The Bastard of Istanbul Read online

  Is it true? Please somebody tell me it is not true!" Uncle Dikran Stamboulian exclaimed as he banged the door open and dashed into the living room, searching for his nephew or nieces or anyone willing to console him. His dark eyes were slightly bulged with excitement. He had a full, drooping mustache that turned up slightly at the ends, making him look like he was smiling even when seriously enraged.

  "Please calm down and have a seat, Uncle," Auntie Surpun, the youngest of the Tchakhmakhchian sisters, muttered without directly looking at him. Being the only one in the family who had unreservedly supported Barsam's marriage to Rose, she now felt culpable. Such self-reproach was not something she was used to. A professor of humanities at the University of California at Berkeley, Surpun Tchakhmakhchian was a self-confident feminist scholar who believed that every problem in this world was negotiable by calm dialog and reason. There were times this particular conviction had made her feel alone in a family as temperamental as hers.

  Dikran Stamboulian did as he was told and scuffled toward an empty chair, chewing on the ends of his mustache. The whole family was gathered around an antique mahogany table full of food, although nobody seemed to be eating anything. Auntie Varsenig's twin babies slept peacefully on the sofa. Distant cousin Kevork Karaoglanian was here too, having flown from Minneapolis for a social event organized by the Armenian Youth Community in the Bay Area. Over the past three months Kevork had dutifully attended every event organized by the group-a benefit concert, Annual Picnic, Christmas Party, Friday Night Light Party, Annual Winter Gala, Sunday Brunch, and a rafting race to benefit ecotour

  m ism in Yerevan. Uncle Dikran suspected the reason his handsome nephew came to San Francisco so frequently was not only because he was committed to these organizational events, but also because he had a yet-to-be-revealed affection for a girl he had met in, the group.

  Dikran Stamboulian gazed longingly at the food set out on the table, and reached for a jar of yogurt drink, Americanized with too many ice cubes. In multihued clay bowls of different sizes were many ofhis favorite dishes: fassoulye pilaki, kadin budu kofte, karmyarlk, newly made churek, and to Uncle Dikran's delight, bastirma. Though he was still fuming, his heart warmed at the sight of bastirma and entirely melted when he saw his favorite dish next to it: Burma.

  Despite the fact that he had always been under the strict dietary surveillance of his wife, every year Uncle Dikran had added another layer of flab to his infamous belly, like a tree trunk adding a growth ring with the passing of each year. Now he was a squat and portly man who did not mind drawing attention to either fact. Two years ago he had been offered a role in a pasta commercial. He had played a jolly cook whose spirits could not be dampened, even when he was dumped by his fiancee, since he still owned his kitchen and could cook spaghetti casserole. In truth, just as in the commercial, Uncle Dikran was such an exceptionally good-humored man that whenever one of his many acquaintances wanted to illustrate the cliche of fat people being far more cheery fellows than others, they would cite his name. Except today Uncle Dikran didn't look like his usual self.

  "Where is Barsam?" Uncle Dikran asked as he reached for a kofte from the pile. "Does he know what his wife is up to?"

  "Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected. As a new-to-the-job elementary school teacher grappling with unruly kids all day long, she couldn't help correcting any mistake she heard.

  "Yeah, ex! Except she doesn't acknowledge that! That woman is nuts, I tell you. She is doing this on purpose. If Rose is not doing this just to upset us, let my name not be Dikran anymore. Find me another name!"

  "You don't need another name," Auntie Varsenig consoled her uncle. "No doubt she is doing this deliberately…."

  "We have to rescue Armanoush," interrupted Grandma Shushan, the matriarch of the family. She left the table and scuffled toward her armchair. Though a wonderful cook, she had never had a big appetite and lately, her daughters feared, had somehow developed a way to stay alive by eating no more than a teacupful a day. She was a short, bony woman who possessed an exceptional strength to handle situations even more dire than this, and whose delicate face radiated an aura of competence. Her refusal to admit defeat no matter what, her unflagging conviction that life was always a struggle but if you were an Armenian it was three times as grueling, and her ability to win over everyone she came across had over the years bewildered many in her family.

