Death Changes

(Photo of Alexander H by Anna H, 1997)

     "You've had so much loss", my cousin said with her eyes welling up, "I don't know what I would have done". 

   For reasons too many to enumerate, I found this extremely offensive.  Death is not a loss, it's a fact.  One loses a dollar, the house key or more recently, one's cell phone.  These are devastating losses.  I lost my key once and believe me, it was a devastating thing.  I have no idea how I got home, since a key was needed to drive the car, but I have come to accept  that my car keys remained back at the IKEA bathroom and that it was as fine a moment of magical realism as any.

   Losing one's parents or children is a fact just as losing one's health or any other aspect of being alive. I read once that St. Ignatius of Loyola said one should not be too attached to any particular outcome, good health versus bad, wealth versus lack of it.  It's all the same.  I'm not too sure if I get all of it because I've been trying to refinance for a while and am pretty attached to the outcome.  However, on some basic level, one has to be prepared for the worst possible outcomes and be ok with them. Plans are nothing, planning is everything.  Even all the insane planning of my parents, borne of historical genocide imprinted on our genes and life in three different countries, could not have prepared them for the loss of their son.  Their witnessing of  a slow disintegration of a good and honest man could not have been foreseen and none of us were prepared for it, but it was a fact.
 
  I went to a support group once and the therapist said:

     "I'm not seeing enough tears".

    That's just it-- it's not a question of anyone else seeing those tears but rather the acceptance of the fact that they're there and that maybe their owner has things to do and people to take care of.

     "Thank you, " I told my cousin with the misplaced sympathy.  "I'm ok. To be honest,
the hardest thing was the lack of continuity and support when I needed it most."  Perhaps this was a cheap shot, but I was standing in front of my father's casket  when someone apologetically showed me a text from a family member too busy to come to the funeral.
 
      "The thing is, " I continued, "that they are always with me. It's only their physical absence but in all other ways, they are a constant presence".  I was talking about my parents, brother and aunt and as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how futile it was.  The futility of talking to someone who cannot hear.  Asoghin, lsogh petk a,  as the saying goes in Armenian. To whom who speaks, a listener is required.

     Years ago, in a writing class and after I'd read a story from my childhood in Armenia, Mariano, a poet friend of mine said in his awesome Spanish accent:

      "In these stories, you are like blotting paper," while gently tapping his fingers on the notebook in front of him. "Simply absorbing everything around you.  Invisible, but present.  The invisible, present child."

     At the time, I didn't understand what a gift writing would become and in fact, on the day that I found out that my brother was dying, I went to my class. I didn't know what else to do.  My mentor and teacher, the late and great  Philomene Long made certain that someone would drive me home and in the years that followed, writing helped me to navigate the inner landscape. 

     I don't need sympathy, I wanted to say to my cousin, for this is not something that has happened only to me.  If I sound defensive, then be it. Nothing crushes the spirit more than pity.

    Death changes things, but in ways one cannot expect.  From a spectator's perspective, the view is constantly changing.  Imagine seeing a Christmas tree completely done up in the window of a lovely home, with beautiful Christmas décor all around.  It's lovely and evocative but oddly empty, because it is the middle of August. That's how it can feel.  Uncomfortable, shocking, shockingly despairing and just physically ill fitting.

   Then, suddenly it changes.  It can be the middle of August, you look up and suddenly see a beautiful Christmas tree in the window of a beautiful home , all done up to be so festive and kind.
And suddenly, instead of despair, you think of a home with a small plastic Christmas tree on top of a table, or a china cabinet with cheap plastic toys on it from a cheap swap meet and maybe some little lights on it and the room is filled with people who are desperately trying to be above frivolity, but are really loving it all.  Little crystal cups filled with cherry liquor, waiting for the apple to fall and for Dick Clark to do his bit and to gather around and turn on all the lights for good luck, to toast each other and to say, "Shnorhavor Nor Tari!".  Happy New Year!  Sometimes, the imagery can take you back to a hospital room, where everyone is watching the Oscars, or the emergency room where your brother looks up at the hospital clock and says, "It's New Year", in a droll, witty and sarcastic, funny and kind voice.

    Death does many things, it changes the viewer, memories and perspectives. Like in a movie, you can look at the same thing and depending on where you sit and who's in front of you, what you see is completely different. 

