The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  "Is he Armenian too?" Mrs. Grinnell whispered when Mustafa left the room.

  "Of course not," Rose said, her voice trailing off. "It's just that they have some things in common."

  The doorbell rang shrilly, snatching Armanoush out of her trance and making everyone else jump in panic. It was not even seven o'clock yet. Punctuality, apparently, wasn't one of Matt Hassinger's merits. As if a button had been pressed, all three aunts scampered to the door only to stop short of opening it. Uncle Dikran hit his head on the cupboard he was still working in and Grandma Shushan opened her eyes in fright. Only Armanoush remained calm and composed. In intentionally measured steps she walked to the door under the fixed gaze of her aunts and opened it.

  "Daddy!!!" Armanoush fluted with delight. "I thought you had a meeting this evening. How come you're home so early?"

  But before she reached the end of her question, Armanoush had already sensed the answer.

  Barsam Tchakhmakhchian smiled his soft dimpled smile and hugged his daughter, his eyes glimmering with pride and traces of anxiety. "Yeah, but it didn't work out, we had to reschedule the meeting," he said to Armanoush. As soon as she was beyond earshot, he whispered to his sisters: "Is he here yet?"

  The last thirty minutes before Matt Hassinger's arrival were marked with escalating apprehension on the part of everyone but Armanoush. They made her put on several dresses and parade around in each one, until they unilaterally reached a decision: the turquoise dress. The outfit was completed with earrings that matched, a burgundy beaded purse that Auntie Varsenig claimed would add a feminine touch, and a fluffy dark blue cardigan, just in case it got cold. That was one other thing Armanoush knew she should not question. Somehow the world outside the family house had an arctic character in the eyes of the Tchakhmakhchians. "Outside" meant "chilly land," and to visit it, you had to take your cardigan, preferably handwoven. This she partly knew from her childhood, having spent her early years under the downy blankets Grandma knit for her with her initials stitched at the edges. To go to sleep without anything covering your body was simply unthinkable, and going out into the street without a cardigan would be a blunder. Just like a house needed a roof above its head, human beings too needed an additional skin between them and the rest of the world so that they could feel safe and warm.

  Once Armanoush agreed to put on her cardigan and the dressing part was over, they came forth with another demand, one that was fundamentally paradoxical but not to the Tchakhmakhchians.

  They wanted her to sit with them at the table and eat, so that she could be ready and strong for tonight's dinner.

  "But honey you are just nibbling like a bird. Don't tell me you are not even going to taste my manta?" Auntie Varsenig wailed with a scoop in her hand and such severe dismay in her dark brown eyes that it made Armanoush wonder if something far more life-anddeath than a bowl of manta was concerned.

  "Auntie, I can't." Armanoush exhaled. "You already filled my plate with khaday f Let me finish this, that's more than enough."

  "Well you didn't want to smell of meat and garlic," Auntie Surpun chimed in with a hint of mischief in her voice. "So we served you ekmek khaday f This way your breath will smell of pistachios."

  "Why would anyone want to smell like pistachios?" Grandma Shushan asked amazed, having missed the first episode of the debate, not that it would have made sense to her anyway.

  "I do not want to smell like pistachios." Armanoush widened her eyes with desperation and turned to her dad, flashing a distress signal, waiting to be saved.

  Before Barsam Tchakhmakhchian could utter a word, however, Armanoush's cell phone started to ring a classical melody by Tchaikovsky: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." She picked it up and pouted at the little screen. Private number. It could be anyone. It could even be Matt Hassinger, calling to give her a weird excuse to cancel the dinner tonight. Armanoush stood there, holding the phone uneasily. On the fourth ring, she answered it, hoping it wasn't her mother.

  It was.

  "Honey, are they treating you all right?" was the first thing she asked.

  "Yes, Mother," Armanoush muttered tonelessly. By now she was kind of used to it. Ever since she was a little girl, whenever she stayed at the Tchakhmakhchian domicile, her mother acted as if her life was in danger.

  "Amy, don't tell me you're still at home?"

