1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts, chopped 1/2 cup pistachios 1/2 cup pine nuts 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/3 cup golden raisins 1/3 cup dried figs 1/3 cup dried apricots 1/2 cup orange peels 2 tablespoons rosewater
Garnishes
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1/2 cup blanched and slivered almonds 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
Preparation
Most of the ingredients should be soaked in separate bowls the day before as follows:
In one bowl, cover the beans with cold water and soak them overnight. The wheat and rice should be rinsed carefully and then covered with water in a different bowl. Soak the figs and apricots and orange peels in hot water for 1/2 hour, then drain and reserve the soaking water; chop them, mix them with the golden raisins, and set aside.
Cooking
Cover the beans with 1 gallon of cold water. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat until the beans are just tender, about an hour.While the beans are cooking, boil 2–1/2 quarts of water, stir in the wheat and rice, and simmer over low heat, stirring frequently, until the wheat and rice mixture is tender, about an hour. Combine.
Add the reserved soaking water, the sugar, chopped hazelnuts, pistachios, and pine nuts to the pot and bring it all to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Simmer and stir for 30 minutes or more. Allow the mixture to thicken slightly until it resembles a thick soup. Add the vanilla, raisins, figs, apricots, and orange peels and cook for another 20 minutes, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat and blend in the rosewater. Let the ashure stand at room temperature for an hour or more. Sprinkle with cinnamon and garnish with slivered almonds and pomegranate seeds.
Inside the girls' room, Armanoush had been quiet and pensive since early morning. She didn't feel like going out or doing anything.
Asya stayed indoors with her playing tavla and listening to Johnny Cash.
"Six six! You lucky thing!"
But Armanoush showed no trace of pleasure about the dice she had rolled. Instead, she broodingly pouted at her checkers as if hoping to move them by the force of her gaze.
"I have this awful feeling something bad has happened and my mother isn't telling me."
"Please don't worry," Asya said, chewing the end of her pencil, craving nicotine. "You've talked with your mom and she sounded all right. Thanks to you they will now visit Istanbul. They'll come and meet you here and soon you will be back in your house…." Though Asya had meant to soothe, the words had oddly come out as an objection. The truth is, it saddened her that Armanoush would be leaving so soon.
"I don't know. It's just this feeling I can't get rid of." Armanoush sighed. "My mom doesn't travel anywhere, not even to Kentucky. That she is flying to Istanbul is mind-boggling. But then again, it is so typical of her. She cannot stand not being in control of my life. She would fly around the globe to keep me under her eye."
While she waited for Armanoush to decide where to move which checker, Asya drew her legs under her, working on yet another article of her Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.
Article Ten: If you find a dear friend, make sure you don't get so accustomed to her as to forget that in the end, each one of us is existentially lonely and that sooner or later the everlasting solitude will overtake any fortuitous friendships.
Distressed though she might be, Armanoush's playing skills were surely unaffected by her mood. With the "six six," she rammed into Asya's home board, and trounced her opponent by crushing all three of her checkers at once. Triumph! Asya sunk her teeth deeper into the pencil.
Article Eleven: Even if you have found a dear friend whom you have gotten so accustomed to as to forget Article Ten, never overlook the fact that she can still give you a drubbing in other spheres of life. On the tavlu board, just as in birth and death, each one of us is alone.
Having three checkers waiting on the bar, and with only two gates still open in the opposing home board, Asya now had to roll either a "five five" or a "three three." There was no other roll that could save her from defeat. She spat in her palms for good luck and heaved a prayer to the tavla djinni, whom she had always envisaged as a half-black, half-white ogre with madly rotating dice as eyeballs. She then rolled the dice: "three two." Damn! Unable to play, she clasped her hands and grumbled.
"Poor thing!" Armanoush exclaimed.
Asya put the awaiting black checkers on the bar as she listened to a street vendor outside yelling at the top of his voice: "Raisins!
I've got golden raisins. For kiddos and toothless grannies, golden raisins are
for everyone!" When she spoke again she raised her voice over the vendor's.
"I'm sure your mom is fine. Think about it, if she weren't fine how could she make this trip all the way from Arizona to Istanbul?"
"I guess you're right." Armanoush nodded and rolled the dice. "Six six" again!
"Yo, are you gonna keep rolling six six forever? Are those loaded dice or what?" Asya volleyed suspiciously. "Are you cheating, miss?"
Armanoush chuckled. "Oh yeah, if only I knew how to!"
But right when she was about to move another pair of white checkers into the open space, Armanoush paused abruptly, pale and drawn.
"Oh my God, how could I not see this?!" Armanoush exclaimed in anguish. "It's not my mother, you see, it's my father. This is exactly how Mom would react if something bad happened to my father… or to dad's family…. Oh God, something has happened to my father!"
"But now you're speculating." Asya tried to soothe her without success. "When did you last speak with your father?"
"Two days ago," Armanoush said. "I called him from Arizona and he was OK, everything sounded normal."
"Wait, wait, wait! What do you mean you called him from Arizona?"
Armanoush blushed. "I lied." Then she shrugged, as if to savor the satisfaction of having done something wrong for a change. "I lied to almost everyone in my family to be able to take this trip. If I'd revealed I was going to Istanbul on my own, everyone would have been so alarmed they wouldn't have let me travel anywhere. So I thought, I'll go to Istanbul and tell them about the whole thing when I get back. My father thinks I'm in Arizona with my mom while Mom thinks I'm in San Francisco with Dad. I mean, she used to think, at least until yesterday."
Asya stared at Armanoush with a disbelief that soon vanished, replaced by something closer to reverence. Perhaps Armanoush was not the immaculate, well-behaved girl that Asya had suspected she was. Perhaps somewhere in her luminous universe there was room for darkness, dirt, and deviance. The confession, far from upsetting Asya, had only served to increase her esteem of Armanoush. She closed the tavla board and stuck it under her armpit, a symbol of accepted defeat, though Armanoush had no way of knowing this cultural gesture. "I don't think anything is wrong… but come on, why don't you give your dad a call?" Asya asked.
As if waiting for these words to take action, Armanoush reached out to the phone. Given the time difference, it was early morning in San Francisco.
It was answered after one ring, not by Grandma Shushan as usual, but by her dad.
"Sweetheart." Barsam Tchakhmakhchian heaved a sigh of intense endearment as soon as he heard his daughter's voice. There was an eerie clatter in the phone connection, which made them both aware of the geographical distance in between. "I was going to call you in the morning. I know you are in Istanbul; your mom called to tell me."
A brief, prickly silence ensued but Barsam Tchakhmakhchian did not comment on it, nor did he scold her. "Your mom and I were so worried about you. Rose is flying to Istanbul with your stepfather…. They are coming there to get you. They will be in Istanbul tomorrow by noon."
Now Armanoush stood frozen. Something was wrong. Something was so very wrong. That her father and her mother were talking to each other, and what's more, updating each other, was a surefire sign of apocalypse.