The Bastard of Istanbul

TWO Garbanzo Beans

Supermarkets are perilous places filled with traps for the despondent and the dazzled, or so thought Rose as she headed to the aisle of diaper refills, this time determined not to purchase anything other than what she really needed. Besides, this was not the right moment to putter around. Having left her little girl inside the car in the parking lot, she now felt ill at ease. Sometimes she did things she instantly regretted but could not possibly take back, and if truth be told, such incidents had multiplied alarmingly over the last few months-three and a half months to be exact. Three and a half months of hell on earth as she resisted, fought over, cried about, refused to accept, begged not to, and finally yielded to her marriage coming to an end. Matrimony might be a fleeting folly that tricked you into believing that it would be forever, but it was harder to appreciate the humor when you were not the one who ended it. The fact that marriage had to tarry before it irretrievably lapsed gave the false impression that there was still hope until you understood it was not hope for the better that you were living for, but hope that the suffering finally would end for both so that each could go his or her own way. And go her own way was precisely what Rose had decided to do from now on. If all this was tantamount to some sort of a tunnel of anguish God was compelling her to crawl through, she would emerge from it no longer recognizable as that weak woman she once had been.

As a sign of her resoluteness Rose tried to force a chuckle but it didn't make it past her throat. Instead she sighed, a sigh that sounded more troubled than intended only because she had reached an aisle she'd rather not visit: Sweets and Chocolate Bars. As she scuttled by the Carb Watchers Gourmet Sugar-Free Vanilla Creme Flavor Dark Chocolate, she halted abruptly. She got herself one, two… five bars. Not that she was carb-watching, but she liked the sound of it, or more precisely, she liked the possibility of being watchful of something, anything. After being repeatedly accused of being a slipshod housewife and a terrible mother, Rose was eager to prove the contrary in any way she could.

In a flash she swerved the cart, but found herself in another aisle of junk food. Where the hell were the diapers? Her eyes caught sight of a pile of toasted coconut marshmallows and the next thing she knew there were one, two… six packages in the cart. Don't Rose, don't…. Just this afternoon you gobbled a whole quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream…. You've already gained so much weight…. If this was an inner warning, it didn't come through loud enough. Nevertheless, it activated a guilt button somewhere in Rose's subconscious and a picture of herself popped up in her mind. For a fleeting second, she stood staring at her reflection in an imaginary mirror, although she had so deftly avoided the real mirror behind the organic baby lettuces. With a sinking heart she eyed her widened hips and buttocks but still managed to smile at her high cheekbones, gold blond hair, misty blue eyes, and those perfect ears of hers! The ear was such a trustworthy part of the human body. No matter how much weight you gained, your ears remained exactly the same, always loyal.

Unfortunately, that was not the case with the rest of the human body. Rose's physical form was anything but loyal. So volatile was her body she could not even classify it, the way Healthy Living Magazine categorized the body types of their female readers. If she belonged to the "pear-shaped" group, for instance, she would have wider hips than shoulders. If "apple shaped," she would be prone to gain weight in the stomach and chest. Having the qualities of both pears and apples, Rose didn't quite know what category to fit in, unless there was another group left unmentioned, the "mango shaped," thick all over and thicker in the bottom. What the hell, she thought to herself. She would shed the extra pounds. Now that this hell-of-a-divorce season was over, she was going to become a new woman. Definitely, she thought. "Definitely" was the word Rose used in lieu of "yes." Instead of "no" she used "definitely not."Buoyed at the thought of surprising her ex-husband and his large extended family with the new woman she would soon become, Rose scanned the aisle. Her hands reached out to sweets and toffees-Sweet 'N Low Sugar Free Butter Toffee, Starburst Fruit Chews, black licorice twists-and as soon as she had tossed these into the cart, she hurried as if running from someone chasing her. But surrendering to her sweet tooth must have had a triggering effect on her guilty conscience because in next to no time she was struggling with a deeper sense of remorse. How could she have left her baby girl inside the car all alone? Every day you heard on KVOA about a toddler abducted in front of her home or a mother charged with reckless endangerment…. Last week a Tucson woman had set her house on fire and almost killed her two kids sleeping inside. If anything close to that ever happened to her, thought Rose, her motherin-law would be thrilled. Shushan-the-Omnipotent-Matriarch would instantly file suit for the custody of her granddaughter.

