Armine

   
          "Be afraid of wolves, you will never go into the forest," my aunt said in Russian, as I was helping her move into a subsidized apartment for the elderly in Hollywood. She often spoke in Russian, because in Armenian her Western dialect was undeniable and it revealed her repatriate roots. I have thought about why this mattered to her so much, but there are no simple answers. My parents, brother and I came to Los Angeles in 1976 and settled into a duplex on North Kingsley Drive in Hollywood and two years later Armen did the same. Initially, she lived across the street but soon moved into a back unit of the same duplex, and we thus lived together for decades. Technically not under the same roof, but as close to it as possible.  In 1997, near retirement age and after years on the waiting list, she finally got into the senior citizens's building three blocks away.  It was big deal, because the sisters were now going to be separated. 

          My brother and I referred to them as The Dynamic Duo and my father called them  Poghokagannern-- the Protestants, and this was mainly because they protested everything. For Armen anything and everything needed to be protested.  Mark, my husband, would confirm years later what my father had always said, that the sisters simply liked to be contrary. As daughters of a Protestant preacher, The Dynamic Duo took things at its most literal-- there was no religious creed involved. The consummate expert at large, Armen not only protested anything coming out of anyone's mouth, but she also had the correct answer which needed to be stated. It was always about getting the truth out there. One had to be on guard at all times and no subject was safe.
             
             Betke chish tnel vran. "Put urine  on it," Armen once said, when I complained about dry skin.  Pandum ayd bes eink anum.

            "That's what we did in prison," she continued. "We were walking  under the sun and our skin was burning. Then the Russian women showed us how to do it.  Like this, very simple. Amen ankam chish unaluts, pambagov gam gdorov garnes yev yeresit gkses. Dranits heto aylevs mashkt lav glini.  Just take a little cotton or some cloth, wet it when going to pee and then put on your face. After that, no more problem with skin. So, we started to do that and after that our skin was good!".

            The stories my mom and her sister told about the prison days were truly surprising as they could come at any time, though never when you asked them.  Once, I  took a notebook and tried to write down the chronology of where exactly my mother had gone when trying to track down Armen and my grandfather.  It didn't get anywhere.  At some point, there was the realization that one had to simply take in these stories as they came and then try to piece them together later.

           "Don't tell me about prostitutes, I was their commander," Armen once said as we were driving up to San Francisco at astronomical speeds, as she had already assessed. In the car were four of us, my mother, aunt, myself and an unwitting tourist from Armenia.  Up Highway 5 we were driving to see the eldest of the three sisters and mark the birth of my cousin's baby. With shrubbery flying by us at astronomical speeds, the conversation had started  meandering. To try and liven things up,  I brought a neighboring building in Hollywood that was halfway house for runaway teens and where a friend was volunteering.

             "Don't  tell me about prostitutes, I was their commander!', was Armen's response.
      
            "What do you mean, you were their commander?", I asked, looking into the rearview mirror.
          
             Ayo. Pandum.  "Yes," she said.. "In prison." 

             "You mother bribed someone to relieve me of heavier duties and they put me in charge of the prostitutes. To get them to build a wall.  They were horrible. Pan chi garoghatsa anem. I could do nothing to get them to do anything.  Mors gatn apsosetsa.  I regretted the milk my mother gave me", she continued. 

              My mother remained silent, with her head cocked back in a meaningful way, while the poor tourist seemed scandalized.  I tried to change the conversation yet again, but eventually gave up.  No matter what I did or how hard I tried, there seemed to be no way for me to corral the two of them to behave as I would have preferred them to, like nice Armenian ladies.  It would years before I would give up this effort and much, much later I would fight to have them remain and be see as the badasses they had always been.

             However, back on the day when I was helping Armen  to move,  I had my own concerns as I watched her walk down the hallway. Just as every immigrant kid dreams, I wished I could have bought her a condo, a nice one with a big yard. To take care of them was my obligation, but at the time things did not seem to be going in the direction of its fulfillment.

          Seeing her walk down the corridor, with the institutional lights and sprinklers, I had a twinge of remembrance and yet it was not my memory. I worried that the institutional aspect of a government building might scare her or remind her of a past horror, but  I was wrong.  Whatever she felt, fear wouldn't be a part of it. Showing courage is what she did, always.  About twenty years later, sitting on the couch in that very same apartment, she said as much.  In and out of hospitals, she infuriated everyone around her but always remained defiant.  Maro, her caregiver, remarked about this. 

         "Oh," she said, "I learned that in prison. You can never show that you are scared."  Yerpek chi bedke tsuyts das. Yes adi pandum sortvetsa.

         And so it was on that day of the move, walking down the corridor.  Whatever she felt, fear wouldn't be shown.  My mother and she were now going to be apart. 

