The Bastard of Istanbul

TEN Almonds

By the fifth day of her stay, Armanoush had discovered the morning routine of the Kazanci konak. Every weekday the breakfast was laid out as early as six and stayed on the table until nine thirty. During that time, the samovar continuously boiled and a new pot of tea was made every hour. Instead of everyone sitting at the table at once, different members of the family came at different intervals, depending on their work or mood or schedule. Thus, unlike dinner, which was an entirely synchronized event, breakfast on weekdays resembled a morning train that stopped at sundry stations, each time with new passengers getting on and others getting off.

Almost always it was Auntie Banu who set the table, the first to wake up, ready for the dawn prayer. She slipped out of her bed, muttering, "Indeed, it is," while the muezzin from the nearest mosque blared for the second time: "Prayer is better than sleep." Auntie Banu then went to the bathroom to prepare herself for prayer, washing her face, washing her arms to the elbows and feetto the ankles. The water would be chilly sometimes, but she didn't mind. The soul needs to shiver to wake up, she said to herself. The soul needs to shiver. Neither did she mind the rest of her family being fast asleep. She prayed twice as hard so that they too would be pardoned.Thus, this morning when the muezzin echoed, "Allah is most great, Allah is most great," Auntie Banu, in bed, had already opened her eyes and was reaching out for her nightgown and head scarf. But unlike any other day, her body felt heavy, very heavy. The muezzin called: "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah." Still Auntie Banu couldn't stand up. Even when she heard, "Come to prayer," and then, "Come to the good," she could not pull half of her body out of bed. It felt as if the blood had been drained out of that part of her body, leaving behind a weighty, sluggish sack.

Prayer is better than sleep. Prayer is better than sleep. _

"What is wrong with you guys, why don't you let me move?" Auntie Banu asked in a tone tinged with frustration.

The two djinn sitting one on each shoulder glanced at each other. "Don't ask me, ask him. He is the one who is causing mischief," said Mrs. Sweet from her right shoulder.

As the name suggests, Mrs. Sweet was a good djinni-one of the righteous ones. She had a kind, gleaming face, a corona around her head in the hues of plum, pink, and purple, a thin, elegant neck, and nothing other than a wisp of smoke where her neck ended and, technically, her torso had to start. Having no body, she looked like a head on a pedestal, which was perfectly all right with her. Unlike female human beings, the djinn women were not expected to have proportionate features.

Auntie Banu trusted Mrs. Sweet enormously, for she was not one of those renegades but a kindhearted, devout djinni who had converted to Islam from atheism-a malady which ran rampant among many a djinni. Mrs. Sweet visited mosques and shrines frequently, and was highly knowledgeable in the Holy Qur'an. Over the years she and Auntie Banu had grown very close. That, however, was not the case at all with Mr. Bitter, who was created from an entirely different mold and had come from places where the wind never stopped howling. Mr. Bitter was very old, even in terms of djinn years. Consequently, he was far more powerful than he often made it sound, for as everybody knows too well, the older they are the more potent the djinn become.

The only reason Mr. Bitter was staying at the Kazanci domicile was because Auntie Banu had bound him years ago, on the last morning of her forty days of penitence. Ever since then she had had him under her control, having never taken off the talisman that held him captive. To tie up a djinni was no easy thing. It first and foremost required knowing his name, guessing it right-a lethal game indeed, given that if the djinni figured out your name before you discovered his, he would become the master and you the slave. Even when you guessed the name right and had the djinni under your control, you couldn't take your authority for granted, since that would be a most foolish delusion. Throughout human history, only the great Solomon had been able to surely defeat the djinn, armies of them, but even he had needed an extra hand from a magic iron ring. Since no one else could match the great Solomon, only a narcissistic fool could take pride in capturing a djinni, and Auntie Banu was anything but. Though Mr. Bitter had been serving her for more than six years now, she regarded their rapport as a temporary contract that had to be renewed every so often. Never had she treated him callously or condescendingly, for she knew that djinn, unlike human beings, had everlasting memories of wrong done to them. They would never forget any injustice. Like a dedicated clerk jotting down every incident to the most infinitesimal aspect, the memories of the djinn recorded everything, only to be evoked someday. Accordingly, Auntie Banu had always respected her captive's rights and never exploited her power.

Still, she could have used her authority in an entirely different way, asking for material gains, such as money, jewels, or fame. She hadn't. All these, she knew, were nothing but illusions, and the djinn happened to be particularly good in creating illusions. Besides, every sudden wealth one acquired was necessarily a wealth stolen from someone else, since there is no such thing in nature as a pure vacuum and the fates of human beings are interrelated like stitches in a latticework. Hence, all these years Auntie Banu had prudently refrained from asking for any material gains. Instead there was only one thing she had demanded from Mr. Bitter: knowledge.

Knowledge about forgotten events, unidentified individuals, property disputes, family conflicts, unburied secrets, unsolved mysteries-the basics she needed to be able to help her many clients. If a certain family had a valuable document long lost, they would come to Auntie Banu to learn its whereabouts. Or a woman who suspected being put under a vicious spell would come to her to inquire about the perpetrator of the wrongdoing. Once they had brought in a pregnant woman who had suddenly fallen ill and was getting frighteningly worse by the day. After consulting with her djinn, Auntie Banu told the pregnant woman to go to the fruitless lemon tree in her own garden, where she would find, in a black velvet purse, a bar of olive soap with her own fingernails jabbed into it-a spell cast by a jealous neighbor. Auntie Banu did not tell her the name of that neighbor, though, so that there would be no further grudge. In a few days news arrived that the pregnant woman had quickly recovered and was doing well. Subsequently, it was along these lines that Auntie Banu used Mr. Bitter's service to this day. Except on one occasion. Only once had she asked him a personal favor, just for herself, a most confidential question: Who was Asya's father?

