The Original Track

My obsession with lamb started with one dish: Razor-Thin lamb skewers crisped up, sprinkled with cumin, browning over the red glow of charcoal. It’s almost Pavlovian—one whiff of the smell of burning coals and I’m transported to the front of my dad’s bicycle, my five-year-old self anticipating those skewers as we weave through the city blocks. Gradually, the smell of smoke overwhelms my senses, followed by a slightly metallic wildness of lamb, a sharp bite of cumin, before, finally, a hit of roasted chile peppers that travels all the way to the back of my throat, a sign that we’ve arrived at the jam-packed, dusty streets of the Muslim Quarter. We jostle for a spot on a stool next to aunties and uncles slurping up noodles, or some drunk guys in their twenties eating pao-mo soup and drinking erguotou baijiu,¹ their faces barely lit with the yellow streetlamps. My focus zeroes in on the skewers, glistening in fat and oil, lit in red.