Orhan's Inheritance (5 page)

“Let the bells of every Armenian church ring,” bellows the boy priest.

“To battle!” A girl dressed as a soldier waves a plastic rifle.

A stout woman kneels in front of the children, mouthing every word. She waves her arms, encouraging the remaining soldiers to take center stage. The audience is eating it up, Seda can tell. There may even be a few veterans of that battle in the audience. There’ll be claims of that sort by Kalustian for sure. All this incessant probing and recording of the past has made celebrities of them all. Outside these walls, these old people may be overlooked, their past a narrative the world insists upon forgetting. But here among the residents of the Ararat Home, they are esteemed as survivors of the genocide, bearers of unspeakable horrors, guardians of their people’s past.

“Morning Ms. Seda.” Betty Shields, Seda’s favorite orderly, enters the room, her shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor. “Not gonna leave the building today, are we? Well, it’s a damn shame, that’s for sure. It’s a mighty fine day out.”

Seda likes it when Betty speaks this way, adapting a comfortable vernacular that exaggerates her southern black roots. Being the only non-Armenian in all of Ararat Home, let alone the only black person, can’t be easy. It’s always amusing when in the presence of others, especially doctors, Betty Shields alters her speech, stripping it of all its color. Is it conscious? Seda wonders.

“You hear about the genocide exhibit? It’s next week, you know,” Betty says.

“I heard,” Seda says. She folds the letter in half then twice more and tucks it back inside her sleeve.

“They say the governor may come. Imagine that. The governor coming here.”

Seda shrugs her shoulders. It’s not all that hard to imagine. California’s governor, George Deukmejian, is Armenian American. The art exhibit is the brainchild of Seda’s niece, Ani.

Betty kneels before Seda’s wheelchair. She reaches over to stroke Seda’s silver bob.

“I’m not an invalid you know,” Seda says, waving her hand away.

“I know,” says Betty, “but you’ve been awfully quiet lately. You all right?”

“I’m ninety,” Seda answers. “How all right can I be?”

“You got a visitor. Not Ms. Ani. No ma’am. This one’s a gentleman. Checked in at the front desk a few minutes ago. Tall and handsome too. Like a Mediterranean Clark Kent.”

“Lucky me.” Seda rubs her fingers against the letter in her sleeve. Let him wait. She’s got nothing to say to him. The past is dead and now so is Kemal. Uttering even a single syllable might bring it all back and she isn’t going to let that happen.
I will breathe. I will sign whatever he wants and make him leave.
She repeats this mantra to herself whenever the panic sets in.

“Well, all righty then. Show’s over,” Betty says, jutting her chin at the window. “You ready for lunch?” Without waiting for a reply, Betty takes the handles of Seda’s wheelchair.

“Did I say I was ready?” says Seda. “I don’t remember saying I was ready.”

“All the same, it’s time for lunch,” says Betty.

Seda takes a deep breath and picks up the embroidery in her lap. She hunches over her hands, letting her fingers work the delicate piece of stitching. Three rows of red and yellow diamonds mark the pattern as Anatolian in origin. Despite her resolve, the past is bleeding out of her fingers, staining everything she touches.

CHAPTER 4

White Days

ORHAN STANDS IN
the parking lot of the Ararat Home for the Aging, sucking on a cigarette and feeling more than a little intimidated. Inside the sprawling grounds and behind the palm-lined walkways are hundreds of elderly Armenian men and women, some of whom may have been alive during World War I. Singed and scattered by history, they are united in their hatred of all things Turkish. When Auntie Fatma told him to use the Armenian alias “Ohan,” Orhan had laughed at the suggestion. He’s done nothing wrong, and as far as he knows, neither have his ancestors. But he’s heard that they are an angry people, angry enough to inflict violence upon themselves and others over something that may or may not have happened seventy-five years ago. He extinguishes his cigarette on the side of a trash can and walks inside.

The reception area is a large rectangular room decorated in muted sea foam and mauve. Three loveseats surround a tiny coffee table much too small for the room. The sofas are upholstered in a floral print made of a vinyl most resistant to human waste. Silk flower arrangements grace the dusty piano. The place reminds Orhan of the prized living rooms of Turkey’s growing middle class: rooms stocked with every Western comfort but still uncomfortable. Rooms to be viewed but not used.

