The Bastard of Istanbul (34 page)

“I thought so.” Armanoush smiled faintly.

Five minutes later they were at the tattoo parlor.

“Welcome!” Auntie Zeliha exclaimed in her slightly husky drawl as she heartily hugged them both. Whatever her perfume was, it was strong—a combination of spice and wood and jasmine. Her dark hair fell on her shoulders in dazzling curls, some of which she had highlighted with a substance so glittery that whenever she made a move under the halogen lights, her hair shimmered. Armanoush looked at her agape, for the first time sympathizing with the fright and admiration that she imagined Asya must have felt toward her mother since she was a child.

Inside it was like a little museum. Across from the entrance there was a huge framed photograph of a woman of uncertain nationality, her back turned toward the viewer to better expose the intricately detailed tattoo on her body. It was an Ottoman miniature. It looked like a scene from a banquet, with an acrobat above the diners walking a tightrope from one shoulder to the other. Such a traditional miniature tattooed on the back of a modern woman was startling. Below was a phrase in English: A TATTOO IS A MESSAGE SENT FROM BEYOND TIME!

There were showcases all over the store in which hundreds of tattoo designs and piercing jewelry were displayed. The tattoo designs were clustered under several titles: “Roses & Thorns,” “Bleeding Hearts,” “Stabbed Hearts,” “The Way of the Shaman,” “Creepy Hairy Creatures,” “Non-Hairy but Equally Creepy Dragons,” “Patriotic Motifs,” “Names & Numbers,” “Simurg and the Bird Family, ” and finally “Sufi Symbols.”

Armanoush couldn’t remember ever seeing so few people in one room making so much noise. Besides Auntie Zeliha, there was an eccentric man with orange hair and a needle in his hand, a teenager and his mother (who couldn’t seem to decide whether to stay or leave), and two longhaired, long-unshaven men who looked completely out of space and time, like drugged-out rock musicians from the 1970s just now recovering from a bad trip. One of the latter was sitting in a large comfortable chair, noisily chewing bubble gum while chatting with his friend and having a purple mosquito tattooed on his ankle. The man with the needle turned out to be Auntie Zeliha’s assistant and a talented artist in his own right. While he worked, Armanoush stared at him, surprised at how much sound a tattoo needle was capable of producing.

“Don’t worry. The sound is more dramatic than the pain,” Auntie Zeliha remarked, reading her mind. Then she added with a wink, “Besides, that customer is used to it. This must be his twentieth. Tattoo is an addiction sometimes. One is never enough. With every new tattoo you will discover the urge to get another one. I wonder why addiction recovery centers have not included this in their programs yet.”

Armanoush was silent for a long moment, studying the outlandish rock musician out of the corner of her eye. If the man felt any pain, he showed no signs of it. “Why would anyone want a purple mosquito tattooed on his ankle?”

Auntie Zeliha chuckled knowingly. “
Why?
That is one question we never ask here. You see, in this store we refuse to accept the
tyranny of normalcy.
Whichever design a customer asks for, I am sure there must be a reason, one that even he might not know himself. I never ask
why.
”

“How about the piercings?”

“The same,” Auntie Zeliha said, pointing to her nose piercing and smiling. “You know, this one is nineteen years old. I did it when I was Asya’s age.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I went to the bathroom, I used a baby carrot, a sterilized needle, ice cubes to anesthetize, and also, lots of rage. I had so much rage against everything but mostly against my own family. I said to myself I am gonna do this and I pierced my nose. My hands shook in my nervousness, so I pierced it wrong the first time and hit the septum. It bled a lot. But then I got the technique and the next time pierced it right on the nostril.”

“Really?” Armanoush said again, only this time she sounded perplexed at the turn the conversation was taking.

“Yup!” Auntie Zeliha patted her nose with pride. “I screwed a ring there and just walked out of the bathroom like that. Back then I used to enjoy driving my mom crazy.”

Hearing these last words from where she stood, Asya gave her mother an amused glance.

