The Boncuk of Good Service - The Evil Eye or Just Bad Timing?

Post 1 of 3 - first published 2007

I bought a nazar boncuğu - a round blue glass amulet said to ward off the evil eye - some years ago, mostly as a prop for a photograph. It sat tucked away, forgotten, until yesterday when I found myself digging through boxes in search of it, finally deciding it might be time to hang it above the front door.

I’m not one to believe in superstition. Much of what I hear from my neighbours falls neatly into the category of “fanciful nonsense.” But I also live by a simple rule: if it doesn’t harm you, why not?

Running a small cooking school from the ground floor of my house has taught me what really matters. The essentials are surprisingly mundane - a working fridge, a stove, an oven, electricity, running water. Without them, no Ottoman feast is possible. With them, everything else tends to fall into place.

Which is why the past year has felt…suspicious.

The fridge stopped working. Twice.
The air conditioner leaked.
The kitchen tap broke.

If I believed in bad luck coming in threes, I might have hung the nazar boncuğu much earlier - perhaps when water from the air conditioner streamed down the wall, damaging cupboards and leaving me sweating through recipe testing in Istanbul’s unforgiving summer heat.

At some point, even a sceptic starts to wonder.

…to be continued