  "Nothing is as important as the well-being of the child," Grandma Shushan muttered as she caressed the silver pendant of Saint Anthony that she always wore. The patron saint of lost articles had helped her numerous times in the past to cope with the losses in her life.

  With that Grandma Shushan took up her knitting needles and sat down. The first skeins of a cerulean baby's blanket dangled from the needles with the initials A. K. woven on the border. There was silence for a moment as everyone in the room watched her hands move gracefully with the needles. Grandma Shushan's knitting affected the family like group therapy. The sure and even cadence of each stitch soothed everyone watching, making them feel that as long as Grandma Shushan kept knitting, there was nothing to fear and in the end, everything would be all right.

  "You are right. Poor little Armanoush," said Uncle Dikran, who as a rule took Shushan's side in every family dispute, knowing better than to disagree with the omnipotent materfamilias. Uncle Dikran dropped his voice as he asked, "What's going to become of that innocent lamb?"

  Before anyone could respond, there was a jingling at the doorstep and the door was opened with a key. Barsam walked in, his face pale, his eyes staring worriedly behind wire-rimmed glasses.

  "Hah! Look who's here!" said Uncle Dikran. "Mr. Barsam, your daughter is going to be raised by a Turk and here you are doing nothing about it…. Amot!"

  "What can I do?" lamented Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, turning to his uncle. He moved his eyes to a huge reproduction of Martiros Saryan's Still Life with Masks on the wall, as if the answer he needed was hidden somewhere in the painting. But he must have failed to encounter any solace there because when he spoke again his voice sounded as inconsolable as before. "I have no right to interfere. Rose is her mother."

  "Arran! What a mother!" Dikran Stamboulian laughed. For a man of his size he had an oddly shrill laugh-a detail he was usually conscious of and able to control, except when he was under stress.

  "What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up? My father is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian, his father is Varvant Istanboulian, my name is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some Turk named Mustafa! What kind of a joke is that?… Ah, marnim khalasim!"

  Dikran Stamboulian paused and looked closely at his nephew to see the effect of his words. Barsam stood stone still.

  "Go, Barsam!" Uncle Dikran exclaimed louder this time. "Fly to Tucson tonight and stop this comedy before it's too late. Talk with your wife. Haydeh!"

  "Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected him, as she served herself a piece of Burma. "Ah, I shouldn't be eating this. It has so much sugar in it. So many calories. Why don't you try artificial sweeteners, Mom?"

  "Because nothing artificial enters my kitchen," Shushan Tchakhmakhchian replied. "Eat freely until you have diabetes in old age. Everything has a season."

  "Right, I guess I am still in my sugar season." Auntie Zarouhi winked at her, but dared to eat only half a Burma. Still chewing, she turned to her brother: "What is Rose doing in Arizona, anyway?"

  "She has found a job there," said Barsam tonelessly.

  "Yeah, what a job!" Auntie Varsenig tapped the ridge of her nose. "What the hell does she think she is doing, stuffing enchiladas as if she didn't have a penny to her name? She is doing that on purpose, you know. She wants the whole world to blame us, thinking we are not giving her any child support.
A brave single mom fighting against all odds! That's the role she is trying to play!"

  "Armanoush will be just fine," Barsam muttered, trying not to sound hopeless. "Rose stayed in Arizona because she wants to go back to college. Working at the Student Union is a temporary thing. What she really wants is to become a grade school teacher. She wants to spend her time with kids. There is nothing bad in that. As long as she is OK and takes good care of Armanoush, what difference does it make who she is dating?"

  "You are right, but you are also wrong," Auntie Surpun spoke as she drew her legs under her in her chair and resettled, her eyes suddenly hardening with a trace of cynicism. "In an ideal world, you could say, well, that's her life, none of our business. If you have no appreciation of history and ancestry, no memory and responsibility, and if you live solely in the present, you certainly can claim that. But the past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children and you know that…. As long as Rose has your daughter, you have every right to intervene in her life. Especially when she starts dating a Turk!"

