The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  Distressed though she might be, Armanoush's playing skills were surely unaffected by her mood. With the "six six," she rammed into Asya's home board, and trounced her opponent by crushing all three of her checkers at once. Triumph! Asya sunk her teeth deeper into the pencil.

  Article Eleven: Even if you have found a dear friend whom you have gotten so accustomed to as to forget Article Ten, never overlook the fact that she can still give you a drubbing in other spheres of life. On the tavlu board, just as in birth and death, each one of us is alone.

  Having three checkers waiting on the bar, and with only two gates still open in the opposing home board, Asya now had to roll either a "five five" or a "three three." There was no other roll that could save her from defeat. She spat in her palms for good luck and heaved a prayer to the tavla djinni, whom she had always envisaged as a half-black, half-white ogre with madly rotating dice as eyeballs. She then rolled the dice: "three two." Damn! Unable to play, she clasped her hands and grumbled.

  "Poor thing!" Armanoush exclaimed.

  Asya put the awaiting black checkers on the bar as she listened to a street vendor outside yelling at the top of his voice: "Raisins!

  I've got golden raisins. For kiddos and toothless grannies, golden raisins are

  for everyone!" When she spoke again she raised her voice over the vendor's.

  "I'm sure your mom is fine. Think about it, if she weren't fine how could she make this trip all the way from Arizona to Istanbul?"

  "I guess you're right." Armanoush nodded and rolled the dice. "Six six" again!

  "Yo, are you gonna keep rolling six six forever? Are those loaded dice or what?" Asya volleyed suspiciously. "Are you cheating, miss?"

  Armanoush chuckled. "Oh yeah, if only I knew how to!"

  But right when she was about to move another pair of white checkers into the open space, Armanoush paused abruptly, pale and drawn.

  "Oh my God, how could I not see this?!" Armanoush exclaimed in anguish. "It's not my mother, you see, it's my father. This is exactly how Mom would react if something bad happened to my father… or to dad's family…. Oh God, something has happened to my father!"

  "But now you're speculating." Asya tried to soothe her without success. "When did you last speak with your father?"

  "Two days ago," Armanoush said. "I called him from Arizona and he was OK, everything sounded normal."

  "Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean you called him from Arizona?"

  Armanoush blushed. "I lied." Then she shrugged, as if to savor the satisfaction of having done something wrong for a change. "I lied to almost everyone in my family to be able to take this trip. If I'd revealed I was going to Istanbul on my own, everyone would have been so alarmed they wouldn't have let me travel anywhere. So I thought, I'll go to Istanbul and tell them about the whole thing when I get back. My father thinks I'm in Arizona with my mom while Mom thinks I'm in San Francisco with Dad. I mean, she used to think, at least until yesterday."

  Asya stared at Armanoush with a disbelief that soon vanished, replaced by something closer to reverence. Perhaps Armanoush was not the immaculate, well-behaved girl that Asya had suspected she was. Perhaps somewhere in her luminous universe there was room for darkness, dirt, and deviance. The confession, far from upsetting Asya, had only served to increase her esteem of Armanoush. She closed the tavla board and stuck it under her armpit, a symbol of accepted defeat, though Armanoush had no way of knowing this cultural gesture. "I don't think anything is wrong… but come on, why don't you give your dad a call?" Asya asked.

  As if waiting for these words to take action, Armanoush reached out to the phone. Given the time difference, it was early morning in San Francisco.

  It was answered after one ring, not by Grandma Shushan as usual, but by her dad.

  "Sweetheart." Barsam Tchakhmakhchian heaved a sigh of intense endearment as soon as he heard his daughter's voice. There was an eerie clatter in the phone connection, which made them both aware of the geographical distance in between. "I was going to call you in the morning. I know you are in Istanbul; your mom called to tell me."

  A brief, prickly silence ensued but Barsam Tchakhmakhchian did not comment on it, nor did he scold her. "Your mom and I were so worried about you. Rose is flying to Istanbul with your stepfather…. They are coming there to get you. They will be in Istanbul tomorrow by noon."