Mr. Bitter gave her an answer, the answer, but she had indignantly, indefatigably refused to believe him, although she knew perfectly well that an enslaved djinni could never lie to his master. She refused to believe until her heart one day simply stopped defying what her mind had long recognized. After that Auntie Banu had never been the same. Time and again she still wondered if it would have been better for her not to know, since knowledge in this case had only brought her suffering and sorrow, the curse of the sage. And today, years after that incident, Auntie Banu was reconsidering asking another personal favor from Mr. Bitter. That was why she was so debilitated this morning; the contradictory thoughts churning inside her mind had weakened her vis-a-vis her slave, who, with each dilemma of his master, weighed heavier and heavier on her left shoulder.

Should she ask Mr. Bitter another personal question now, though she had so much regretted doing it that last time? Or perhaps it was time to end this game and take off the talisman, thus releasing the djinni once and for all? She could go on performing her duties as a clairvoyant with the help of Mrs. Sweet. Her powers would be somewhat lessened but so be it. Was this much not enough? One side of her warned Auntie Banu against the curse of the sage, recoiling from the harrowing agony that comes with too much knowledge. The other side of her, however, was dying to know more, ever curious, conscientious. Mr. Bitter was well aware of her dilemma and he seemed to be enjoying it, pressing her left shoulder harder with each doubt, doubling the weight of her ruminations.

"Get down from my shoulder," Auntie Banu decreed and uttered a prayer that the Qur'an advised to voice every time one had to face a dodgy djinni. All of a sudden compliant, Mr. Bitter jumped aside and let her stand up.

"Are you going to release me?" Mr. Bitter asked, having read her mind. "Or are you going to use my powers for some specific information?"

A whispered word escaped Auntie Banu's slightly parted lips but rather than a "yes" or "no," it sounded like a moan. She felt so small amid the cavernous vastness of earth, sky, and stars and the quandary that pulverized her soul.

"You can ask me the question you have been dying to find out ever since the American girl told you all those sad things about her family. Don't you want to learn if it is true or not? Don't you want to help her find out the truth? Or do you reserve your powers for your clients alone?" Mr. Bitter challenged, his charcoal, bulging eyes feverishly triumphant. Then he added, suddenly placid, "I can tell you, I am old enough to know. I was there."

"Stop it!" Auntie Banu exclaimed, almost shrieking. She felt her stomach lurch and the burn of sour bile in her throat as she snapped, "I don't want to learn. I am not curious. I regret the day I asked you about Asya's father. Oh God, I wish I hadn't. What is knowledge good for if you cannot change anything? It is venom that handicaps you forever. You can't vomit it up and you can't die. I don't want that to happen again…. Besides, what do you know?"

Why she had blurted out that last question, she couldn't fathom. For she knew too well that if she wanted to learn about Armanoush's past, Mr. Bitter would be the right one to ask, since he was a gulyabani, the most treacherous among all the djinn, yet also the most knowledgeable when it came to traumatic ends.

Ill-omened soldiers, ambushed and massacred miles away from their home, wanderers frozen to death in the mountains, plague victims exiled deep into the desert, travelers robbed and slaughtered by bandits, explorers lost in the middle of nowhere, convicted felons shipped to meet their death on some remote island… the gulyabani had seen them all. They were there when entire battalions were exterminated in bloody battlefields, villages were doomed to starve or caravans reduced to ashes by enemy fire. Likewise, they were there when the Byzantine emperor Heraclius's huge army was crushed by the Muslims at the Battle of Yarmuk; or when Berber Tank thundered to his soldiers, "Behind you is the sea, before you, the enemy! Oh my warriors, whither would you flee?" and with that they invaded Visigothic Spain, killing everyone on their way; or when Charles, thereafter named Martel, slew 300,000 Arabs in the Battle of Tours; or when the Assassins, intoxicated with hashish, killed the illustrious vizier Nizam-al-Mulk and spawned terror until the Mongolian Hulagu destroyed their fortress, along with everything else. The gulyabani had witnessed firsthand each and every one of these calamities. They were particularly notorious for stalking those lost in the desert with no food and water. Whenever, wherever someone died leaving no gravestone behind, they appeared beside the corpse. Should they feel the need, they could disguise themselves as plants, rocks, or animals, particularly vultures. They would spy on calamities, observing the scene from the side or above, though it is also known that occasionally they would haunt caravans, steal whatever food the destitute might need to survive, scare the pilgrims on their holy journey, attack processions, or whisper a terrifying tune of death into the ears of those sentenced to the galleys or those forced to walk a death march. They were the spectators of those moments in time in which humans had no testimony, no written record left behind.

The gulyabani were the ugly witnesses of the ugliness human beings were capable of inflicting on one another. Consequently, Auntie Banu reasoned, if Armanoush's family had really been forced on a death march in 1915, as she claimed, Mr. Bitter would surely know about it.

"Aren't you going to ask me anything?" Mr. Bitter mouthed as he sat on the edge of the bed, fully enjoying Auntie Banu's quandary. "I was a vulture," he continued bitterly, the only tone in which he knew to talk. "I saw it all. I watched them as they walked and walked and walked, women and children. I flew over them, drawing circles in the blue sky, waiting for them to fall on their knees."