“But what I am trying to say is, I pierced my nose because it was forbidden. You know what I mean? It was out of the question for a Turkish girl from a traditional family to have a piercing, so I went ahead and did it on my own. But times have changed now. That’s what we’re here for. In this store we give advice to our customers, and sometimes we even refuse some people, but we never judge them. We never ask
why.
That is one thing I learned early in life. If you judge people, they’ll go and do it anyway.”

Just then the teenager slid his gaze from the showcases toward Auntie Zeliha and asked, “Can you make this dragon’s tail longer so that it can cover my whole arm? I want it to extend from my elbow to my wrist—you know, as if it were crawling down my arm.”

Before Auntie Zeliha could answer that, however, it was the mother who piped in. “Are you crazy? No way! We had agreed to have something small and simple, like a bird or a ladybug. Never did I give you permission for dragons’ tails. . . .”

For two hours Asya and Armanoush watched the action in the parlor as customers came and went. Five high school students came in saying they each wanted to have an eyebrow pierced, but as soon as the sterilized needle went through the eyebrow of the first, the others changed their minds. Then a soccer fan walked in who wanted to have the emblem of his favorite team on his chest. After that came an ultranationalist who asked to have the Turkish flag on his fingertip so that when he wagged his finger at other people he would be waving the flag. And finally, there was an impressive blond transvestite singer who wanted to have the name of her lover tattooed on the knuckles of her hands.

Then a middle-aged man came in who looked abnormally
normal
among the usual clientele in the tattoo parlor. It was Aram Martirossian.

Aram was a tall, slightly stout, good-looking man who had a kind but weary face, dark beard, rather hoary hair, and deep dimples that materialized each time he broke into a smile. His eyes glittered with intellect behind his thick-rimmed glasses. From the way he looked at Auntie Zeliha, one could instantly see love. Love and respect and synchronization. When he talked she completed his gestures, when she gestured he completed her words. They were two complicated individuals who seemed to have achieved a miraculous harmony together.

When she started to converse with him, Armanoush switched to her English-as-a-second-language English, the way she did each time she met someone new in Istanbul. Thus she introduced herself as unhurriedly as possible in a slow-moving, rhythmic, almost childlike English. She was surprised to hear Aram’s English flow fluently, with a subtle British accent.

“Your English is so good!” Armanoush couldn’t help but remark. “How did you pick up a British accent, may I ask?”

“Thank you,” Aram said. “I went to college in London, both undergrad and grad. But we can speak Armenian if you’d like.”

“I can’t.” Armanoush shook her head. “As a child I learned some from my grandma but because my parents were separated, I didn’t stay in one place for too long and there were always disruptions. Then every summer when I was between ten and thirteen, I went to an Armenian youth camp. That was fun and my Armenian improved there, but afterward, it deteriorated again.”

“I learned Armenian from my grandmother too.” Aram smiled. “To tell the truth, both Mom and Grandma thought I should be raised bilingual, except they disagreed about what the second language had to be. Mom thought it would be better for me to speak Turkish at school and English at home, since when I grew up, I was destined to leave this country anyway. But Grandma proved resolute. She wanted Turkish at school, Armenian at home.”

Armanoush was intrigued by Aram’s aura, but she was even more fascinated by his humbleness. They talked about Armenian grandmothers for a while—those in the diaspora, those in Turkey, and those in Armenia.

At six thirty p.m. Auntie Zeliha handed the store over to her assistant and the four of them headed to a tavern nearby.

“Before you leave Istanbul, Aram and Auntie Zeliha want to take us to a tavern so that you can see a typical evening of drinking, ” Asya had explained to Armanoush.

On the way, as they passed through a poorly lit street, they came across an apartment building from whose windows transvestite prostitutes eyed the passersby. The two on the first floor were so close that Armanoush was able to glimpse the details of their heavily made-up faces. One of them, a hefty woman with thick lips and hair as glowing red as fireworks in the dark, laughingly said something in Turkish.

“What did she say?” Armanoush asked Asya.

“She said my bracelets are gorgeous and far too many for me!”

To Armanoush’s surprise, Asya took off one of her beaded bracelets and gave it to the red-haired transvestite. The latter joyously accepted the gift, put it on, and with perfectly manicured, crimson-nailed fingers raised a can of Diet Coke, as if offering a toast to Asya.