  Armanoush was used to this too, relatively speaking. Since the day her parents had separated, a separation of a different sort had happened between her mother and her own name. She had stopped calling her "Armanoush," as if she needed to rename her daughter to be able to continue loving her. To this day Armanoush had not told anyone in the Tchakhmakhchian family about this shift of nomenclature. Sometimes things had to be kept as secrets, of which she happened to have way too many.

  "Why don't you respond?" her mother insisted. "Weren't you going out tonight?"

  Armanoush paused, fully aware that everyone in the room was eavesdropping. "Yes, Mother," was all she uttered after an awkward lull.

  "You haven't changed your mind, have you?"

  "No, Mother. But why do you have a private number?"

  "Well, I have my own reasons, just like any mother would. You don't always answer the phone if you know it's me." Rose's voice dwindled desolately only to escalate again. "Is Matt going to meet the family?"

  "Yes, Mother."

  "Don't! That will be the worst mistake ever. They'll scare the life out of him. Oh your aunts, you don't know them, you are such a good girl you can't see the bad, they'll strike terror into the poor boy with their questions and interrogations."

  Armanoush didn't say anything. There were bizarre swishes on the line and she suspected her mother was brushing her hair at the same time as she delivered her tongue-lashing.

  "Honey, why don't you say something? Are they all there?" Rose asked. There came another muffled rustle, except it didn't sound like brushing to Armanoush anymore. Rather it sounded like a mushy object dropping into a liquid without a splash, or more precisely, a scoop of pancake mix being poured into a sizzling pan.

  "Oh, why do I ask the obvious? Of course they are. All of them, I bet. They still hate me, don't they?"

  Armanoush had no answers. She could see Rose in her mind's eye, there in the dim kitchen with light salmon laminate cabinets, which she planned to have refaced but never had the money or the time to do, her hair pulled into a loose bun, the cordless phone glued to her ear, a spatula in her other hand, making a heap of pancakes as if there were an army of children at home, only to eat them all by herself at the end of the day. She could also envision her stepfather, Mustafa Kazanci, sitting at the kitchen table, stirring halfand-half into his coffee as he skimmed through the Arizona Daily Star.

  Upon graduating from the University of Arizona and getting married to Rose, Mustafa had started working at a mineral company in the region, and as far as Armanoush could tell, he enjoyed the world of rocks and stones more than anything. He wasn't a bad man; if anything he was just a bit dull. He seemed to have no passion whatsoever for anything in life. He hadn't gone back to Istanbul for God knows how long, although he had family there. At times Armanoush had the impression that he wanted to break away from his past, but she could not possibly tell why. A few times she had tried to converse with him about 1915 and what the Turks had done to the Armenians. "I don't know much about those things," Mustafa had replied, shutting her out with a genteel but equally stiff manner. "It's all history. You should talk with historians."

  "Amy, are you gonna talk to me?" Rose's voice now sounded irritated.

  "Mama, I have to hang up. I'll call you later," Armanoush said. There was an abrupt click accompanied by a swish on the phone, which sounded like her mother had either scooped another dollop of pancake mix into the pan or had broken into a sob. Armanoush preferred to think it was the former.

  Utterly pissed off, she returned to the table, resettled in her chair, grabbed her spoon, and avoiding eye contact, started to cram down what was in front of
her, except it wasn't what she wanted. It took her a few more spoonfuls to realize the mistake.

  "Why am I eating manta!?" Armanoush exclaimed.

  "I don't know, honey," Auntie Varsenig exclaimed back, staring at her with fright as if she were a kind of creature new to her. "I put it there in case you wanted to try it. And it looks like you did."

  Now Armanoush felt like crying. She asked permission to leave the table and whisked off to the bathroom to brush her teeth, deeply regretting in the meantime this whole silly date. She stood in front of the mirror with a half-squeezed tube of toothpaste in her hand and the look of someone who was about to forswear society forever to become a lonely hermit on some godforsaken mountain. What could a Colgate Total Whitening Paste do to fight the infamous manta? Perhaps she could call Matt Hassinger and cancel the whole thing? All she wanted was to lie in bed saturated in despair and read the novels she had purchased. Read and read until her nose bled and her eyes drooped. That was all she wanted.

