arabic

• place Egypt
• public https://www.almazeyd.com/

There are hallmarks of a chef. Another chef can immediately recognize them. Nails kept short? Hair pulled back? Chef scars?
I opened up the box with my pair of shitty dull purple scissors. My husband looked at me like I was in the depths of insanity as I held up the knife with the glee that only a chef could know. Damascus steel knives with blue marble handles. I held it to my thumb and I pressed it into the butcher cleaver of the knife set. Blood instantly poured out of my thumb. Red spilling everywhere, it could have been a crime scene shown on Investigation Discovery. Joe Kenda might have stood over it and said “well my my my.” I was totally unbothered. I didn’t feel a thing. I was just elated that the knives were sharp.
My husband looked at me in my mixture of pure chef ecstasy and what he perceived as insane masochism and swooped in, saying “Why did you do that? You’re bleeding. Let me get a band-aid. Or some Nu-Skin?” I shook my head. “Don’t bother.” I pulled out a pan. I fired it up. I let the heat radiate and I pressed my thumb to the hot pan. That tiny cut was cauterized now, and I moved on with my day as usual. This is just a chef thing we do. Nobody else can understand. This is perfectly normal to us. He was totally dumbstruck as I did this right in front of him, with no awareness that chefs live on a different plane where pain doesn’t exist. Cut, sizzle, move on.
He returned home from work later that day, and it was like the cut never even existed. Cuts, burns, scars. This is the stuff of life. This is the stuff of chef work. Sweet, bitter, sour, salty, umami, cool, and hot. Things have to balance each other out. Sometimes a little cut is necessary to be truly elated about a set of chef’s knives.
I was barely 21 when my husband first saw me. I stood at the Godiva pavilion inside the mall, pressed up against the counter, leaning over it because of my small stature. I walked away with my bag draped over my arm, flinging my blonde hair away from my face. And then I heard it— “hey.” I pivoted and saw him with his wrinkled pathetic mall security uniform. He pulled out a piece of paper from the front pocket of that uniform. It had his number written on it. I found the closest trash can and I promptly threw it away. What kind of shady man has his number pre-written for just any random woman? I want no part of that.
It wasn’t long after that I was at a late night dinner. I’d been working on a project with a fellow student, the weird goth kid that nobody else wanted to pair up with for the project, so of course I offered to work with him, and after we finished up the project we sat down over half off appetizers in the restaurant attached to the mall. My now-husband walks in with his coworker, another mall security guard. Our eyes met. I shifted my gaze downwards, ashamed that I had thrown his number away.
His coworker approached our table, asking if he could pull up a chair. I said yes. His words were like a sledgehammer. “My buddy was heartbroken you never texted him. He saw you and he said ‘that’s the woman I’m going to marry’ and he immediately wrote down his number for you. And then you never texted him.” Well, shit fuck and damn. I made a snap judgement over a piece of paper in his pocket and really he had just genuinely saw something special in me.
My husband and I went on our first date the next week. He asked me what I was doing that night. I said “nothing.” I asked what he was doing that night. He said “we’re going ice skating.” I thought “well, have fun.” My phone dinged, I picked it up, and I read “I’m on my way.” My response: “Wait a second… you meant WE are going ice skating?” That’s the moment I knew he was a shitty communicator. He’s the total opposite of a Virgo, obsessive compulsive, lover of words.
I slapped on some makeup and some clothes. I owed him for throwing away his number in an act of silly judgement.
I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he chose me. We skated that night under the stars. He made me break out in laughter and he rubbed his sweat on me. This wasn’t something that should have made me fall in love with him, but it did. I know why. After almost 15 years of marriage, I know exactly why.
Balance. I am the Damascus steel and he is the marble handle. Together, they are steady and beautiful. It’s the slice of a knife and the happiness of it anyway. It’s the sizzle and move on.
I do not think there’s a thing that I could do that could make this man, my husband, not love me. He didn’t know that my magic was pulling him in. He didn’t know he’d fallen in love with a witch. Sunlight in my hair, sky in my eyes, and stars around me. He couldn’t see it then, but he felt it pulling him towards me. My name means honey bee in Greek. I was named after the Allman Brothers song “Sweet Melissa.” From the moment I was born, I was fated to be a honey bee— sweet but can sting you.
After that first date, there was no going back. He never left my apartment after that. He’d been stung by sweet magic, possibly also bewitched by my cooking. I held up my knives to the moonlight and I sniffed my spices to just get a sense of them and it was always a magic there that couldn’t be named. “Oh, we put moon water in that.” He never once questioned it. Barefoot, outside, underneath the dark sky, I clip herbs, talk to the plants, call the wildlife to me. He doesn’t know what is what or why is why. He just trusts me, implicitly. There’s no going back from magic. Once that Damascus steel has sliced you, you’re all in. Once that marble handle balances you out, you’re all in too.
Now, he asks me for moon water. He asks me to do a spell. I have always looked into his eyes, and I see a simple man. That is a compliment of the highest regard. He reminds me of my grandfather. He would give anyone the shirt off his back or do anything in an act of kindness. He’s a salt of the earth, hard working type of man and he fell in love with a woman who lives on three separate planes and he’s always just accepted that fact.
The point is, he appreciates me for who I am. I appreciate him for who he is. The Damascus steel and the marble handle. Separated, they are useless.