The Bastard of Istanbul (25 page)

Asya gnawed the insides of her mouth, but when she had finished, all she said was, “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I mean, Sultan Hamid’s Pan-Turkish and Pan-Islamic yoke. I mean, the 1909 Adana massacres or the 1915 deportations. . . . Do those ring a bell? Did you not hear anything about the Armenian genocide?”

“I’m only nineteen.” Asya shrugged.

The teenagers behind cheered as the freckled girl failed to accomplish her task in time and was replaced by a new player, a lanky, handsome boy whose Adam’s apple jutted out from his neck with each mimic. The boy lifted three fingers, indicating that the movie’s title consisted of three words. He proceeded into the third and last word directly. Raising both hands into the air, he clutched an imaginary, round thing between his palms, smelled and squeezed it. While his team members failed to understand what that meant, the rival team snickered.

“Is that an excuse?” Armanoush looked Asya in the eye. “How can you be so impervious?”

Not knowing the meaning of
impervious,
Asya saw no problem in personifying the word until she had found an English-Turkish dictionary and looked it up. Savoring the brief reappearance of the sun from behind thick clouds, she remained quiet for what felt like a long time. Then she murmured, “You’re fascinated with history.”

“And you aren’t?” drawled Armanoush, her voice conveying both disbelief and scorn.

“What’s the use of it?” was Asya’s curt answer. “Why should I know anything about the past? Memories are too much of a burden.”

Armanoush turned her head, and her gaze involuntarily settled on the teenagers. Narrowing her eyes, she concentrated on the boy’s gestures. Asya too turned around, observed the game, and before she knew it blurted out the answer: “Orange!”

The teenagers burst into laughter, all looking at the young women at the next table. Asya flushed crimson, Armanoush smiled. They paid the bill quickly and were out on the street again.

“What movie has ‘orange’ in its name?” Armanoush asked once they had reached the path along the seaside.

“
A Clockwork Orang
e . . . I guess.”

“Oh yeah!” Armanoush conceded with a nod. “Listen, about the fascination with history,” she said, marshaling her thoughts. “You have to understand, despite all the grief that it embodies, history is what keeps us alive and united.”

“Well, I say that’s a privilege.”

“What do you mean?”

“This sense of continuity is a privilege. It makes you part of a group where there is a great feeling of solidarity,” Asya replied. “Don’t get me wrong, I can see how tragic the past was for your family, and I respect your wish to keep the memories alive come what may so that the sorrow of your ancestors is not forgotten. But that is precisely where our paths diverge. Yours is a crusade for remembrance, whereas if it were me, I’d rather be just like Petite-Ma, with no capacity for reminiscence whatsoever.”

“Why does the past frighten you so?”

Asya demurred. “It doesn’t!” As the capricious to and fro of the Istanbul wind fluttered her long skirt and cigarette smoke every which way, she paused briefly. “I just don’t want to have anything to do with it, that’s all.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Armanoush insisted.

“Perhaps it doesn’t. But in all honesty, someone like me can never be past-oriented. . . . You know why?” Asya asked after a long pause. “Not because I find my past poignant or that I don’t care. It’s because I don’t know anything about it. I think it’s better to have the knowledge of past events than not to know anything at all.”

An expression of puzzlement passed over Armanoush’s face. “But you also said you didn’t want to know your past. Now you sound different.”

“I do?” Asya asked. “Well, let’s put it this way, I have conflicting voices inside me with respect to this issue.” She gave her companion a glance full of mischief but then her voice became more serious. “All I know about my past is that something wasn’t right, and I can’t attain that information. For me history starts today, you see? There is no continuity in time. You can’t feel attached to ancestors if you can’t even trace your own father. Maybe I will never be able to learn my father’s name. If I keep thinking about it, I’ll go nuts. So I say to myself, why do you want to unearth the secrets? Don’t you see that the past is a vicious circle? It is a loop. It sucks us in and makes us run like a hamster on a wheel. Then we start to repeat ourselves, again and again.”

As they walked up and down on the undulating streets, every neighborhood looked so different that Armanoush began to think Istanbul was an urban maze, cities within a city. She wondered if James Baldwin had felt the same way when he was here.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, exhausted and hungry, they entered a restaurant, which Asya said was a
must,
since it was here that one could find the best chicken
döner
in town. They each got a
döner
and a large glass of frothy yogurt drink.

“I have to confess,” Armanoush muttered after a lull. “Istanbul is a bit different from what I expected. It’s more modern and less conservative than I feared.”

“Well, you should tell that to my Auntie Cevriye sometime. She’d be thrilled. She’ll give me a medallion for having represented my country so well!”

They laughed together for the first time since they’d met.

“There’s a place I want to take you to sometime,” Asya said. “It is this little café where we regularly meet. Café Kundera.”

“Really? He’s one of my favorite authors!” Armanoush exclaimed in delight. “Why is it called that?”

“Well, that’s an endless debate. Actually, every day we develop a new theory.”

On the way back to the
konak,
Armanoush grabbed Asya’s hand and squeezed it as she said, “You remind me of a friend of mine.”

For a while she looked at Asya like she knew something but couldn’t tell. But then she remarked, “I have never seen anyone so perceptive and so . . . so empathetic be so stringent and so . . . so confrontational at the same time. Except one person! You remind me of my most unusual friend: Baron Baghdassarian. You two are so alike in many ways, you could well be soul mates.”

“Oh yeah?” Asya asked, the name intriguing her. “What is it? Tell me why you’re laughing.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help laughing at the twist of fate,” Armanoush said. “It’s just that among all my acquaintances Baron Baghdassarian happens to be the most—
most
anti-Turk!