"Shut up!" Auntie Banu bawled. "Shut up! I don't want to know. Don't forget who the master is."

"Yes, master." Mr. Bitter shrank back. "Your wish is my command and thus it shall be as long as you wear that talisman. But should you want to learn what happened to that girl's family in 1915, just let me know. My memory can be yours, master."

Auntie Banu sat straight up in her bed, biting her lips hard to look adamant, having no intentions of showing weakness to Mr. Bitter. As she tried to be resilient, the air started to reek of dust and mold, as if the room had fallen into a state of putrefaction. Either the present moment was quickly decaying into a residue of time or the decay of the past was seeping into the present. The inner gates of time awaited being unbolted. To preserve them locked and everything in its place, Auntie Banu took out the Holy Qur'an, which she kept inside a pearly cover in a drawer in her bedside table. She opened a page randomly and read: "I am closer to you than your jugular vein" (50:16).

"Allah." She sighed. "You are closer to me than my jugular vein. Help me out of this dilemma. Either grant me the bliss of the ignorant or give me the strength to bear the knowledge. Whichever you choose shall make me grateful, but please don't make me powerless and knowledgeable at the same time."

On that prayer Auntie Banu slipped out of bed, put on, her nightgown, and with soft, swift steps tiptoed to the bathroom to get ready for her morning prayer. She checked the clock on the buffet inside, seven forty-five. Had she been in bed so long, arguing with Mr. Bitter, arguing with her conscience? Hurriedly she washed her face, hands, and feet, walked back to her room wearing her gauzy prayer head scarf, spread her little rug, and stood to pray.

If Auntie Banu had been late to set the breakfast table this morning, Armanoush would be one of the last to realize it. Having remained online till late, she had overslept, and would have liked to have slept in more. She tossed, turned, pulled the blanket up and down over her chest, doing her best to sink back into sleep. She opened one droopy eye and saw Asya at her desk reading a book and listening to music with her headphones on.

"What are you listening to?" Armanoush asked loudly.

"Huh?" Asya shouted, "Johnny Cash!"

"Oh, sure! What are you reading?"

"Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, " the same loud, steady voice replied.

"Isn't that a bit irrational too? How can you listen to music and concentrate on existential philosophy at the same time?"

"They square perfectly," Asya remarked. "Johnny Cash and existential philosophy, they both probe the human soul to see what's inside, and unhappy with their findings, they both leave it open!"

Before Armanoush could ruminate on that, someone knocked on the door calling both girls to catch the last train to breakfast.

They found the table set just for the two of them, everyone else having already finished their breakfast. Grandma and Petite-Ma had gone to visit a relative, Auntie Cevriye to school, Auntie Zeliha to the tattoo parlor, and Auntie Feride was in the bathroom dyeing her hair ginger. And the only auntie in the living room now looked strangely grumpy.

"What's the problem, have your djinn dumped you?" Asya asked.

Instead of answering, Auntie Banu headed to the kitchen.. In the following two hours, she reorganized the cereal jars lined on the shelves, mopped the floors, baked raisin-walnut cookies, washed the plastic fruits on the counter, and painstakingly sponged an ossified mustard stain at the corner of the stove. When she finally came back to the living room, she found the two girls still at the breakfast table, scoffing at every single scene in The Malediction of f the Ivy of Infatuation-the longest-running soap opera in Turkish TV history. But instead of feeling resentful for seeing them mock something she valued, Auntie Banu was only surprised-surprised to realize that she had completely forgotten about it, missing her favorite program for the first time in years. The only other time she had missed it was years ago during her period of penitence. Even then, may Allah forgive her, she had thought about The Malediction of the Ivy of Infatuation, wondering what was happening in the show while she repented. But now that there was no reason to miss it, how could she? Was her mind so preoccupied? Wouldn't she know if she were so confused?

Suddenly, Auntie Banu noticed the two girls eyeing her from their chairs, and felt uncomfortable, perhaps because she also realized that with the soap opera now over, they could be rummaging around for some new targets of ridicule.

But Asya seemed to have something else in mind. "Armanoush was wondering if you could read the tarot cards for her?"

"Why would she want that?" Auntie Banu said quietly. "Tell her she is a beautiful, intelligent young woman with a bright future. Only those who don't have a future need to learn about their future."

"Then read some roasted hazelnuts for her," Asya insisted, skipping the translation.

"I don't do that anymore," said Auntie Banu, contritely. "It didn't prove such a good method after all."

"You see, my aunt is a positivistic psychic. She scientifically measures the margin of error in each divination," Asya said to Armanoush in English but then switched back to a serious tone in Turkish. "Well then, read our coffee cups."

"Now that's another thing," Auntie Banu agreed, incapable of saying no to coffee cups. "Those I can read anytime."

Coffees were made, Armanoush's with no sugar and Asya's with plenty, although the latter did not want to have her cup read. It was caffeine that she was after, not her fate. When Armanoush finished her coffee, the saucer was placed on top of the coffee cup, held tight, and moved around in three horizontal circles; the coffee cup was then turned upside down over the saucer, letting the coffee grinds slowly descend to form patterns. When the bottom of the cup had cooled off, it was flipped over and Auntie Banu started to read the patterns left in the coffee cup, moving her gaze clockwise.

"I can see a very worried woman here."

"It must be my mother." Armanoush sighed.

"She is deeply worried. She thinks about you all the time, loves you very much, but her soul is stressed. Then- there is a city with red bridges. There is water, sea, wind, and… mist. There I see a family, many heads-look at this, lots of people, lots of love and caring, lots of food too…."

