The Doves of Ohanavank (31 page)

“Good,” she says, “that will come in handy when we’re ready. Leave the planning to me, Yuri. This is not something you can rush. I doubt that
his men will suddenly find motivation any time soon. We still don’t have enough information about him. His weaknesses and, more importantly, his routine. What does he do on a typical day? Who can take over from him if he dies? What do
they
do on a typical day? I admit that what you’ve uncovered in the past week has been impressive. But it is not enough to strike. Gather this information and we’ll regroup. I have a specific team in mind for this operation.”

“Any progress on the documents for Dubai?” asks Yuri.

“Yes,” says Carla, but makes sure Yuri sees her displeasure. Only she can change the subject like that, and only she can ask for progress reports. Nevertheless, she explains. “Three documents are ready. He’s working on the fourth.”

She then takes her feet off the desk and walks toward him.

Alisia confirms Laurian’s reports that Avo has moderated his drinking. Actually, moderation is not the right way to describe it, because he avoids alcohol altogether for four or five days in a row, and then drinks a bottle of vodka in a few hours and gets senseless drunk. But at least he does not drink everyday, and he does not get violent when he drinks. He just passes out and sleeps for twelve hours.

Most of the pigs are sold. Only one remains with her litter of piglets. Avo has decided to keep them, using the feed he had purchased before the prices rose, augmented by household refuse, such as potato peels, outer leaves of cabbages, wilted carrots, beets and turnips from their winter storage bin, and as much as he can gather of the same stuff from Martha’s house.

The proceeds from the sale of the pigs have generated less than twenty percent of what Avo borrowed from Laurian. But Laurian does not accept any payment.

“Use what you have to cover your other debts,” he tells Avo. “The interest will accumulate and it will become a much larger burden on you later. What you and I need to talk about is not the old debt, but a new business plan.”

“What’s the point?” says Avo. “They’ll destroy anything else that we start.” He sounds so depressed that Laurian is torn between his feelings of sympathy and anger. Anger not at LeFreak, but at Avo himself, for not showing the will to start oevr, to fight back, for what appears to Laurian as a defeatist, fatalistic resignation and acceptance of conditions as they are. That is the problem with the whole country, he thinks. The LeFreaks and the Ayvazians would not survive for one day if people didn’t acquiesce so easily.

Laurian checks his anger by reminding himself that Avo is in fact different from the vast majority of the population. He has shown two major acts of defiance, both violent. One during the killings of last fall, and the second through his attack on LeFreak’s fence, an utterly hopeless act driven by nothing other than extreme desperation.

“Of course there is a point,” he tells him calmly, “since when do you give up like that? Haven’t we overcome much larger problems?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A
hmed spends hours at the Madenataran, pouring over not only old Arabic manuscripts, but also ancient Armenian texts written on lambskin, old Bibles with miniature art filling the margins, handwritten and painstakingly copied by one priest over his entire lifetime.

He has done his homework before coming here.

“This is one of the largest repositories of old manuscripts in the world,” he tells me, oblivious to the irony of acting as my tour guide in Yerevan. “More than seventeen thousand manuscripts, thirty to forty thousand documents virtually on every subject, and what’s most surprising to me, well over two-thousand historical documents in non-Armenian languages, including over a thousand Arabic manuscripts.” He catches me watching him and stops.

“Are you listening to what I’m saying?” he asks with a smile.

“I’m listening.” I smile back.

I admit to him that this is my first visit to the place as well. He looks at me, surprised at first, then smiles.

“I love it that we can share a first experience,” he whispers.

We go to lunch at a French restaurant near the Cascade. He talks nonstop about the Arabic manuscripts, which, he says, include both complete and partial Quranic scripts and life stories of the Prophet Mohammed. “We don’t have this many ancient manuscripts in Dubai,” he tells me.

After lunch, he drops me back at my place, because I tell him I need a few hours for some personal errands.

“Thanks Ahmed,” I say as I leave the car, “I’ll meet you in the lobby of your hotel around four. No need to send the car to pick me up.” The Mercedes sedan has begun to be noticed in my neighborhood.

I don’t know why I never thought about the fact that Ahmed and Edik are staying at the same hotel. Edik always stays at the Marriott. That’s where Ahmed is. As I walk up the steps to enter the hotel, I wonder what I’d do if they’re both there. Do I introduce them? Do I pretend I don’t know Edik?

I walk in, and Ahmed is with Manoj as expected, having a coffee. Edik is not around. I wait for them to finish and we walk over to the Art Gallery across the Square. Here too, Ahmed has done his homework.

“There is far too much to see in just a few hours,” he says. “Let’s focus on the 5
^th
and 4
^th
floors. The 5
^th
floor is the classical Armenian artists and some 19
^th
century art. The 4
^th
is twentieth century Armenian artists.” He sees me staring at him again and starts laughing. “All you need, Lara
jan
,” he says, stressing the
jan
, “is to think like a tourist. It is all there. But those who live here will never open a tourist flyer!”

“And who taught you to say ‘
jan
’?” I ask.