         "There is the phone, of course, " my aunt said, "but she won't be able to come in just to talk the way she did before."  This was something that aggravated my mom to no end.   "She do everything she want, but if you ask her, it is always for me," my mom always said. It really drove her crazy and they bickered all the time.

          As we drove up to Armen's new building, we ran into a man I knew.  I didn't know him that well, but had seen him for years at the house of a friend of mine.  Our families didn't socialize but my mom would always hint at some strange connection.

          I said hello and introduced him to my aunt, who of course recoiled and acted strangely. Once we were safely in the apartment, the phone rang and I answered.

         "So, what you are doing?" my mother asked.  She'd called while we were in the act of moving. She knew this.
        
         "Not much.  Moving."  I answered and told her about the man downstairs. My comment was followed by short silence.
         
         "What is he doing there?" she asked.
    
          "He said he came to visit his mother-in-law's something," I answered.  Ekel a kesuri ch gitem inchu tesni.  Each  possible relation has a specific name in Armenian, however because  my mom never had a handle on it, I was and remain cluess.

         "So, tell Armen who he is, " I said.  I just knew there was an odd connection.

          "Tell her he is Nara's relative," my mother said. Vechu dun bidi kas? "You come home after?"

          "I don't know, Let me see how it is here." I hung up, and turned towards my aunt.

          "Nara's relative," I said.  "That's who that man downstairs is."

           I saw my aunt's profile as she looked down.  Lav, sandrs ure?  "Where is my comb?  I can't find my comb."

          "Who's Nara?" I continued.

          "Oh, the woman who sent me to prison," she said. "Why can't I find my comb?" She was still looking on the floor around her.

           "She sent you to prison?" I asked.

            Ayo. Bayts, vat mart cher. "Yes, but she wasn't a bad person," Armen said. 

           "She had her good points. She was nice to a lot of people", she continued.

           "So, she was nice to a lot of people..." I repeated.  I could understand my aunt being infuriating at times, but sending someone to prison for this seemed out of proportion.

            "Yes, where is my comb?" She opened the closet door. Sandrs ure?

            "So, she was nice to other people, but you she sent to prison?" I asked.

            "You could say that," she responded.

            "So why you specifically? I mean, did you piss her off or something?" I wanted to know.

            "Ah, politika!" she laughed. "I found my comb," she added and picked it up form the top of her desk.

             That was pretty much it on that day. Someday, I m going to write a book, I had thought, but how can I if they never tell me anything. 

             My mother and Armen passed away within nine months of each other. Actually, all three of them did.  My mother, nine months later my father and then two weeks later, Armen.  Though none of them spent much time talking about how the past had affected them, their stories were always there.
         While clearing out Armen's apartment, at the top of a shelf in the closet we found a box.  In it there were photos, newspaper cutouts, diplomas, work commendations and  my grandfather's letters. In the box, we also found a notebook  filled with poetry written by her friends in the hard labor camp in Kirza. It was a remembrance gift upon being freed on August 26th of 1952. Along with the notebook there was a small piece of paper with a picture of Armen as a young woman and an official stamp-- it was the document stating that she was now free. 
  

 

Story Of Honest Markar

     The first time I heard about Markar it was from uncle Bedros in our apartment in Hollywood.  Known as Bedros Akhbar, our visitor's stories carried weight in our home because he was the one person  who had known my grandfather's home in Anatolia before the Genocide and his wife Marie was somehow related to my neneh Vergine.  Because Bedros Aghbar was also a frequent visitor  to our house in Armenia and had shared some of my family's forced peregrinations, my father was always very excited and nostalgic to have him over. He would sit in our apartment in Hollywood, much as he had in our house in Yerevan and reminisce, providing a crucial voice of validation to my father's own memories. In fact, I remember the balcony in my grandparents home, where Bedros Aghbar along with their other visitors, would discuss the life that had taken them from Anatolia to Yerevan, Armenia.
 
      For my grandparents and their friends life had meant starting all over again several times over, often leaving behind people and places they loved deeply. Many of them had had to split their lives into parts, with their childhood and youth in one place,  families started in another, old age experienced in a third and finally many would go on to meet their end in yet another country.  Bedgros Aghbar's life had so far taken him from Anatolia, to Lebanon, to Cuba, to Argentina, back to Lebanon, to Soviet Armenia and then to Los Angeles, USA.  It had been a circuitous path even by our standards and in fact, my father would always tell me that we should go and record everything that Bedros Akhbar knew because, well,  the man was past ninety.

