The Bread Makers

... 1 knife, 3 loaves, 6 people ... a few crumbs left ...

Mati is going back to Nepal this month.

“I can’t believe two years has gone so fast.”

“Three and a half years,” he replied.

The graduate students are dedicated – they work almost 18 hours a day seven days a week. The rare times I see them is when I am cooking in the kitchen. Occasionally they come out of their rooms to tell me stories about when they were young – one my favorite Mati-tales being the one about the first time he tasted bread.

He is from a small village in Nepal – though we make a joke of it, the truth is, to get to his village I would have to walk 10 hours after getting off the 8 hour bus ride from Katmandu. That is why he tells me I cannot come to visit. His family pretty well eat what they can grow – corn, chilies and a few other basics. When he was young, his grandfather had 2 extra sweet potatoes and went to the road that leads to Mr. Everest, hoping to sell them to someone travelling there, for much needed cash. A traveller offered him an exchange – a loaf of bread for the 2 sweet potatoes. Although the grandfather needed cash, he knew that none of his grandchildren had ever tasted bread, and though he needed money, back the bread came to the village, a small slice for each child. Mati was seven. He tells of cupping the bread in his hand and holding it under his nose for a long time – savoring the aroma before he had his first taste.

Since the time of hearing that story, I have hoped that on some of the days when I make bread, I can produce loaves that will match that first smell. I don’t think I ever did it. Related to this story, I have to say that there is a little bit of grieving when someone who has lived with me for a long time must leave. I tell the men that my own children didn’t stay in this house as adults – so having the men leave is a different kind of separation for me.

I decided to work out my sense of loss with bread. I have been baking, filling the house with the smell of muffins or bread or buns trying to treasure our last days together. I am still having a difficulty trying to re-create a sensation that will match Mati’s first encounter with bread. I tried a fig, caraway seed, toasted fennel loaf last night. I might have come close.

Arta