Armanoush nodded, a little embarrassed at being found out like this.

"Then.." Auntie Banu said, skipping the bad news settled at the bottom of the cup flowers soon to be scattered on a grave, far far away. She rotated the coffee cup between her plump fingers. Her next words came out louder than she intended, startling them all. "Oh, there is a young man who cares deeply for you. But why is he behind a veil?… Something like a veil."

Armanoush's heart skipped a beat.

"Can that be a computer screen?" Asya asked mischievously as Sultan the Fifth hopped onto her lap.

"I don't see computers in my coffee grounds," Auntie Banu objected. She didn't like to incorporate technology in her psychic universe.

Auntie Banu solemnly paused, turned the cup an inch, and then paused again. Her face looked troubled now. "I see a girl your age. She has curly hair, black, pure black… an ample bosom…."

"Thanks, auntie, I got the message." Asya chuckled. "But you don't have to place your relatives in every cup you read, that's called nepotism."

Auntie Banu blinked, completely deadpan.

"There is a rope here, a thick, strong rope with a noose at one end, like a lasso. You two girls are going to be attached to each other with a strong bond…. I see a spiritual bond…."

To the girls' disappointment Auntie Banu said nothing further. She stopped reading, put the coffee cup on the saucer, and filled it with cold water so that the patterns jumbled and vanished before anyone else, good or bad, had a chance to peek inside. That was the one good thing about coffee-cup reading: Unlike the fate written by Allah, that written by coffee could always be washed away.

On the way to Cafe Kundera, they took the ferry so that Armanoush could see the city in all its vastness and splendor. Like the ferry itself, its passengers too had an air of lassitude, which was quickly swept away by the sudden wind when the huge vessel veered into the azure sea. The hum of the crowd inside amplified for a full minute, and then it dwindled to a monotonous drone to accompany other sounds: the clatter of the outboard motor, the splash of the waves, the shrieks of the seagulls. Armanoush noticed with delight that the lazy seagulls on the shore were coming with them. Almost everyone on the ferry was feeding them with morsels of simit-sesame-seed ring breads being a treat these carnivorous birds found irresistible.

A classically dressed, portly woman and her teenage son sat on the bench across from them, side by side but worlds apart. From her face Armanoush could tell the woman was no big fan of public transportation, despising the masses, and if possible would have thrown all of the poorly dressed passengers into the sea. Hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses, the son looked half embarrassed by his mother's standoffish ways. They are like Flannery O'Connor characters, Armanoush thought to herself

"Tell me more about this Baron," Asya said out of the blue. "What does he look like? How old is he?"

Armanoush blushed. Within the vivid light of the winter sun glowing from among thick clouds, her face was that of an enamored young woman. "I don't know. I've never met him in person. We're cyber friends, you see. I admire his intellect and passion, I guess.

"Don't you want to meet him someday?"

"Yes and no," Armanoush confessed after purchasing a simit from the small but crowded buffet inside. She ripped a piece off and with the morsel in her hand leaned against the rail surrounding the deck, waiting for a seagull to approach.

"You don't have to wait for them to appear." Asya smiled. "Just toss a piece up in the air and a seagull will catch it instantly."

Armanoush did as told. A seagull materialized from the empty sky and bolted the treat down.

"I am dying to learn more about him, and yet deep down, I don't want to meet him ever. When you date someone the magic perishes. I couldn't bear for that to happen with him. He's too important to me. Dating and sex are just another story, so knotty…."

Now they were entering that murky zone guarded by the three untouchables. A good sign indeed, indicating that they were drawing closer to each other.

"Magic!" Asya said. "Who needs magic? The tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf and Zulaykha, the Moth and the Candle, or the Nightingale and the Rose…. Ways of loving from a distance, mating without even touching-Amor platonicus! The ladder of love one is expected to climb higher and higher, elating the Self and the Other. Plato clearly regards any actual physical contact as corrupt and ignoble because he thinks the true goal of Eros is beauty. Is there no beauty in sex? Not according to Plato. He is after `more sublime pursuits.' But if you ask me, I think Plato's problem, like those of many others, was that he never got splendidly laid."

Armanoush looked at her friend, amazed. "I thought you liked philosophy.. " she stammered without quite knowing why she'd said it.

"I admire philosophy," Asya conceded. "But that doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the philosophers."

"So should I assume you are not a big fan 'of Amor platonicus?!"

Now that was a piece of information Asya preferred to keep to herself, not because the question itself was unanswerable, but because she was afraid of the implications of her answer. Armanoush being so polite and proper, Asya did not want to intimidate her. How on earth could she now tell Armanoush that, though only nineteen, she had known many men's hands and did not feel a speck of guilt for it? Besides, how could she ever reveal the truth without giving the wrong impression to an outsider about "the chastity of Turkish girls"?

This kind of "national responsibility" was utterly foreign to Asya Kazanci. Never before had she felt part of a collectivity and she had no intention of being so now or in the future. Yet here she was accomplishing a pretty good impersonation of someone else, someone who had gotten patriotic overnight. How could she now step outside her national identity and be her pure, sinning self? Could she tell Armanoush that deep in her heart she believed only when you had sex with a man, could you really be sure that he was the right person for you; that only in bed did people's most imperceptible, innate complexes surface; and that no matter what people assumed all the time, sex was in fact far more sensual than physical. How could she reveal she had had numerous relations in the past, way too many, as if to take revenge on men, but the revenge of what, she still couldn't tell. She had had many boyfriends, sometimes simultaneously, polygamous affairs that had always ended in heartbreak, accumulating a heap of secrets she had neatly kept away from the frontiers of the Kazanci domicile. Could she divulge these? Would Armanoush understand without being judgmental; could she really, truly see into Asya's soul from the echelons of that sterile tower of hers?

