The Bastard of Istanbul

FOURTEEN Water

Shall I go inside and tell them to quiet down?" Auntie Feride asked. She was standing in front of the girls' room, her gaze fixated on the knob.

"Oh, leave them alone!" Auntie Zeliha exclaimed from the couch where she had collapsed. "They're a bit tipsy and when you're a bit tipsy you listen to music loud." To make a point she

then exclaimed: "LOUD!"

"Tipsy!" bellowed Grandma Gulsum. "Mind you, why are they tipsy? Is it not enough that you always bring disgrace to this family? Look at that skirt you are wearing. The dish towels in the kitchen are longer than your skirts! You are a single mother, a divorcee. Hear me well! I have never seen a divorcee with a ring in her nose. You should be ashamed of yourself, Zeliha!"

Auntie Zeliha raised her head from the cushion she had been hugging. "Ma, for me to be a divorcee, I would have had to have gotten married first. Don't distort the facts. I cannot be called a divorcee or a grass widow or any of those sticky terms you have in reserve in your glossary for unfortunate women. This daughter of yours is a sinner who wears miniskirts and she loves her nostril ring and she loves the child she gave birth to out of wedlock. Like it or not!"

"Is it not enough that you spoiled your daughter and forced her to drink? Why did you also have to make the poor guest drink? She's Mustafa's responsibility; she is your brother's guest in this house. How dare you spoil the girl!"

"My brother's responsibility! Yeah, right!" Auntie Zeliha laughed morosely, and she closed her eyes.

Inside the girls' room, meanwhile, Johnny Cash was playing full blast. The two girls were sitting side by side at the desk staring at the computer screen, with Sultan the Fifth curled between them, his eyes half-closed. The girls were so absorbed in the Internet that neither of them heard the argument outside their door. Armanoush had just logged on to the Cafe Constantinopolis, determined to take Asya with her this time.

Hello everyone! Haven't you missed Madame My-Exiled-Soul? she typed.

Our reporter from Istanbul is back. Where were you? Did the Turks

gobble you up? wrote Anti-Khavurma.

Well, one of the gobblers is with me right now. I want to introduce you

all to a Turkish friend of mine.

There followed a pause.

She has a nickname, of course: A Girl Named Turk. What was that? Alex the Stoic couldn't help asking.

It's a reinterpretation of the title of this Johnny Cash song. Anyway, you

can ask her yourself. Here she is. Dear Cafe Constantinopolis meet A Girl

Named Turk. A Girl Named Turk meet Cafe Constantinopolis.

Hello! Greetings from Istanbul, Asya wrote. There was no response.

I hope the next time you too will come to Istanbul with Arman…

Asya realized her mistake only when Armanoush slapped her hand… with Madame My-Exiled-Soul.

Oh, thanks. But frankly, I am in no mood for a touristy tour to a country that has caused so much suffering for all my family. It wasAnti-Khavurma again.

Now it was Asya's turn to pause.

Look, don't get us wrong, we don't have anything against you, OK? joined in Miserable-Coexistence. I am sure the city is nice and scenic, but the truth is we don't trust the Turks. Mesrop would turn in his grave if, Aramazt forbid, l would forget my past just like that.

"Who is Mesrop?" Asya asked Armanoush in a voice barely above a whisper, as if they could hear her.

All right. Let's start with the basics. The facts. If we can make it thru the facts we can then talk about other things, decreed Lady Peacock/ Siramark. Let's start with this touristy Istanbul trip. These magnificent mosques you show to tourists today, who was the architect behind them? Sinan! He designed palaces, hospitals, inns, aqueducts…. You exploit Sinan's intelligence and then deny he was Armenian.

I didn't know he was, Asya wrote puzzled. But Sinan is a Turkish name.

Well, U R good at Turkifying the names of the minorities, replied Anti-Khavurma.

OK, I see what you are saying. True, Turkish national history is based on censorship, but so is every national history. Nation-states create their own myths and then believe in them. Asya lifted her head and squared her shoulders and continued to type. In Turkey there are Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Georgians, Pontians, Jews, Abazas, Greeks…. I find it too oversimplistic and far too dangerous to make generalizations of this sort. We are not brutal barbarians. Besides, many scholars who have studied the Ottoman culture will tell you it was a great culture in many ways. The 1910s were a particularly difficult time. But things are not the same as they were 100 years ago.

Lady Peacock/Siramark countered instantly. I don't believe the Turks have changed at all. If they had, they would have recognized the genocide.