Watching the scene with marveling eyes, Armanoush wondered what Jean Genet would make of it. That Cherry-Vanilla Diet Coke, bead bracelets, the tart odor of semen, and childish joy could all coexist on a seamy street in Istanbul?

The tavern was a stylish but convivial place near the Flower Passage. As soon as they sat, two waiters appeared with a cart of
mezes.

“Armanoush, why don’t you surprise us again with your culinary vocabulary?” Auntie Zeliha requested.

“Well, let’s see, there is
yalanci sarma, tourshi, patlijan, topik, enginar
. . .” Armanoush started naming the dishes the waiters were leaving on the table.

Customers kept arriving in couples or groups, and in no more than twenty minutes the tavern was full. Amid all these equally unfamiliar faces and sounds and smells, Armanoush lost her sense of place. She felt like she could be in Europe or in the Middle East or in Russia. Auntie Zeliha and Aram drank
rakı,
Asya and Armanoush had white wine. Auntie Zeliha smoked cigarettes, Aram puffed on cigars, while Asya, apparently avoiding the use of tobacco in front of her mother, chewed the insides of her mouth instead.

“You’re not smoking this evening,” Armanoush said to Asya, sitting next to her.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Asya sighed. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Hush! Auntie Zeliha doesn’t know that I smoke.”

Armanoush was surprised that Asya rebelliously, almost sadistically, took pleasure in infuriating her mother at every opportunity, but when it came to smoking cigarettes in front of her, she was a docile daughter.

During the following hour they chatted idly while waiters brought one dish after another. First they served the
mezes
—the cold dishes—followed by lukewarm dishes, the hot dishes, and desserts and coffee.
This must be the style here,
Armanoush figured out,
instead of choosing from a menu, the whole menu comes to you.

When both the noise and the smoke inside intensified, Armanoush inched closer toward Aram, having finally summoned the courage to ask him the question that had been tugging at the edges of her mind for some time:

“Aram, I understand you like Istanbul, but didn’t you ever consider coming to America? I mean, you could come to California, for instance. There’s a large Armenian community there, you know. . . .”

Aram stared at her for a full minute, as if taking in every detail, until he slumped back in his chair and gave a puzzling laugh. Armanoush was rather perturbed by this laughter, which she felt somehow shut her out. Not convinced that she had been understood correctly, she leaned forward and tried to offer a better explanation: “If they are oppressing you here, you can always come to America. There are many Armenian communities there who would be more than happy to help you and your family.”

Aram did not laugh this time. Instead he gave her a warm smile, warm but somewhat tired.

“Why would I want to do that, dear Armanoush? This city is my city. I was born and raised in Istanbul. My family’s history in this city goes back at least five hundred years. Armenian Istanbulites belong to Istanbul, just like the Turkish, Kurdish, Greek, and Jewish Istanbulites do. We have first managed and then badly failed to live together. We cannot fail again.”

Just then the waiter materialized again, this time serving fried calamari and fried mussels and fried pastries.

“I know every single street in this town,” Aram continued, taking another sip of
rakı.
“And I love strolling these streets in the mornings, in the evenings, and then at night when I am merry and tipsy. I love to have breakfasts with my friends along the Bosphorus on Sundays, I love to walk alone amid the crowds. I am in love with the chaotic beauty of this city, the ferries, the music, the tales, the sadness, the colors, and the black humor. . . .”

They fell into an awkward silence, taking a rare distant glimpse into each other’s positions, realizing there could be more than geographical distance between them—he suspecting she was too Americanized, she construing he was too Turkified. The mordant gap between the children of those who had managed to stay and the children of those who had to leave.

“Look, the Armenians in the diaspora have no Turkish friends. Their only acquaintance with the Turks is through the stories they heard from their grandparents or else from one another. And those stories are so terribly heartbreaking. But believe me, just like in every nation, in Turkey too there are good-hearted people and bad people. It is as simple as that. I have Turkish friends who are closer to me than my flesh-and-blood brother. And then there is, of course”—he lifted his glass and signaled toward Auntie Zeliha— “this crazy love of mine.”