As the Poppies Bloomed

by Maral Boyadjian

  He was leaning forward, lanky, pointed elbows digging into lanky, pointed knees. His black leather shoes, absurdly polished, pressed into the green shag carpet.

  “No.” His dark head shook and she looked again. “You look good.”

  His black eyes met her blue-gray ones and they smiled.

  Armen looked past the pillow of white veil the hairdresser had anchored to his sister’s head, past the layers of powders and shadows and the large pearl and gold cross suspended from her neck, to try to share a word of parting with her. He had been born one year and one month after his sister; only the spinning of time would make them admit how close and interdependent their existences had been.

  Their cousin’s voice came to them from another room. “Susie! Can we pull the shoulders down just a little more? They’re gonna fall anyway when we walk into church. Look!”

  Heels pulled along the carpet and she burst in, hands clasped together as if to hold a bouquet. As her shoulders came forward, the puffs of material slid unevenly.

  Susie turned to her mother, Sona. Sona turned to her mother’s sister, the oldest female present.

  “That would leave bare shoulders. In church.”

  They did not need to say more and the older women’s lips pursed and their minds raced to find a solution.

  Susie’s best friend was the only one of the bridesmaids who was not Armenian and so had no inkling of what a calamity this bare-shouldered-ness could be and did not care. While the others girls argued and tugged at their dresses, she hummed and checked the mirrors to see if her blond hair still flipped as evenly as it had five minutes ago. Meanwhile, all the bridesmaids’ shoulders were lifted and shifted backwards and forwards in hopes of finding a pose that would hold the slippery muslin.

  Armen had been the one who had changed his sister’s name. He had had to do it. His own name was bad enough, but his sister’s would never have worked.

  They lived in two worlds in one small California suburb, and hand in hand, sometimes literally, they had navigated both. Now there was only one person who ever called her anything but Susie, and that was Grandpa Daron. He only called her Sossè.

  Susie looked at all the bared shoulders and remembered how long it had taken her mother to allow her to wear a halter top when she was dating Johnny. They had compromised. She had taken along a sweater.

  Susie had given in quickly that day, before her mother had said “the words.”

  “Don’t forget who you are. We are Armenian.” Their list of rules was different than most, and longer.

  The fact that Johnny was also Armenian—because what else would he be if she were allowed to date him?—didn’t matter. You could never be reminded enough.

  At first Susie and Armen thought that the older folks were just not getting it, but then as they grew, they realized rage forced those words out. “They killed us. They drove us out. But we do not forget.”

  Outdoors, at school, at the library or the stores, they dressed and talked like everyone else. As kids, they played in the streets with the other neighborhood children, Ditch It and Red Rover, sometimes into the night on those long, sticky summer days. They loved the after-school playground activities and they begged their mother to make sandwiches for them with peanut butter and cream-filled cupcakes for dessert.

  But it was so hard meeting someone for the first time. Adults weren’t any easier than the kids, but the kids mattered more. They gave their names, and sometimes their strange, unpronounceable last names. And then waited for the inevitable.

  “But what kind of name is that?”

  As if the answer was going to clear things up. As if the other kids would understand what they were told and all could get on with sizing each other up according to things that mattered, like softball skills, bell-bottoms, and transistor radios.

  “Armeeeneean? What’s that?” would inevitably follow. And another kid or two would gather and snicker. It was never easy. It had never been easy. Not even once, Armen remembered.

  Indoors, Susie and her mother cooked and cleaned and washed and ironed for the men. Precious vinyl records produced by Armenian singers living now in Lebanon or Syria or somewhere twirled round and round on the record player in the corner of their living room. They drowned out the Watergate hearings and all that Walter Cronkite or Archie Bunker ever had to say on their black-and-white TV perched on its four wooden legs.

  Once a month, up until Grandma Bayzar died, it was baking day. Anyone who could escape did, because Grandma Bayzar needed the whole kitchen and the dining room beyond to bake and lay out trays of bread, cheese and meat pies, date cookies, and salted, braided cookies. On holidays there was even more. Chorek. And bakhlava. Trays and trays of sticky, flaky bakhlava filled with pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts.