Immersed in these grim scenarios, Rose couldn't help shuddering. It was true she had been slightly off recently, forgetting things that were second nature, but nobody, not a single soul in his right mind, could justly accuse her of being a bad mother! Definitely not! She was going to prove that both to her ex-husband and to that mammoth Armenian family of his. Her ex-husband's family was from another country where people bore a surname she couldn't spell and secrets she couldn't decipher. Rose had always felt like an outsider there, always aware of being an odar[2] - this gluey word that had stuck on her from the very first day.

How terrible it was to still be mentally and emotionally attached to someone from whom you have been physically separated. When the dust had settled, out of that one year and eight months of marriage, all that was left for Rose was pure resentment and a baby.

"This is all I am left with. . " Rose muttered to herself. That, indeed, was the most common side effect of postmarital chronic bitterness: It made you talk to yourself. No matter how much dialogue you imagined, you were never out of words. Over the past weeks Rose had repeatedly argued in her imagination with each and every member of the Tchakhmakhchian family, defending herself with determination, winning every time, fluently articulating all the things she had failed to voice during the divorce and had been lamenting ever since.

There they were! Latex-free super absorbent diapers. As she placed them in the cart, she noticed a middle-aged man with graying hair and a goatee smiling at her. The truth is, Rose liked to have her motherhood observed, and now that she had an audience, she couldn't help but break into a grin. Happily, she reached up to get a huge box of lightly scented wipes with aloe vera and vitamin E. Thank God some people appreciated her motherhood. Piloted by her yearning for further recognition, she walked up and down the aisle of baby products, each time finding something she had no intention of purchasing earlier but now saw no reason why not to: three bottles of antibacterial diaper-rash lotion, a baby bath safety ducky that warned when the water in the tub was too hot, a set of six plastic door guards to protect little fingers, a Max the Monkey car litter bag, and a water-filled freezable chewy butterfly teether.

She put them all in the cart. Who could possibly call her an irresponsible mom? How could they accuse her of paying no heed to her baby girl's needs? Had she not given up her college education when the baby was born? Had she not been working hard to sustain this marriage? Every now and then Rose liked to imagine her best self still going to college, still a virgin, and yes, still slim. Recently she had found a job at the university cafeteria, which might help the first dream to come true, though it wouldn't help the other two.

As she stepped into the next aisle Rose's face contorted. International Food. She stole a nervous glance at the jars of eggplant dips and cans of salted grape leaves. No more patlijan! No more sarmas! No more weird ethnic food! Even the sight of that hideous khavourma twisted her stomach into knots. From now on she would cook whatever she wanted. She would cook real Kentucky dishes for her daughter! For one long minute Rose stood there racking her brain to find an example of the perfect meal. Her face perked up as she thought of hamburgers. Definitely! she assured herself. What's more, fried eggs and maple-syrup-soaked pancakes and hot dogs with onions and mutton barbecue, yes especially mutton barbecue…. And instead of that squelchy yogurt drink that she was sick of seeing at every meal, they would drink apple cider! From now on she would choose their daily menu from Southern cuisine, hot spicy chili or smoked bacon… or… garbanzo beans. She would serve these dishes without complaining. All she needed was a man who would sit across from her at the end of the day. A man who would truly love her, and her cooking. Definitely, that was what Rose needed: a lover with no ethnic luggage, no hard-to pronounce names, and no crowded family; a fresh new lover who would appreciate garbanzo beans.