  Now Armanoush stood frozen. Something was wrong. Something was so very wrong. That her father and her mother were talking to each other, and what's more, updating each other, was a surefire sign of apocalypse.

  "Dad, has something happened?"

  Barsam Tchakhmakhchian paused, stricken with sorrow from the weight of a childhood memory that had appeared out of nowhere.

  When he was a boy, every year a man with a dark pointed hood and black cape would visit their neighborhood, going door to door with the deacon of the local church. He was a priest from the old country looking for young, bright boys to take back to Armenia to train them to be priests.

  "Dad, are you all right? What is going on?"

  "I'm all right sweetheart. I missed you," was all he could say.

  Barsam was fascinated by religion at a young age, the best student in Sunday school. Consequently, the man with the black hood visited their house often, talking to Shushan about the boy's future. One day, as Barsam, his mother, and the priest were sitting in the kitchen sipping hot tea, the priest had said if a decision was to be made, this was the time to do it.

  Barsam Tchakhmakhchian would never forget the flash of fear in his mother's eyes. As much as she respected the holy priest, as much as she'd have been delighted to see her son as a grown-up man in pastoral garb, as much as she wanted her only son to serve the Lord, Shushan could not help but recoil withh fright, as if faced with a kidnapper who wanted to take her son away from her. She had flinched with such force and fear that the cup in her hand had shaken, spilling some tea on her dress. The priest had softly, amiably nodded, detecting the shadow of a dark story secreted in her past. He had patted her hand and blessed her. Then he had left the house, never to come back with the same request again.

  That day Barsam Tchakhmakhchian had sensed something he hadn't felt before and wasn't going to feel ever again. A spiky, creepy premonition. Only a mother who had already lost a child would react with such profound fear in the face of the danger of losing another one. Shushan might have had another son at some point who had become separated from her.

  Now as he mourned his mother's death, he couldn't find the heart to tell his daughter.

  "Dad, talk to me," Armanoush said urgently.

  Just like his mother, his father came from a family deported from Turkey in 1915. Sarkis Tchakhmakhchian and Shushan Stamboulian shared something in common, something their children could only sense but never fully grasp. So many silences were scattered among their words. When coming to America they had left another life in another country, and they knew that no matter how often and how truthfully you evoked the past, some things could never be told.

  Barsam remembered his father dancing around his mother to a Hale, drawing circles within circles with his arms raised like a soaring bird; the music starting out slow, becoming faster and faster, this Middle Eastern swirl that the children could only watch with admiration from the side. Music was the most vivid trace left from his upbringing. For years Barsam had played the clarinet in an Armenian band and danced in traditional costume, black bloomers and a yellow shirt. He remembered leaving his house in those costumes while all the other kids in their non-Armenian neighborhood watched him with mocking eyes. Each time he would hope the kids would forget what they had seen or simply wouldn't bother to poke fun at him. Each time he was wrong.

  While being enrolled in one Armenian activity after another, all he really wanted was to be like them, nothing more, nothing less, to be American and to get rid of this Armenian dark skin. Even years later, his mother would reproach him every now and then, explaining how as a little boy he had asked t
he Dutch American tenants upstairs what particular soap they used to wash themselves, because he wanted to be just as white as them. Now as the memories of his childhood gushed back to him with the loss of his mother, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian couldn't help but feel guilty for rapidly unlearning what little Armenian he had learned as a child. He now feltt sorry for not having learned more from his mother, and not having taught more to his daughter.

  "Dad, why are you silent?" Armanoush asked, her voice filled with fright.

  "Do you remember the youth camp you went to as a teenager?" "Yes, of course," Armanoush answered.

  "Were you ever angry at me for not sending you there

  anymore?"

  "Dad, it was me who didn't want to go there anymore, did you forget? It was fun at the beginning but then I decided I was too mature for it. I'm the one who asked you not to send me there the next year…."

  "Right," Barsam said tentatively. "But still I could have looked for a different camp for Armenian teenagers yourr age."