  Grandpa Daron had been a baker in Syria for many years after leaving his village. After he married Grandma Bayzar, he had begun to teach her all he had learned. The baking was still done for him, really. He sat in the corner of the dining room, a cigarette between his fingers, and watched Grandma Bayzar knead and roll the dough as her fingers expertly shaped and filled tray after tray. The heat of the oven blew the sides of her hair free of its bun and her nose grew pinker as the day progressed. Grandpa Daron never spoke while she worked and never, ever helped. Their mother was there in case Grandma Bayzar needed anything, but the baking took place with basically no conversation at all, until the very end, when an especially well-shaped cookie or pastry was placed on a tiny glass plate and presented to him to taste. But just one. Grandpa Daron never spoke much and he ate even less. It was when their father would come in after a long day’s work, when Armen and Susie thought the coast was clear and ventured back indoors, that true appreciation was shown for Grandma Bayzar’s skills.

  He and Susie were groomed and dressed and stuffed into the car between his parents and grandmother nearly every Sunday as they headed off to church. Grandpa Daron usually saw them off with a nod, then turned his back as he made his slow way to the backyard to sit in a shaded corner.

  Church wasn’t too bad once they got there. He and Susie went to Sunday school with kids who all had hard-to-pronounce names. Some even worse than their own. And many of their grandmothers, too, had tattoos on the inside of their forearms, where they had been branded as property by the Arab tribes who kidnapped them during the long death marches away from their lands.

  Grandpa Daron had been working for another man in a small bakery for a few years when he saw Bayzar in an orphanage in Syria. The first thing he had noticed about her was that large tattoo on the inside of her thin arm. The owner of the bakery, misreading Daron’s stares in Bayzar’s direction, began urging him to marry, to have a wife and bring some warmth into his life. For years, Daron did not even consider it.

  “It is over,” the baker would insist. “Whatever happened to us happened. They took our lands and we cannot change that. God has spared you, now live your life.”

  Had he said it was over? Daron could only stare back at the man. “It was this morning,” he would begin to say. It was one hour ago.

  He relived the last time he had held Anno to him again and again. The memory of her did not fade. It became even more clear and real each day.

  Alone, he had dragged himself south, hiding from the caravans of walking corpses. A corpse himself, he had drawn in one shallow burning breath after another, heading for a place he could barely conceive of.

  He sloughed through the desert, watching from a distance as his people were driven like broken animals. An old man had dropped to the ground next to two other children and a woman. He too began reaching for the bread the Turkish gendarme dangled at them an arm’s length away. The other three had no strength to lift their arms. It was no matter. The gendarme ground the bread deep into the sand with the heel of his boot.

  At last in Syria, he had huddled, ragged and emaciated, with others like him, surprised to find himself still drawing one shallow breath after another. He was no longer threatened by d
eath by a Turk or Kurd, but by starvation.

  The people behind him were eating a cat. At least that was what he believed it to be. They did not speak. They did not share.

  He leaned against a stone wall at the mouth of an alley, his skin the same color as the dirt he sat on. He was at the end of a row of shops. The sun beat down on his head and he considered dragging himself to the fountain behind him for more water. At the turn of the road was the opening to the Aleppo Bazaar, a covered, cave-like maze of stalls of fabric and plates, spices and candles, fruits and vegetables and baked goods. He had stumbled in earlier today and the smells of food had made him retch until, unable to breathe, he had collapsed on his face on the ground. He had been dragged here, to the mouth of the alley, or he had crawled, he could not remember, but the water had revived him enough to sit up and take in his surroundings.

  Not far away, three men argued. They had gotten their load to the door of their shop, but their cart was too large to roll it inside. The shop was filled wall to wall with carpets and ottomans and pillows. Their load would have to be lifted off the cart and pulled in. From what Daron could tell, it was more heavily rolled carpets, pale fringes hanging at both ends. Another man sat inside the shop on a low stool in front of a low, three-legged table, watching them argue as he chewed something and drank his tea.

