Orhan's Inheritance

by Aline Ohanesian

  “A disease of grief,” says Orhan.

  “Except there’s really no cure for inherited grief. Some people look for the cure in the soil of the homeland. They call it reparations. Others seek the salve of an apology, recognition. I stopped trying to escape this sorrow long ago. I accept it the way I accept the color of my eyes and the width of my hips. It is part of who I am.”

  “Is that what the exhibit is about? Finding a cure for your grief?” Orhan asks.

  “That or just more probing of the wound.”

  “You people know how to keep a wound fresh.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Ani says.

  “Sure you do. You could forget it. Everyone else has.”

  “Impossible. It would be a betrayal.”

  “What is a memory if not the reliving of an experience?” Orhan asks, thinking of his own past. “Why relive this over and over again?”

  “Because it happened. Remembering it is all we have in the face of denial. Silence is the enemy of justice,” she says in a mocking voice. “That was my father’s motto, anyway. The baykar, or the cause, with a capital C, is a sacred thing to an Armenian.” Ani fixes her dark eyes on him. “I’m oversharing, aren’t I? I tend to do that,” she says, smiling for the first time.

  “No, I wanted to know,” Orhan smiles back at her. He walks a dozen steps before formulating a proper question. “This cause you were talking about. What’s the objective?”

  She stops in front of a cream-colored sedan, its backseat crammed with boxes. “It’s about getting Turkey to admit to the genocide. You can’t get over a thing when the perpetrator denies it even happened. That’s why eyewitness accounts are so important.”

  She reaches into the car and grabs a cardboard box. “Could you help me with this?” She hands him the box without waiting for an answer and dives back into the back seat of the car.

  “War is a terrible thing,” Orhan says to her backside. “Everyone suffers.” It is the safest sentence in the world, but he knows he’s said the wrong thing because his words paralyze her. She extricates herself from the backseat and turns to face him.

  “What did you say your name was again?” she asks, knitting her brows.

  “Orhan,” he pronounces it clearly this time. He knows she is ingesting his name because she fixes her kohl-rimmed eyes on his face and takes a deep breath.

  “There is a difference, Orhan, between wartime atrocities perpetrated by both sides and a state-sponsored campaign of genocide meant to exterminate an entire race.”

  “There’s no real proof of that, is there?” Orhan asks, unable to silence himself.

  “There are telegrams proving that the decision to annihilate the entire Armenian population came directly from the ruling members of the Young Turk Party,” she says, looking him directly in the face.

  Orhan doesn’t respond to this. He is no historian.

  The light vanishes from Ani’s eyes. Her mouth falls open and a kind of dread falls upon her soft features. She places one hand on the car door to steady herself.

  “Who did you say you were visiting?” she asks.

  “I didn’t,” he says. The box in his arms suddenly feels like a boulder.

  “You’re the one who wrote the letter,” she says, pressing her lips together to form a tight line. Before he can answer, she jumps in again. “I remember the name now from the front of the envelope. Türkoğlu, wasn’t it?” She pronounces his name not like an American or even a city Turk, but like an Anatolian.

  Orhan goes mute. His stomach tightens and curls in on itself. I’ve done nothing wrong, he reminds himself. “I . . .” he begins. “Yes,” he says.

  “I haven’t read your letter Mr. Türkoğlu, but my aunt hasn’t been the same since she got it,” she says.

  Orhan nods at this, admitting guilt.

  “What do you want? Why are you here?”

  The question is simple enough, but it sounds profound coming from her. Orhan is not sure how to answer it.

  “Please, call me Orhan,” he says, wishing they could rewind and go back to the nursing home, when Ani treated him like a kind stranger. “I’m here because my late grandfather put your aunt in his will,” he says finally.

  An uncomfortable silence hangs between them.

  “So you thought you would just pump me for information?”

  “I didn’t pump you for anything,” he says.

  “How did they know each other?” Ani asks.

  “I was hoping she would tell me that,” he says.

  Ani scans the floor, as if she’s lost something. “What has he left her?” she asks.

  “Some sketchbooks,” Orhan lies, then thinking better of it, adds, “and a house.”

  “A house,” she repeats.

  “In Sivas,” he adds.

  “Sivas,” she repeats.

  “Do you know Sivas?” he asks, trying to lighten the mood.

  She does not answer him right away. She slams the car door and locks it instead. “Not directly,” she says as she starts walking back to the home. “My father described it as a paradise.”

  Orhan scoffs at this. “Maybe he was talking about a different place,” he says to her back.

  She does not slow her steps. She walks like she’s fleeing from a demon.

  “Memories are tricky things,” he goes on. “Happy or sad, they are always accompanied by a sense of loss.” He knows he’s treading on thin ground, but he can’t seem to stop talking. “The past does not define me and it shouldn’t define you.” He flings these words at her receding back. They come out louder and more forcefully than he’d intended. Ani stops her hurried steps and turns so suddenly that Orhan almost collides into her.

  “What a Turkish thing to say.” She says each word softly, individually, letting each one land in the tiny space left between their faces.

  “Are you insulting me?” Orhan asks.