Could Asya confess to her that once she had tried to commit suicide, a nasty experience from which she had derived two basic lessons: that swallowing your lunatic aunt's pills was. not the right way to go about doing this and that if you wanted to kill yourself you'd better have a rationale ready in hand in case you survived, since "WHY?" would be the one question you would hear from all sides. Could she further confess that to this day she hadn't been able to fathom the answer to that question, other than recalling being too young too foolish too furious too intense for the universe in which she lived? Would any of this make sense to Armanoush?

Could she then disclose that recently she had made some progress toward stability and tranquillity, since she now had a monogamous relationship, except that it was with a married man twice her age whom she met every now and then to share sex, a joint, and refuge from loneliness? How could she tell Armanoush that, if truth be told, she was a bit of a disaster?

Thus, instead of replying, Asya pulled a Walkman out of her knapsack and asked permission to listen to a song, just one song. A dose of Cash was what she needed right now. She offered one of the headphones to Armanoush. Armanoush accepted the headphone warily and asked: "Which Johnny Cash song are we going to listen to?"

11 'Dirty Old Egg-Suckin' Dog!"'

"Is that the name of the song? I don't know that one." "Yup," Asya said gravely. "Here it comes. Listen.."

And the song started, first a listless prelude, then country melo

dies fusing with seagull shrieks and Turkish vocalizations in the

background.

As she listened, Armanoush was too stunned by the dissonance between the lyrics and the surrounding setting to enjoy the song. It dawned on her that this song was just like Asya-full of contradictions and temper, utterly disharmonious with her surroundings; sensitive, reactive, and ready to explode at any time. As she leaned back, the murmur in the background dwindled into a tedious humming, pieces of simit disappeared in the air, a touch of enchantment wafted with the breeze, the ferry glided smoothly, and the ghosts of all the fish that had once lived in these waters swam with them in a sea of dense, viscous azure.

When the song was over they had already reached the shore. Some of the passengers jumped off before the ferry reached the dock. Armanoush watched this acrobatic performance with amazement, admiring the many talents the Istanbulites had acquired to cope with the pace of the city.

Fifteen minutes later the shaky, wooden door of Cafe Kundera opened with a strident tinkle and in walked Asya Kazancl, wearing a mauve hippie dress, with her guest, in a pair of jeans and a plain sweater. Asya found the usual group sitting in its usual place with its usual attitude.

"Hello, everyone!" Asya chirped. "This is Amy, a friend from America."

"Hello, Amy!" they greeted in unison. "Welcome to Istanbul!"

"Is this your first time here?" someone asked. And then the others started to inquire: "Do you like the city? Do you like the food? How long will you stay? Are you planning to come back?…"

Though they welcomed her warmly, they were also quick to go back to their standard posture of unremitting languor, since nothing could upset the sluggish rhythm that prevailed in Cafe Kundera. Those in need of speed and variation could simply go out, for there was plenty of that on the streets. Here it was about mandatory indolence and eternal recurrence. This place was about fixations, repetitions, and obsessions; it was for those who didn't want to have anything to do with the bigger picture, if there indeed was such a thing.

During the brief pauses between questions, Armanoush scrutinized the place and the people, intuiting where the name of the cafe came from. The constant tension between vulgar reality and treacherous fantasy, the notion of the outside people versus us people inside, the dreamlike quality of the place, and finally, the sullen expression on the men's faces, as if they were desperately ruminating on what to choose-either to carry the weight of disheveled love affairs or become half real with lightness-everything evoked a scene out of a Kundera novel. They, however, didn't and couldn't know this, being too enveloped, too much a part of it, like fish that couldn't possibly comprehend the immensity of the ocean in which they swam from the blurry lens of the waters surrounding them.

Likening the cafe to a Kundera scene only doubled Armanoush's interest. She noticed many other things, including the fact that everyone at the table spoke English, although with an accent and grammatical flaws. Overall they seemed to have no trouble switching from Turkish to English. At first Armanoush attributed such ease to their self-confidence, but by the end of the day she suspected that the facilitating factor might be less their confidence in their English than their lack of confidence in any language whatsoever. They acted and talked as if no matter what they said or how they said it, one could not really fully express the innermost self and, in the end, language was only a reeking carcass of hollow words long rotten inside.

Armanoush also noticed that the overwhelming majority of the framed road pictures on the walls depicted either Western countries or exotic places; feww had anything to do with what might fall in between. Having made this observation, she didn't quite know how to interpret it. Perhaps the flight of the imagination here was oriented toward either moving to the West or fleeing into an exotic land far away.

A swarthy, slim street vendor sneaked in, almost hiding himself from the waiters, who might have chased him away. The man carried a huge tray of unpeeled yellow almonds on cubes of ice.

"Almonds!" he exclaimed, as if it were somebody's name he was desperately looking for.

