Kalim and Food

When Kalim was approximately 13 years old he ate poisoned food that put him in a coma for two weeks.

He has had anything hazardous identified and disposed of before it reaches him ever since.

Kalim says that he “can’t even tell you how often I fell ill after eating things that were prepared for me by others. And I’m not talking about stomachaches. I’d be unconscious in the infirmary for days on end. Jamil and Dad used to say that was the fate of the Asim family’s eldest son.”

Kalim has made it a rule to not touch anything other than food Jamil has made personally.

Jamil says that he is not Kalim’s personal chef and he actually doesn’t even like to cook.

In Book 5 Kalim goes into more detail, saying that after some awful experiences with poisoned food he started being suspicious of “pretty much everything” he was about to eat, but it was exhausting weighing whether or not he could trust the cook and everyone sitting at the table as it got in the way of enjoying a nice meal.

Kalim’s talent is “identifying poisons”, and he explains this is because, “if I figure out it’s bad as soon as I take a bite, then I can avert a much worse situation…for myself and the other party, both. Suppose the food-poisoner sees the error of their ways and realizes they’ve done something wrong. If I’m already gone then that wouldn’t do them any good would it? I wouldn’t want to deny someone the opportunity to redeem themselves after recognizing the error of their ways…so I consider it very important for me to survive.”

This is likely the reason why Jamil’s luggage in Book 5 is full of potions and medicinal herbs “so that I can formulate antidotes in the event of an emergency”, and why Jamil spent three years teaching Kalim the procedures for brewing simple antidotes.

Kalim is not the only one who has been poisoned, however: we learn that, as his food-tester, Jamil once ate poisoned curry that had been meant for Kalim and ended up bedridden for days on end.

Jamil has no aversion to curry as a result of the experience and is still Kalim’s food tester, but Kalim refuses to ever eat it again.

Kalim seems oblivious to the possibility that he might be being targeted by members of his own family: both Riddle and Jamil have insinuated, in whispers, that as “the eldest son with plenty of siblings” beneath him it is possible that the danger is coming from inside his own house, but Kalim does not acknowledge the comment from either character.

(On EN Kalim responds to Jamil’s whispered question about his relatives with “Nothing so sinister”, but this was an addition to Kalim’s EN dialogue; he never actually said it.)

We see the occasional workaround to Kalim’s rule of “never eating anything not cooked by Jamil”: for Culinary Crucible, ingredients get strictly inspected, and when Kalim eats both his and Jamil’s lunches they eat in the school cafeteria, as the buffet is deemed safe enough.