“You’re probably right,” Mrs. Gradore said, and put her glasses back on. “I can’t believe they did this,” she said. “Can you?”
“No,” Tamar said.
“You can blame it all on Cecile,” she said. “This was probably her idea and your daughter just went along.”
“I don’t think so,” Tamar said. She hesitated. She had never confided in anyone about her marriage or children. “Araxi had reasons to leave,” she said. “To be truthful, my husband and I might as well have pushed her out the door ourselves.”
“You’re Persian, right?” Mrs. Gradore said, squinting at Tamar as if her origins were faintly written across her forehead.
“Armenian,” Tamar said. “From Beirut, but Armenian. And my husband was born in Bucharest.”
The woman nodded her head as if this bit of information had confirmed a hunch she had. “Tough life,” she said.
“Yes,” Tamar said, not sure if Mrs. Gradore was referring to her life or Levon’s.
“Will you please call me if you hear anything?” she asked.
“Of course,” Tamar said. “Don’t blame all this on your daughter. Now that I know mine’s alive I’m ready to kill her myself,” she said, and smiled a little.
Tamar
“I forgot my key.”
“Jenny, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
“How many times are they going to go over that?” Tamar asked. She was standing next to her mother in the kitchen and rolling up grape leaves as her mother placed a pinch of seasoned meat onto each leaf.
“Anahid! Shoushan! Enough. Come and set the dinner table,” her mother called out.
Her sisters had gone out to the cinema that afternoon to see Love Story. Tamar had been listening to them play acting for over an hour. She hadn’t been allowed to go. Her sisters were a year apart in age and Tamar was only twelve, whereas Anahid was fifteen and Shoushan was fourteen. Perhaps it was because they were so close in age, but for as long as Tamar could remember she regarded her sisters as if they were twins. They dressed similarly, seemed to share the same opinions on any topic or situation, and they dealt with Tamar with the same air of seniority.
It didn’t seem fair that she was once again forced to stay alongside her mother, helping with the household chores. “Why can’t I go?” she had asked her mother that afternoon. “They’re not so much older than me.”
“You’re only twelve,” her mother said. “And I need you to help me with dinner and hang the wash. You can go another time.”
“I’ve never been!” Tamar protested. “When will I get to go?”
“Everything has its time and place,” her mother said, which she was quite fond of saying.
Tamar knew there was no point in pursuing the matter because it was settled as far as her mother was concerned. As she stood in the kitchen wrapping sarma she had to endure the dramatics of her sisters play-acting the same scene over and over.
The family sat down for dinner and ate in their customary silence. The girls knew their father was usually tired and regarded conversation as idle banter.
Shoushan nudged Anahid and said, “Merry widower,” quoting a line from the movie.
Anahid shook her head. “It’s so sad,” she said.
“What is?” her father asked.
“We went to the cinema today,” Anahid said. “We saw an American film. Love Story.”
“You let them see this?” Artemis asked his wife.
“I already spoke to one of the neighbors who saw it. She said they cut out all the bad scenes. Don’t worry,” she said.
“What was it about?” Tamar asked. She had wanted to ask since they’d come back that afternoon, but her envy had given way to a sense of pride and stubbornness and she had resisted until now.
“A rich man meets a woman who’s not so very rich and they fall in love,” Shoushan explained.
“And the rich man—his name is Oliver—finds out that his wife Jenny is sick. And she dies at the end,” Anahid said.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry!” Shoushan said for the twentieth time.
“American nonsense,” her father said, interpreting the sentiment literally. “When you do something wrong you apologize,” he said.
“That’s the last time I want to hear that,” her mother chimed in. “If you’re going to come home and repeat everything like silly parrots then you won’t go at all.”
“We want to go see another film that they’re showing in two weeks,” Shoushan said. “And we promise when we come home not to say a word.”
“What film?” her father asked. “Another American one?”
“Yes. It’s called Fiddler on the Roof,’” Shoushan said. “It’s about a father with all these daughters and they’re forced to leave their house. Baba, you should come with us.”
“I don’t like the movies,” he said. It was true. Artemis was known for his restlessness. He grew bored very quickly with any pastime that did not involve physical activity. The neighbors joked that on his day off from work he would create a new project to keep himself busy because it was unheard of to find him sitting and resting for any length of time.
“It’s playing on Hamra Street,” Anahid said. “We were hoping we could sit in the orchestra section, but it was going to cost extra.”
“Maybe I can go to that one,” Tamar said. She looked at her sisters hoping that one of them would be willing to coax her parents into letting her go. They stayed quiet, pretending as if they hadn’t heard her.
“We’ll see,” her mother said and starting stacking the plates. It was Tamar’s cue to clear the table and wash the dishes. “I’m sure you two have school work to do,” she said. “Tomorrow is Sunday. Go do it now so you don’t leave it for the last minute tomorrow night.”
That evening Tamar sat in the backyard by herself while her sisters did their homework and her parents sat in the common room drinking tea. From a distance she heard the dim noises of the street settling into a quiet hush: one of the neighbors beating a rug they had hung over a railing, the soft crackling of a wheelbarrow dragging across the pebbled road, the voices of her parents coming from an open window.