"Over here!" the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist exclaimed, as if responding to his name. Almonds would go perfectly with what he was drinking at the moment: beer. By this time he had already openly quit Alcoholics Anonymous, less on grounds of addiction than on grounds of earnestness, seeing no reason why he should call himself an alcoholic when he wasn't one. It didn't sound sincere to him. Instead, he had decided to become his own supervisor. Today, for instance, he'd drink only three beers. Having already guzzled down one beer, there were two more to go. After that, he'd stop. Yes, he assured everyone, he could manage such discipline without someone's pitiful professional guidance. With that kind of decisiveness, he bought four ladlefuls of almonds and piled them in the middle of the table so that everyone could easily reach them.

Armanoush's thoughts, in the meantime, were busy. She watched the lanky, lost-looking waiter take everyone's orders and was somewhat surprised to see so many people drinking. She remembered her blanket comment the other night on Muslims and alcohol. Should she now mention the Turks' fondness for alcohol to her pals in the Cafe Constantinopolis? How much of what was happening here should she reveal to them?

A few minutes later, the waiter returned with a large glass of frothy beer for the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist and a carafe of dry red wine for everyone else. As he poured the dark crimson liquid into elegant wine glasses, Armanoush took the opportunity to observe the people around the table. She figured that the edgy woman sitting next to and yet miles away from the bulky man with the bulbous nose must be his wife. One by one she examined the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist's wife and the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, as well as the Closeted-Gay Columnist, the Exceptionally Untalented Poet, the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies, and… she couldn't help staring a bit longer at the young, sexy brunette across from her, who didn't look like part of the group but seemed, if anything, awkwardly attached to it. Definitely a cell phone person, the brunette kept toying with her pink, glittery phone, flipping it open for no apparent reason, pressing on this button or that, sending an SMS or receiving one, absorbed by the small device. From time to time, she inched toward the bearded man next to her and nuzzled his ear. Evidently, she was the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies.

"I had a tattoo done yesterday."

The words were so out of context that Armanoush could not instantly grasp if they were addressed to anyone, let alone to her. Yet, either out of sheer boredom or in an attempt to befriend the only other recent addition to the group, the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies was talking to her: "Would you like to see it?"

It was a wild orchid, as red as hell, snaking around her belly button.

"That's cool," Armanoush said.

The woman grinned, pleased. "Thank you," she said as she patted her lips with a napkin even though she hadn't eaten anything.

In the meantime, Asya too had been observing the woman, albeit with a far more disapproving gaze. Having met a new female, as usual, she could do one of two things: either wait to see when she would start hating her or take the shortcut and hate her right away. She chose the latter.

Asya leaned backward and picked up her glass between thumb and forefinger, observing the red liquid. Even when she started to talk she didn't remove her gaze from the glass.

"In point of fact, when we come to recall how long-standing the practice of tattooing is. . " Asya said, but didn't finish her sentence. Instead she started a new one. "At the beginning of the 1990s, explorers found a well-preserved body in the Italian Alps. It was more than five thousand years old. It had fifty-seven tattoos on its body. The world's oldest tattoos!"

"Really?" Armanoush asked. "I wonder what kinds of tattoos were done back then?"

"Often they tattooed animals, the ones that were their totems… probably donkeys, deer, owls, mountain rams-and snakes, of course, I'm sure snakes were always on demand."

"Wow, more than five thousand years old!" the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies enthused.

"But I guess he didn't have a tattoo on his belly button!" he cooed back to her. And they laughed together, followed by a kiss and a cuddle.

There were a few tables scattered outside on the sidewalk. A grim couple settled themselves at one of them, and then another couple, with stressed-out, serious urban faces. Armanoush watched their gestures with curiosity, likening them to characters from a Fitzgerald novel.

"We somehow tend to associate tattoos with originality, inventiveness, and even modernism. In point of fact, having tattoos around your belly button is one of the oldest customs in world history. Let me remind you that by the end of the nineteenth century a mummified body was discovered by a group of Western archaeologists. It belonged to an Egyptian princess. Her name was Amunet. And guess what? She had a tattoo. Guess where?" Now Asya turned toward the scenarist and looked him directly in the eye. "On her belly button!"

The scenarist blinked, puzzled by so much information. His new girlfriend seemed just as impressed when she asked: "How do you know all this?"

"Her mother operates a tattoo parlor," interjected the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist without tearing his eyes from Asya. He sank into his chair, resisting the urge to kiss her angry lips, resisting the urge to ask for another beer without ado, resisting the urge to stop impersonating the man he was not.

His mood went unnoticed by all but one. Armanoush detected the warmth in his eyes when he looked at Asya and sensed he might be in love with her.

Asya meanwhile seemed to be in an entirely different state of mind, getting ready to launch another attack on the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies. Leaning forward with a hard look on her face, she said: "Tattoos can be very dangerous though."

Asya waited a few seconds for the word dangerous to sink in. "The instruments used in the process should be thoroughly disinfected, but the truth is you can never be a hundred percent sure about the risk of contamination, which, of course, is a serious issue given that the most common technique of tattooing is inserting ink into the skin via needles…."

She had uttered the word needles in such a menacing way that everyone at the table felt the chill. Only the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist watched her with an impish sparkle in his eyes, fully enjoying the show.

"The needle is repeatedly driven in and out of the skin with a rhythm that approximates three thousand times a minute," Asya continued. She took out a cigarette from her pack, repeatedly pushing it back and forth as if illustrating the act, until she finally lighted it. The new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies tried to smile at the overtly sexual gesture, but something in Asya's eyes stopped her halfway through.

"Blood poisoning and hepatitis are only two of the many fatal diseases you can contract at a tattoo parlor. The artist needs to break open a new sterile package each time and wash his hands with hot water and soap, and on top of that use sanitizing liquids and wear latex gloves…. Theoretically, of course. I mean, come on, who would bother with all that fuss?"