There was a time when she and Barsam had loved each other. A time when Barsam did not even notice, and certainly did not mind, whatever food she placed on the table, for his gaze would be elsewhere, locked into hers, immersed in love. Rose's cheeks warmed at the recollection of these prurient moments but instantly chilled as she remembered the very next phase. Alas, in next to no time that horrendous family of his had entered onto the stage only to dominate it forever, and ever since then theiY affection for each other had worn thin. If that Tchakhmakhchian gang had not poked their aquiline noses into her marriage, Rose thought, her husband would still be by her side. "Why did you constantly snoop into our marriage?" she asked Shushan, whom she now imagined sitting in her armchair, counting the stitches in her knitting, making yet another baby blanket for her granddaughter. But her mother-in-law did not respond. Frustrated, Rose repeated the question. That, indeed, was the second most common side effect of postmarital chronic resentment: It made you not only talk to yourself, but also made you obstinate with others. Even if you might be dangerously close to the breaking point, you would never bend. "Why didn't you ever leave us alone?" Rose posed the same question one by one to,her husband's three sisters-Auntie Surpun, Auntie Zarouhi, and Auntie Varsenig-while she glared at the jars of baba-ghanoush on the grocery shelves.

Rose left the ethnic foods section, making a sharp, swift U-turn into the next aisle. Inspired by her anger and melancholy, she moved down the aisle of Canned Food and Dry Beans from one end to the other, almost bumping into a young man standing there. He was eyeing the shelf where different brands of garbanzo beans were lined up. That guy surely wasn't there a second ago! thought Rose. He seemed to have simply materialized, as if zoomed down from the sky. He had fair skin, a slim, well-proportioned body, hazel eyes, and a pointed nose, which made him look attentive and studious. His sable hair was short. Rose suspected that she had seen him before, but where and when she couldn't remember.

"They are good, aren't they?" Rose asked. "Unfortunately not everyone is sensible enough to appreciate them…."

Yanked out of his meditation, the young man flinched, turned toward the rosy-faced, plumpish woman who had mushroomed by his side, and still clutching in each hand a can of garbanzo beans, blushed. Having been caught by surprise, he could not easily get his masculine guard back.

"I am sorry…. " he said, and tilted his head to the right, a nervous tic, which Rose interpreted as a sign of shyness.

She smiled to show the young man that she pardoned him and then looked at his face without so much as a blink, making him even more nervous. Besides the suave-bunny expression that she now wore, Rose had three other animal-like looks inspired by Mother Nature, which she interchangeably employed for all her dealings with the opposite sex: her staunch-canine expression, one that she chose when she wanted to convey complete dedication; her impish-feline expression, which she used when she wanted to seduce; and her pugnacious-coyote expression, which she wore whenever she was criticized.

"Oh, I know you!" All of a sudden Rose beamed an ear-to-ear grin, satisfied with her memory. "I was racking my brain wondering where I'd seen you before. Now I know! You're from the U of A, right? I'll bet you like chicken quesadillas!"

The young man glanced up the aisle, as if he were considering running away at any moment but couldn't figure out toward which direction.

"I work part-time at the Cactus Grill"-Rose tried her best to help him comprehend-"the big restaurant on the second floor inside the Student Union, remember? I am usually behind the counter where the hot food is served-you know, omelettes and quesadillas. It's a part-time job, of course; it doesn't pay much but what are you gonna do? This is just for the time being. What I really want is to become a primary schoolteacher."

The young man was now quizzically studying Rose's face as if to memorize every detail for future reference.

"Anyway, that is where I must have seen you before," Rose concluded. She narrowed her eyes and moistened her bottom lip, switching to her feline expression. "I dropped out when I had a baby last year, but now I'm trying to go back to college…."

"Oh, really?" the guy said, but then instantly shut his mouth. If Rose had had any previous experience with foreigners she would have detected the foreigner's introduction reflex-the fear of engaging in a conversation and not expressing the right words at the right time or with the correct pronunciation.

