“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.