“That’s how everyone talks around here,” he says casually. “That’s much easier than
ma.de.na.ta.ran
! Anyway, I think we should start with the 5
^th
floor and walk down. What do you say?”

On the fifth floor, we start from the left wing, which happens to host the Gallery’s Aivazovski collection. He is fascinated by the shipwreck
scenes. He spends a long time in front of each painting. I hear an occasional ‘incredible’ or ‘genius’ coming out of his mouth, but he finds it difficult to let go of one painting and move to the next. He stops the longest in front of a painting of a storm, with a large sailing ship tilted on its side, the mast bare of any sails, waves and mist rising from the ocean, merging with a sky full of thick white clouds, a long log is floating in front of the ship, waves gushing over it—the entire painting is a presentation of concentrated, angry nature and danger. “Look at that,” whispers Ahmed, in awe. “Every single point on this canvas is moving. You feel the waves in your bones.”

Something else catches his eye. It is a painting of Noah leaving the ark. Noah is in the foreground, in flowing robes, long white hair and beard, accompanied by his sons, and in the background a long caravan of the other family members and all the animals, winding through the wet fields, with Mount Ararat in the background.

He walks closer to the painting. “You can feel the exhilaration, the joy, the victory of having survived the flood, and most of all, you can feel the power of their faith. Wouldn’t you love to have this painting in your bedroom, right in front of your bed, so every morning when you open your eyes, you live this same feeling of having survived something huge? Can you imagine that?”

I did not know about Ahmed’s infatuation with paintings. During the time that I was with him, he had talked about music, poetry, and sometimes philosophy. He had brought CDs for us to listen together. Towards the end, right before I escaped, he had begun to introduce verses from famous Arab poets, to augment my language lessons. He’d read and translate them to me, then ask me to read them. But his ability to walk straight into a painting and be engulfed by it is news to me.

“On second thought,” he says, looking at Noah’s painting again, “I could never have this in my home.”

“Why?” I ask. “I mean, obviously not this exact one, but a perfect duplicate. The guide below told me you could commission duplicates of the paintings. They will be identical, except for the size, she said. They change the size, otherwise it would be considered a forgery.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “Noah’s story is in the Quran also. In Islam, he is considered one of the prophets. God spoke to him. And we cannot have a physical portrayal of any prophet. It goes back to the prohibition of worshipping idols.”

A guard walks in to say it is closing time. We have not even finished viewing Aivazovski yet.

We walk out. It is already dark in the Square.

“It is too late to go to the Genocide Memorial,” he says. “I will not even try to pronounce the name again. There is too much to see here. I’ll have to extend my stay by a day or two.” He looks at me, hoping for a happy reaction. I give him a warm smile.

“I think you’ll enjoy meeting my friend Edik,” I say. “He’s like you. Interested in everything.”

“I’m not interested in everything, Lara,” he says seriously. “Only in the things that are part of you.” After a minute, he adds, “Of course, I’d still love to meet your friend.”

We walk slowly around the Square and back to the hotel.

“Where shall we have dinner?” he asks.

“You seem to know more about Yerevan than I do,” I say, laughing. “You decide.”

“Do you feel like anything in particular?”

“No, but I’d prefer somewhere quiet. I have something important to discuss with you.”

“Oh? Good news or bad?”

“Would I give you bad news when you’ve come all the way here to see me?” I ask, paraphrasing him.

He chooses a quiet restaurant on Charents Street. It is around fifteen minutes drive from the hotel. Manoj does not come along. Ahmed’s driver will have to figure out where it is from a map, instead of following Armen as usual. He finds the address without any difficulty.

I like the feel of the place. It is an old house turned into a restaurant, with separate dining areas with just a few tables in each. There is also a terrace, where we sit. He orders several dishes for us to share, and looks at the wine list.

“They have some interesting foreign wines here,” he says. “What type of wine do you feel like?”

“Ahmed, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not drink tonight. I think I still have some of that cognac from last night in my veins.”

“That’s fine,” he says, “I won’t drink either.”

I don’t know why I automatically compare Ahmed and Edik in almost everything. This, for example, would never happen with Edik. For him,
wine is more important at dinnertime than the food. He won’t go to a restaurant that has a poor wine list, even if the food is excellent. Ahmed does not seem to care one way or another.

We’ve spent almost the entire day together without talking about us. I think he feels the need for a break from last night’s serious conversation as much as I do. His seemingly boundless interest in old and new, and his deep appreciation of the arts remind me of Edik. But the two men could not be more different in every other way. Edik’s endless curiosity springs in part from his profession, and in part from his being an expatriate Armenian trying to understand today’s Armenia. Ahmed, on the other hand, is first and foremost a businessman. His interest in history and art comes from a nostalgia toward a once glorious history that he fears is lost. He used to talk to me about the Arab renaissance in the first several centuries of Islam with great passion. One way or another, all of his non-business interests can somehow be traced back to that history.

Aivazovski’s paintings are still on his mind. His desire to wake up every morning to the same sensation as Noah must have had at the hour when he finally left the ark fascinates me. I wonder what it would be like to have the freedom to think about that kind of possibility. What type of outlook on life should he have for that thought to even occur to him?