However, ever since she was a teenager Rose harbored a propensity to assume everything around her was either for or about or against her. Accordingly, she interpreted the silence as a sign of her own inability to make a decent introduction. To compensate for the error, she reached out her hand.

"Oh, I am sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Rose."

"Mustafa…" The young man swallowed, his Adam's apple moving up and down.

"Where are you from?" Rose asked.

"Istanbul," he answered curtly.

Rose raised her eyebrows and a trace of panic crossed her face. If Mustafa had any previous experience with provincials, he could detect the provincial's information reflex-the fear of not having enough knowledge of geography or world history. Rose was trying to recall where on earth Istanbul was. Was it the capital of Egypt or perhaps somewhere in India…? She frowned in confusion.

However, ever since he was a teenager Mustafa harbored a fright of losing his grip on time and his appeal for women. So he interpreted the gesture as a sign of having bored Rose by failing to come up with anything interesting to say, and to compensate for the lack, he hastened to cut off the conversation.

"Nice meeting you, Rose," he said, drawling his vowels with a mellow but obvious accent. "I have to go now…."

Very quickly he put back both cans of garbanzo beans, stared at his watch, grabbed his basket, and walked off. Before he disappeared, Rose heard him mumble "bye-bye" and then, as if echoing himself, another "bye-bye." Then he was gone.

Having thus lost this mysterious companion, Rose suddenly realized how much time she had squandered in the supermarket. She grabbed a few cans of garbanzo beans, including the ones Mustafa had left behind, and hurried to the checkout. She passed through the aisle of journals and books, and it was there that she caught sight of something she sorely needed: The Great World Atlas. Underneath the title it said: A World Atlas of Flags, Facts, and Maps/Helping Parents, Students, Teachers, and Travelers Worldwide. She grabbed the book, pinpointed "Istanbul" in the index, and once having found the relevant page, looked at the map to see where it was.

Outside in the parking lot she found the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee heating up under the Arizona sun while her baby girl slept inside.

"Armanoush, wake up sweetheart, Mama's back!"

The baby moved but did not open her eyes, not even when Rose rained kisses all over her face. Her soft brown hair was tied with a golden ribbon almost as big as her head and she was wearing a fluffy green outfit adorned with salmon stripes and purplish buttons. She looked like a dwarf Christmas tree decorated by someone in a state of frenzy.

"Are you hungry? Mama is gonna cook you real American food tonight!" Rose exclaimed as she put the plastic bags in the backseat, reserving a package of coconut marshmallows for the road. She checked her hair in the rear view mirror, put on a cassette that was her favorite these days, and grabbed a handful of marshmallows before she started the engine.

"Did you know that the guy I've just met in the supermarket is from Turkey?!" Rose said, as she winked at her daughter in the rear view mirror. Everything about her baby seemed just about right: her button nose, her round hands, her feet, everything except her name. Her husband's family had wanted to name the baby girl after her grandmother's mother. How deeply Rose lamented not having named her something less outlandish, like Annie or Katie or Cyndie, instead of accepting the name her mother-in-law had come up with. A child was supposed to have a childlike name and "Armanoush" was anything but that. The name sounded so… so mature and cold, appropriate for a grown-up, perhaps. Did Rose have to wait until her baby girl had reached forty to use her name without it pricking her tongue? Rose rolled her eyes and ate another marshmallow. Then and there she had a revelation: She could call her daughter "Amy" from now on, and as part of the baptism ceremony, she sent the baby a kiss.

At the next intersection they waited for the light to turn green. Rose drummed on the steering wheel, accompanying Gloria Estefan.

No modern love for me, it's all a hustle

What's done is done, now it's my turn to have fun.