"He did all that. The needles were new and his hands were clean," the new girlfriend remarked in Turkish with a tinge of panic.

Asya did not yield, continuing in English. "Yeah, good. Unfortunately that's not enough. How about the ink? Did you know that not only the needles but the ink has to be renewed each time? You have to use fresh ink for each session, for each customer."

"The ink.." Now the new girlfriend looked really concerned.

"Right, the ink!" Asya decreed with certitude. "There are many infections that can surface after a tattoo operation just because of the ink. One of the most common ones is Staphylococcus aureus, which sadly"-she frowned-"is known to cause serious cardiac damage. "

Though she tried not to lose her cool, upon hearing this piece of information the color drained from the face of the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies. Her cell phone beeped just then but she didn't even look at it.

"Had you consulted a physician before getting it done?" Asya asked with a concerned expression that she hoped would prove persuasive.

"No, I didn't," the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies said. Her face now turned grave, etching new lines around her lips and eyes.

"Oh, really? Well, never mind, don't worry." Asya flung up her hands. "Almost certainly nothing bad will happen."

And with that she leaned back. The Dipsomaniac Cartoonist and Armanoush smiled, but none of the others reacted in any way.

Deciding to join the game, the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist turned to Asya with sly amusement and asked, "But she can have it removed if she wanted to, right? It is possible to have it removed, isn't it?"

"It's possible," Asya instantly replied. "However, the entire process is painful and daunting at best. You can choose one of three methods: surgery, laser treatment, or skin peeling."

With that Asya took an almond from the pile and peeled off the skin. Everyone at the table, even Armanoush, couldn't help but stare at the almond with horror. Pleased with her audience's reaction, Asya tossed the peeled almond into her mouth and chewed heartily. The eyes of the new girlfriend of the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies grew wide as she watched Asya chew the almond.

"I personally would never recommend the third. Not that the others are any better. You need to find a good-a very gooddermatologist or cosmetic surgeon. It costs a lot, but what can you do? Each visit is a ton of money and you need to pay for several visits. Even when the tattoo is removed, there will be a visible scar left behind, not to mention skin discoloration. If you want to get rid of that, you'll need another cosmetic surgery. Even then there is no hundred-percent guarantee."

Armanoush pinched herself not to laugh.

"Well, why don't we drink?" the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist's wife broke in with a tired smile. "And what better reason do we have to drink than Mr. Tiptoe? What was his name?… Cecche?"

"Cecchetti," Asya corrected her, still lamenting the day she had been intoxicated enough to give the group a speech on ballet history.

"Yes, yes, Cecchetti." The Exceptionally Untalented Poet chuckled and explained to Armanoush, "If it weren't for him, ballet dancers wouldn't have to tire themselves out walking on their toes, you know?"

"What was he thinking?" someone added, and then everybody laughed.

"So tell us, Amy, where do you come from?" the Exceptionally Untalented Poet now asked Armanoush over the customary muttering in the cafe.

"Actually, Amy is short for Armanoush," Asya interjected, still in a provocative mood. "She is Armenian American!"

Now the word Armenian wouldn't surprise anyone at Cafe Kundera, but Armenian American was a different story. Armenian Armenian was no problem similar culture, similar problems-but Armenian American meant someone who despised the Turks. All heads turned toward Armanoush now. Their stares revealed interest tainted with alarm, as if she were a flamboyant gift box with unknown content. Inside the box there could be a present as exquisite as the outside, or there could be a bomb. Armanoush squared her shoulders as if steeling herself against a blow, but, being regulars at Cafe Kundera for so many years, the group had too deeply absorbed the sluggish characteristic of the place to get excited for long.

Asya, however, did not let the excitement wane. "Did you know that Armanoush's family was Istanbulite?" she said in between chomping on two almonds.

"They were made to suffer all sorts of pain in 1915. Many died during the deportations-died of hunger, fatigue, brutality…."

Pure silence. No comment. Asya pulled the strings a bit tighter under the concerned gaze of the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist.

"But her great-grandfather was killed before all that, mainly because"-Asya turned to face Alnianoush, though her next statement was directed less at her than at the members of the group "he was an intellectual!" She sipped her wine slowly. "The thing is, the Armenian intelligentsia were the first to be executed so that the community would be left without its leading brains."

It didn't take long for the silence to be broken.

"That didn't happen." The Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies shook his head vigorously. "We never heard of anything like that." He took a puff on his pipe and amid the swirling smoke looked Armanoush in the eye, his voice now dwindling into a compassionate whisper. "Look, I am very sorry for your family, I offer you my condolences. But you have to understand it was a time of war. People died on both sides. Do you have any idea how many Turks have died in the hands of Armenian rebels? Did you ever think about the other side of the story? I'll bet you didn't! How about the suffering of the Turkish families? It is all tragic but we need to understand that 1915 was not 2005. Times were different back then. It was not even a Turkish state back then, it was the Ottoman Empire, for God's sake. The premodern era and its premodern tragedies."

Armanoush pressed her lips together so hard that they paled. She had so many counterarguments, she didn't quite know where to begin. How she wished Baron Baghdassarian were here and could hear all this.

Armanoush's pause was instantly filled by Asya's interruption: "Oh yeah? I thought you weren't nationalist!"

"I'm not!" the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies exclaimed, raising his voice a couple of octaves. To keep his temper, he began to stroke his beard. "But I do respect historical truths."