That night when all the Kazancı women had gone to sleep, Armanoush slipped out of her bed in pajamas, turned on the frail desk lamp, and doing her very best not to make any noise, turned on her laptop. Never before had she realized how distressingly noisy it could be to get online. She dialed the telephone number, found the network node, and typed in her password to log on to Café Constantinopolis.

Where have U been? We were so sick worried! How R U?

Questions began to come in from everyone.

I’m okay, wrote Madame My-Exiled-Soul. But I’ve not been able to find grandma’s house. In its place there is an ugly modern building. It’s gone. No traces left behind . . . There are no traces, no records, no reminiscences of the Armenian family who lived in that building at the beginning of the century.

I am so sorry dear, Lady Peacock/Siramark wrote. When R U coming back?

I’ll stay till the end of the week, Madame My-Exiled-Soul replied. It is quite an adventure here. The city is beautiful. It resembles San Francisco in some ways, the hilly streets, the constant fog and sea breeze, and the bohemian faces in places least expected. It is an urban maze here. More than one single city, it is like cities within a city. By the way, the cuisine is fantastic. Every Armenian would be in heaven here.

Armanoush halted, realizing in panic what she had just written. I mean, in terms of food, she added quickly.

Yo Madame My-Exiled-Soul, you were our war reporter and now you sound like a Turk! You have not been Turkified, have you? It was Anti-Khavurma.

Armanoush took a deep breath.

The opposite. I have never felt more Armenian in my life. You see, for me to fully experience my Armenianness, I had to come to Turkey and meet the Turks.

The family I am living with is quite interesting, a bit crazy but perhaps all families are. But there is something surreal here. Irrationality is part of the everyday rationale. I feel like I am in a Gabriel García Márquez novel. One of the sisters is a tattoo artist; another sister is a clairvoyant; one other is a national history teacher; and the fourth is an eccentric wallflower, or a full-time cuckoo, as Asya would say.

Who is Asya? Lady Peacock/Siramark typed instantly.

She is the daughter of the household. A young woman with four mothers and no father. Quite a character—full of rage, satire, and wit. She’d make a good Dostoyevski character.

Armanoush wondered where on earth Baron Baghdassarian was.

Madame My-Exiled-Soul, have you talked about the genocide with anyone? Miserable-Coexistence wanted to know.

Yes, several times, but it is so difficult. The women in the house listened to my family’s history with sincere interest and sorrow but that is as far as they could get. The past is another country for the Turks.

If even the women stop there, I cannot possibly be hopeful about their men. . . , the Daughter of Sappho cut in.

Actually, I haven’t yet found the chance to talk to any Turkish men, Madame My-Exiled-Soul wrote back, only just now realizing this. But one of these days Asya will take me to this café where they meet regularly. There I will get to know at least some men, I guess.

Be careful if you drink with them. Alcohol brings out the worst in people, you know. That was Alex the Stoic.

I don’t think Asya drinks. They’re Muslims! But she sure smokes like a chimney.

Lady Peacock/Siramark wrote, In Armenia people smoke a lot too. I revisited Yerevan recently. Cigarettes are killing the nation.

Armanoush fidgeted in her chair.Where was he? Why wasn’t he writing? Was he angry or cross at her? Had he been thinking about her at all? . . . She would have gone on torturing herself with questions, if it hadn’t been for the next line that appeared on the shimmering screen.

Tell us, Madame My-Exiled-Soul, since you have been to Turkey, have you pondered the Janissary’s Paradox?

It was him! Him! Him! Armanoush reread the two lines, after which she typed: Yes, I have. But then she didn’t know what else to write. As if he had sensed her hesitation, Baron Baghdassarian continued.

It’s very nice of you to get along with that family so well. And I believe you when you say they are good-hearted people, interesting in their own way. But don’t you see? You are their friend only insofar as you deny your own identity. That’s how it has been with the Turks all through history.

Armanoush pursed her lips, saddened. At the other end of the room, Asya tossed and turned in her bed, in the throes of what looked like a nightmare, and murmured something incomprehensible. Whatever she was saying, she repeated it many times.

All we Armenians ask for is the recognition of our loss and pain, which is the most fundamental requirement for genuine human relationships to flourish. This is what we say to the Turks: Look, we are mourning, we have been mourning for almost a century now, because we lost our loved ones, we were driven out of our homes, banished from our land; we were treated like animals and butchered like sheep. We have been denied even a decent death. Even the pain inflicted on our grandparents is not as agonizing as the systematic denial that followed.

If you say this, what will be the Turks’ response? Nothing! There is only one single way of becoming friends with the Turks: to be just as uninformed and forgetful.

Since they won’t join us in our recognition of the past, we are expected to join them in their ignorance of the past.

All of a sudden there was a light knock on the door, and then there were too many knocks. Armanoush slumped in her chair, her heart leaped into her throat. She impulsively turned off the computer screen. “Yes,” she whispered.

The door opened gently and Auntie Banu’s head popped in. She had a rosy, loosely tied scarf on her head now and a long, pasty nightgown. Awake at this hour for prayer, she had noticed the light coming from the girls’ room.

With the discomfort of all the words she lacked in English etched on her face, Auntie Banu made a series of gestures, as if she too were playing charades. She shook her head, furrowed her brows, and then smilingly wagged a finger—all of which Armanoush interpreted as: “You study a lot. Don’t tire yourself too much.”

After that Auntie Banu shoved forward the plate in her hand and mimicked an eating effect, both too obvious to need any interpretation. She smiled, patted Armanoush’s shoulder, put the plate next to the laptop, and then left, closing the door softly behind her. On the plate were two oranges, peeled and sliced.

Turning on the screen again, Armanoush bit into a slice of orange, as she contemplated what to write back to Baron Baghdassarian.

B
y the fifth day of her stay, Armanoush had discovered the morning routine of the Kazancı
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 feet to 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.