckily I had a stove fueled by a gas canister, but I cooked by candlelight, peering into obscure saucepans and dripping wax on the potatoes.