    And so it was on one of his last visits, as he sat in our living room with his proper, short and rock solid frame against the light in the window behind him, that he mentioned Markar.  Sitting on the edge of the cushioned seat, his hat resting on his baston, and his other hand gently bringing the cup of Turkish coffee to his lips, he began his story. With the gravelly voice of a life that had taken him virtually around the world  and finally landed him in the San Fernando Valley, he spoke about Markar.

      "Babam,why you have to be the most correct man? " Bedros Aghbar recounted, "Just say it is a meter! Why make life hard?".
  
       This is what Bedros Aghbar was saying about a man who simply insisted on exactly measuring every piece of wood, when people's lives consisted of measuring less and taking home the remainder-- basically, stealing.  However, this was the Soviet Union after WWII and stealing could  have meant that you were warm and fed.

      "Mortsir aylevs. Forget it, I told him, but no," he continued. "He had to measure everything to  millimiter. Even in good time, you don't have to be so right.  Why now? I say it. I say it to him. Usi, usi iren."

     My mother, father, and Bedros Aghbar all shook their heads. They shook their heads, paused at the memory of Markar and then the conversation moved on. A couple of years later, at the forty day commemoration of Bedros Aghbar's passing, when everyone was gathered together, I asked to hear the rest of Markar's story.

     "Ah, you mean Markar, Arsho's brother?", my father asked. My father loved to draw connections, go off on tangents and fill in details as he told a story.  With Bedros Aghbar and several others of his caliber gone, it was now my father's turn to become the supreme storyteller at large.  Sitting at the edge of the cushioned seat, his head cocked to the side for emphasis and his hands opened with palms facing outwards, my father's eyes rounded and his eyebrows rose. This was always a good sign and sure enough, sitting there in Bedros Aghbar's living room in the San Fernando Valley, I got to hear the rest of Markar's story. 

    "I tell him.  I say, look here Markar. One flower spring does not make, understand?  Look where we are.  Chors ghoghmd naye. Look to four sides of you. Asi voch Ekiptos eh, voch al Lebanon, voch al Fransa. This is not Egypt, Lebanon or France. They send people to prison here. What you think? You change everything? I tell you, mek hat zaghik karun chiner.  One flower spring does not make. You learn a little. Look around.  See how they are and go like that. A little. I tell him that.". 

    "And then what happened? I mean what did he do?" I asked.

    "He write letter to government. Complain about work.  Complain why Khrushev hit his shoe on table in New York.  He write that government not good communist. In good communism, people get good money for work.  He complain too much lying," my father said. 

    "Oh my God, then what happened? They sent him to prison?" I asked. This was making me so uncomfortable. I thought then that faced with the same situation, I would do as Markar was doing but somehow wasn't so sure. 

   "No, they no send him to prison. They give him his own site. Construction. People die for chance like that. I mean you get rich.  People with site have everything. Wood to burn, wood to sell.  But he complain. Noren. Again.", my father continued.

   "Ok, now they sent him to prison, right?".  I was sure this time that I'd guessed the outcome.

   "No.  They go visit his house.  See that he live with two sisters and no have food or heat.  They take construction site away and give him beer stand.  You know what that is? You be a millionaire with that! Government give you a hundred cup of beer.  You mix with water.  Sell two hundred and keep the rest of money.  This is guarantee, " my father said.

   "And what happened? " I asked.

   "He make people wait.  He keep a line of taxi driver wait outside so he make sure the cup is full to top.  Completely. No foam.  Taxi driver given him change.  He throw it his face. Tramt ar. Yes murastkan chem yev voch al gox.  Take your money, I no beggar and I no thief. And he write more letters.  In English.  He speak four language.  He write in English to American Embassy."

   "Ok, now they sent him to prison, right?" I asked.  This was the most absurd story I had heard so far and I'd heard plenty. 

    "No. They feel sorry.  They say he crazy.  They give him job where he no do nothing.  Just sit.  Nothing.  And they pay.  But no good.  As al cheghav. He write letter and go every day to complain."

    "They killed him?" I asked. 

    "No.  They put him to xentanots. Crazy hospital.  He stay for some time. He get out.  They give him new job and ...", my father's voice faltered.  He didn't want to continue anymore. 

     "So, what happened? Is he in LA?" I asked, because somehow the protagonists of a lot of these stories ended up living around the corner in Hollywood or the Valley.  Where my father stopped, my mother picked up.  She'd been following with occasional, validating nods. 

     "No, he died" she said and with her right hand made a slashing sign across her left wrist.  She did this in a very casual way, however, like it was just as likely an ending to the story as any other.

    "It happen to a lot of people," my father said. "Many people do that.  Panm ne. Is something.  Amen mart chi grtsav.  Not everybody could."