    Philomene once said and instructed us to write a story on what we have lost.  Quoting a study in Japan where most people lose umbrellas, she said that we are the sum total of what we lose and asked us to write about what we have lost. She meant literal losses and not metaphorical ones like ambition.  I didn't know what to write about at the time, because to be honest I never lost stuff.  This could be because I am or rather was, a very orderly person-- my brother would say OCD, but now I can say that I lose stuff all the time.  Maybe it's time, middle age, dulling sense of memory, but I seriously cannot remember a thing.  I'm not even sure that "lost" is the word to describe people who were in your life, shaped you and now are no longer physically present.  It's obviously a different thing, since you can eventually find your car but a dead mother cannot be found again. That's the thing that's hard. The finality of it. But this is the caveat, for if you try, it isn't final at all. You just have to look and be ok with constant reminders of absence and this I have come to realize is what separates most people.  There are those who are ok with carrying pain and remembering and those who are not.  I finally understand what Kundera meant by the Unbearable Lightness Of Being, but I could not explain it to anyone and least of all to those who pity.  Koshogin ashogh petka a.  A talker needs a listener.

Tsavt Danim

      My parents lived in the same old Spanish style duplex in Hollywood, where I grew up and when visiting I would sometimes park in my old spot in the back. This meant driving up the narrow driveway and then backing out, which was no small feat, because it involved driving backwards between a wall and an iron fence, while keeping an eye out for people walking by and then making it safely onto a street with oncoming traffic.


     This backward driving maneuver was something around which my father and I had, over the years, worked out a ritual. As I would reach the critical juncture of driveway and sidewalk, he would rush out, putting himself between my moving car and the street. If he saw a car a block away, he would pound on my car and raise his arm straight up in the air in alarm.



     Getsir!, Getsir!. "Stop!, Stop!", he would yell as he blocked my path, his arm suspended in midair, bent at the elbow like a broken turnstile. With his head moving from side to side to look out for oncoming cars, we remained thus until the arm went down, clearing the pathway.

     Hima grnas, hima kna nayim ur bidi yertas ne. Haide nayim, kna. Shoot, shoot ure!.  "Now you can, now go where you are going. Let me see where you go. Fast, fast!" he would say.
     
     Though the turnstile would  go down, my father would continue pounding on my car while it moved, this time purely as a speed control measure.  He needed to reinforce what I already knew-- "fast" actually meant a slow, deliberate and practical rate. 

    
        As he became progressively more frail and legally blind in the left eye, I'd worry about running him over during this ritual of ours. As my father shrank through the years, his clothes remained the same. His usual attire at home consisted of a large, white Tshirt  with a V-neck, carefully tucked into  extra large jeans. T-shirt and jeans were both held together by a wide leather belt on its very last hole. With a special hole puncher, my father had punched holes on the same old belt, chronicling the years until the time when the end of the belt was by his spine.  He didn't use a cane during our driving maneuvers and would lean on the car for support.


     When his arm would go up to signal safe passage, followed by the pounding on the car, I'd worry that  the backward motion of the car would tip him over. This never happened however, because he  always managed to get out of the way on time.  My mom's role in all this was to make sure that he  came out to help at all times and that I never left without completing the ritual. Until the day she died, she made sure that each of us completed our role.



       "Haroutioun, come on, go help the child, come on," she'd say while sitting on the couch with her leg lifted on the couch to prevent the ankle on her twice broken right leg from swelling.  Haide, Haroutioun, haide, chojuxin turs ellalu naye. Naye ki, turs ella.  Haide.
 
      Like a blind person in old familiar room, I now stumble across old memories and textures and one story leads to another.  I wish I'd known then what a treasure they all were, for we'd fought the big fight together.  They buried their firstborn, after watching him suffer, but never lost their sense of humor. Ours were rituals of storytelling.  I would sit on the couch between my parents, my brother on his armchair to the left of the couch and Armen, my mom's sister, on the armchair in the front of the couch.  The TV was a distraction, a punctuation point between all the stories.

      From Armenia, to Bulgaria, to Egypt and then to LA, they told stories of people and events long past.  "Remember when?"   Hishum Es?   Annan yerevi chi hishum.   Anna probably doesn't remember.   One or the other would then start and one story would lead into another.

    Armen viewed herself as editor at large, "Voch, ayd pes cher!"   No, it wasn't like that.  Her silence meant, that it really was like that.  

     I never understood why my brother, first with Kristi and then by himself, would spend hours and hours at my parents going over these old stories.  Every single weekend, any day off he had and until the very end, this is what he did.  

      There were times when I avoided these sessions, deeming them to be to fruitless walks down memory lane.   I often seem to encounter this familiar incomprehension now that it is my turn to tell these same stories.  I wish that I had valued these times more then, because my mother was right.  