  Never quite comfortable with philosophical speeches, and preferring straight talk over intellectual jargon, Auntie Varsenig interjected: "Barsam dear, show me a Turk who speaks Armenian, will you?"

  Instead of an answer, Barsam gave his elder sister a sidelong look.

  Auntie Varsenig continued, "Tell me how many Turks ever learned Armenian. None! Why did our mothers learn their language and not vice versa? Isn't it clear who has dominated whom? Only a handful of Turks come from Central Asia, right? And then the next thing you know they are everywhere! What happened to the millions of Armenians who were already there? Assimilated! Massacred! Orphaned! Deported! And then forgotten! How can you give your flesh-and-blood daughter to those who are responsible for our being so few and in so much pain today? Mesrop Mashtots would turn in his grave!"

  Shaking his head, Barsam remained silent. To ease the distress of his nephew, Uncle Dikran began telling a story.

  "An Arab goes to a barber for a haircut. After the haircut, he tries to pay but the barber says, `No way, I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Arab is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop, he finds a `Thank you' card and a basket of dates waiting at his door."

  One of the twins sleeping on the sofa fidgeted but stopped short of crying.

  "The very next day a Turk goes to the same barber for a hair cut. After the haircut, he tries to pay but the barber once again says, `I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Turk is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop, he finds a `Thank you' card and a box of lokum waiting at his door."

  Awakened by her sister's movement, the other twin started to cry. Auntie Varsenig ran to her side and managed to shush her with only the touch of her fingers.

  "Then the next day an Armenian enters for a haircut. After the haircut, he tries to pay the barber and the barber objects- "Sorry, I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Armenian is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop… guess what he finds?"

  "A package of Burma?" Kevork suggested.

  "No! He found a dozen Armenians waiting for a free haircut!"

  "Are you trying to tell us that we are penny-pinching people?" Kevork asked.

  "No, you ignorant young man," Uncle Dikran said. "All I am trying to tell you is that we care for one another. If we see something good, we immediately share it with our friends and relatives. It is because of this collective spirit that the Armenian people have managed to survive."

  "But they also say, `When two Armenians come together, they create three different churches,'" said Cousin Kevork, taking a firm stand.

  "Das' mader's mom'ri, noren koh chi m'nats." Dikran Stamboulian grunted, switching to Armenian as he always did when he tried to teach a young person a lesson, but failed.

  Able to comprehend only house-Armenian but not newspaperArmenian, Kevork chuckled, a bit too nervously perhaps, as he tried to conceal the fact that he had understood the first half of the sentence but failed to get the rest.

  "Oglani kizdirmayasin." Grandma Shushan raised an eyebrow, speaking Turkish, as she always did when she wanted to directly convey a message to an elder in the room without the younger ones understanding.

  Having gotten the message, Uncle Dikran heaved a sigh, like a boy scolded by his mother, and went back to his Burma for consolation. A silence ensued. Everyone and everything-the three men, the three generations of women, the myriad rugs decorating the floor, the antique silver in the cupboard, the samovar on the chiffonier, the videocassette in the VCR (The Color of Pomegranates), as well as the multiple paintings and the icon of The Prayer of Saint Anna and the poster of Mount Ararat canopied under pure white snow-fell silent for a brief moment as the room acquired a rare luminosity under the drowsy light of a street lamp just lit outside. The ghosts of the past were with them.

  A car pulled over and parked in front of the house, its headlights panning the interior of the room, illuminating the letters on the wall in a gilded frame: AMEN, I SAY TO YOU, WHATEVER YOU BIND ON EARTH, SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN, AND WHATEVER YOU LOOSE ON EARTH SHALL BE LOOSED IN HEAVEN.-ST. MATTHEW I8:I H. Another trolley passed by chiming its bells, transporting noisy children and tourists from Russian Hill to Aquatic Park, the Maritime Museum, and Fisherman's Wharf. The rush-hour sounds of San Francisco poured into the room, pulling them out of their reverie.

  "Rose is not a bad person at heart," Barsam ventured. "It was not easy for her to get used to our ways. She was a shy girl from Kentucky when we first met."

  "They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions," Uncle Dikran snapped.

