Serving a dictator can take many forms. Polish journalist Witold Szablowski has tracked down the chefs whose appetites to prepare food for some of the world's most notorious despots - from Idi Amin to Pol Pot - gave them unique perspectives.
His book How to Feed A Dictator offers a sometimes unpalatable truth about the nature of these fearsome men and what it was like to look after their culinary needs while they held on to power.
Photo: AFP / FILE
It explores the chefs' personal relationships with the tyrants and authoritarian strongmen.
Szablowski was inspired to write the book after seeing a movie featuring chefs who worked in conflict hot spots and was struck by their unique perspectives and pragmatism.
“I saw a movie when I was in my mid-30s about the cooks in the warzones and their stories were amazing. They always had a very unusual and unexpected perspective for historical moments.
"Cooks are always very pragmatic… In the move one of the characters was the personal for the Yugoslav dictator Marshal Tito… and that was the moment when I thought, wow, all these guys you hear about, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro – they had their chefs. I was just curious what they cooked and how they became a chef for a dictator.”
Szablowski says he observed these people had to be of a certain disposition and well-rounded as individuals, able to converse on many topics, while employing a fair degree of intuition.
“They were one of the most amazing personality types I’ve ever met. And they were very good psychologists and you need to be good with maths because you need to calculate a lot of items, especially because they were cooking for not just the dictator, but also his guests and household.”
Creative flair is much more important as a cook when employed by a dictator, than those working in an eatery, because of the need to adjust the recipe and menu to avoid that person getting bored with repetitive flavours.
Szablowski, who is a trained chef himself, says knowing what these dictators had for tea reminds us that they were human too and came from a particular set of social circumstances, even though in many cases they were monstrous.
“They were not brought here by aliens, they grew up among humans and for some reason they became what they became," he says.
One dictator who wasn’t that hard to please in the kitchen was Cambodia’s notorious Pol Pot. He was stoic and required simple food to survive. Pot, who governed Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979, is remembered for one of the worst episodes of genocide in modern history.
“It’s quite scary actually. He really believed in the revolution and thought it was okay to starve two million people to death. Because he was devoted he didn’t like any extravagant food. He liked fish or chicken or sour-sweet soup, which is very typical soup in Cambodia.”
Some chefs refused to talk to Szablowski, but that didn’t necessarily imply fear. Sometimes it reflects a genuine sense of loyalty, something many of the chefs he did speak to expressed.
Witold Szablowski Photo: wikicommons
Between 1954-1959 Fidel Castro led a guerilla war against military dictator Fulgencio Batista, alongside Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. Castro helped form a Marxist government in 1959 and initiated a series of social and economic reforms with financial help from the old Soviet Union, much to the fury of the United States.
“In the case of Fidel Castro’s chef, he had quite a friendly relationship with Fidel. He was an old revolutionary, joining the revolution when he was 16. He started his career as a bodyguard of Che Guevara, then he was sent to Fidel and then he began cooking.
“Fidel was very warm to all the old revolutionaries, so they were more like friends.”
The chef used to make soup for Castro during the early years of the Cuban liberation movement while his leader held meetings on the run and his life was chaotic.
Other chefs didn’t fare so well. In Albania two chefs had been killed under dictator Enver Hoxha. The Soviet satellite state dictator served as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 until his death in 1985.
Hoxha’s former chef did not want his real name used in the book, such was the trauma suffered during that period.
“The kitchen in the presidential palace was a scary place. It was the place were two chefs had been executed before ‘Mister K’ got his job proposal, one he could not refuse. He knew that any mistake he made could cost his life or the life of his wife, or little children.”
The man's memories come across as an amazing story of survival, he says. He started the job at 19 and lasted decades.
Mr K is the only chef in the book who believes he worked for a genuine monster, with the others being ambiguous or supportive of their former employers.
“He is living now with post-traumatic stress disorder. Working 20 years in a place and never knowing whether you come back or not, every day could be an execution.
“Enver Hoxha killed even his best friends. He killed the man who had been a prime minister in his government for 40 years, who had saved his life in World War II and he killed him in his 80s. So, everybody could have been killed without reason and the chef knew that.”
The chef also believes that he moderated the dictator’s psychotic mood swings by preparing sweet treats that he could eat while still maintaining his strict 1500 calories-per-day diet.
“The chef is absolutely sure that he saved many people.”
In contrast, Saddam Hussein’s chef was lucky enough to have an employer who he admired and who treated him well. Very well. His memories are fond.
“You’re talking to a guy who had the job of his life. He tells the story of Saddam buying new cars for all the chefs every year. When you made a good soup, he would give you a golden Rolex. He loved working for Saddam. He gave up the job because he became older and it became very stressful.
“All the wars – for many years he had to hide because he was working so closely with Saddam, but generally he had nothing but good memories from the time he worked with Saddam.”
Uganda’s Idi Amin’s chef unsurprisingly lived in terror and remained in the job for fear of being tracked down and killed by the notoriously unpredictable tyrant.
Known as the ‘butcher of Uganda’ the military officer served as President from 1971 to 1979. He is considered one of the cruelest despots in world history.
“He was totally dependent on him and his whole family were totally dependent on Amin. If he tried to escape from his position he could have been executed… and all the people around him. They knew about the executions, Amin throwing his enemies’ bodies to crocodiles, but there was nothing they could do about it.”
Szablowski says the former chef reveals in the book the horrific truth behind rumours Amin had a penchant for eating human flesh.
