FOURTEEN
Water
Shall I go inside and tell them to quiet down?" Auntie Feride asked. She was standing in front of the girls' room, her gaze fixated on the knob.
"Oh, leave them alone!" Auntie Zeliha exclaimed from the couch where she had collapsed. "They're a bit tipsy and when you're a bit tipsy you listen to music loud." To make a point she
then exclaimed: "LOUD!"
"Tipsy!" bellowed Grandma Gulsum. "Mind you, why are they tipsy? Is it not enough that you always bring disgrace to this family? Look at that skirt you are wearing. The dish towels in the kitchen are longer than your skirts! You are a single mother, a divorcee. Hear me well! I have never seen a divorcee with a ring in her nose. You should be ashamed of yourself, Zeliha!"
Auntie Zeliha raised her head from the cushion she had been hugging. "Ma, for me to be a divorcee, I would have had to have gotten married first. Don't distort the facts. I cannot be called a divorcee or a grass widow or any of those sticky terms you have in reserve in your glossary for unfortunate women. This daughter of yours is a sinner who wears miniskirts and she loves her nostril ring and she loves the child she gave birth to out of wedlock. Like it or not!"
"Is it not enough that you spoiled your daughter and forced her to drink? Why did you also have to make the poor guest drink? She's Mustafa's responsibility; she is your brother's guest in this house. How dare you spoil the girl!"
"My brother's responsibility! Yeah, right!" Auntie Zeliha laughed morosely, and she closed her eyes.
Inside the girls' room, meanwhile, Johnny Cash was playing full blast. The two girls were sitting side by side at the desk staring at the computer screen, with Sultan the Fifth curled between them, his eyes half-closed. The girls were so absorbed in the Internet that neither of them heard the argument outside their door. Armanoush had just logged on to the Cafe Constantinopolis, determined to take Asya with her this time.
Hello everyone! Haven't you missed Madame My-Exiled-Soul? she typed.
Our reporter from Istanbul is back. Where were you? Did the Turks
gobble you up? wrote Anti-Khavurma.
Well, one of the gobblers is with me right now. I want to introduce you
all to a Turkish friend of mine.
There followed a pause.
She has a nickname, of course: A Girl Named Turk. What was that? Alex the Stoic couldn't help asking.
It's a reinterpretation of the title of this Johnny Cash song. Anyway, you
can ask her yourself. Here she is. Dear Cafe Constantinopolis meet A Girl
Named Turk. A Girl Named Turk meet Cafe Constantinopolis.
Hello! Greetings from Istanbul, Asya wrote. There was no response.
I hope the next time you too will come to Istanbul with Arman…
Asya realized her mistake only when Armanoush slapped her hand… with Madame My-Exiled-Soul.
Oh, thanks. But frankly, I am in no mood for a touristy tour to a country that has caused so much suffering for all my family. It wasAnti-Khavurma again.
Now it was Asya's turn to pause.
Look, don't get us wrong, we don't have anything against you, OK? joined in Miserable-Coexistence. I am sure the city is nice and scenic, but the truth is we don't trust the Turks. Mesrop would turn in his grave if, Aramazt forbid, l would forget my past just like that.
"Who is Mesrop?" Asya asked Armanoush in a voice barely above a whisper, as if they could hear her.
All right. Let's start with the basics. The facts. If we can make it thru the facts we can then talk about other things, decreed Lady Peacock/ Siramark. Let's start with this touristy Istanbul trip. These magnificent mosques you show to tourists today, who was the architect behind them? Sinan! He designed palaces, hospitals, inns, aqueducts…. You exploit Sinan's intelligence and then deny he was Armenian.
I didn't know he was, Asya wrote puzzled. But Sinan is a Turkish name.
Well, U R good at Turkifying the names of the minorities, replied Anti-Khavurma.
OK, I see what you are saying. True, Turkish national history is based on censorship, but so is every national history. Nation-states create their own myths and then believe in them. Asya lifted her head and squared her shoulders and continued to type. In Turkey there are Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Georgians, Pontians, Jews, Abazas, Greeks…. I find it too oversimplistic and far too dangerous to make generalizations of this sort. We are not brutal barbarians. Besides, many scholars who have studied the Ottoman culture will tell you it was a great culture in many ways. The 1910s were a particularly difficult time. But things are not the same as they were 100 years ago.
Lady Peacock/Siramark countered instantly. I don't believe the Turks have changed at all. If they had, they would have recognized the genocide.
Genocide is a heavily loaded term, wrote back A Girl NamedTurk. It implies a systematic, well-organized, and philosophized extermination. Honestly, I am not sure the Ottoman state at the time was of such a nature. But I do recognize the injustice that was done to the Armenians. I am not a historian. My knowledge is limited and tainted, but so is yours.
You see, here's the difference. The oppressor has no use for the past. The oppressed has nothing but the past, commented Daughter of Sappho.
Without knowing your father's story, how can you expect to create your own story? Lady Peacock/Siramark joined in.
Armanoush smiled to herself. So far everything had gone just like she had imagined. Except Baron Baghdassarian. He had not responded to anything yet.
In the meantime, Asya, still fixated on the screen, typed, I do recognize your loss and grief. I do not deny the atrocities committed. It's just my past that I am recoiling from. I don't know who my father is or what his story was like. If I had a chance to know more about my past, even if it were sad, would f choose to know it or not? The dilemma of my life.
You are full of contradictions, replied Anti-Khavurma.
Johnny Cash wouldn't mind that! interjected Madame My-ExiledSoul.
Tell me, what can I as an ordinary Turk in this day and age do to ease your pain?
Now this wass a question hitherto no Turk had asked the Armenians in the Cafe Constantinopolis. In the past, they had had Turkish visitors twice, both heatedly nationalist young men who had popped up out of nowhere, apparently with the intention to prove that the Turks had done nothing wrong to the Armenians, and if anything, it was the Armenians who had rebelled against the Ottoman regime and killed the Turks. One of them had gone so far as to argue that if the Ottoman regime had really been as genocidal as claimed, today there would be no Armenians left to talk about this. The fact that there were so many Armenians lashing against the Turks was a clear indication that the Ottomans had not persecuted them.
Until today the Cafe Constantinopolis's encounter with the Turks had basically been a fuming exchange of slander and soliloquy. This time the tone was radically different.
Your state can apologize, answered Miserable-Coexistence.
My state? I've got nothing to do with the state, Asya wrote as she thought about the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist prosecuted for drawing the prime minister as a wolf. Look, I am a nihilist! She stopped short of mentioning her Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.
Then you yourself can apologize, barged in Anti-Khavurma.
You want me to apologize for something I personally had nothing to do with?
So you say, Lady Peacock/ Siramark wrote. We R all born into continuity in time and the past continues to live within the present. We come from a family line, a culture, a nation. Are you gonna say let bygones be bygones?
As Asya's eyes raked the screen she looked baffled, as if in the midst of a presentation she had forgotten her lines. She stroked Sultan the Fifth's head absently a few times before her fingers went back to the keyboard again.