Something for Isfandiyor

*Categories: Central Asian*

In her kitchen, love had a flavor.

There she was, Shahnoza, my grandmother, kneading the dough with her hands, flour dusting her arms white. She stretched it, then smoothed each one into shape, rounding it off into our naan. I would see dozens sitting there, waiting for the most central part. In her now-wrinkled hands, she held the wooden chekich — an heirloom bread stamp — and pressed it firmly into the center of each waiting naan. It was the same stamp her great-great-grandfather had carved himself, passed down through four generations before reaching her. Its face was studded with tiny nails in a pattern he alone had designed. Pressed just right, it kept the center flat while the rest of the naan rose and crisped golden brown in the heat.

Our little bread shop had served this neighborhood for generations. Even now, I can still see her smile, as clear as if it were yesterday. Her tandoor’s thick clay held the smell of years of use, both baked clay and wood permeating our little kitchen. I could feel the warmth as I stood near it. With a practiced hand, she slapped each naan inside the oven. In minutes, the naan’s edges blistered and browned, each ready as she scooped them out. The smell didn’t just fill the room — it carried me somewhere else entirely.

To a time we were once all together. My family gathering close, green tea steaming in small- round cups, Grandma Shahnoza serving us her dish of love — Uyghur Laghman — warm naan broken by hand and passed from person to person. My grandfather would bless the food; our cups would always be refilled before they every turned empty. Nobody was allowed to want for anything at that table. My dad’s voice still lived in such moments, a longing for that room, an hunger for that warmth — all vanishing instantly the moment her voice spoke directly to me.

“Isfandiyor,” Shahnoza said softly, pouring green tea into my cup.

“Your father… my son…” Her voice caught. She reached over and rested her hand on mine for a moment. Gathering herself, she cleared her throat, then managed a small smile. “He would always sneak in, watch me right there.” She pointed at a corner of the kitchen. “He’d tip-toe, thinking he was unseen, and take bread for himself... badly, too, always laughing so loud I'd hear him from anywhere in the house." She laughed.

“When he got older, he always used to say the supermarket would never make it like this,” she said, and forced a chuckle, though it came out more like a sigh. Then, collecting her breath, she added, “Let these cool off, then go open the bread window. We’ll sell most of them, but grab a few just for us.”

“Grandma,” I said hesitantly, “can you teach me how to make naan like Papa used to—now that he is… he is gone, and Mom is at work?”

She paused for a moment. “Your father asked the same thing, much younger than you,” she said. “He burned a lot of bread before he got it right. How old are you now?” Something in her voice told me my answer was already yes.

“Sixteen.” I said.

She opened her mouth to say more, and then we heard

“Tuk-tuk,” an older man said playfully, tapping his cane like a bell on the side of our wall. I opened our store window; he was standing with a bag in hand and said, “I’ll take four.”

“Coming so early, Rustam?” Shahnoza said, leaning over the window.

“How could I not? I have made it the same time for years…” he said smiling.

“Yes, you have… Well, here you go,” she placed them into the bag. “May God give you good health,” Shahnoza said as she sat back down, breathing a little heavy.

He lingered a moment, then turned back. “You know, young man—your father once gave us an entire month of free bread. Every morning, when my wife passed.” He motioned toward the nearby supermarket, his expression souring. “Foo!” he said, followed by a string of words I won’t repeat, though they made my grandmother and me laugh all the same.

“Store bread is not bread, my son.” He tapped his cane and then left.

****

That summer I became her apprentice. Shahnoza, showed me how to make naan from scratch. She kneaded the dough and rolled it rhythmically, beckoning me to do the same. We sprinkled nigella seeds on some, sesame on others. Hers were perfect mine were emerging.

For each one, she let me press the chekich into the dough myself, watching as it left behind my family’s pattern beneath my own clumsy hand. She sat at times, a little winded, smiling at me as she dabbed the sweat from her brow.

Over the next few weeks, I was kneading and stretching the dough myself, tending the tandoor on my own. I kept remembering my father’s hands covered in dough, just like my grandmother’s. I carried the smoke and ashes on my body day after day, flour staining my clothes, and by the sweat on my brow, I began making naan that was starting to be edible.

My first few were burnt to a crisp. Yet, no one here ever threw bread away.

Grandmother would often peek into the kitchen. I’d hear the click of a plate set down on the table before she said a word — dried apricots, a boiled egg, almonds, sometimes still-warm samsa. Only then would she ask, “Isfandiyor… how are things?”

“Here, grandma, try this.” I took one and broke it in half. A crisp break of the bread lead to a soft plume of steam lifting upward.

She reached over, hands shaking a little, and took a bite. “You have your fathers touch.” She said approvingly. “You have earned this. Tomorrow… you open shop. Have the bread ready at 8:00.” She looked tired, her breathing more heavy of late.

This was the first time she had ever asked me to do this alone. I said yes to her before I even gave it much thought. All day, I felt a deep sense of dread that carried through to the night. I had a hard time sleeping, tossing and turning. By 5am, I was already at the tandoor.

Customers were coming soon, and I was falling behind. My hands were sweaty, and when I grabbed the chekich, it slipped from my hand, and all I heard was a dull snap when it hit the floor. The one thing in our kitchen that should never be broken.