A bronze bust stands on a large pedestal, placed in the center of the room so that one must walk around it to get to the front desk. Below the bronze man’s creased forehead and comic mustache is a plaque identifying him as the writer, William Saroyan. A paragraph below the bust reads:

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

Orhan stands dumbfounded by this strange collection of words. In this homage to survival, the author actually invites an imagined enemy to try and destroy his race. At least the writer acknowledges that they are an unimportant people. The only thing that’s left to give them importance is this claim to a tragic past, in which Orhan’s people, the Turks, play the villain intent upon destroying them. Orhan knows all about the difficulties minorities face in Turkey, but that doesn’t make all Turks murderous thugs.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asks.

“I’m here to visit a . . .” He considers the word
relative
or
friend,
but neither word fits comfortably in his mouth.

“Name?”

“Orhan.”

“The name of the resident, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Her name is Seda Melkonian,” Orhan says, suddenly aware of his thick Turkish accent.

“Room 1203,” she says. “But it’s lunchtime, so they’re all in the dining hall now. Go down this main hall and turn right. You’ll see the sign.”

Orhan walks a maze of corridors and hallways before finding the dining room. He pauses just before the glass-paneled French doors. The room is filled almost entirely with old women. A handful of men sit at a rectangular table, huddled together for camaraderie or protection. They roll dice into wooden backgammon trays, the way men in his village have done for centuries. Women in mint green scrubs roam the room, adjusting wheelchairs and spoon-feeding hesitant mouths. He steps over the threshold and is immediately confronted by a din of noise coming from a television in one corner of the room. On the screen, a man with perfectly coifed white hair and matching teeth is presiding over a game show of sorts. The contestants stand before an enthusiastic crowd shouting out prices of things ranging from a blender to a new car. Orhan stares at the screen, marveling at the spectacle of garish colors, a celebration of consumerism and wealth accompanied by shiny smiling people and loud music. Distracted, he does not at first notice the robed and slippered woman approaching him. She cradles a plastic blue-eyed doll and calls out to him in what he assumes is Armenian.

Oh God, please don’t be Seda.
He never considered the Melkonian woman might be senile or suffering from some kind of dementia. He gives the woman with the doll a cautious smile. She points an accusing finger at him, and holds the matty-headed doll tight in her other arm. It stares at him too, its rosy lips and cheeks in direct contrast to its shorn locks and tattered dress. Orhan tries to ignore the woman, but she points her crooked finger straight at him.

“Don’t mind her. This is Mrs. Vartanian,” says a hefty black woman, wearing a uniform. Her name tag is decorated with stickers of puppies and reads “Betty.” She takes the woman with the doll gently by the arm.

“She thinks you’re a soldier,” says Betty. The woman presses her plastic doll to her chest before spitting at Orhan’s feet. He looks down in disbelief, his ears burning with disdain.

“She don’t mean nothing by it,” says Betty. “Do you, Mrs. Vartanian?”

“It’s okay. I understand. She’s . . .” He fishes for the appropriate English word and finally settles for “old.”

“We like to call it mature,” Betty says.

Orhan nods, making a mental note to look up the word
mature
later in his English-language dictionary. “I am here to see Seda Melkonian,” he says.

She scans his face for a moment.

“She is expecting me,” he adds.

“Right over there,” Betty says, pointing to a woman with short hair the color of unpolished steel. She is bent over a piece of needlework. Orhan can see her gnarled fingers, hooked like a great eagle’s talons, working diligently at a delicate piece of fabric. He takes a few steps toward her, then stops. Unlike the woman with the doll, Seda Melkonian is impeccably dressed. She wears a navy blue cardigan with a violet silk scarf around her neck. Orhan takes a deep breath and continues toward her, stopping only when his feet are planted right in front of her chair. She smells strongly of jasmine.

“Mrs. Melkonian?” His voice is smaller than it’s been in years.