  “You don’t even know your own past,” she says, resuming her gait.

  “How would you know?” he says, thinking how infuriating it is to constantly be talking to her back. “You don’t know me. I live with my past every day.”

  “Then we have something in common,” she says. “Only I have to live with my father’s past too, and my aunt’s, and the past of every other surviving member of my race.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Orhan, his frustration rising.

  “Genocide.” She raises her voice. “I’m talking about genocide.”

  “What does all that have to do with me?” Orhan yells back at her. “My grandfather fought in the First World War. He defended his country from Russians, the British, the French, and a bunch of Armenian insurgents who would have gladly handed him over to his enemies. How does that make him, me, guilty of anything?”

  “What does it have to do with you?” she asks, raising her voice to meet his. “Everything,” she shouts, her arms making a wide circle. “It has everything to do with you.”

  How ridiculous to be arguing with this stranger. “Listen,” he says, regaining his composure, “if you want to debate some event from a hundred years ago, go ahead. I’m only here to get a signature, maybe even some closure.”

  “You want closure.” She pronounces the words like a declaration, her voice tight and controlled.

  “If I can get it. Yes,” he says, placing her box at the dining-room door.

  “I see,” Ani says, nodding her head in what looks like sarcastic agreement. “Closure would be good,” she says, “but you’re not going to get it from my aunt.”

  We’ll see about that, thinks Orhan.

  “I’d like closure too, Mr. Türkoğlu. Perhaps I’ll get a lawyer to help me get some closure.”

  “If you think that scares me, you’re wrong,” Orhan lies. “No Turkish court would give our house to a perfect stranger. I’m only here because I’m a decent person.”

  “And because you want closure,” she says in a mocking voice. “Will you still be in town tomorrow?” she asks. />
  “Probably,” he says.

  “Good. You should come to the opening of the art exhibit,” she says walking back into the dining room. “There’ll be lots of closure then. Until then, stay far away from my aunt.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Semantics

  “YOU KNOW THERE’S no difference between withholding and lying, right?” Ani is standing in her room.

  “Good morning to you too,” Seda says. The morning light glows horizontal in the slats of her blinds. She rubs her face in an attempt to shake off the sleepless night. Two sleeping aids and still no sleep. Ani’s heels pound across the floor. She clicks the blinds open and whirls them all the way up, letting the sun flood the room.

  “I can handle all your withholding. I’m used to it.”

  “Who’s lying?” says Seda.

  “You told me he was from the Armenian Herald.”

  “No, you said he was from the Armenian Herald. I just didn’t correct you.”

  “Semantics,” says Ani.

  Seda sits up and motions for Ani to get her wheelchair.

  “I’m ninety. You think you could wait to assault me until after breakfast?”

  Ani places the chair, wheels locked, against Seda’s bed. “No one’s assaulting. We’re talking,” she says.

  “Semantics,” Seda says, lowering herself into the wheelchair.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “A man leaves you a house and it’s nothing?”

  Seda can feel Ani’s eyes boring into her. She doesn’t dare look up.

  “Why?” Ani’s voice cracks. “Why is it so hard for you to talk to me? I don’t deserve this.” She turns to face the window, away from Seda. Seda can hear the tiny whimpers escaping from her throat. They sound exactly the same as they did when she was a child. And just like then, Ani has managed to make this about her.

  “What do you want to know?” Seda says.

  “Everything.” Ani spins around. “Like who left you a house in Sivas?”

  “Someone from my past.”

  “Who? Who from your past?”

  “An old friend. A Turk.”

  “A friendly Turk just decided to leave his family home to you? Did this house belong to your family before the genocide?”

  “We lived in it, yes.”

  “Let me get this straight. Turks take everything you have, kill every member of your family, and when you somehow survive, kick you out of their country. Then sixty years later, one goddamn guy finally has a crisis of conscience? Thinks it’s probably a good idea to right things before he croaks and leaves you a house? Am I right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “When were you planning on telling me this? Do you realize what kind of legal repercussions this could have? It’s an admission of guilt.”

  “I knew you would do this,” says Seda.

  “Do what?”

  “Turn this into something it’s not.”

  “What is it not?”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with the house. Or with Sivas. I just want to live my last days in peace. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

  “Peace comes at a price. You of all people should know that.”

  Seda spins her chair around and rolls toward the door. “You don’t want my story. You’ve got your own story. The one you’ve plastered all over the walls.”

  “What other story is there?” Ani shouts back at her.

  “I’m tired. I need my breakfast.” Seda starts heading toward the dining room for her morning meal before remembering that it’s Friday, the day of the exhibit. The dining room has been converted into a gallery of the past.

  Kemal wasn’t just any Turk. And he had nothing to do with what happened to my family. He was a good man. What could he do?

  CHAPTER 36

  Witness

  ORHAN ARRIVES EARLY on the day of the exhibit. He parks his car inside the gray fog of the empty lot and rests his groggy head on the steering wheel. Last night Seda’s words appeared in his sleep. Gendarmes and refugees were being eaten by giant silkworms from a mulberry tree. Auntie Fatma and Dede both made an appearance. They were scrubbing a basin full of paper money and coins. When he asked them what they were doing, they told him that the money was tainted. There was also something about a train or was it a wagon?