Mustafa placed the few items he had selected in front of the cashier: Kalamata olives, frozen spinach and feta pizza, a can of mushroom soup, a can of cream of chicken soup, and a can of chicken noodle soup. Until he came to the United States, he had never had to cook in his life. Every time he labored in the small kitchen in his two bedroom student apartment, he felt like a dethroned king living in exile. Long gone were the days when he was served and fed by a devoted grandmother, mother, and four sisters. Now, dish washing, room-cleaning, ironing, and especially shopping were a huge burden for him. It wouldn't be as difficult if he could only rid himself of the feeling that someone else should be doing these things for him. He was no more used to doing chores than he was to being alone.

Mustafa had a housemate, an undergrad student from Indonesia who spoke very little, worked hard, and listened to odd tapes, such as Sounds of Mountain Streams or Songs of the Whales, in order to go to sleep every night. Mustafa had hoped that if he had a housemate, he would feel less lonely in Arizona, but the result had been quite the opposite. At night, alone in his bed and thousands of miles away from his family, he couldn't fight back the voices inside his head. Voices that questioned and blamed him for who he was. He slept poorly. He spent many nights watching old comedies or surfing on the Internet. It helped. The thoughts stopped at those times. Yet they would return with daylight. Walking from home to the campus, between classes or during lunchtime, Mustafa would catch himself thinking about Istanbul. How he wished he could remove his memory, restart the program, until all of the files were deleted and gone.

Arizona was to have spared Mustafa the bad omen that fell upon every man in the Kazanci family. But he didn't believe in such things. Drifting away from all those superstitions, evil-eye beads, coffeecup readings, and fortune-telling ceremonies in his family was less a conscious choice than an involuntary reflex. He thought they were all part of a dark and complicated world peculiar to women.

Women were a mystery anyway. Having grown up with so many women, it was odd that he had felt so estranged from them all of his life.

Mustafa had grown up as the only boy in a family where the men died too soon and too unexpectedly. He experienced growing sexual desires while surrounded by sisters who were taboo to a fantasy life. Nevertheless, he slipped into unspeakable thoughts about women. At first Mustafa fell for girls who rejected him. Terrified that he would be rejected, ridiculed, and reviled, he turned to yearning for the female body from a distance. This year he had looked angrily at the photos of top models in glossy American magazines, as if to absorb the excruciating fact that no woman this perfect would ever desire him.

Mustafa would never forget the fierce look on Zeliha's face when she called him "a precious phallus." The embarrassment of that moment still burned through him today. He knew Zeliha could see behind his forced masculinity to the real story of his upbringing. She recognized that he had been pampered and spoon-fed by an oppressed mother, intimidated and beaten by an oppressive father. "In the end you have become both narcissistic and insecure," she had said. Could things have been different between Zeliha and him? Why did he feel so rejected and unloved with so many sisters around and a doting mother by his side?

Zeliha always mocked Mustafa and his mother always admired him. He wanted to be just an ordinary man, good and fallible at the same time. All he needed was compassion and a chance to be a better person. If only he had a woman who loved him, everything would be different. Mustafa knew he had to make it in America not because he wanted to attain a better future but because he had to dispose of his past.

"How you doin'?" The young woman at the cash register smiled at him.

That was one thing Mustafa still had not gotten used to. In America everyone asked everyone how they were doing, even complete strangers. He understood that it was a way of greeting more than a real question. But then he didn't know how to greet back with the same graceless ease.

"I am fine, thank you," he said. "How are you?"

The girl smiled. "Where are you from?"

One day, Mustafa thought, I will speak in such a way that no one will ask this rude question because they will not believe, even for a minute, that they are talking to a foreigner. He picked up his plastic bag and walked outside.

A Mexican American couple crossed the sidewalk, she pushing a baby in a stroller, he holding the hand of a toddler. They walked unhurriedly while Rose watched them with envy. Now that her marriage was over, every couple she saw seemed blissfully content.