   "Many people do that.  Many.  Not everybody could," my mother repeated, again with that very casual tone.  Casual, resigned yet somehow tinged with a certain pride.  Perhaps it was not pride, but certainly there was in the way that my parents's and uncle Bedros's telling of this story and others like it, a sense of accomplishment.  Many people couldn't, but they did. Menk timatsank.

    In front of me, on the coffee table was a beautiful doily, most likely the handywork of Digin Marie, Bedros's wife.  On the doily were various pastries and nuts in little bowls with gold and blue images of Romeo and Juliet.  I grabbed the corresponding serving plates and promptly started to eat baklava. Marie was a petite woman who had devoted her life to her family and I looked at her as she spoke with her almost girly voice.

    "Bedros had all sort of ideas.  When we first come to Armenia, he want to be farmer, work on land.  I say to him. Look, know what? Kides inch? I no go anywhere.  We get up and come here and from here I no go anywhere anymore.  Aylevs chem ertar.  We stay here and you do what you know to do.  You want to be farmer, go be farmer.  Yes deghmnal chi bidi kam.  I no go anywhere anymore," she said.  As she said this, her two daughters sat smiling at this memory of their father.  He had never lived down this desire to farm.

    "After that, he see things no easy.  Hard living in city.  They give him hard time sometime, but most of time we ok.  One day, he come home very late.  After night.  He no say where he was.  He tired, but he never say what happen.  I think they question him.  After this, nothing.  We ok.  He good workman, all engineer and architect ask his opinion and take his word on everything, " she said.

    "He was a good workman," my father concurred.  "He work on many buildings. The library too."  I had seen the library on my one and only visit back in 1994.  It was strange to think that after the regimes change and people move, the things that were built still had the touch of the builder's hands.

   "They take me in one day too, " he added. " I saw a man in hat and black coat waiting for me on the way to the factory. I think, Haroutiun, habu glletsir.  You swallow the tablet.  That is it.  I know already that my turn next.  All other guys they went, now my turn.  I know the question they ask.  They take me in.  They sit me.  And from morning to night, they ask the same thing.  Same thing.  Again and again.  They know everything.  Everything.  Where my shop in Alexandria.  Where my father's shop.  Everything.  They ask you know so and so who live on such and such street.  Over and over.  I know, I can't lie.  They know.  I say, babam, I know the people.  I know, but just say hello.  That is all.  I say hello every morning when I pass shop.  That is all."  My father shook his hand, but his eyebrows were still raised and his hands open with the palms facing upward. 

   "In the end, ask if I want to work for them, " he continued. " I say, I know nothing.  I not read or write, not very smart. I no education.  Usum chunim.  Not very smart.  You no want me. I no help you.  Really.  Many hours they ask the same thing.  At the end, they let me go.  I worry about my parents.  Kidem tghakner usadsen.  I know, the guys have told them I no go to factory.  They know where I go.  Nobody say, but they know." 

    We all shook our heads and I kept eating nuts.  My mom sat with a funny look, waiting for her turn somewhat impatiently.

    "Your sister sit, right? Nstetsav?", Digin Marie asked my mom, meaning sit in prison. 

     "Four years," my mother answered.  "Hayrs al, my father too".

      "What happened to Markar's sisters?" I asked, somewhat impatiently.  I'd already heard about my aunt and grandfather.  I found it irritating that my mom acted like it was the only story going when clearly there were so many others and besides, it was impossible to get a chronologically detailed story from her.  You had to piece them together yourself, whereas my father lived to fill in the details.

     "Oh, you saw her, Arsho come to our house " my father said.  "When we coming to America, she come and sit at house when nobody home.  People know you leaving and come to steal when no one home, " he clarified. 

       I remembered a woman not much bigger than my twelve year old body with a scarf on her head.  She was with a Russian speaking girl, sort of blondish.  "She take care of their older sister and the children of the other brother who was in open exile in Siberia," my father added.  I hadn't realized that all along Markar had had an exiled brother who had married a Russian woman while in Siberia.

      "She never marry," he added about Markar's sister Arsho. 

      "What happened to them, " I asked.  I wanted to know what happend to Arsho and the blond girl.  I wondered if they were here in LA like us.  My father didn't think so. 

        "Oh, we know if they here," he added.  "We hear something. But we no hear, so they not here.  Arsho old, so who knows.  The brother's children maybe go back to Siberia.  Who know." 

         We all sat for a while and ate nuts and drank coffee.  In the room with the beautifully arranged artificial flowers and the plates with Romeo and Juliet, it was really comfortable.  I complimented Digin Marie on her tseragorts, her doilies, and reiterated my desire to learn how to croche.  I was beginning then to realize the futility of this desire. Some people spend a lifetime learning things, you can't just pick it up in a couple of lessons. You don't become a master craftsman in one hour, it takes time.  Soon, it was time to go back home-- back to Hollywood.