“What are you doing?” she heard, and whipped around. Faris was standing behind the wooden gate that led to the vegetable garden.
“You scared me,” Tamar said and walked over to him.
“Didn’t mean to,” he said. She noticed he was holding something in his hand. “I discovered something,” he said. “Want to try it?”
“What is it?” she asked. It was difficult to see his face in the growing darkness.
“Stick out your tongue,” he said.
She gave him an odd look. “No.”
“Trust me,” he said.
Tamar drew out her tongue and felt a soft feathery brush against her lips. “Now close your mouth,” she heard him say, “and tell me what that tastes like.”
To her surprise it tasted like honey. She removed the thing from her mouth and upon examining it saw that it was a small yellow flower.
“I’ve been watching the bees all day,” he said.
Tamar giggled. “What kind of thing is that to say? ‘I’ve been watching the bees all day,’” she said in a low voice, trying to imitate him.
“I have,” he said. “And I noticed they love these flowers. So I thought to taste one to see what all the buzzing was about. Nice, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she said.
“What are you doing out here by yourself?” he asked.
“Nothing. My sisters went to see a movie today and I had to stay home and help my mother doing stupid chores,” she said.
“Again?” Faris asked, raising his eyebrows. The amount of time Tamar was made to stay at home confounded him.
“You only make it worse when you say it like that,” Tamar said.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just saying.”
“I want to see a mov
ie,” she said. “Will you help me?”
“How?”
“Get me a ticket,” she said.
“What are you going to tell your parents?” She could hear the worry in his voice. He knew her parents were strict and that their punishments were often harsh.
“I’m going to tell them I’m sick and go to my bedroom and then go to Hamra Street.”
“That sounds crazy,” he said. “They’ll check in on you and then you’ll really be in trouble.”
“There’s an American movie they’re going to be showing,” she pressed on. “It’s called Fiddler on the Roof. My sisters are going but they couldn’t care less if I get to go. I asked permission during dinner and you’d think they’d throw in a few nice words to convince my parents. They sat there like a pair of dummies staring at the tablecloth,” she said. “It’s like they share a brain.” She laughed at her critique of them.
“I’ll get you a ticket,” Faris said. “But you’re going to get in a lot of trouble. Much worse than the time you ran off picking mulberries until dark.”
Even at a young age, Faris could see the terrible cycle between Tamar and her parents. The more they confined her, the more rebellious she became, which made them confine her even more. Each of Tamar’s antics escalated, testing the strict boundaries her parents tried to reinforce. Before the mulberry-picking incident there was the afternoon at the bazaar, where she had lingered long after the vendors had closed their stations and left for the evening. Tamar had not returned until way past dinnertime and her mother was pacing up and down the street with a slipper in her hand. Faris could hear Tamar’s cries that evening when her mother dragged her into the house and slapped her repeatedly with the sole of the slipper.
“What are you going to do if they catch you?” he asked.
It was dark now, and the windows of each house were bright rectangles of light against the evening sky.
Tamar shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing,” she said.
A few weeks later Faris appeared at Tamar’s house with a ticket tucked in his pocket.
“You got it?” she asked.
He nodded, but didn’t smile.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“I’m scared for you, Tamar. So I got an extra ticket to keep you company,” he said smiling. He pulled out two long green slips and handed one to her. “I’ll wait under your window and you can sit on my shoulders so I can help you down.”
Shoushan and Anahid had already gone to see the movie. In spite of their mother’s complaining, the two chattered endlessly about it, recounting scene after scene, yet it did not deter Tamar’s desire to go. They had even managed to spoil the ending, albeit unwittingly, but it enticed Tamar all the more.
“I would never let myself fall in love with some Russian peasant,” Anahid said after returning from the cinema with Shoushan.
“He was handsome,” Shoushan speculated. “And nice.”
“But he wasn’t Jewish,” Anahid insisted. “That would be like one of us not marrying an Armenian. Imagine never seeing Mama or Baba again? All for some boy! Never.”
She would not understand or remember the irony of her words when the following year she spotted her little sister holding hands with Faris in the narrow alley by their house. Tamar overheard the two speaking and felt her face burn with embarrassment. She would be sitting next to Faris during the movie. She was nervous that he would somehow connect the similarity between the daughter’s dilemma in the movie and the invented romance she had been entertaining about him in her childish fantasies.
The day of the movie Tamar woke up and lay in bed longer than usual.
“Where is Tamar?” she heard her mother ask her sisters. Neither of them knew.
“Still in bed, I guess,” Anahid said.
Their mother sent her sisters to see what was the matter.
“I don’t feel well,” Tamar said. She had pulled the covers up to her chin and stared at the ceiling blankly.
“How?” Anahid asked, looking at her curiously. “Do you have any pain?”
“Kind of,” Tamar said.
“Where?” Anahid asked.
“You don’t suppose—” Shoushan tried to ask.