Genocide is a heavily loaded term, wrote back A Girl NamedTurk. It implies a systematic, well-organized, and philosophized extermination. Honestly, I am not sure the Ottoman state at the time was of such a nature. But I do recognize the injustice that was done to the Armenians. I am not a historian. My knowledge is limited and tainted, but so is yours.

You see, here's the difference. The oppressor has no use for the past. The oppressed has nothing but the past, commented Daughter of Sappho.

Without knowing your father's story, how can you expect to create your own story? Lady Peacock/Siramark joined in.

Armanoush smiled to herself. So far everything had gone just like she had imagined. Except Baron Baghdassarian. He had not responded to anything yet.

In the meantime, Asya, still fixated on the screen, typed, I do recognize your loss and grief. I do not deny the atrocities committed. It's just my past that I am recoiling from. I don't know who my father is or what his story was like. If I had a chance to know more about my past, even if it were sad, would f choose to know it or not? The dilemma of my life.

You are full of contradictions, replied Anti-Khavurma.

Johnny Cash wouldn't mind that! interjected Madame My-ExiledSoul.

Tell me, what can I as an ordinary Turk in this day and age do to ease your pain?

Now this wass a question hitherto no Turk had asked the Armenians in the Cafe Constantinopolis. In the past, they had had Turkish visitors twice, both heatedly nationalist young men who had popped up out of nowhere, apparently with the intention to prove that the Turks had done nothing wrong to the Armenians, and if anything, it was the Armenians who had rebelled against the Ottoman regime and killed the Turks. One of them had gone so far as to argue that if the Ottoman regime had really been as genocidal as claimed, today there would be no Armenians left to talk about this. The fact that there were so many Armenians lashing against the Turks was a clear indication that the Ottomans had not persecuted them.

Until today the Cafe Constantinopolis's encounter with the Turks had basically been a fuming exchange of slander and soliloquy. This time the tone was radically different.

Your state can apologize, answered Miserable-Coexistence.

My state? I've got nothing to do with the state, Asya wrote as she thought about the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist prosecuted for drawing the prime minister as a wolf. Look, I am a nihilist! She stopped short of mentioning her Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.

Then you yourself can apologize, barged in Anti-Khavurma.

You want me to apologize for something I personally had nothing to do with?

So you say, Lady Peacock/ Siramark wrote. We R all born into continuity in time and the past continues to live within the present. We come from a family line, a culture, a nation. Are you gonna say let bygones be bygones?

As Asya's eyes raked the screen she looked baffled, as if in the midst of a presentation she had forgotten her lines. She stroked Sultan the Fifth's head absently a few times before her fingers went back to the keyboard again.

Am f responsible for my father's crime? A Girl Named Turk asked.

You are responsible for recognizing your father's crime, AntiKhavurma replied.

Asya seemed confused by the bluntness of the statement, briefly irritated but also intrigued.Within the glow radiating from the computer, her face was pale and still. She had always tried to distance her past as far as possible from the future she hoped to attain. In the hope that, whatever the memories of times past entailed, no matter how dark or depressing, the past would not consume her. The truth is, as much as she hated to admit it, she knew the past did live within the present.

All my life I wanted to be pastless. Being a bastard is less about having no father than having no past… and now here you are asking me to own the past and apologize for a mythical father!

There came no answer, but Asya didn't seem to be waiting for one. She kept typing as if her fingers acted on their own, as if she were navigating with eyes closed.

Yet, perhaps it is exactly my being without a past that will eventually help me to sympathize with your attachment to history. I can recognize the significance of continuity in human memory. I can do that… and I do apologize for all the sufferings my ancestors have caused your ancestors.

Anti-Khavurma wasn't content. It really doesn't mean much if you apologize to us, he cut in. Apologize aloud in front of the Turkish state.

Oh come on! all of a sudden Armanoush had pulled the keyboard toward her and wrote, unable to resist the temptation to interject. It's Madame My-Exiled-Soul, here. What is that gonna do other than get her into trouble?"

She has to go thru that trouble if she is sincere! Anti-Khavurma blew up.

But before anyone could respond to that came a most unexpected comment.

Well, the truth is, dear Madame My-Exiled-Soul and dear A Girl Named Turk… some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victimhood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changed on both sides.

It was Baron Baghdassarian.

"They still aren't sleeping," Auntie Feride paced left and right outside the girls' room. "Is there something wrong?"

The older women had gone to sleep, and so had Auntie Cevriye, as a disciplined teacher. Auntie Zeliha had passed out on the couch.

"Why don't you go to sleep, sister, and let me guard their door to make sure they are all right." Auntie Banu squeezed her sister's shoulder. Now and then, whenever her illness escalated, Auntie Feride panicked about the possible harm that might come from anyone or anything in the outside world.

