One of the twins sleeping on the sofa fidgeted but stopped short of crying.
"The very next day a Turk goes to the same barber for a hair cut. After the haircut, he tries to pay but the barber once again says, `I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Turk is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop, he finds a `Thank you' card and a box of lokum waiting at his door."
Awakened by her sister's movement, the other twin started to cry. Auntie Varsenig ran to her side and managed to shush her with only the touch of her fingers.
"Then the next day an Armenian enters for a haircut. After the haircut, he tries to pay the barber and the barber objects- "Sorry, I cannot accept your money. This is a community service.' The Armenian is pleasantly surprised and leaves the shop. The next morning when the barber opens his shop… guess what he finds?"
"A package of Burma?" Kevork suggested.
"No! He found a dozen Armenians waiting for a free haircut!"
"Are you trying to tell us that we are penny-pinching people?" Kevork asked.
"No, you ignorant young man," Uncle Dikran said. "All I am trying to tell you is that we care for one another. If we see something good, we immediately share it with our friends and relatives. It is because of this collective spirit that the Armenian people have managed to survive."
"But they also say, `When two Armenians come together, they create three different churches,'" said Cousin Kevork, taking a firm stand.
"Das' mader's mom'ri, noren koh chi m'nats." Dikran Stamboulian grunted, switching to Armenian as he always did when he tried to teach a young person a lesson, but failed.
Able to comprehend only house-Armenian but not newspaperArmenian, Kevork chuckled, a bit too nervously perhaps, as he tried to conceal the fact that he had understood the first half of the sentence but failed to get the rest.
"Oglani kizdirmayasin." Grandma Shushan raised an eyebrow, speaking Turkish, as she always did when she wanted to directly convey a message to an elder in the room without the younger ones understanding.
Having gotten the message, Uncle Dikran heaved a sigh, like a boy scolded by his mother, and went back to his Burma for consolation. A silence ensued. Everyone and everything-the three men, the three generations of women, the myriad rugs decorating the floor, the antique silver in the cupboard, the samovar on the chiffonier, the videocassette in the VCR (The Color of Pomegranates), as well as the multiple paintings and the icon of The Prayer of Saint Anna and the poster of Mount Ararat canopied under pure white snow-fell silent for a brief moment as the room acquired a rare luminosity under the drowsy light of a street lamp just lit outside. The ghosts of the past were with them.
A car pulled over and parked in front of the house, its headlights panning the interior of the room, illuminating the letters on the wall in a gilded frame: AMEN, I SAY TO YOU, WHATEVER YOU BIND ON EARTH, SHALL BE BOUND IN HEAVEN, AND WHATEVER YOU LOOSE ON EARTH SHALL BE LOOSED IN HEAVEN.-ST. MATTHEW I8:I H. Another trolley passed by chiming its bells, transporting noisy children and tourists from Russian Hill to Aquatic Park, the Maritime Museum, and Fisherman's Wharf. The rush-hour sounds of San Francisco poured into the room, pulling them out of their reverie.
"Rose is not a bad person at heart," Barsam ventured. "It was not easy for her to get used to our ways. She was a shy girl from Kentucky when we first met."
"They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions," Uncle Dikran snapped.
But Barsam ignored him, and continued. "Can you imagine? They don't even sell alcohol there! Forbidden! Did you know that the most exciting event in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, is this annual festival when people dress up as the Founding Fathers?" Barsam flipped his hands upward either to make a point or to call God's attention in a desperate prayer. "And then they walk downtown to meet General George Armstrong Custer!"
"That is why you shouldn't have married her in the first place." Uncle Dikran cackled quietly. By now all the anger had drained out of him, replaced by the knowledge that he couldn't possibly manage to remain upset with his favorite nephew any longer.
"What I am trying to say is that Rose had no multicultural background," Barsam remarked. "The only child of a kind Southern couple operating the same hardware store forever, she lives a small-town life, and before she knows it, she finds herself amid this extended and tightly knit Armenian Catholic family in the diaspora. A huge family with a very traumatic past! How can you expect her to cope with all of this so easily?"
"Well, it wasn't easy for us either," Auntie Varsenig objected, pointing the tines of her fork at her brother before spearing them into another kofte. Unlike her mother she had a good appetite, and given the amount of food she ate every day, plus the fact that she had recently given birth to twins, it was nothing short of a miracle that she could stay so thin. "When you come to think that the only food she knew how to cook was that horrendous mutton barbecue on buns! Each time we came to your house, she would put on that dirty apron and cook mutton."
Everyone but Barsam laughed.
"Oh, but I should be fair," Auntie Varsenig continued, pleased with her audience's response. "She would change the sauce every now and then. Sometimes we would get mutton barbecue with Spicy Tex-Mex sauce, and other times mutton barbecue with Creamy Ranch sauce…. Your wife's kitchen was a land of variety!"
"Ex-wife!" Auntie Zarouhi corrected again.
"But you guys gave her a hard time too," Barsam said, without looking at anyone in particular. "Mind you, the very first word she learned in Armenian was odar."
"But she is an odar." Uncle Dikran lurched forward, slapping his nephew on the back. "If she is an odar, why not call her an odar?"
Shaken by the slap more than the question, Barsam dared to add: "Some in this family have even called her Thorn."
"What is wrong with that?" Auntie Varseriig took it personally, in between her final two bites of churek. "That woman should have her name changed from Rose to Thorn. Rose is not appropriate for her. Such a sweet name for that much bitterness. If her poor papa and mama had had the faintest idea as to what sort of a woman she would turn out to be, believe me, my dear brother, they would have named her Thorn!"
"That's enough joking!"
It was Shushan Tchakhmakhchian. The exclamation had sounded neither like a reproach nor like a warning, but somehow had both effects on everyone in the room. By now the dusk had turned to night and the light inside shifted. Grandma Shushan stood up and turned on the crystal chandelier.
"We should save Armanoush from harm, that is the only thing that matters," Shushan Tchakhmakhchian said softly, the many lines on her face and the thin, purplish veins in her hands all the more apparent under the harsh white light. "That innocent lamb needs us, just like we need her."
Her face faded from determination to resignation as she slowly bobbed her head and added: "Only an Armenian can understand what it means to be so drastically reduced in numbers. We've shrunk like a pruned tree…. Rose can date and even marry whomever she wants, but her daughter is Armenian and she should be raised as an Armenian."
Then she leaned forward and with a smile said to her eldest daughter: "Give me that half on your plate, will you? Diabetes or no diabetes, how could one decline Burma?"
FOUR
Roasted Hazelnuts
Asya Kazanci didn't know what it was that made some people so fond of birthdays, but she personally detested them. She always had.
Perhaps her disapproval had something to do with the fact that ever since she was a little girl, each year on her birthday she was made to eat exactly the same cake-a triple-layer caramelized apple cake (extremely sugary) with whipped lemon cream frosting (extremely sour). How her aunts could expect to please her with this cake, she had no idea, since all they heard from her on the matter was a litany of protests. Perhaps they simply forgot. Perhaps each time they erased all recollections of last year's birthday. That was possible. The Kazancis were a family inclined to never forget other people's stories but to blank when it came to their own.