The Balcony Mangal Experiment

In February I decided a tiny mangal on the balcony could not be so difficult. How hard, I asked myself, while wearing a coat over my nightgown and squinting against the cold. The coals sulked for a long time, grey and unimpressed by my optimism. Then they committed entirely. Smoke poured along the facade in a low dedicated river. The fog had been down since first light and the smoke simply joined it. A neighbour’s window opened with the unhurried pace of someone who has seen every kind of nonsense and intends to comment only once. The comment was mild. I deserved worse.

I turned the skewers with tongs, half frozen, eyes stinging, conducting nothing so much as a small public apology. The fat dripped and flared. The lamb looked uncertain and then, against the available evidence, done. I brought the skewers inside smelling like a roadside barrel that had taken a wrong turn into residential life.

The meat was somehow still good: charred at the edge, tender enough at the center, onions from a jar doing their sharp best to help. I ate it grinning through the cold still stuck in my fingers, standing at the counter because sitting felt like too much dignity for the occasion.

Verdict, delivered with respect to every man I have watched feed an oil barrel on a dark road: leave it to them. I will stick to being a customer, the person who pulls over, pays, and leans on a warm hood while someone competent handles the fire. The balcony mangal has been retired to the corner where ambitious ideas go to cool. I light the cezve instead and call it wisdom. Some lessons taste better when the smoke belongs to somebody else.