      Minak hishadaknern gmnan verchu, janportutyunner yev urax order.  "Only memories remain at the end, travels and happy times," she would say.


      When Mark and I were getting married, the only place available seemed to be, not the Art Deco City Hall of Beverly Hills  as I'd hoped but a recreational center in Boyle Heights.   

     "Pan chi ga", my mother said, "Badmutynu aveli lav glla".  "It is nothing, the story will be better".


       Every person and every act, big or small, became a story to be told  and retold in our living room.  In retrospect, it is when the stories stopped that I knew they were going, that something had changed fundamentally.  It took their absence for me to realize that not everybody does this-- tell stories and see their life as one. I had thought it was commonplace, that it was a way for people to cope because this was what sustained us during the long years of my brother's illness and the hardships that had come before.  My parents, aunt and brother made sure we clung to our rituals of telling stories, as long as they could and these times became islands of respite and solace.   

      However, instead of this constant retelling of old stores, what I had wanted were the ritualized holiday making, formal dinners and family gatherings that I saw on TV.  In fact, I used to joke that my family were like a bunch of Jehovas Witnesses, without the benefit of  actual commitment to doctrine because after coming to America, as a family we had entered holiday limbo.  

      New Year's was the most anticipated day of the year in Armenia and in the US, it is Christmas.  We ended up not doing much for either day.  My parents recoiled at the idea of forced gift giving and the constant advertising on TV.
     
     Abush paner.  Tratsiin het yergu xosk chen user, verch mek hat abush never gudan.  Himarutiun..

     "Stupid things.  Two words they don't say to a neighbor, but then give one  present. Stupidity," they both would say.



      Easter and Thanksgiving were the two days that were recognized in our household.  Easter, because it was my father's name day and Thanksgiving, because my parents liked the idea. So, as a preteen growing up in LA, I had these two days  in common with the people on TV.


      Armenian Easter coincided with the American one, so at least on that level there was some continuity with the population at large, though what we did seemed completely different. My mom would make chorek, Easter bread, and people would call from all over the world to congratulate my father on his name day and friends would come over for visiting.


     My experience of Easter had nothing to do with the pastels and bunnies on TV, but it was better than no holiday.  The one American holiday my parents seemed open to was Thanksgiving and I think it was largely because there wasn't much advertising associated with it, especially in the mid-seventies.  It seemed less compulsory and more of a choice, so they liked it.



     It wasn't until after my brother got sick, however,  that we started go out of our way to mark holidays.  This was always a contentious point for me, since once again I took it as a sign of them coming around for him and not me. I can honestly say, that sibling rivalry,  jealousy, resentment and all the other good stuff were always present, even as I drove to the hospital at a moment's notice and did so for years.



   "He was worried about you, always said that  you need to have a family of your own," his friend Pete, an old trumpet player from Woody Herman days, quoted my brother as saying.


    My brother always seemed to have an older friend who regarded him as a son, but somehow found discord with our own father. His friends were generally old musicians, oft married, with kids from various marriages, easy-going and bohemian. 


    Our father was definitely not bohemian. He was a tough, hard working, exacting and honest man who'd gone to work at fourteen and was married to our mom for sixty two years until her death.  I could see potential for rebellion, but I was eleven years younger than my brother and by the time I was old enough, we were already in America and he was just too old to rebel against.  I saw him struggle and sacrifice to pay for my college.  Making sure not to disappoint him was always more of a concern for me than rebellion and like a lot of immigrant kids, I just wanted to grow up and buy my parents a house. 



    "I loved your brother like a son", my brother's friend, Pete, told me , "He was wonderful and was always worried about you."



    "Well, he sure as hell didn't act like it was a concern, " I thought, but didn't say anything.



    " I want to live, not just survive", my brother once told me once.



    "I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean", I had answered. 



      I didn't understand that and I guess I still don't.  He owed it us to take care of himself, and he wasn't doing that. After he died, we were at a loss as to what to do with our time.  My mom once asked me to take my father out.


      Dar, kichmu btdsur.  "Take him, take him around a little bit," she'd said.  I took my father to the Farmer's Marker and we had started to talk.  I told him, there is a play about Hamlet where the side people are talking about the prince who'd just died.  I was talking about  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard.

     Gites inchi masin a?  Vor Hamletu merav, irank el koxkits, hasarak martik en, u asum en, lav bayts inch eghav, hima inch enk anelu?. 


