"Where is Barsam?" Uncle Dikran asked as he reached for a kofte from the pile. "Does he know what his wife is up to?"
"Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected. As a new-to-the-job elementary school teacher grappling with unruly kids all day long, she couldn't help correcting any mistake she heard.
"Yeah, ex! Except she doesn't acknowledge that! That woman is nuts, I tell you. She is doing this on purpose. If Rose is not doing this just to upset us, let my name not be Dikran anymore. Find me another name!"
"You don't need another name," Auntie Varsenig consoled her uncle. "No doubt she is doing this deliberately…."
"We have to rescue Armanoush," interrupted Grandma Shushan, the matriarch of the family. She left the table and scuffled toward her armchair. Though a wonderful cook, she had never had a big appetite and lately, her daughters feared, had somehow developed a way to stay alive by eating no more than a teacupful a day. She was a short, bony woman who possessed an exceptional strength to handle situations even more dire than this, and whose delicate face radiated an aura of competence. Her refusal to admit defeat no matter what, her unflagging conviction that life was always a struggle but if you were an Armenian it was three times as grueling, and her ability to win over everyone she came across had over the years bewildered many in her family.
"Nothing is as important as the well-being of the child," Grandma Shushan muttered as she caressed the silver pendant of Saint Anthony that she always wore. The patron saint of lost articles had helped her numerous times in the past to cope with the losses in her life.
With that Grandma Shushan took up her knitting needles and sat down. The first skeins of a cerulean baby's blanket dangled from the needles with the initials A. K. woven on the border. There was silence for a moment as everyone in the room watched her hands move gracefully with the needles. Grandma Shushan's knitting affected the family like group therapy. The sure and even cadence of each stitch soothed everyone watching, making them feel that as long as Grandma Shushan kept knitting, there was nothing to fear and in the end, everything would be all right.
"You are right. Poor little Armanoush," said Uncle Dikran, who as a rule took Shushan's side in every family dispute, knowing better than to disagree with the omnipotent materfamilias. Uncle Dikran dropped his voice as he asked, "What's going to become of that innocent lamb?"
Before anyone could respond, there was a jingling at the doorstep and the door was opened with a key. Barsam walked in, his face pale, his eyes staring worriedly behind wire-rimmed glasses.
"Hah! Look who's here!" said Uncle Dikran. "Mr. Barsam, your daughter is going to be raised by a Turk and here you are doing nothing about it…. Amot!"
"What can I do?" lamented Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, turning to his uncle. He moved his eyes to a huge reproduction of Martiros Saryan's Still Life with Masks on the wall, as if the answer he needed was hidden somewhere in the painting. But he must have failed to encounter any solace there because when he spoke again his voice sounded as inconsolable as before. "I have no right to interfere. Rose is her mother."
"Arran! What a mother!" Dikran Stamboulian laughed. For a man of his size he had an oddly shrill laugh-a detail he was usually conscious of and able to control, except when he was under stress.
"What will that innocent lamb tell her friends when she grows up? My father is Barsam Tchakhmakhchian, my great-uncle is Dikran Stamboulian, his father is Varvant Istanboulian, my name is Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, all my family tree has been Something Somethingian, and I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915, but I myself have been brainwashed to deny the genocide because I was raised by some Turk named Mustafa! What kind of a joke is that?… Ah, marnim khalasim!"
Dikran Stamboulian paused and looked closely at his nephew to see the effect of his words. Barsam stood stone still.
"Go, Barsam!" Uncle Dikran exclaimed louder this time. "Fly to Tucson tonight and stop this comedy before it's too late. Talk with your wife. Haydeh!"
"Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected him, as she served herself a piece of Burma. "Ah, I shouldn't be eating this. It has so much sugar in it. So many calories. Why don't you try artificial sweeteners, Mom?"
"Because nothing artificial enters my kitchen," Shushan Tchakhmakhchian replied. "Eat freely until you have diabetes in old age. Everything has a season."
"Right, I guess I am still in my sugar season." Auntie Zarouhi winked at her, but dared to eat only half a Burma. Still chewing, she turned to her brother: "What is Rose doing in Arizona, anyway?"
"She has found a job there," said Barsam tonelessly.
"Yeah, what a job!" Auntie Varsenig tapped the ridge of her nose. "What the hell does she think she is doing, stuffing enchiladas as if she didn't have a penny to her name? She is doing that on purpose, you know. She wants the whole world to blame us, thinking we are not giving her any child support. A brave single mom fighting against all odds! That's the role she is trying to play!"
"Armanoush will be just fine," Barsam muttered, trying not to sound hopeless. "Rose stayed in Arizona because she wants to go back to college. Working at the Student Union is a temporary thing. What she really wants is to become a grade school teacher. She wants to spend her time with kids. There is nothing bad in that. As long as she is OK and takes good care of Armanoush, what difference does it make who she is dating?"
"You are right, but you are also wrong," Auntie Surpun spoke as she drew her legs under her in her chair and resettled, her eyes suddenly hardening with a trace of cynicism. "In an ideal world, you could say, well, that's her life, none of our business. If you have no appreciation of history and ancestry, no memory and responsibility, and if you live solely in the present, you certainly can claim that. But the past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children and you know that…. As long as Rose has your daughter, you have every right to intervene in her life. Especially when she starts dating a Turk!"
Never quite comfortable with philosophical speeches, and preferring straight talk over intellectual jargon, Auntie Varsenig interjected: "Barsam dear, show me a Turk who speaks Armenian, will you?"
Instead of an answer, Barsam gave his elder sister a sidelong look.
Auntie Varsenig continued, "Tell me how many Turks ever learned Armenian. None! Why did our mothers learn their language and not vice versa? Isn't it clear who has dominated whom? Only a handful of Turks come from Central Asia, right? And then the next thing you know they are everywhere! What happened to the millions of Armenians who were already there? Assimilated! Massacred! Orphaned! Deported! And then forgotten! How can you give your flesh-and-blood daughter to those who are responsible for our being so few and in so much pain today? Mesrop Mashtots would turn in his grave!"
Shaking his head, Barsam remained silent. To ease the distress of his nephew, Uncle Dikran began telling a story.
"An Arab goes to a barber for a haircut. After the haircut, he tries to pay but the barber says, `No way, I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Arab is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop, he finds a `Thank you' card and a basket of dates waiting at his door."