I did not want to look. I felt weak in my legs and sick to my stomach. I finally looked down to pick it up. The chekich lay in two pieces. It had been used countless times, for more years than I had walked this earth, with more history than I could even fathom. My first attempt, and I had shattered it.

I fought back tears. Anger at my own clumsiness rising up within me. Of course, I could go to that supermarket and buy one of those metal ones, but as with everything in life, it seemed artificial and fake without our family’s signature mark. Nothing seemed to require a human touch anymore.

In the back room, there was a drawer of things my grandfather never threw away: nails of all sizes, a broken hinge, a spool of wire gone stiff with rust. I tried to wire the halves together, but who would want rust? In a panic, I just slapped the naan in as is, without a stamp in the center.

After a few minutes—disaster. The middle puffed out, the shape distorted, and instead of flat and circular, it ballooned in the very center. I pulled it out and watched it settle; it was hideous and wrong. I failed.

Tap, tap, came the sound at our window. I lost all color, and a wave of embarrassment flooded me. I opened the window, and before me, spread out on that colorful linen cloth, was the worst naan we had ever displayed.

The old man, Rustam, had been coming since before I was born. His eyes said everything the second he saw my display. “Oh,” he said, trying hard not to smile. Rustam took one in his hand, and broke it, and handed me a piece. We both ate.

“Isfandiyor… it tastes just as Shahnozas or your even fathers. Well done. Something happened to the chekich?”

“How did you know?” I asked, shocked.

He held both hands out, as if to motion toward the display we were both witnessing. I couldn’t help but laugh; it really was that bad.

Here it is. What… do I do?” I asked, holding the broken heirloom in my palms.

“Clean this up. No one will buy it… and come to my place. Bring your grandfather’s carving tool from that drawer,” he said, and walked off with his usual limp.

I worked at Rustam’s side that whole evening. My hands were unpracticed, and the lines I cut into the old spoon handle came out jagged and crooked, nothing like the fine, careful pattern of the chekich. Rustam took it from me at times, deepening a groove here, smoothing an edge there, until what we’d made together held its own shape, different from what had broken, but still carrying something of likeness.

The smell of walnut wood filled the room as we worked.

“Your father,” he said, holding it up to the light with a satisfied smile, “would have approved.” “No cheap imitation,” I said, hoping he would agree.

We stamped it into the dough, and there it was, almost the same, but this time carrying my own variations, marking it as distinct. I knew grandma would have been wondering where I had been all day. She would have gone to bed by now, so I decided to wait till tomorrow to tell her what happened. I could already picture her face when she saw it — surprise, maybe pride, or maybe she’d just laugh, remembering that my father had probably done the exact same thing once. I placed the improvised chekich beside the tandoor, its walnut handle looked fresh and pale, ready for Shahnoza’s hands to hold.

****

That morning, I woke around 5am and walked through our home. It seemed quieter than usual. I went outside to check the wood pile before lighting the fire, the way I did every morning now. The tandoor was cold. Completely untouched. The wood was still stacked exactly where I’d left it the night before.

My heart felt uneasy, and I hastened my steps. I told myself she was probably just sleeping, or perhaps her back was stiff again and she’d wave me away with a smile. She never got sick often. I was telling myself all of this as I walked up to her door. It was cracked, as usual, a faint light casting my shadow onto the floor.

I do not remember my feet crossing the room. I only remember her face — that color I recognized, the very same I remembered from the morning I found my father.

And then I saw it.

Beside her bed, on a torn scrap of paper, was a shopping list in her handwriting, written, I realized, sometime before she’d lain down: Siyob Bazaar. 5 kg flour. Sugar. Salt. New thick felt gloves… and something for Isfandiyor.

My eyes burned with tears. I was alone now, in every way that mattered.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough that Rustam found me, still kneeling by her bed, when he came to collect his morning bread and found the window shut for the first time in forty years.

Months passed. The silence left an ache in every corner of our house. At times, I felt I could still hear Grandma Shahnoza, her warm voice, the hand on my shoulder. The kitchen seemed to have lost its light. My mother came for two days during our time of mourning, said little, and left again. I didn’t ask why. I had hoped she would stay. Yet I knew she would leave. She never really recovered after my father died. I think, in truth, neither had I.

I never grieved as other people did, or even how they described it — the crying, the long stretches of doing nothing. My grief moved forward. It looked a lot like flour in my hands, and dough kneaded just like hers.

It was Grandma Shahnoza’s hands I kept returning to, how much I had memorized their movements without meaning to. I gathered the wood and then coaxed the flame. By the time I noticed what I was doing, the tandoor was already warming — her tandoor, my father’s, and now, somehow, mine.

I mixed the flour, warm water, salt, and yeast, and let it sit. Then kneaded the dough the way she had shown me. Stretched it. I felt the wooden chekich in the palm of my hand — our heirloom signature, mended, imperfect, yet still ours. I placed it into the center of each piece of dough. Each naan now carried five generations of our craft and design. And when I slapped it against the tandoor wall, I felt it: the hands of my family, shaping and molding something through me.

Then a familiar tap was at the window. 8:00am.