could never be told.
Barsam remembered his father dancing around his mother to a Hale, drawing circles within circles with his arms raised like a soaring bird; the music starting out slow, becoming faster and faster, this Middle Eastern swirl that the children could only watch with admiration from the side. Music was the most vivid trace left from his upbringing. For years Barsam had played the clarinet in an Armenian band and danced in traditional costume, black bloomers and a yellow shirt. He remembered leaving his house in those costumes while all the other kids in their non-Armenian neighborhood watched him with mocking eyes. Each time he would hope the kids would forget what they had seen or simply wouldn't bother to poke fun at him. Each time he was wrong.
While being enrolled in one Armenian activity after another, all he really wanted was to be like them, nothing more, nothing less, to be American and to get rid of this Armenian dark skin. Even years later, his mother would reproach him every now and then, explaining how as a little boy he had asked the Dutch American tenants upstairs what particular soap they used to wash themselves, because he wanted to be just as white as them. Now as the memories of his childhood gushed back to him with the loss of his mother, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian couldn't help but feel guilty for rapidly unlearning what little Armenian he had learned as a child. He now feltt sorry for not having learned more from his mother, and not having taught more to his daughter.
'Dad, why are you silent?' Armanoush asked, her voice filled with fright.
'Do you remember the youth camp you went to as a teenager?' 'Yes, of course,' Armanoush answered.
'Were you ever angry at me for not sending you there
anymore?'
'Dad, it was me who didn't want to go there anymore, did you forget? It was fun at the beginning but then I decided I was too mature for it. I'm the one who asked you not to send me there the next year….'
'Right,' Barsam said tentatively. 'But still I could have looked for a different camp for Armenian teenagers yourr age.'
'Dad, why are you questioning this now?' Armanoush felt on the verge of tears.
He did not have the heart to tell her. Not like this, not over the phone. He did not want her to learn about her grandmother's death while all alone and thousands of miles away. As he tried to mutter a few words of distraction, his voice rose softly over a hum that broke out in the background. The droning hum of a gathering. It sounded like the entire family was there, relatives and friends and neighbors under the same roof, which, as Armanoush was wise enough to know, could be the sign of only two things: either someone had gotten married or someone had died.
'What's wrong? Where is Grandma Shushan?' Armanoush said softly. 'I want to talk to Grandma.'
That is when Barsam Tchakhmakhchian brought himself to tell her.
Since late evening Auntie Zeliha had been pacing her room with a brisk energy she didn't know how to contain. She couldn't confide in anyone at home how bad she felt, and the more she buried her feelings, the worse she felt. First she thought of brewing herself some soothing herbal tea in the kitchen, but the heavy smell of all the cooking almost made her throw up. Then she went into the living room to watch TV, but finding two of her sisters in there frantically engaged in cleaning while chatting excitedly about the next day, she instantly changed her mind.
Once back in her room again, Auntie Zeliha closed her door, lit a cigarette, and took out the companion she kept under her mattress for such trying days: a bottle of vodka. She hurriedly, but then with increasing sluggishness, imbibed one third of the bottle. Now, after four cigarettes and six shots, she didn't feel anxious anymore; actually, she didn't feel anything, except hunger. All she had to snack on in her room was a package of golden raisins she had bought from a rake-thin street vendor yelling in front of the house earlier in the evening.
Halfway through the bottle and with only a handful of raisins left, her cell phone rang. It was Aram.
'I don't want you to stay in that house tonight,' was the first thing he uttered. 'Or tomorrow, or the day after that. As a matter of fact, I don't want you to spend a day away from me for the rest of my life.'
In response, Auntie Zeliha snickered.
'Please my love, come and stay with me. Leave that house right now. I got you a toothbrush. I even have a clean towel!' Aram attempted to make a joke but stopped halfway. 'Stay with me until he's gone.'
'How are we going to explain my sudden absence to my dear family, then?' Auntie Zeliha grumbled.
'You don't need to explain anything,' Aram said imploringly. 'Look, this must be the one benefit of being the maverick in a traditional family. Whatever you do, I'm sure nobody will be shocked. Come. Please stay with me.'
'What am I going to tell Asya?'
'Nothing, you don't have to say anything…. You know that.'
Holding the phone tightly, Auntie Zeliha curled up in a fetal position. She shut her eyes, ready to sleep, but then mustered the energy to ask: 'Aram, when is it going to end? This compulsory amnesia. This perpetual forgetfulness. Say nothing, remember nothing, reveal nothing, not to them, not to yourself…. Is it ever going to come to an end?'
'Don't think about that now,' Aram tried to soothe her. 'Give yourself a break. You're being too hard on yourself: Come here first thing tomorrow morning.'
'Oh my love… how I wish I could….' Auntie Zeliha turned away her anguished face, as if he could monitor her via the receiver. 'They expect me to go to the airport to welcome them. I am the only one who can drive in this family, remember?'
Aram remained silent, conceding this.
'Don't worry,' Auntie Zeliha whispered. 'I love you… I love you so…. Let's sleep now.'
As soon as she hung up, Auntie Zeliha began to slip into a deep slumber. How she turned off the cell phone, put the vodka bottle aside, stubbed the cigarette into the ashtray, turned off the light, and slid under the covers she would have no recollection of the next morning, when she woke up with an excruciating headache and one of her blankets missing.
'Is it chilly in Istanbul? Should I have brought warmer clothes?' Rose asked, despite the fact that there were three main reasons not to: because she had asked this question before, because she had already packed her luggage, and because just now they were on their way to the Tucson Airport and it was too late to wonder anyway.
Tempted as he was to remind his wife of these three reasons, Mustafa Kazanci kept his eyes fixed on the road and shook his head.
On the day of their flight, Rose and Mustafa left the house at four p.m. to drive to the airport. They had two flights awaiting them: one short, the other quite long. They would first fly from Tucson to San Francisco, then from San Francisco to Istanbul. This being her very first trip to a country where English wasn't the primary language and people did not eat maple syrup-soaked pancakes in the morning, Rose found herself simultaneously excited and distressed. The truth is, she had never been the explorer type, and if it weren't for that much-wished-for but never-actualized dream trip to Bangkok, she and Mustafa wouldn't even have had passports. The closest she had gotten to international travel was to watch their six DVD Discovering Europe collection. From it she had a sense of what Turkey was like-a far more coherent sense than the scraps of information Mustafa had let slip every now and then during their many years of marriage. The problem, however, was that because Rose had watched all six disks in one sitting, and because the 'Traveling Turkey' episode happened to be at the very end, after the episodes about the British Isles, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and Israel, she couldn't help but doubt if the scenes that popped into her mind now were from Turkey or from some other country. Discovering Europe DVDs were indeed handy for educational purposes, especially for American families with no time, means, or desire to travel overseas, but the producers should have put a notice on the collection urging the viewers not to watch the six disks uninterrupted, not to 'travel' to more than one country in one sitting.
At the Tucson International Airport, they visited every store, which meant one kiosk and one souvenir stand. Despite the ostentatious INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT sign (a name bestowed because of its out-of-country flights to Mexico, which was only an hour by car), the airport was so modest that it resembled a local bus terminal, and even Starbucks didn't care to open a branch there. All the same, once inside the souvenir store, Rose was able to find numerous gifts for Mustafa's family. Despite the impromptu nature of this trip and her constant worry about how her daughter was doing there, not to mention her concern about how to tell her about her grandmother's death, as the time of departure neared, Rose had lapsed into a kind of tourist daze. Aspiring to get a special present for every member of Mustafa's all-female family, she carefully pored over the merchandise on every shelf, though there