"Let me take the night shift," Auntie Banu smiled. "You go to bed and sleep. Don't forget that your mind is a stranger at nights. Don't talk to strangers."

"Yes." Auntie Feride nodded, and for a moment she seemed like a little girl stirred by a tale. Now visibly relaxed, she shuffled toward her room.

As soon as they had logged off Armanoush checked her watch. It was time to give her mother a call. This week she had called her every day at the same time, and each time Rose had scolded her for not calling more often. Trying not to be distressed about this unvarying pattern, she dialed the number and waited for her mom to pick up.

"Amy!!!" Rose's voice escalated into a shriek. "Honey, is it you?"

"Yes, Mom. How are you doing?"

"How am I doing? How am I doing?!" Rose repeated, now sounding bewildered and her voice muffled. "I need to hang up now, but you promise, you promise me, you will call me back in ten… no, no, ten isn't enough, in fifteen minutes exactly. I need to hang up and collect my thoughts now and then I will wait for your call. Promise me, promise me," Rose echoed hysterically.

"Okay, Mom, I promise," Armanoush stammered. "Mom, are you all right? What's happening?" But Rose had already gone.

Stunned, pale, and desolately holding the phone, Armanoush looked at Asya. "My mother asked me to call back later instead of asking me why I hadn't called before. It's so unlike her. This is so not her."

"Please relax." Asya shifted in her bed, popping her head up from under the blanket. "Maybe she was driving or something and couldn't talk on the phone."

But Armanoush shook her head, a fretful shadow crossing her face. "Oh God, there's something wrong. Something's very wrong."

Her eyes swollen from crying, her nose miserably red, Rose reached out for a paper towel as she broke into tears. She always bought the same paper towels from the same store: strong, absorbent Sparkle. The company produced these in different styles and Rose's favorite was called My Destination. Printed on the towels were pictures of seashells, fish, and boats, all in blue, and among them swam the following words: I CAN'T CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF THE WIND, BUT I CAN ADJUST MY SAILS TO ALWAYS REACH MY DESTINATION.

Rose liked this slogan. Besides, the azure tint of the printed images perfectly matched the color of the tiles in her kitchen, the part of the house she was particularly proud of. Despite her initial fondness, once they had purchased the house, Rose had lost no time in remodeling the kitchen, adding pull-out shelves, placing a thirtysix-bottle lacquered-top wine rack in the corner-though neither she nor Mustafa were drinkers-and decorating the entire room with oak swivel stools. Now as she felt a surge of panic, it was onto one of those stools that she dropped her body.

"Oh my God, we've got fifteen minutes. What are we gonna tell her? We've only got fifteen minutes to decide," she cried to Mustafa.

"Rose, darling, will you please calm down," Mustafa said as he rose from his chair. He didn't like the stools and instead kept two solid-wood honey pine dining chairs in the kitchen, one for him and the other for him too. He approached his wife and held her hand, in the hope of laying her worries to rest. "You will be calm, very calm, you understand? And you will calmly ask her where she is right now. This is the first thing you need to ask her, OK?"

"What if she doesn't tell me?" Rose said.

"She will. You ask her nicely, she'll tell you nicely." Mustafa

spoke slowly. "But no scolding. You need to keep your cool. Here,

have some water."

Rose took the glass with trembling hands. "Is that possible? My little girl has lied to me! How stupid of me to trust her. All this time I think she's in San Francisco with her grandma and then it turns out she's lied to everyone… and now her grandma… oh, God, how am I gonna tell her?"

The day before when they were both in the kitchen, she making pancakes, he reading the Arizona Daily Star, the phone rang. Rose picked up the phone with the spatula in her hand. The call was from San Francisco. Her ex-husband, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, was on the line.

How many years had they spent without exchanging a word? After their divorce they had been forced to communicate often concerning their baby girl. But then, as Armanoush had grown up, their talks had become rare and then ceased entirely. Of their brief marriage, only two things remained: mutual resentment and a daughter.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Rose," Barsam said with a smooth yet drained voice. "But it is an emergency. I need to talk to my daughter."

"Our daughter," Rose corrected tartly, and as soon as the words

had come out of her mouth she instantly regretted her bitterness. "Rose, please, I need to give Armanoush some bad news. Will

you please call her to the phone? She is not answering her cell

phone. I had to call her here."

"Wait… wait-isn't she there?" "What do you mean?"

"Isn't she there in San Francisco with you?" Rose's lips quiv

ered with panic.

Barsam wondered if his ex-wife was playing games. He tried not to sound irritated. "No, Rose, she decided to go back to Arizona. She is spending the spring break there."

