The Shish Kebab Chronicles (an explanation)

I would like to begin this journey in the beginning, that is, to start by elaborating about the name of the blog. I must admit that the wording “Shish Kebab” is first and foremost a language tick I indulge in, it is a term that fills in for me spaces in conversation, thought, and imagination. But, names have a strange way of revealing meanings about things and people, and though it is especially true for the Hebrew language (which is my first language) in which all names mean something, I think it is true for all names.
Because every name operates on that fascinating tension between its inherent meaning and the many latent meanings it acquires and then reacquires.

With all this in mind, I would like to begin first with the fact that Shish-Kebab (pronounced Shish-Kah-Bab, with a silent ‘g’), does have an inherent meaning. Such as all names there is a primary binding narrative that lends it its’ meaning and significance.

All names, well, with one obvious exception, the name ‘Dusty’.

I am sure most of you are aware of the different versions, so as a rule I will insist not to bore the reader with information he or she may already be acquainted to. However I will recall the most formidable of these versions (if only to disprove it once and for all) which refers to the first appearance of the name in the English speaking world: the now posthumously famous Dusty McFadden, the third chambermaid of Adam the Toiletteer, King of the Scotts, is thoroughly considered as the first recorded Dusty in world history.

However, in his recent study “Primeval to Medieval Latrines in the Highlands”, Dr. Norman J. Hinterland had clearly demonstrated that in the dialect of the medieval Toiletteers the name was actually pronounced as Du-Sh-tee (again pronounced with a silent ‘g’), which led him to the natural conclusion that the name ‘Dusty’ must be a derivative of the English word ‘Douche’, and therefore Dusty or Duchty should be considered as a feminine term of endearment rather than an actual name.

The emission of the letter ‘o’, claims Hinterland, pertains to the phobia of round images within the Toiletteers cultural makeup (A round image symbolized the abyss, death, eternal damnation, as well as that hole which should be religiously avoided when one is entering a latrine. Given the lack of archeological points of reference we may never know the purpose of this hole).

Since there was no evidence of migration from the highlands to different parts of Britain prior to the assassination of Adam of Toiletteer (which brought an end to his dynasty), we conclude that the word Dushtee and its specific pronunciation became obsolete and was carried over in its displaced form by the word ‘Douche’. This theoretical deadlock leaves all contemporary etymologists at a complete loss as to the origins of the name. The name Dusty, one should assume, will be forever falsely associated with the modern English word: ‘dust’. How very simplistic…

But as always, I digress. I tend to do that. I beg your pardon and thank you for your patience.

Shish Kebab derives from the ancient Persian dialect that was promoted in the Americas during the first Persian occupation of Central and South America, which lasted between the years of 400 BC and 407 BC, and which covered Belize, Ecuador and the greater part of Argentina. We do not have any validated information as to the means of transportation of the Persians to the Americas nor to the years of the second occupation, and in fact the only relic of that period is the bronze statue, still found erected at Iguaçu, of a very large woman kneeling in grief for the end of the empire (or according to other views reclining in violent constipation), and globally referred to in the academic world as the statue of “The Fat Cow”, dated either 411 BC or according to other sources, 317 BC.

The debate on the actual dates of the 2nd Persian Empire reign in the Americas in is still open, and it was brought forth recently (7:16PM on October 19th, 1984) by the esteemed geologist Sir Duncan de Vere that at the heart of this enigma one can trace a truth that renders visible an inherent flaw in our metric system.

Tradition tells us that Chess, or “Shakh-Mat” in its Persian name, rather than Shish Kebab means “King is Dead”, and it is an honest and excusable error. What misleads us continuously is the insistence on content rather than context. For in fact, non can argue that the word “Shakh” does not mean King (or the equivalent) and that “Mat” does not means Dead, however one only has to consider the rigid censorship during the First and Second Person empires in order to appreciate how very much an impossibility was it to publicly utter a sentence such as ‘the king is dead’ in ancient Persia, let alone across its colonies.

The Perisan Kings (Shakhs) were notoriously paranoid, and rightly so. It is quite known that over the course of a King lifetime he would have to rebuff at average 170 assassination attempts (not counting those attempts orchestrated or executed by his own mother).

In fact during the Achaemenid Persian empire (559 BC–338 BC), the game known to us as Shakh Mat was known throughout the empire as “That Game”, for even a semblance for an assassination of a king was considered a crime, and though the game was not considered illegal, most citizens refrained from playing the game on the street, and restricted their play to Chess private “parties”.