  But Barsam ignored him, and continued. "Can you imagine? They don't even sell alcohol there! Forbidden! Did you know that the most exciting event in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, is this annual festival when people dress up as the Founding Fathers?" Barsam flipped his hands upward either to make a point or to call God's attention in a desperate prayer. "And then they walk downtown to meet General George Armstrong Custer!"

  "That is why you shouldn't have married her in the first place." Uncle Dikran cackled quietly. By now all the anger had drained out of him, replaced by the knowledge that he couldn't possibly manage to remain upset with his favorite nephew any longer.

  "What I am trying to say is that Rose had no multicultural background," Barsam remarked. "The only child of a kind Southern couple operating the same hardware store forever, she lives a small-town life, and before she knows it, she finds herself amid this extended and tightly knit Armenian Catholic family in the diaspora. A huge family with a very traumatic past! How can you expect her to cope with all of this so easily?"

  "Well, it wasn't easy for us either," Auntie Varsenig objected, pointing the tines of her fork at her brother before spearing them into another kofte. Unlike her mother she had a good appetite, and given the amount of food she ate every day, plus the fact that she had recently given birth to twins, it was nothing short of a miracle that she could stay so thin. "When you come to think that the only food she knew how to cook was that horrendous mutton barbecue on buns! Each time we came to your house, she would put on that dirty apron and cook mutton."

  Everyone but Barsam laughed.

  "Oh, but I should be fair," Auntie Varsenig continued, pleased with her audience's response. "She would change the sauce every now and then. Sometimes we would get mutton barbecue with Spicy Tex-Mex sauce, and other times mutton barbecue with Creamy Ranch sauce…. Your wife's kitchen was a land of variety!"

  "Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected again.

  "But you guys gave her a hard time too," Barsam said, without looking at anyone in particular. "Mind you, the very first word she learned in Armenian was odar."

  "But she is an odar." Uncle Dikran lurched forward, slapping his nephew on the back. "If she is an odar, why not call her
an odar?"

  Shaken by the slap more than the question, Barsam dared to add: "Some in this family have even called her Thorn."

  "What is wrong with that?" Auntie Varseriig took it personally, in between her final two bites of churek. "That woman should have her name changed from Rose to Thorn. Rose is not appropriate for her. Such a sweet name for that much bitterness. If her poor papa and mama had had the faintest idea as to what sort of a woman she would turn out to be, believe me, my dear brother, they would have named her Thorn!"

  "That's enough joking!"

  It was Shushan Tchakhmakhchian. The exclamation had sounded neither like a reproach nor like a warning, but somehow had both effects on everyone in the room. By now the dusk had turned to night and the light inside shifted. Grandma Shushan stood up and turned on the crystal chandelier.

  "We should save Armanoush from harm, that is the only thing that matters," Shushan Tchakhmakhchian said softly, the many lines on her face and the thin, purplish veins in her hands all the more apparent under the harsh white light. "That innocent lamb needs us, just like we need her."

  Her face faded from determination to resignation as she slowly bobbed her head and added: "Only an Armenian can understand what it means to be so drastically reduced in numbers. We've shrunk like a pruned tree…. Rose can date and even marry whomever she wants, but her daughter is Armenian and she should be raised as an Armenian."

  Then she leaned forward and with a smile said to her eldest daughter: "Give me that half on your plate, will you? Diabetes or no diabetes, how could one decline Burma?"

  FOUR

  Roasted Hazelnuts

  Asya Kazanci didn't know what it was that made some people so fond of birthdays, but she personally detested them. She always had.

  Perhaps her disapproval had something to do with the fact that ever since she was a little girl, each year on her birthday she was made to eat exactly the same cake-a triple-layer caramelized apple cake (extremely sugary) with whipped lemon cream frosting (extremely sour). How her aunts could expect to please her with this cake, she had no idea, since all they heard from her on the matter was a litany of protests. Perhaps they simply forgot. Perhaps each time they erased all recollections of last year's birthday. That was possible. The Kazancis were a family inclined to never forget other people's stories but to blank when it came to their own.