"You know what? I wish your grandma-the-witch could have seen me flirting with that Turk. Can you imagine her horror? I cannot think of a worse nightmare for the proud Tchakhmakhchian family! Proud and puffed up… proud and.." Rose didn't finish her sentence because she was distracted by a most puckish thought. The light turned green, the cars that were lined up in front of her lurched forward, and the van behind her honked. But Rose remained motionless. The fantasy was so delicious she could not move. Her mind wallowed in many images, while her eyes beamed a ray of pure rage at an oblique angle. That, indeed, was the third most common side effect of postmarital chronic resentment: It not only made you talk to yourself and be obstinate with others, but it also made you quite irrational. Once a woman felt justifiable resentment, the world turned upside down, and unreason appeared perfectly reasonable.

Oh sweet vengeance. Recovery was a long-term plan, an investment that paid off over time. But retaliation was quick to act. Rose's first instinct was to do something, anything, to exasperate her ex-mother-in-law. And there existed on the surface of the earth only one thing that could annoy the women of the Tchakhmakhchian family even more than an odar: a Turk!

How interesting it would be to flirt with her ex-husband's archenemy. But where would you find a Turkish man in the midst of the Arizona desert? They didn't grow on cacti, did they? Rose chuckled as her facial expression changed from recognition to one of intense gratitude. What a lovely coincidence that fortune had just introduced her to a Turk. Or was it not a coincidence?

Singing along with the song, Rose moved forward. But instead of going straight on her route she veered to the left, made a full U-turn, and once in the other lane, sped in the opposite direction.

Primitive love, I want what it used to be. In next to no time the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee had reached Fry's Supermarket's parking lot. I don't have to think, right now you've got me at the brink. This is good-bye for all the times I cried…

The car moved in a semicircle, then maneuvered crosswise, thus reaching the main exit of the supermarket. Just when Rose was about to lose any hope of finding the young man, she spotted him patiently waiting at the bus stop with a flimsy plastic bag next to him."Hey, Mostapha!" Rose yelled, cocking her head from the half-open window. "Wanna ride?"

"Sure, thanks." Mustafa nodded and made a frail attempt to correct her pronunciation: "It's Mus-ta-fa ".

Inside the car, Rose smiled.."Mustapha, meet my daughter, Armanoush…. But I call her Amy! Amy this is Mustapha, Mustapha this is Amy…."

While the young man beamed at the sleepy baby, Rose studied his face for signs of recognition but couldn't find any. So, she decided to give him another hint, this time a more revealing one: "My daughter's full name is Amy Tchakhmakhchian."

If the words had inspired any negative recognition, Mustafa's face didn't show it. So Rose felt the need to repeat, just in case it hadn't been understood the first time: "Armanoush Tchakh-makhchi-an! "

It was only then that the young man's hazel eyes flickered, though not exactly in the way Rose had anticipated.

"Chak-mak-chi-an… yak-mak-q…! Hey, that sounds like Turkish!" he exclaimed happily.

"Well, as a matter of fact, it's Armenian," Rose said. Suddenly she felt insecure. "Her father-I mean, my ex-husband-" She swallowed hard as if trying to get rid of some sour taste. "He was, I mean, he is, Armenian."

"Oh yeah?" he said nonchalantly.

He didn't get it, did he? Rose wondered to herself as she chewed the inside of her mouth. Then, as if breathing out a suppressed hiccup long welling up in her throat, she let out a whoop of laughter. But he is cute… very cute…. He will be my sweet vengeance! she thought.

"Listen," Rose said. "I don't know if you like Mexican art but there is a group exhibition opening tomorrow night. If you don't have other plans we could go to it and grab a bite afterward.""Mexican art…?" Mustafa paused.

"People who have seen it elsewhere say it's really good," Rose said. "So what do you say…. Would you like to come with me?"

"Mexican art…!" Mustafa echoed with confidence. "Sure, why not?"

"Awesome." Rose cheered up. "It's so nice to meet you, Mostapha," she said, distorting his name again. But this time Mustafa felt no need to correct her.