AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING: The Smells of Childhood by JM

THE SMELLS OF CHILDHOOD

I cook with a lot of spices. I’m not sure if it is because the smell of specific spices brings back memories of the different countries where I spent my school holidays as a child, or because I’m just accustomed to eating spicy food. Until the age of twelve, I went to school mostly in the Netherlands and the U.K. and spent my holidays in whatever country my father happened to be living at the time. Among others, there were several summers in Turkey in the late fifties and several in Iran – Persia, as my father called it – in the early sixties. For me the smells and aromas of those two countries were the most memorable ones. The smells of Turkey were familiar from the start because many of them were similar to those in Greece where I had spent some time before; there was shish kebab, borek (warm filled savory pastries), koftes (small roasted meat balls), and, of course Turkish fruit. But the smells of Iran were different; pungent, varied and mysterious. I spent quite a bit of time with the cook in the kitchen of the large, walled house where we lived because my brother and I were not allowed to leave the grounds and riding a bike in the street was absolutely unheard of. The spices were kept in small cloth bags and the cook would repeat their names to me over and over and shake her head at my ignorance of such basic knowledge. She would often give me a glass of abdug - a yoghurt drink - a small plate, a fork, and a spoon and make me try the different dishes she was preparing for the evening meal. I have forgotten most of them though there are some that I remember vividly as soon as I smell the spices: cumin, thyme, saffron, mint, sumac…
I have a big wood spice rack my father made for me on my request when I first got married. It hangs on the wall in my kitchen and houses some fifty small bottles with cork tops of a large variety of spices. I have collected the little bottles over time and most of them have no labels; you have to open them and smell the contents to know what is in them. Some smell like northern Europe, some smell like the Middle East, some smell like the Caribbean, some smell like Turkey and Iran.