bowls, one and a half scoops in each. She wondered why Auntie Zeliha didn't want to take her along to the airport. There certainly was room in the car. It crossed her mind that perhaps Auntie Zeliha was trying to keep her away from the visitors. Asya had noticed that her mother was not thrilled with the news of Mustafa's return after twenty years.
'Can I help you?'
When she turned around she spotted Armanoush standing, watching her.
'Sure, why not? Thanks.' Asya gave her a bowl of slivered almonds. 'Would you sprinkle a few of these into each bowl?'
For the following ten minutes they worked side by side as they exchanged brief, poignant words about Grandma Shushan.
'I came to Istanbul because I thought if I made a journey on my own into my grandmother's city, I could better understand my family heritage and where I stood in life. I guess I wanted to meet Turks to better absorb what it means to be an Armenian. This whole trip was an attempt to connect with my grandma's past. I was going to tell her that we looked for her house… and now she's gone….' Armanoush began to cry. 'I didn't even have the chance to see her one last time.'
Asya gave Armanoush a hug, though clumsily, not being used to showing love and compassion. 'I'm so sorry for your loss,' she said. 'Beforee you leave Istanbul, you and I can go hunt for other reminiscences from your grandma's past. We can go to that place again and talk to other people, see if we can find anything.'
Armanoush shook her head. 'I appreciate that, but the truth is, once my mother is here, it'll be hard to go around alone. She's very overprotective.'
They got quiet hearing footsteps behind them. It was Auntie Banu, coming to check how they were doing. She watched them decorate the desserts for a while. 'Does Armanoush know the tale of the ashure?' she asked, smiling, not so much a question as an introduction to a narrative.
As the two young women worked together, cracking pomegranates and sprinkling cinnamon powder and slivered almonds on dozens of ashure bowls lined up on the counter, Auntie $anu began.
'Once there was, once there wasn't, in a land not so far away, the ways of the human beings were despicable and the times were bad. After watching this wretchedness for long enough, Allah finally sent a messenger, Noah, to correct the people's ways and to give them a chance to repent. But when Noah opened his mouth to preach the truth, nobody listened to him and his words were interrupted by curses. They called him names: crazy, lunatic, erratic….'
Asya cast an amused look at her aunt, knowing how to get to her: 'But more than anyone else it was the betrayal of his wife that devastated Noah, right Auntie? Didn't Noah's wife join the ranks of the pagans?'
'Indeed she did, that she-snake in the grass!' Auntie Banu replied, torn between narrating a religious story fittingly, and peppering it with a few remarks of her own.
'Noah tried hard to convince his wife and his people for eight hundred years…. And don't ask me how come it took him that long,' Auntie Banu counseled. 'Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one smaller. Just like that, Noah spent eight hundred years praying for his people, trying to bring them to the right path. One day God sent him the Angel Gabriel. `Build a ship,' the angel whispered, `and take a pair of each species.'… '
Translating a story that needed no translation, Asya's voice dropped a notch, for this happened to be the part she liked least.
'Eventually, in Noah's ark there were good people of all faiths,' Auntie Banu continued. 'David was there; so were Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and peace be upon him, Mohammed. Thus equipped, they embarked and started to wait.
'Soon the flood came. Allah commanded: `O sky! Now is the time! Let your water pour down. Do not hold yourself back anymore. Send them your water and wrath!' He then commanded the earth: `O earth, holdd your water, do not absorb it. The water, rose so quickly no one outside the arc could survive.''
Now the translator's voice rose, for this happened to be Asya's favorite part. She liked to visualize the flood in her mind's eye, washing away villages and civilizations, as well as all the unwanted memories of the past.
'For days on end they sailed and sailed, it was all water everywhere. Soon food became scarce. There wasn't food enough to make a meal. So Noah ordered: `Bring whatever you have.' And they did, animals and humans, insects and birds, people of different faiths, they brought whatever little they had left. They cooked all the ingredients together and thus concocted a huge pot of ashure.' Auntie Banu proudly smiled at the pot on the stove as if it were the same as the one in the legend. 'That is the story of this dessert.'
According to Auntie Banu every significant event in world history had taken place on the day of ashure. It was on this day that Allah had accepted Adam's repentance. So was Yunus released by the dolphin that had swallowed him, Rumi encountered by Shams, Jesus taken to the heavens, and Moses given the Ten Commandments.
'Ask Armanoush to tell us the most important date for the Armenians,' Auntie Banu remarked, thinking there was a good chance it could be this very same day.
As soon as the question was translated, Armanoush replied, 'The genocide.'
'I don't think that suits your pattern.' Asya smiled at her aunt, skipping the translation.
It was then that Auntie Zeliha appeared in the kitchen armed with her purse. 'All right airport passengers, it's time to go!'
'I'm coming with you.' Asya dropped the scoop on the counter.
'We've talked about this,' Auntie Zeliha responded indifferently. It didn't quite sound like her. A husky, scary tinge infiltrated her tone, as if someone else were speaking but using her mouth. 'You stay at home, miss,' decreed the stranger.
What upset Asya most was the fact that she couldn't read Auntie Zeliha's expression. She must have done something wrong to upset her mother, but she had no idea what it could be, unless, of course, it was her very existence.
'What have I done to her this time?' Asya lifted her hands in despair when Auntie Zeliha and Armanoush had gone.
'Nothing, my dear; she loves you so,' Auntie Banu muttered. 'You stay with me and the djinn. We'll all finish decorating the ashure and then go shopping.'
But Asya didn't feel like going shopping. With a sigh she grabbed a handful of pomegranate seeds to sprinkle on the stillundecorated bowls to the side. She scattered the seeds evenly, as if leaving behind a trail of marks to guide some star-crossed fable child homeward. It occurred to her that pomegranate seeds could have been tiny, precious rubies in another life.
'Auntie.' She turned to her eldest aunt. 'What happened to that golden brooch that you had? The pomegranate brooch, remember? Where is it?'
Auntie Banu paled as Mr. Bitter on her left shoulder whispered into her ear: 'When do we remember the things we remember? Why do we ask the things we ask?'
Noah's flood, terrifying though it was, started gently, inaudibly, with a few drops of rain. Sporadic drops, heralding the catastrophe to come, a message noticed by no one. There were dark, gloomy clouds clustered in the sky, so gray and heavy, as if loaded with molten lead full of evil eyes. Each hole in each cloud was an unblinking celestial eye that shed a tear for each sin committed on earth.
But the day Auntie Zeliha was raped was not a rainy day. As a matter of fact, there was not even a single cloud in the bright blue sky. She remembered the sky on that ill-omened day for years and years to come, not because she had turned her eyes up toward the heavens to pray or beg Allah for help, but because during the struggle there came a time when her head was hanging over the bed, and while unable to budge under his weight, unable to fight him back anymore, her gaze had inadvertently locked on to the sky, only to catch sight of a commercial balloon slowly floating by. The balloon was orange and black, and on it was stenciled in huge letters:
KODAK.
Zeliha shivered at the thought of a colossal camera taking pictures of everything happening down here on earth at that moment in time. A Polaroid camera taking a snapshot of a rape inside a room in a konak in Istanbul.
She had been alone in her room since late morning, enjoying the solitude, which was a rare occasion in their household. When her father had been alive, he wouldn't permit anyone to close the doors of their rooms. Privacy