  "You should have stayed in bed and read your novels," she scolded the familiar face in the mirror.

  "Nonsense!" It was Auntie Zarouhi, having just materialized next to her in the mirror. "You are a beautiful young woman who deserves the best man in the world. Now let's see a little feminine glamor. Put on some lipstick, miss!"

  She did. It didn't say feminine glamor on the bottom of the lipstick tube but close enough: It said CHERRY GLAMOR. Armanoush generously applied the lipstick, only to pat her mouth with a napkin and wipe most of it off. And that was precisely when the doorbell rang. Seven thirty-two! Punctuality seemed to be among Matt Hassinger's merits, after all.

  A minute later Armanoush was smiling at a neatly dressed, noticeably excited, and somewhat baffled Matt Hassinger standing at the door. He was three years younger than her-a trivial fact which she hadn't felt the need to tell anyone but was very much evident from his face now. Either because he had done something with his cropped hair or slipped into clothes he wouldn't normally wear, dark brown lambskin blazer and Ralph Lauren honeydew pants, Matt Hassinger looked like a teenager dressed as an adult. He stepped inside with a huge bouquet of crimson tulips in his left hand, smiled at Armanoush, then noticed the audience in the background and froze. The whole Tchakhmakhchian family had lined up behind Armanoush.

  "Come on in, young man," said Auntie Varsenig in her most encouraging voice, which also happened to be her most intimidating one.

  Matt Hassinger shook hands with each family member, feeling their inquiring gazes rake his face. He lost his confidence and broke into a sweat. Somebody took the flowers and someone else took his blazer. Looking like a plucked peacock now that his blazer was off, he shuffled toward the living room and threw himself on the first chair he spotted. Everyone else sat close, forming a half-moon around him. They exchanged a few words about the weather, about Matt's education (he was in law school, which could be good and bad), about Matt's family (he was an only child, which could be good and bad), about Matt's parents (they too were lawyers, which could be good and bad), about Matt's level of knowledge on the Armenians (not much, which was bad, but he was eager to learn more, which was good), and then went back to the weather again before an irritating silence fell. For almost five minutes no one had a word to utter but everyone beamed as if they all had something lodged in their throats and found humor in this. From this awkward state they were about to pass into an almost dismal impasse when "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" was heard again. Armanoush checked the screen: private number. She shut off the phone, letting it vibrate. She arched her eyebrows and twisted her lips as a "never mind" gesture to Matt, which neither he nor anyone else understood.

  At seven forty-five Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian and Matt Hassinger were finally outside, steadily speeding up along Hyde Street in a Venetian red Suzuki Verona, heading toward a restaurant that Matt had heard much about and assumed would be cute and romantic: Skewed Window.

  "I hope you like Asian fusion with a touch of Caribbean influence," Matt chuckled, amused at his own words. "This place was highly recommended."

  Now "highly recommended" was not a criterion for Armanoush, mainly because she was always wary of "highly recommended" best sellers. Still, she didn't object, hoping that her cynicism would stand corrected at the end of the night.

  That, however, turned out to be far from the case. A popular meeting place for urban intellectuals and artists, Skewed Window was anything but a cute, romantic restaurant. It was a funky warehouse with lofty ceilings, art deco pendant lights, and walls on which glimmered examples of contemporary abstract art. Dressed headto-toe in black, the waiters scurried around like a colony of ants who had just discovered a pile of granulated sugar. The colony of waiters served artfully crafted dishes with the knowledge that soon you'd be replaced by a new customer, probably someone who would tip better. As for the menu, it was simply incomprehensible. As if the contents weren't perplexing enough, each dish was shaped, trimmed, and garnished so as to allude to a particular abstract expressionist painting.

  The Dutch chef of the restaurant had three aspirations in life: to become a philosopher, to become a painter, and to become a restaurant chef. Having badly failed in both philosophy and art during his youth, he saw no reason not to bring his unappreciated talents into his cuisine. Thus, he prided himself on rematerializing the abstract, and reinserting into the human body the work of art that had come out through an artist's desire to externalize his inner emotional state. Here at the Skewed Window, dining was less culinary than philosophical, and the act of eating was deemed to be guided not by the primordial urge to fill your stomach or suppress your hunger but by a sublime dance with catharsis.

