Chapter 3 - Bread, Wine, and the People of Troy
If you truly want to understand a city, eat in it.
Architecture can lie.
Kings can lie.
Merchants lie professionally.
Food usually tells the truth.
On my third day in Troy, I decided to spend as little money as possible while eating as much as possible.
This was not journalism.
It was a personal principle.
Myrine began the morning by placing a bowl of barley porridge in front of me.
It was thick, warm, and determined to remain attached to the spoon.
“What is in this?” I asked.
“Barley.”
“And?”
“Water.”
“That explains the excitement.”
She put honey on top.
It improved dramatically.
Later, at the market, I bought flat bread brushed with oil and herbs. A boy sold me dried figs. A fisherman tried to convince me that a fish had been caught that morning despite the fact that its eyes suggested otherwise.
At another stall, a woman offered goat cheese wrapped in leaves.
I tasted it.
Salty.
Sharp.
Excellent.
“Two pieces,” I said.
“Three.”
“I asked for two.”
“You look hungry.”
“I look poor.”
“Then two.”
I spent the morning wandering between stalls.
People in Troy ate simply most of the time.
Grain formed the center of many meals. Bread, porridge, cakes. Beans and lentils appeared everywhere. Olives and oil. Onions. Garlic. Fruit when available. Cheese. Fish. Meat less often for ordinary families, more often during festivals, sacrifices, or among the wealthy.
Wine was common.
Strong wine was often mixed with water.
I learned this after drinking a cup offered by a trader who did not believe in dilution.
For half an hour, Troy became significantly more beautiful.
I sat beneath an awning until the world returned to its proper shape.
That was where I met Ione.
She was carrying a basket of herbs and looking at me as if I were a public performance.
“You’re the foreigner staying with Myrine,” she said.
“You know Myrine?”
“Everyone near this street knows Myrine.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It is.”
Ione was twenty-five and worked with her aunt preparing herbs, oils, and simple remedies. She had dark hair usually tied back with a strip of cloth and the habit of looking directly at people while they spoke.
Most people glance away eventually.
Ione did not.
“You write things down,” she said.
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“So I remember.”
“What do you forget?”
“Most things.”
She sat beside me without invitation.
“That must be difficult.”
“For my dignity, mostly.”
She laughed.
From then on, I saw Ione often.
Not because Troy was small.
Because cities arrange accidents when two people are willing to let them.
She showed me a bakery where flat loaves were slapped against the hot inner wall of a clay oven.
She introduced me to a brewer who insisted his beer cured stomach pain.
It caused mine.
She brought me to a courtyard where her aunt dried thyme, sage, mint, and other plants I could not identify.
The air smelled green even in the heat.
Ione knew everyone.
A potter named Makon.
A widowed baker named Sira.
A bronze worker whose left hand had only three fingers.
A shepherd who lied about wolves.
A singer who lied about women.
An old soldier who lied about everything.
Through them, Troy became personal.
Not a city I was visiting.
A collection of voices.
One evening, Ione and I ate near the wall while the sky turned purple.
She had brought bread, olives, cheese, and roasted onions.
I contributed wine.
“Why Troy?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You could trade in Miletus. Lesbos. Chios. Anywhere.”
“I had heard stories.”
“About us?”
“About the walls.”
She rolled her eyes.
“The walls.”
“Everyone talks about them.”
“No one comes to Troy because of Sira’s bread.”
“They should.”
Ione smiled.
“What will you write?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Write that the people are beautiful.”
“You mean the women?”
“I mean the people.”
“That sounds suspiciously generous.”
“Then write that the women are beautiful and the men smell like goats.”
“That sounds more believable.”
Below us, the city prepared for night.
Cooking smoke rose.
Doors closed.
Oil lamps appeared one by one.
Somewhere a flute began playing.
A child cried.
Someone shouted for him to stop.
Someone else laughed.
Ione tore bread in half and handed me a piece.
“This,” she said, “is Troy.”
“The bread?”
She pointed around us.
“All of it.”
I understood.
Visitors remember monuments because monuments do not move.
Residents remember people.
I began writing more names after that.
Not only kings.
Not only princes.
Sira the baker.
Makon the potter.
Ione and her aunt.
Children who played near Myrine’s house.
The old man who sold onions and cheated me every time.
I did not know then why preserving their names would matter.
I only knew I did not want Troy to become a collection of stones in my memory.
Years later, people would tell stories about this city and fill them with heroes.
They would remember the men who killed the most people.
May you like
I would remember the woman who sold cheese.
Perhaps that is why I am telling this story.