"Oh my God!! But she is not here! Where is my baby?! Where is she?!" Rose started to sob, falling into one of those anxiety attacks she thought she had long ago left in the past.

"Rose, will you please calm down? I don't know what's going on, but I am sure there is an explanation. I trust Armanoush with all my heart. She won't do anything wrong. When did you last speak with her?"

"Yesterday, she calls every day-from San Francisco!"

Barsam paused. He didn't tell her that Armanoush had been calling him too, although from Arizona. "That's good, it means she is fine. We need to trust her. She is an intelligent, dependable girl, you know that. Next time she calls just tell her to give me a call. Tell her it is urgent. You got that, Rose? Will you do that?"

"Oh my God!" Rose started to cry louder. But then all of a sudden it occurred to her to ask: "Barsam, you said there was bad news. What is it?"

"Oh. . " A heavy pause. "It's my mom…" He could not finish his sentence.

"Just tell Armanoush that Grandma Shushan has died in her sleep. She did not wake up this morning."

Fifteen minutes had never passed so slowly. Armanoush paced the room under the worried gaze of Asya. Finally, it was time to give her mom another call. This time Rose picked up the phone instantly.

"Amy, I will ask you just one question and you will tell me the truth; you promise you'll tell me the truth."

Armanoush felt a wave of worry well up in her stomach.

"Where are you?" Rose rasped, her voice breaking. "You lied to us! You are not in San Francisco, you are not in Arizona, where are you?"

Armanoush swallowed hard. "Mom, I'm in Istanbul." "What?!"

"Mom, I'll tell you everything but please calm down."

Rose's eyes sparkled with pure indignation. How she hated to hear everyone telling her to calm down.

"Mother, I am terribly sorry for worrying you so much. I should never have done this. I am so sorry, but there is nothing to worry about, believe me."

Rose put her hand over the phone. "My baby is in Istanbul!" she said to her husband with a hint of a reprimand as if this were his fault. Then she yelled into the receiver: "What the hell are you doing there?"

"Actually, I am staying at your mother-in-law's house. It is a wonderful family."

Flabbergasted, Rose turned again to Mustafa and this time scolded harder: "She is staying with your family."

Then, before an ashen and alarmed Mustafa Kazanci could put in a word, she said, "We are coming there. Don't disappear anywhere. We are coming. And don't you ever turn off your cell phone again!" With that she hung up.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Mustafa squeezed his wife's arm, harder than he intended. "I am not going anywhere."

"Yes, you are going," Rose said. "We are going. My only daughter is in Istanbul!!!" she screamed, as if it meant Armanoush had been taken hostage.

"I cannot leave my job now."

"You can take a few days off. And if you don't, I will go alone," Rose, or someone who looked like Rose, snapped. "We will go there, make sure she is safe, pick her up, and bring her back home."

Late that night when they were about to go to sleep the Kazancis' phone rang.

"Inshallah it is nothing bad," Petite-Ma whispered from her bed, a rosary in her hand, a shadow of anxiety on her face. She reached out for the glass of water with her false teeth inside and, still praying, took a sip. Only water could quell fear.

Still awake, it was Auntie Feride who picked up the phone. More than anyone else in the family, she was the most talkative and communicative when it came to phone conversations.

"moo?

"Hi, Feride, is it you?" the receiver asked in a male voice. And without waiting for an answer, he added, "It is me… from America… Mustafa…."

Thrilled to hear her brother's voice, Auntie Feride grinned. "Why don't you call us more often? How are you? When are you coming to see us?"

"Listen, dear, please. Is Amy-Armanoush there?"

"Yes yes, of course, you sent her to stay here with us. We love her very much." Auntie Feride beamed. "Why didn't you come with her, you and your wife?"

Mustafa stayed put, his forehead buckled with discomfort. Behind him in the window lay the Arizona soil, always dependable, always secretive. In time he had learned to appreciate the desert, its infinity soothing his fear of looking back, its tranquillity easing his fear of death. At times like this he remembered, as if his body reminisced on its own, the fate awaiting all the men in his family. At times like this he felt close to committing suicide. Finding death before death found him. He had lived two very different lives. Mustafa and Mostapha. And sometimes the only way to bridge the gap between the two names seemed to silence them simultaneously-to bring both of his lives to an abrupt end. He shunned the thought. A sound similar to sighing. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps it was just the desert.

"I think we are. We will come for a few days to pick Amy up and to see you…. We are coming."

These words seemed to come effortlessly, as if time was not a sequence of ruptures but an uninterrupted continuity, easily bendable even when fractured. Mustafa would visit as if it had not been almost twenty years since he had been home.