The Cook from Tora Bora
Story by Appadurai MuttulingamStory by Appadurai Muttulingam
Translation from Tamil to English by S Thillainayagam

Share Article
I was in desperate need of a cook. My transfer to Peshawar, Pakistan, was so sudden that I was not able to prepare myself adequately. I did not have time to study the people or the language. The only thing I knew was that the place was famous for chapli kebab, a delicacy made of ground beef and various spices.
As my business involved traveling to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, frequently, I was located in Peshawar for convenience. On receiving the order for transfer I told my employers that I would need a cook, and they said, “Oh, Peshawar is full of cooks, you needn’t worry about it.” It turned out that Peshawar was not full of cooks but of wounded soldiers from Afghanistan. The only method used by people to advertise was word of mouth, and I used my mouth extensively for this purpose.
Peshawar, as one of the oldest cities in Asia, has a long history. At one time it had a building, Kanishka Stupa, so high it was regarded as one of the towering structures in the world. Close to this vanished stupa, I occupied the house vacated by my predecessor, which was in a fairly good shape. Within a matter of few days, I was fully settled but still could not find a cook.
People in the office told me to talk to my colleague Mumtaz, who was very efficient in matters like this. His main passion in life was trapping falcons, training them, and selling them to Arabs who flood Peshawar in September each year. If he sold a falcon, the money it fetched would be more than his annual salary. He would disappear for months, enjoying life, and only reappear when the money was finished. I told him of my dilemma and waited to see who he would find.
Living in Peshawar, I felt that I had gone back in time. Every morning I woke up to the din of horse hooves. When these horses walked rhythmically, tapping their hooves loudly against the stone paved roads, I would imagine a life five centuries back. At times I heard the sound of a solitary horse swiftly galloping very close beneath my windows. I would imagine an emissary was bringing me an urgent message from the king of a neighboring country.
One day, standing on the upstairs balcony, I watched a bride arriving at the groom’s house in a palanquin. The palanquin was borne by four hefty men and was surrounded by the wedding party and musicians playing melodious tunes. First a white leg emerged from the palanquin, followed by a lady wearing a sari and an embroidered purdah covering half her face. I surmised from her slightest movement that she was an exceptional beauty.
In the mornings, traffic was very heavy on the Peshawar roads, which were overcrowded with cars of several new models, auto-rickshaws, scooters, motorcycles, and buses displaying colorful paintings. Unmindful of the traffic, youngsters would stand on the flat seats of single-horse buggies and ride them fast, reminding me of the chariot race in the movie Ben-Hur. The pavements teemed with crowds of women in black purdahs, looking like upside-down shuttlecocks, and men in pure white dishdashas.
Though Peshawar was a city with all kinds of comforts, getting a cook seemed almost impossible. When I discussed my need with my landlord, he suggested that among the Afghans displaced by the Russian war there would be a large number of skillful cooks and that I could easily pick one among them.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had ended one year earlier, and now the country was ruled by the strongman Mohammed Najibullah from Kabul. People reverted back to their old lives and there was peace of some sort. The old soldiers, many of them wounded, were looking for jobs in Peshawar. I was not sure that it would be wise to recruit one of them as my cook.
One day, looking down from the terrace, I saw a young boy washing buffaloes in the nearby canal. Another boy was hanging upside down, clinging to the neck of a large black buffalo. Other boys gave him a wash along with the buffalo. Not interested in these goings-on, small water birds with large beaks played about, diving into the water and rising up again. I was enjoying this display just as the bell in my house rang.
It was Mumtaz. An old man was standing erect next to him, wearing a light-brown shalwar kameez made of rugged cloth. The shawl he had thrown over his shoulders looked as heavy as a sack. His eyes were yellow, like guavas when they ripen. He hadn’t the looks of a cook. On seeing me, he stiffened up, stamped his right foot on the ground like a soldier, and delivered a military salute and laughed, revealing his red gums.
The interview began. The old man gave one and two-word answers. He expected to be able to answer my questions using the range of his English vocabulary, which consisted of fifteen words. He came from the village of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. This old man could not have then foreseen that his village would become world-famous in another few years or that the B-52 bombers of the superpower America would pound this small village with more than a thousand bombs and raze it to the ground. I too could not have guessed it.
Both his sons were killed in the war with the Soviets, and he had come with high hopes of getting a job as a cook and spending the rest of his life in Peshawar with his granddaughter. He could find no jobs in Tora Bora and was confident of his culinary expertise. Just then I noticed the sack he had carried on his shoulder all the way from Tora Bora. He opened it to reveal a watermelon and gave it to me as a gift, saying that it was grown in his village. It had cracked a little and the red inner flesh was visible as if it was smiling. The distance between Tora Bora and Peshawar is 160 kilometers. These fruits were selling for very cheap in the local market close to my house. This old man had carried this fruit from such a long distance! He needed this job more desperately than I needed a cook.
I asked him, “What can you cook?” He said he knew everything. Presuming his reply to be too short, he filled the remaining space with long laughter. Mumtaz was multilingual and acted as my interpreter. At unexpected moments, he put forth a few questions of his own. I got so confused that I could not tell who had said what. Mumtaz wanted me to employ the old man, citing his poverty and the miserable condition of his family. I could not figure out the connection between these details and the old man’s culinary skills.
The interview came to an end. The old man was still standing straight at attention as though he had been told that I was recruiting him for the army. My understanding of his cooking capabilities after the interview was the same as it had been at the beginning. I asked him again, “What can you cook?” and he said, “I know all.” It seemed as if he had memorized this single line.
The old man had somehow guessed from my facial expression that things were not going in his favor. Yet his face brightened suddenly as an idea to turn the tide and bring the interview to a successful end flashed in his mind. Still maintaining his erect posture, he turned sideways like a clock hand jumping suddenly from number six to nine. Bending down, he held the bottom of his kameez, rolled it up inch by inch above his paunch, inserted his hand into the shalwar pocket, and drew out something that looked like a letter.
I was ready to be thrown over the edge of wonder. He handed it to me reverentially, with his right hand supported underneath by his left. It was an envelope kept very safely inside a plastic cover. The envelope was extremely old and frayed at the edges. I opened it and drew the letter out. It had been folded three times, and its eight parts were on the point of detaching from one another and flying away. I straightened the letter with extreme care, and it fluttered in my hands as if alive. It was written by an Englishman in the year I was born, when this old man was a youth in his service. The letter was typed by that Englishman or his secretary as a testimonial to the abilities and loyalty of a person who had worked under him.
“To whom it may concern. If you are reading this letter, I can assume that Gulam Mohamed Nizaruddin has applied to you for a job. He served as my cook for two years. He has many admirable qualities but knows no cooking. I believe that he can do any other work you may entrust to him. Wilfred Smith.”
The letter could not have been more honest or terse. I folded it with great caution, put it back in the envelope, and returned it to the old man. It was clear that he could not read or write in any of the languages used in the world. He knew it was an important letter and had kept it safe for many years. Never had he taken any effort to find out what was written in it. He looked at my face in eager anticipation. The hope that he would be offered the job in the next few seconds was clear in his eyes. He laughed extending his mouth by two more inches. That laughter was red like the cracked watermelon he had carried all the way from Tora Bora.