  Daron was on his feet making his way toward the Arabs. A few quick hand motions made it clear that he would get those carpets inside, on his back, in exchange for the bread that sat piled on the low tea table.

  The Arabs agreed, mostly out of curiosity, and one hour later, Daron sat with his belly full for the first time in many weeks. His mind began to work.

  He had never told any of them the story of what had happened to him.

  Only Grandma Bayzar told them some things. She told them that Grandpa Daron had had another family, another wife before her, but they had all died. Susie and Armen always asked about them, how many there were, their names, how they died, but Grandma didn’t answer them because she didn’t really know.

  “We should get moving, Mom.” Armen rose. The limousines had been waiting outside for a half hour. “You want me to get the guys together and head out for the church already?”

  “Yes,” Sona answered him, “but first”—she held Susie’s wedding dress, still on its satin hanger—“let me check on my father. Did he finally put his tuxedo on?” Her English was heavily accented, but she chose her words carefully, and the Reader’s Digest, old and new issues all over the house, had improved her vocabulary immensely.

  “Yep, he did.” Armen followed her out of the bedroom, leaving Susie and her dress in the hands of the bridesmaids until her return.

  In the living room, Armen’s father stood surrounded by young men in matching tuxedoes. Medium height and stocky, he held a wide glass of whiskey on ice in his large mechanic’s hands. Without even checking, Armen knew that all would have been served drinks of their choice, many times over, by him. He liked Johnny, and he liked nothing more than a house full of friends and family, so today he was one person their mother did not need to even think about.

  She found Daron sitting in his usual tufted leather chair by the wide window that looked into their backyard. One large apricot tree stood in the middle, its branches bent with fruit.

  Sona stopped short at the sight of her father. He was sitting almost languidly with his arms draped carelessly over the arms of the chair. His back was straight as always and his glasses were gone from his face as he watched the activity in the room. The midnight black of the tuxedo and the white of his collar were becoming against his olive skin. His eyes, dark and knowing, watched her. A small gray velvet pouch lay on his knee.

  Sona did not comment on his looks. He would not like her to draw attention to that.

  “So you are ready, Hayrig. We shall be leaving soon. Did you want anything?” Spoken in their own language, the words flowed without thought or hesitation.

  He took in her long silvery gown and upswept hair. “Is Sossè ready?” he asked.

  “She is putting on her dress, and then yes, she will be ready.”

  Sona waited. She could feel he had not finished.

  “I have something to say to her.”

  Sona nodded. If there was anyone he ever did speak to with true traces of enjoyment, it was Susie. But the pouch puzzled her.

  “Would you like to go in to see her?”

  “Yes. Call me when she is ready.”

  Daron had grown uncomfortable. Sona hurried away to prepare his granddaughter.

  Daron watched the men, boys really, smooth their hair and examine themselves in the mirror time and again. They had greeted him first upon arrival, but that was a while ago. They drank and ate and joked among themselves, in English.

  He faced their direction, he dressed in whatever they asked, but he thought of a wedding, so different, long ago.

  A day did not pass when he did not think of her, her honey-brown eyes and her coarse hair, and of Sossè, with her wisps of black hair and shimmering blue-gray eyes. He thought of all of them, but he could not speak of them. They lived, a layer of lead wrapped around his heart.

  Armen came back to him. He looked at the pouch his grandfather held and decided to hang around and see what this was all about. “Harse badrasd e, Dada,” he said. His Armenian was broken, the words twisted, but that was all they spoke with their grandfather. “The bride is ready.”

  Daron usually held a string of worry beads in his hands. He pushed them round and round on their string between his thumb and forefinger all day long. The beads were unusual, golden brown, and all his older friends commented on their color. They shifted in his pocket now as he stood up.

  The bedroom was cleared when Daron entered. Only Susie stood there, waiting for him, with Armen close at his side.

  Good, Daron thought, and fumbled with the cinch on the pouch.

