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A Blessing
Twice a year Apa cooked his “monk’s half-moon” dish: pumpkin blossom lamb curry—first crackle the fenugreek seeds in ghee, stir the thinly sliced baby pumpkins translucent, add a concocted paste of wild herbs soaked in buttermilk overnight, drop the smoked fatted lamb pieces, pour bone stock, let the fat begin to melt, then spread the flowers whole on top until they’re dreaming—but before offering it to us over steamed rice, even before his gods, he’d serve those who were not home, place the filled clay bowls on the edge of the smoldering hearth in a half-ring, always bigger portions than for those politely waiting around him with clean wet hands, which made me wish I were not there but forgot all about it as bite after bite dissolved in my mouth, each mouthful lusher than the last, more ravenous for the next: salt, cliff-forged flesh, aged smoke, foraged fragrance, rain-honeyed dark, earthed moonmilk, petrichor pistils, butter gossip of the butterflies, fire of the fireflies, summer, sweet summer, sweet impossible summer—