Another Famous Sweet

When I was younger, my hometown had one famous sweet. At least that was how I understood the situation. One famous sweet seemed reasonable for a city.

Then another one appeared.

People began talking about it as if it had always been there. I tried it and, inconveniently, liked it more than the older one. This weakened my position as a defender of tradition, so I ate another piece and kept quiet.

A few years later, there was a third famous sweet.

That was when I became suspicious.

I imagined a room somewhere in the city where serious men met every few years to discuss the matter.

“We need another famous sweet.”

“But we already have two.”

“Other cities are catching up.”

Naturally, a new product would be approved.

The funniest part was that people in Ankara sometimes knew these famous hometown sweets better than I did. They would mention one and look at me for confirmation. Since I was from the city, I was expected to know its complete confectionery history.

Worse, knowledge created responsibility.

“Bring some next time you go home.”

Suddenly I was not a person from a city. I was its regional distribution office.

Nobody asking for several kilograms seemed interested in the price. In their imagination, people from a place famous for a product must have special access to it. Perhaps sweets grew on municipal trees. Perhaps every family received a monthly allowance.

I began to understand that hometowns look different from outside. Visitors collect the famous things: monuments, dishes, sweets, historical places. People who actually live there collect shortcuts, traffic problems, ordinary shops, and the knowledge of which bakery opens early.

So it was perfectly possible for someone from another city to know the official version of my hometown better than I did.

Still, the sweets kept multiplying.

Every time I heard about another famous one, I wondered how long it had been famous and why nobody had informed me. The city was clearly continuing to develop after I left.

Perhaps that is what happens when you move away. Your hometown remains fixed in your memory while the real city keeps producing new roads, new shops, new habits, and apparently new forms of sugar.

Eventually, outsiders begin sending you updates about the place you are from.

Then they ask you to bring two kilos of it.