  After numerous aborted attempts to choose what they were going to eat, Armanoush decided to go for the sesame-crusted ahi tuna tartare with foie gras yakiniku, and Matt decided to try a prime rib-eye with hot mustard cream sauce on a bed of passion fruit vinaigrette and jicama. Not knowing which wine would match with these dishes but in need of making a good impression, Matt inspected the wine list and after five minutes of bewilderment, he did what he always did when he had absolutely no idea about what to pick: Decide on a wine by looking at its price. A 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon looked perfect, expensive enough but also within his means. Thus having given their order, they tried to read how good their choices were on the face of the waiter who served them, but all they could find there was a blank page of professional politeness.

  They talked a little, he about the career he wanted to build, she about the childhood she would like to destroy; he about his future plans, she about the traces of the past; he about his expectations in life, she about family recollections. The Sugar Plum Fairy started to dance just when they were about to embark on another conversational topic. Armanoush fretfully checked the number. It wasn't a familiar number, but it wasn't private either. She answered.

  "Amy, where are you?"

  Dumbfounded, Armanoush stuttered, "Ma-ma! How did you… how come your number is different now?"

  "Oh, it's because I'm calling you on Mrs. Grinnell's cell phone," Rose conceded. "I wouldn't have to go to this much trouble if you cared to answer my calls, of course."

  Armanoush blinked blankly as she watched the waiter place a peculiar-looking plate of food in front of her, composed of hues of red, beige, and white. Amid a sauce that resembled smudged brush strokes rested three spherical chunks of red, raw tuna and a bright yellow egg yolk, altogether forming a sorry face with hollow eyes. Still holding the cell phone to her ear but not listening to her mother anymore, Armanoush puckered her lips, as she tried to figure out how to eat a face.

  "Amy, why aren't you responding to me? Am I not your mother? Don't you allow me at least half the rights you grant the Tchakhmakhchians?"

  "Mom, please," Armanoush said, because this seemed like a question that could only be answered by begging her not to ask it. She hunched her shoulders as if the weight of her body had doubled. Why was it so hard to communicate with her mother?

&
nbsp; With a quick excuse and a promise to call her back as soon as she got home, Armanoush hung up and turned off the cell phone. She sneaked a look at Matt to see if he minded the phone call, but upon noticing he was still inspecting his plate, she decided not to worry. Matt's plate was rectangular, not round, and the food on it was divided into two zones separated by a perfectly straight line of mustard cream sauce. It was less the design or the colors that had struck him than the flawlessness of the arrangement. He swallowed hard as if afraid of spoiling the seamless rectangularity.

  Their dishes were replicas of two expressionist paintings. Armanoush's plate was based on a painting by Francesco Boretti titled The Blind Whore. As for Matt's plate, it was inspired by one of Mark Rothko's paintings and was aptly titled Untitled. So absorbed were the two in their plates that neither of them heard the waiter when he asked them if everything was all right.

  The rest of the evening was nice but only as far as the word nice can go. The food turned out to be delicious and they quickly got used to wolfing down works of art, so much so that when their desserts arrived, Matt had no trouble in messing up the impeccably lined blueberries in April Blues Bring May Yellows by Peter Kitchell, and Armanoush did not even hesitate to jab her spoon into the shaky velvety custard representing Jackson Pollock's Shimmering Substance. But when it came to conversing they couldn't make half the progress they achieved in eating. Not that Armanoush did not enjoy being with Matt or did not find him attractive. But something was terribly missing, not in the sense of a detail missing from the whole, but in the sense of the whole dissolving into pieces without that missing part. Perhaps it was too much philosophical food. At any rate, Armanoush had understood her limits; she could not possibly fall in love with Matt Hassinger. After making this discovery, she stopped questioning herself, and her interest in him was replaced by sheer sympathy.