The old woman raises her head. She has a lovely face, despite its creases. Her eyes have a haughtiness to them. Greenish gray with flecks of gold, they take him in, starting at his shoes and pausing at his shoulders before finally coming to rest on his face.

“Orhan Türkoğlu,” Orhan announces, extending his hand. When she doesn’t take it, he clears his throat and fixes his eyes upon her, looking for a clue about her identity. She looks nothing like his father but a bit like himself with his own hazel eyes and tawny skin. Could this woman hiding in a nursing home in Los Angeles be flesh of his flesh? Orhan’s grandmother had died of tuberculosis within a year or two of his father’s birth. Her sister, Auntie Fatma, arrived shortly after to take care of Orhan’s father, the young Mustafa. No photographs survive of his paternal grandmother. But then, few in Anatolia could have afforded such things back then.

When Orhan’s own mother died in childbirth, Mustafa watered the repressed seeds of his anger with large amounts of raki. And later, when he found God, he replaced the raki with a stronger cocktail of theology and nationalism. Mothers birthed, then died, in the Türkoğlu family. Not even their ghosts stayed behind. Perhaps this is why Orhan is almost thirty and unmarried.

Suddenly, Orhan is eager to get beyond the awkward introductions. He considers how best to explain his presence. A flock of generalities swirl in his head about the importance of his mission, but all he can manage is “I sent you a letter.”

She does not respond.

“I speak perfect English,” he says.

The old woman raises an eyebrow at this.

Embarrassed by the exaggeration, Orhan adds, “I mean, I am fine speaking English.”

After an uncomfortable silence, he grabs an empty chair. “May I sit?” he asks, then before she can respond, he sits down. He waits for her to say something, about the letter or its contents, but the old woman picks up the embroidery in her lap, arranging it just so.

“As you know, my grandfather, Kemal Türkoğlu, has passed.” The words cut through him, forming fresh wounds. Orhan looks for a hint of sadness in her eyes at the news and, finding none, continues, “And he’s left our family home in Karod to you.”

The old woman lowers her head so that her silver hair falls forward, masking the sides of her eyes.

“Do you have any idea why he did that?” he asks suddenly.

She does not answer.

“Are you a distant relative? A friend maybe?” The question seems idiotic as soon as it leaves him.

Orhan looks around for someone with authority, only to find Betty staring at him suspiciously. He has every right to be here. So why are his hands sweaty?

“Excuse me,” he says to Betty, lifting a finger in the air.

Betty continues looking at him, but does not move. “Yes?” she says.

“Does she speak?”

“Pardon?” says the orderly, her southern twang lingering on the first syllable in a way that makes Orhan feel even more foreign.

“Mrs. Melkonian—does she speak?”

“When she wants to,” says Betty, arching one penciled eyebrow at him.

Orhan sighs. Will that be soon? he wants to ask.

He turns his attention back to Seda, who’s making small loops with her needles. Her gnarled fingers move slow and steady in circular motions. Orhan wills himself to be patient, trying to remember that all this may be too much for her. But as a hexagon emerges in the needlework, he feels himself growing more and more angry. Say something, he wants to shout at her. He stretches a hand out and places it on top of the needlework, stalling her hands.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks her.

The old woman looks into his face for a long defiant moment. “
Evet,
yes.”

Orhan is silenced by her answer, spoken in the familiar language of his mother tongue. There is no mistaking the disdain in her voice. Her eyes bore into him, offering up a challenge he can’t quite comprehend.

“You want the house,” she says in English, looking away from him again.

“That’s right,” he says, recovering. “It’s been in my family for almost a century.”

The old woman does not respond to this.

“Can you imagine how we must feel? No, of course you can’t,” he says, answering his own question. He presses his lips together in an effort to contain the emotions. This is when he remembers the photo.

“I wanted to show you this,” he says, pulling out the last photo he took of the house before leaving Karod. He looks at it again before handing it to her. He had hoped that the barren tree and the crumbling facade of the house would discourage this Seda woman from seizing the property, but the intense chiaroscuro makes it a powerful image. The tree and the house have never looked more exotic. He hands it to her anyway.