  Inside the Ararat Home, the bronze bust of the mustached writer is gone and there is a new receptionist at the front desk.

  “I’m here for the exhibit,” he says, hiding his satchel beneath the high counter. “Ticket?” she says, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “I’m the lighting engineer,” he lies. “Ani asked me to come by.”

  “All right, down the hall to your right,” she says.

  Orhan signs the now familiar clipboard. The Ararat Home is completely deserted in the way only an old folks’ home or cemetery can be. With all the doors shut, the hallway is endless and barren. He drifts past one shut door after another, letting his fingers brush the walls that take up the empty spaces between doors. His body feels raw but transparent like a jellyfish’s. When the pair of walls that make up the hallway lean in closer together, he turns toward the garden, thinking, I am not one thing or another.

  If he is not a photographer or a businessman, then what is he? If he is not Kemal’s grandson, then who is he? Mustafa’s son. But then who is Mustafa? Fatma’s son. And who is Fatma? Someone who loves. That is it. He is someone who was, is, loved.

  And if he is Turkish, what does that mean? Is he the prodigal son of a democratic republic or a descendant of genocide perpetrators? Maybe he is all of those things and none of them.

  He steps onto the garden path, with its carved explanation of history inscribed in stone. He follows the timeline from Byzantium to 1915 and on to the present. There is only one version of events, and there it is beneath his feet. If only someone could do the same for him. Carve who he is in words and numbers that quantify and make sense: a singular interpretation of Orhan Türkoğlu.

  But he is not singular. No one is. Not him, not Dede, not Seda. And if they are not singular, how can history be? Orhan reaches into his satchel for the legal papers when he realizes he must have forgotten them in Seda’s room the night before. He makes his way to her door but finds it locked. He knocks gently, then with more purpose, but no one answers.

  Orhan heads toward the dining room, hoping to find Betty or maybe even Seda, but when he swings the door open, he’s confronted with the somber reality of the art exhibit. The room is dark, except for the light projected on the black-and-white photographs that pop against the white walls. Men and women stand with their backs to the massive images. From the backs of their heads, Orhan can tell that they’ve all made an extra effort. The men have removed their newsboy caps and combed their sparse hair to one side. The women have had their short bobs teased so that rows of fluffy helmets line the room.

  Orhan steps inside and presses himself against the back wall, still close enough to the door to make a stealth exit. The bronze bust from the reception area has been moved to the front of the room and placed next to a podium where a gray-haired man is talking into a microphone.

  “And so I humbly call on President Bush to honor the proud history of the United States as a champion of human rights throughout the world by recognizing the memory of the 1.5 million who perished in the Armenian genocide,” he says.

  “The governor,” someone whispers. He turns to see Ani holding her clipboard.

  “You came,” she says. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  Orhan nods and is about to respond when a microphoned voice interrupts.

  “Thank you, Governor,” says a woman with a heavy accent. “Our first speaker is Mrs. Varti Vartanian, originally from Kharpert. As you all know, this testimony is being recorded for posterity and will be collected into an oral history, so please keep your questions and comments for the very end.”

  Mrs. Vartanian’s bent back miraculously straightens w
hen she stands before the microphone. Even then, her white froth of hair clears the podium by only a foot. She begins her story in Armenian, her arthritic hands gesticulating left and right. Orhan can’t understand a single word of her tale, but the tragedy enters the room, fully formed. Palpable.

  That is when he hears it. A single understandable word floats among the undecipherable syllables. It is uttered in Turkish. “Oğlum.” My son. Then, “Çocuk.” The child. These are her memories, her burden to carry. But somehow he feels a degree of ownership for this story, and all the other stories that will and will not be shared in this room.

  Mrs. Vartanian ends her story, dabbing at her eyes with a small handkerchief. Her back gradually curves again; her head hangs like a lantern from her neck. An orderly shows up at her side and leads her by the elbow away from the podium. The speaker with the accent announces the name of the next witness, but Orhan keeps his attention on Mrs. Vartanian. She looks spent and exhausted from telling her story. Leaning on the orderly, she makes her way down toward the back of the room.

  She stops a few steps shy of the exit. Her doll is propped in a chair only inches from where Orhan is standing. She turns her neck and her eyes rest upon the doll next to Orhan. Her gaze climbs up slowly to his face.

  “He doesn’t belong to you,” she whispers, her voice filled with anger.

  “I know,” says Orhan, handing her the doll. Mrs. Vartanian lays her cheek on top of the plastic face and inhales.

  Without thinking, Orhan lifts his camera and takes a photo of her cradling the child. The act of pressing his eye to the hole and seeing the world framed, a neat little border around its perimeters, gives him an immeasurable sense of comfort.

  His next shot is of Ani, who stands only a foot away. She looks his camera in the eye, an expression of defiance on her face.

  He clicks the shutter, letting the aperture swallow her image up. He lowers his lens and stares back at her.

  “You were right,” he says.