"People have been brainwashed," his new girlfriend rallied in an attempt to both support her lover and take revenge for the tattoo discussion.

Asya and Armanoush now exchanged looks. Within that fleeting moment the waiter appeared again and replaced the empty carafe of wine with a new one.

"Well, how do you know? Maybe you too have been brainwashed," Armanoush said slowly.

"Yeah, what do you know?" Asya echoed. "What do we know about 1915? How many books have you read on this topic? How many controversial standpoints did you compare and contrast? What research, which literature?. . I bet you've read nothing! But you are so convinced. Aren't we just swallowing what's given to us? Capsules of information, capsules of misinformation. Every day we swallow a handful."

"I agree, the capitalist system nullifies our feelings and curtails our imagination," the Exceptionally Untalented Poet broke in. "This system is responsible for the disenchantment of the world. Only poetry can save us."

"Look," the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies replied. "Unlike many other people in Turkey, I have done a lot of research on this issue due to my job. I write scenarios for historical movies. I read history all the time. So I talk like this not because I have heard it elsewhere or because I have been misinformed. Quite the opposite! I talk as someone who has done meticulous research on the topic." He paused to take a sip of his wine. "The claims of the Armenians are based on exaggeration and distortion. Come on, some go as far as claiming that we killed two million Armenians. No historian in his right mind would take that seriously."

"Even one is too many," Asya snapped back.

The waiter rematerialized with a new carafe in his hand and a concerned expression on his face. He made a gesture to the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist: "Do you want to keep ordering?" In return he was given the thumbs-up. Having long finished his three beers and loyal to his decision to have only that amount, the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist had by this time switched to wine.

"Let me tell you something, Asya," the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies said while refilling his glass. "You know about the infamous Salem witch trials, don't you? The interesting thing is that almost all the women accused of witchcraft had made similar confessions, shown common symptoms, including fainting at the same time….. Were they lying? No! Were they pretending? No! They were suffering from collective hysteria."

"What does that mean?" Armanoush asked, barely able to control her anger.

"Yeah, what the hell does that mean?" Asya chimed in, without controlling her anger.

The scenarist allowed a tired smile to cross his grim features. "There is such a thing as collective hysteria. I'm not saying that the Armenians are hysterical or anything, don't get me wrong. It is a scientifically known fact that collectivities are capable of manipulating their individual members' beliefs, thoughts, and even bodily reactions. You keep hearing a certain story over and over again, and the next thing you know you have internalized the narrative. From that moment on it ceases to be someone else's story. It is not even a story anymore, but reality, your reality!"

"It's like being under a spell," remarked the Exceptionally Untalented Poet.

Running a hand through her hair, Asya slouched back in her chair, puffed some smoke, and said, "Let me tell you what hysteria is. All those scripts you've penned thus far, the whole series of Timor the Lionheart-the muscular, herculean Turk running from one adventure to another against the idiot Byzantine. That's what I call hysteria. And once you make it into a TV show and make millions internalize your awful message, it becomes collective hysteria."

This time it was the Closeted-Gay Columnist who broke in. "Yes, all those vulgarly macho Turkish heroes you created to ridicule the effeminacy of the enemy are signs of authoritarianism."

"What's wrong with you people?" the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies asked, his lower lip quivering in rage.

"You guys know so well I do not believe in that crap. You know those shows are just for entertainment."

Armanoush did her very best to change the mood. Though she knew Baron Baghdassarian would strongly disagree, she believed increasing the tension did not help the recognition of the genocide. "That frame over there," she pointed to the wall. "You know that carroty-framed road picture over there is from Arizona. That's a road my mom and I used to take many times when I was a kid."

"Arizona," the Exceptionally Untalented Poet muttered, and sighed as if the name implied a utopialand for him, some sort of Shangri-la.

But Asya was not going to let it go. "But that's the thing," she said. "What you have been doing is even worse. If you believed in what you were doing, if you had the foggiest faith in those movies, I would still question your standpoint, but at least not your sincerity. You write those screenplays for the masses. You write and sell and earn huge amounts of money. And then you come here, take cover in this intellectual cafe, and join us to mock those movies. Hypocrisy!"

Color drained from the scenarist's face, leaving his expression hard and his eyes almost glacial. "Who do you think you are to tell me about hypocrisy, Miss Bastard? Why don't you go and rummage around for your papa instead of plaguing me here?"

He reached for his wine glass but there actually was no need since by this time a glass of wine was reaching out for him: The Dipsomaniac Cartoonist jumped to his feet, grabbed a wine glass, and threw it at the scenarist, just missing. The glass hit a frame on the wall, spilling wine all over, but surprisingly it did not break. Having failed to hit his target, the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist rolled up his sleeves.

Though barely half the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist's size, and just as drunk, the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies managed to dodge the first blow. He then quickly retreated to a corner, keeping an eye on the exit.

He didn't see it coming. The Closeted-Gay Columnist bolted from his chair and darted to the corner with the carafe in his hand. In next to no time the scenarist was on the floor with blood oozing from his forehead. Pressing a bloody napkin to his head like a war casualty, he stared first at the columnist, next at the cartoonist, and then at an oblique angle.

But after all, Cafe Kundera is a comfy, dreary intellectual cafe where the rhythm of life is, for better or worse, never disrupted. This is no place for a drunken brawl. Even before the scenarist's forehead stopped bleeding, everyone else at the cafe had gone back to what they were doing before the interruption-some grimacing, some chatting over wine or coffee, and some others drifting into the framed photos on the walls.