  "Dad, why are you questioning this now?" Armanoush felt on the verge of tears.

  He did not have the heart to tell her. Not like this, not over the phone. He did not want her to learn about her grandmother's death while all alone and thousands of miles away. As he tried to mutter a few words of distraction, his voice rose softly over a hum that broke out in the background. The droning hum of a gathering. It sounded like the entire family was there, relatives and friends and neighbors under the same roof, which, as Armanoush was wise enough to know, could be the sign of only two things: either someone had gotten married or someone had died.

  "What's wrong? Where is Grandma Shushan?" Armanoush said softly. "I want to talk to Grandma."

  That is when Barsam Tchakhmakhchian brought himself to tell her.

  Since late evening Auntie Zeliha had been pacing her room with a brisk energy she didn't know how to contain. She couldn't confide in anyone at home how bad she felt, and the more she buried her feelings, the worse she felt. First she thought of brewing herself some soothing herbal tea in the kitchen, but the heavy smell of all the cooking almost made her throw up. Then she went into the living room to watch TV, but finding two of her sisters in there frantically engaged in cleaning while chatting excitedly about the next day, she instantly changed her mind.

  Once back in her room again, Auntie Zeliha closed her door, lit a cigarette, and took out the companion she kept under her mattress for such trying days: a bottle of vodka. She hurriedly, but then with increasing sluggishness, imbibed one third of the bottle. Now, after four cigarettes and six shots, she didn't feel anxious anymore; actually, she didn't feel anything, except hunger. All she had to snack on in her room was a package of golden raisins she had bought from a rake-thin street vendor yelling in front of the house earlier in the evening.

  Halfway through the bottle and with only a handful of raisins left, her cell phone rang. It was Aram.

  "I don't want you to stay in that house tonight," was the first thing he uttered. "Or tomorrow, or the day after that. As a matter of fact, I don't want you to spend a day away from me for the rest of my life."

  In response, Auntie Zeliha snickered.

  "Please my love, come and stay with me. Leave that house right now. I got you a toothbrush. I even have a clean towel!" Aram attempted to make a joke but stopped halfway. "Stay with me until he's gone."

  "How are we going to explain my sudden absence to my dear family, then?" Auntie Zeliha grumbled.

  "You don't need to explain anything," Aram said imploringly. "Look, this must be the one benefit of being the maverick in a traditional family. Whatever you do, I'm sure nobody will be shocked. Come. Please stay with me."

  "What am I going to tell Asya?"

  "Nothing, you don't have to say anything…. You know that."

  Holding the phone tightly, Auntie Zeliha curled up in a fetal position. She shut her eyes, ready to sleep, but then mustered the energy to ask: "Aram, when is it going to end? This compulsory amnesia. This perpetual forgetfulness. Say nothing, remember nothing, reveal nothing, not to them, not to yourself…. Is it ever going to come to an end?"

  "Don't think about that now," Aram tried to soothe her. "Give yourself a break. You're being too hard on yourself: Come here first thing tomorrow morning."

  "Oh my love… how I wish I could…." Auntie Zeliha turned away her anguished face, as if he could monitor her via the receiver. "They expect me to go to the airport to welcome them. I am the only one who can drive in this family, remember?"

  Aram remained silent, conceding this.

  "Don't worry," Auntie Zeliha whispered. "I love you… I love you so…. Let's sleep now."

  As soon as she hung up, Auntie Zeliha began to slip into a deep slumber. How she turned off the cell phone, put the vodka bottle aside, stubbed the cigarette into the ashtray, turned off the light, and slid under the covers she would have no recollection of the next morning, when she woke up with an excruciating headache and one of her blankets missing.

  "Is it chilly in Istanbul? Should I have brought warmer clothes?" Rose asked, despite the fact that there were three main reasons not to: because she had asked this question before, because she had already packed her luggage, and because just now they were on their way to the Tucson Airport and it was too late to wonder anyway.

  Tempted as he was to remind his wife of these three reasons, Mustafa Kazanci kept his eyes fixed on the road and shook his head.