Since any form of gathering could raise the attention of the authorities, and with it thier suspicions, the participants were forbidden to carry any form of weaponry on their person so that if a sudden inspection will be imposed on them by the King secret police, no claims for conspiracy could be made.
As a side note, I believe it is interesting to state that unarmed men were considered as unmanly. Some will find it hard to believe, but this custom is the foundation of the modern day Chess clubs (and the reason these clubs attract mostly unmanly men).

What strikes me as truly remarkable is how in the course of human history, censorship has always served as a vehicle of ingenuity and creativity, oftentimes from unlikely places.
“The Persian fishermen guild”, is a prime example (their motto, “if you own the ship, sit in it” can still be found engraved in doorsteps in modern day Tehran, traditionally hidden under a heart-shaped wool-woven doormat). As an entity initially created under the platform of free and secure passage to the Mediterranean in order to expand on the varieties of fish available to the center of the Persian Empire, one can only assume that had the King of the time known the consequences or the amount of clout this group eventually accumulated, he would never have allowed the guild to come into being.

And of course timing in such matters is everything. The most vocal of the guild’s leaders was Behrooz the Great, a man largely celebrated as the person who first introduced shrimps to the Persian Empire (according to some sources, he received his name – Behrooz the Great - thanks to his remarkable built, as he was very tall, but according to others his greatness was rather manifested by the size of his shrimps, which led some to believe that he was actually fishing prawns).

We know all this only through various transcripts of his speeches retrieved recently in excavations near the port city, Bandar Abbas, his hometown, all of which began with the greeting “Good morning! I bring you Shrimps by the plenty!” (after which the scribe reserved a space of a few lines in the Papyrus. At first it was speculated that some of the text was missing, but given this space recurred in all of the discovered documents, we now assume this space was intended to signify a pause in his speeches caused by the crowd’s roar of acceptance).

Once the shrimp was introduced to the Persian citizens, it became all the rage, that is, the most desired commodity in the various bazaars, and the most talked about cuisine in every household. And, of course, the person who was responsible for the distribution of the shrimp became all the more influential and powerful, which finally didn’t escape the attention of the king, Artaxerxes II (404–358 BC).

Knowing perfectly well that Behrooz was a highly popular figure in the empire; Artaxerxes II wasn’t able to simply eliminate Behrooz, so instead he orchestrated a special banquet for Behrooz in the royal palace in which he provided the latter the key to the South American colonies. The pretense was that Behrooz will be able to use his special gift in fishery and supply the empire with an even more diverse supply of fish and sea food. It seems that Artaxerxes II wanted to distance Behrooz from central Persia hoping that his influence and popularity will soon wear off. But what he didn’t take into account was that Behrooz’s fame carried over the Atlantic Ocean into the colonies, so that when he actually arrived, he was received has someone who can unite the colonies and turn them into an autonomous kingdom, and to finally separate them from Persia and its taxes.

Though this notion never occurred to Behrooz (in fact once he heard of it, he immediately rejected the notion, swearing his allegiance to the Artaxerxes), the rumor reached the kings ear, and within two weeks of Behrooz arrival to South America he was arrested, incarcerated and was sent back in a cage to central Persia. According to the law of that time, the king had the liberty of choosing the method of execution, and despite Behrooz pleads of innocence and loyalty, as well as the massive public cry for mercy, he decided to execute Behrooz by skewering him on a golden spear and displaying his corpse near the gates of the royal palace.

What Artaxerxes didn’t take into account again, was Behrooz vast popularity and how the image of him skewered will affect the public’s imagination and sense of resentment. As solidarity from that day on shrimps were eaten on a skewer in Persia, which was proceeded by a silent treacherous hiss, “this should be done to him as well”. When even someone was publicly asked who would that “him” be, they would answer, “Behrooz’s son, of course”. However, Behrooz didn’t have a son (he had three daughters) and the intention was of course, that the king should endure the same fate as poor Behrooz.

And therefore, Shish Kebab (which nowadays mostly designates Lamb or chicken on a stick, rather than the original ingredient, namely shrimps) was the only way for a Persian citizen to express his resentment to the king without fearing prosecution, and in a subverted way, means, the King is dead, or rather, The King should die on a stick.

Finally, after coming full circle, this blog will have nothing to do with killing kings (please do not mistake me for a dissident), but rather to the extracting of truth from fiction, or possibly extracting fiction from truth. For every name holds with it its own intrinsic past as well as the endless possibilities that are the future.