“It can’t be,” Anahid cut her off. “She’s too young.”
“What?” Tamar asked and sat up a bit. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Anahid said and left the room.
She lay in bed all day saying she felt tired and weak. At dinnertime she asked to be left alone to sleep. “I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning,” she said to her mother. “I just feel so tired,” she said.
Her mother closed the door and left her in the darkness of her bedroom. She could hear her family eating dinner. Any minute now Faris would be tapping at her window. During moments like these when Tamar disobeyed her parents she would feel an intense queasiness that traveled from her stomach to her knees, making it almost impossible to follow through with her intentions. This time was no different. After spending an entire day feigning illness, she was actually feeling very sick now. She had never gone so far away from home. The bazaar was one thing and the mulberry tree another, but she had never been to Hamra Street. She wished the movie had been playing at the cinema closer to her home and that she didn’t need to walk so far. She had never been there, but knew that it was the busiest street in Beirut and had heard that the streets were lined with cafes and boutiques and that the movie theaters were dazzling and grandiose.
Although she had acted nonchalantly when Faris asked if she was scared of getting caught, she was terrified. There was also the possibility of being spotted by an acquaintance or neighbor, who would surely either grab her by the arm and drag her back home or at the very least tell her father. So they give her a few lashings and lock her in her room—so what? She was numb to the consequences of her actions because they were so predictable. It was the moment of getting caught that made her hands tremble.
She heard the soft tapping at her window and immediately grabbed her shoes from beneath her bed and opened the window. Within seconds she was sitting on Faris’s shoulders and moments later they were sprinting down the block toward Hamra Street.
“It’s twenty-two blocks from your house,” Faris said, panting for air when they finally stopped running. “I thought you’d be wondering.”
As they drew closer, the lights on Hamra Street became brighter. Taxi cabs whirred by. People sat outside cafes drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and chatting animatedly. There were vendors on every corner selling items that Tamar would only be able to buy for her mother at the bazaar on certain days of the week: sugar-coated chickpeas, rose water ice cream, hand-blown glass vases. Tamar and Faris weaved through the crowd and Tamar realized with exhilaration that the streets were too busy for anyone to spot her.
“There’s the cinema,” Faris pointed.
It seemed more majestic than Tamar could have imagined. “This must be what Hollywood is like,” she said, marveling at the light-studded kiosk that read “Fiddler on the Roof.”
The ticket taker did not even look at them when they handed him their tickets. He tore their stubs in half and pointed to a sign that led to the balcony.
“I would have bought orchestra seats,” Faris said sheepishly, “but I didn’t have the money and thought it would be nice to sit somewhere where we can see everything.”
“I can’t believe we’re here,” Tamar murmured, entranced by the fantastically high ceilings and dark red velvet curtains that covered the movie screen. The only other thing she was acutely aware of since they had started walking through the crowded streets of Hamra was Faris taking her hand. He finally let go when they walked down the aisle and found their seats.
She wondered if their hands would find each other when the film started, but she didn’t have much time to think about it when the curtains parted and a large lion roared in the center of a black background. Then a man stood against a setting sun playing the violin. She was gratefu
l she read Arabic so quickly, but it took a bit of time for her eyes to adjust to both reading the subtitles and focusing on the scenes. She tried to liken the characters to her own family, and although there were similarities, she knew her father was not the affable father that was being portrayed in the story.
She became nervous when the young girl and the Russian peasant first met and she glanced at Faris from the corner of her eye. He was transfixed and didn’t notice her. The music filled the theater with a swelling symphony. Tamar hummed a few bars to herself when the songs ended, knowing she would forget them. But the one melody that would stay with her long after they had left was sung during a scene when the family had gathered for the Friday Sabbath. She had never heard such a mournful and uplifting song in her life. Without hesitation, she reached for Faris’s hand and for the first time their fingers linked together. He could see slow tears pooling in Tamar’s eyes and slipping down the sides of her face. He squeezed her hand and stared at the screen.
“We have to go,” he whispered to her. The film had ended and the audience was clapping. “Let’s go,” he said, taking her hand while she was clapping in mid-air.
At first they walked, and as the streets became emptier and darker, Tamar felt the same anxiety from before when she was lying in bed and waiting for Faris. Sensing that she had grown quiet, he said, “Do you want to run back? I can peek down the block and see if your mother is waiting outside.”
She nodded and didn’t say anything. They slowly picked up their speed and started dashing through the neighborhood until they reached Tamar’s block. She stood behind him and watched as he walked towards her house. After a few moments he turned to her, shook his head and motioned her over. They walked to the side of her house and she took her shoes off and balanced herself on his shoulders.
“Thanks,” she whispered after she climbed through the window.
He smiled and waved as he walked away.
Tamar fell asleep, the night humming the melody she had fallen in love with. She understood English well enough that she could appreciate the words, and realized that she remembered certain phrases. She fell asleep with the image of the red velvet curtain and she and Faris holding hands. What a gift, she thought to herself before drifting off, to see my first film at such a beautiful theater and with Faris!
The Legacy of Lost Things Page 10