  On the day of their flight, Rose and Mustafa left the house at four p.m. to drive to the airport. They had two flights awaiting them: one short, the other quite long. They would first fly from Tucson to San Francisco, then from San Francisco to Istanbul. This being her very first trip to a country where English wasn't the primary language and people did not eat maple syrup-soaked pancakes in the morning, Rose found herself simultaneously excited and distressed. The truth is, she had never been the explorer type, and if it weren't for that much-wished-for but never-actualized dream trip to Bangkok, she and Mustafa wouldn't even have had passports. The closest she had gotten to international travel was to watch their six DVD Discovering Europe collection. From it she had a sense of what Turkey was like-a far more coherent sense than the scraps of information Mustafa had let slip every now and then during their many years of marriage. The problem, however, was that because Rose had watched all six disks in one sitting, and because the "Traveling Turkey" episode happened to be at the very end, after the episodes about the British Isles, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and Israel, she couldn't help but doubt if the scenes that popped into her mind now were from Turkey or from some other country. Discovering Europe DVDs were indeed handy for educational purposes, especially for American families with no time, means, or desire to travel overseas, but the producers should have put a notice on the collection urging the viewers not to watch the six disks uninterrupted, not to "travel" to more than one country in one sitting.

  At the Tucson International Airport, they visited every store, which meant one kiosk and one souvenir stand. Despite the ostentatious INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT sign (a name bestowed because of its out-of-country flights to Mexico, which was only an hour by car), the airport was so modest that it resembled a local bus terminal, and even Starbucks didn't care to open a branch there. All the same, once inside the souvenir store, Rose was able to find numerous gifts for Mustafa's family. Despite the impromptu nature of this trip and her constant worry about how her daughter was doing there, not to mention her concern about how to tell her about her grandmother's death, as the time of departure neared, Rose had lapsed into a kind of tourist daze. Aspiring to get a special present for every member of Mustafa's all-female family, she carefully pored over the merchandise on every shelf, though there weren't many options. Cactus-shaped notebooks, cactus-shaped key chains, cactusshaped magnets, tequila glasses with pictures of cacti-a bunch of tchotchkes and trinkets with images of, if not cactus, either lizards or coyotes painted on them. In the end
, Rose got each Kazanci woman a gift-exactly the same to be fair-composed of a multicolored I LOVE ARIZONA pencil curved into the shape of a cactus, a white T-shirt with the Arizona map printed on the front, a calendar with photos of the Grand Canyon, a mammoth BUT IT'S A DRY HEAT mug, and a refrigerator magnet with a real baby cactus in it. She also purchased two pairs of floral shorts like the kind she was wearing at the moment, in case someone would like to try them on in Istanbul.

  After having lived in Tucson for more than twenty years, Rose, once a Kentucky girl, had Arizona written all over her. It wasn't only the customary leisure clothes-light T-shirts, denim shorts, and straw hats-that gave her away, or the sunglasses that stayed glued to her face, but also her body language that radiated the Arizona style. Rose was forty-six this year but carried herself with the sprightly attitude of a retired criminal court clerk who, after having rarely had the chance to don flowery dresses throughout her life, now enjoyed them to the extreme. The truth is there were a number of things Rose deeply regretted not having done by this age, including having more children. How she lamented not giving birth to another child while she was still able. Mustafa had not been particularly eager to have children, and for a long time, Rose had been fine with that, never really suspecting how she might eventually regret the decision. Perhaps it was a professional hazard — being surrounded by fourth graders all day long, she never noticed the lack of children in her own life. That said, she and Mustafa did overall have a happy marriage. Theirs was a marriage characterized more by the solace of mutually developed habits than passionate devotion, but nevertheless a marriage far better than thousands of others claiming to be amorous in essence. It was a twist of fate, when she came to remember that she had started dating Mustafa just to take revenge on the Tchakhmakhchians. But the more she had gotten to know him, the more she had liked and desired him. Though the allure of romantic affairs had from time to time left Rose secretly pining away for a different life with a different man, she had overall been quite content with the one she had.