I hold up the last piece of Konya böregi. “But wasn’t this Mevlana’s favourite food?” I joke.
Now I get the finger wag. “No. His favourite food was helva. Almond helva.” Nevin grins. It makes her happy that she knows such things.
Having tried all the variations of etliekmek on Cemo’s menu, it is time to go. The gluttony has rendered me nearly immobile, but I lug myself out of my chair and follow Nevin into the parking lot. “The day after tomorrow you will come to my house for breakfast,” she says. (I love how invitations in the Middle East are so often expressed as prophesies.) “I will prepare for you dishes from all seven regions of Turkey. But tomorrow you will go out on your own. You will find firin kebab. It is another specialty of Konya. Be sure to eat with your hands; you will fly. And, of course, you will go to Mevlana’s tomb.”
That unparalleled beauty has taken possession of my heart’s kitchen with all its title deeds; and is smashing my pots, pans, plates, platters to pieces.
Ates-baz Veli was embarrassed that he’d burned his toe. It wasn’t the burn itself that bothered him. After all, you could expect a chef, especially “one who plays with fire,” to earn the occasional blister. And it wasn’t the unlikely location of the burn that fazed him. It was the fact that his burned toe was evidence of a brief lapse of faith.
Earlier that day, Ates-baz complained to Mevlana, his friend and master, that there was no wood left to fuel the stove. Mevlana told the chef to place his feet below the stove. When Ates-baz did this, a flame burst from his toes and set the pot boiling, but because he had doubts about this strange miracle, his left big toe burned. Mevlana heard about Ates-baz’s injury and scolded his apparent lack of conviction. Ates-baz tried to hide his scorched left digit by covering it with his right foot.
Since that day, when Mevlevi dervishes engage in the centuries-old whirling ritual for which they are famous, they begin by placing their right big toe over their left. This is a reminder of Ates-baz Veli and that odd day in the kitchen.
I obeyed Nevin’s instructions and made my way to Mevlana’s tomb. The shrine is part of a grand museum complex built out of a thirteenth-century dervish lodge, or tariqat. I paid my admission fee, plucked plastic shower caps from a bin in front of the entrance to the shrine, stretched them over my shoes, and entered the complex where the great poet tries to rest amid the camera flashes. Mevlana’s gravestone is enormous and topped with two green turbans. Pillars rise above him to support a dome made of carved and painted wood. Every surface of the shrine is softly lit and adorned with verses of his poetry written in gold.
I spent only a moment there among the throngs – the schoolchildren, the quietly praying Turks, and the Western New Agers who’ve adopted Mevlevi Sufism as the next fashionable mysticism – before leaving the shrine for another sort of pilgrimage. I found the ancient dervish kitchen in a different part of the museum. For Mevlevi Sufis, the kitchen was a sacred place and heart of the tariqat. Here, everyday labours were elevated to a sort of meditation. The operation of the kitchen was divided into eighteen precise duties, which were assigned to individual acolytes. The Master of the Cupboard was in charge of cleaning the cupboards and maintaining the utensils within. This was his only job. The Coffee Grinder only ground coffee. The Purchaser of Provisions did the daily shopping. He hung a symbolic set of tongs, called pazarci tongs, from his belt. The tongs identified him as a Mevlevi Sufi to the market vendors and they would, in theory, sell him goods at a lower price. Everyone laboured under the supervision of the Chief of the Kitchen and Master of Ceremonies, the spiritual descendant of Ates-baz Veli.
Aspirants to the Mevlevi order would begin their Sufi training in a small alcove, called a saka postu, on the left side of the kitchen’s entrance. They would sit there for three days in silence and observe the work of the dervishes. (The saka postu in the museum’s kitchen is still intact and occupied by a kneeling mannequin.) After his three days of observation, the dervish-to-be had to run errands for eighteen days before beginning his formal apprenticeship under the Keeper of the Cauldron, the kitchen’s second-in-command. This period of repetitive labour and intense scrutiny would last 1,001 days. If an aspirant survived the ordeal and showed the sort of patience and endurance required of a Mevlevi dervish, he would then become a member of the order.