  Neither Susie nor Armen moved as they watched Daron remove a single bangle from its depths. He held it with the tips of his fingers and looked closely at it, as if to be sure, before lifting his eyes to his granddaughter.

  Susie stared at the bracelet, at its aged finish, at the delicately stretching tendrils and flowers etched onto its surface, and knew she was at last seeing into her grandfather’s past and her own.

  Unmoving, she waited for him to speak. Armen checked the door to the bedroom and knew that if anyone tried to pass through that door now, he would break their legs.

  Daron lifted his hand, worn and thick-veined. Still Susie dared not move. Slate-blue eyes locked with tear-filled black ones.

  “This is for you.” His voice was gentle and uncommonly hesitant.

  Susie’s hand trembled as she took the bracelet between her own fingers, daintily, as if it might be snatched back at any moment. Tears flooded her eyes. “Dada, whose was this?” Her question was beseeching, her eyes pleading.

  Armen stepped closer.

  “This…” Daron began. His voice rasped and his shoulders fell before he started again. “This belonged to my wife, in Sassoun.”

  Susie held the bracelet now in both hands and looked into the past.

  “Before your grandmother…” Daron’s voice sounded a bit more strongly. “I had a wife and a daughter. You carry my daughter’s name, Sossè.” This last he said more warmly. He looked to her, almost waiting for approval.

  Susie nodded furiously. “Yes! I know.” She quickly dried her eyes, afraid that her grandfather would decide he had said enough. “Grandma told us. Mom too. I am so glad. I have always been glad.”

  Daron nodded slowly. “And you resemble her, too.”

  “I? I do?”

  Daron nodded again and leaned heavily into Armen. If he let the tears flow at last, could he stop them? This was not the day, not the time. He had made a mistake, he knew.

  Susie pulled a chair close to him. Holding the bracelet, she extended her arm.

  Seated and shaken, Daron looked up into her face framed by dark, wavy hair
and was startled to see joy there.

  He looked at his grandson and saw that now he held the bracelet with, surprisingly, the same reverence he had himself for so, so many years.

  The times he had thought to sell it, for food. And the times he had, instead, held it, as if he held her, and somehow carried on, as if filling himself instead with her presence.

  “Put in on, Dada,” Armen urged.

  And Daron clasped it high on Sossè’s forearm using the further opening, just as Anno always had.

  “This is the best wedding gift,” she whispered. “The best gift.”

  “Will you tell us more, Dada?” Armen bent to him.

  “Tell us everything?” Sossè asked.

  Suddenly Daron breathed. His chest expanded in a way he could hardly remember. His grandchildren beamed at him, and his mouth curved, surprisingly, upward.

  “Do you not wish to be married first?” he asked. “Later, I will tell you everything.”

  They want to know, he realized. They deserve to know. And his mind raced. He would tell them of Maratuk, of the fields and the fruits they ate from the orchards, and of the Sassoun River. And of course, of Anno. Anno and Sossè, Kevork and Nairi and Mgro, and of how the poppies bloomed.

  A U T H O R ’ S N O T E

  I am the granddaughter of four genocide survivors. As a child of nine or ten, my day began with whisperings from my grandmother as she knelt on her cushion near my bed, faced east, and raised her arms to God in prayer. Those who had kidnapped her during the Armenian Genocide march had forced her to kneel and worship Allah. She had learned to mimic their motions precisely and continued to do so even after she was freed, but in her heart she had always prayed only to her God. I could never understand how she sustained her will in the face of all that she had lived through and suffered.

  All four of my grandparents were born and raised in Armenian cities of Anatolia, in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire, today’s Turkey. When they were children, official government policy targeted all Armenians in the empire, and the overwhelming majority were killed or, at best, deported across deserts, only to die along the way. This intentional campaign to eliminate all Armenian citizens became known as the Armenian Genocide. The term genocide was coined after the Second World War, using the tragedy that befell Armenians during the First World War as an example of a government’s crime committed against a religious minority—the intent to wipe out an entire people. From 1915 through 1922, a million and a half Armenians lost their lives.