     "You know what it's about?  It's after Hamlet died, and these side people, regular people say, ok, what happened? What do we do now?", I told my father.



    Ayo, ayo, hima inch bidi unenk? Jisht adang e.   "Yes, yes, it is just like that.  What we do now?", he answered.


     We sat together in the car and it was close to sunset, the stores were closing at the old Farmer's Marker.  This was before it  became the much more posh The Grove.  We sat for a while and then we went home.


      This is what I never got my brother to understand.  We were all dependent on him and his well being, and it just seemed like he didn't care.  Or maybe, he understood and didn't want that responsibility.  Maybe he hated the fact that he was dependent on us.  I don't know.  Our conversations never got that deep, despite numerous attempts by all parties.  We just did what we thought we needed to do.


      It was after he got sick, that we started to celebrate holidays.  We even marked the Oscars in the hospital once. Eventually, it became technically difficult to celebrate, because it seemed like no holiday went by without a trip to the hospital.  I took him out for dinner for his birthday and we all went. Kristi, his wife, was there too. My brother and father had osso buco.  We were all basking in the moment. I still remember this--it was at a restaurant called Vermont on Vermont Blvd in Hollywood.  I'd just read about them and their special dish osso buco, but my brother, of course, already knew all about it and this drove me nuts, as it always did.  We were so happy.  The next day, Kristi called to say that he'd been rushed to the hospital. 


     There was once, closer to the end, a New Year's in the ER and as the clock's hands came to twelve:
    
      "Happy New Year!",  my brother said sarcastically but with a smile.



       "Yeah, Happy New Year!", I responded, looking to make sure he wasn't getting cold.


        All they gave you in the ER were and still are, by the way, flimsy white blankets kept in a warming booth on the floor.



       I had at one point, the crazy idea to personalize the hospital experience and so after a while, he had a blue quilt type blanket that I'd always take and which one of the nurses had found and returned to Kristi. They knew us all after a while, especially Kristi.



        On my 40th birthday, I was in the hospital sitting and sleeping on the porto-potty.  He woke up suddently.



        "It's your birthday.", he said.  This was near the end. 



         "Yeah," I said.  "You fucker," I thought.  But I wouldn't have been anywhere else. 



        I have always felt bad about not being more generous or kind in gesture.  I wish it'd be different, but it wasn't.  We all did the best we could. 



        It was around this time, on an Easter Sunday, that I had picked him at the hospital and was dropping him off at my parents. As I was leaving, my father came outside and motioned for me to stop.  He rushed over  to my car in the driveway as though he had forgotten something. 


         "I just want to go home", I thought.  "I'm tired".  With the car still running, I rolled down the window.
        
        "Incha Papa jan? What is it, Papa?", I asked.


        He looked at he and catching his breath, placed his hand in the car door.


       "As al Zadig e, jisht Christmasin yev Nor Darvan bes. So, this is Easter, just like Christmas and New Year's",  he said, his voice somewhat hoarse as he was still trying to catch his breath.


       "Thanksgivingi ch moranas," I answered, rolling my eyes. "Don't forget Thanksgiving".


       "I am sorry, honey, " he said. 


       He liked to say "honey", emphasizing the last syllable.  It sounded kind of funny and he knew it, and would play it up every chance he got.


       "Merci, axchigs," he added.  "Thank you, daughter".


       "Tun al hoknetsar. You are tired." he said quietly, leaning inside the window of the car.


       I didn't know what to say and just stayed quiet in the car.


       "This is how it is now. Hima asang e. Merin jagadakirn en.  It is written on our foreheads.  Ingerenk, bidi kashenk.  We are in it and we take it", he added.


        He was still catching his breath, though he was now standing still, with his T-shirt neatly tucked in.


       "Anunovt après, Papa jan," I said.  "May you live with your name".


         Because it was Easter and his name was Resurrection, Haroutiun, today was his name day. This is what you did on Easter--you said these words.  I don't know what it means or why you say it, but you do.  Suddenly, it seemed so formal and so beautiful and so perfect.


       "Tsavt danim, " my father answered. "I wish I could take our pain away."


          This is another on those old sayings that are repeated so casually, until the day one realizes their meaning. I nodded in response to my father.  There was nothing I could answer.  This one expression has no answer.  I knew he meant it literally.  If he could have assumed the pain of the people he loved on his own shoulders, he would have done so with no hesitation. It took his passing for  me to know how rare that is.
 
       "Lav, ushatir kshes.  Drive safely," my father said as he lightly tapped on my car and headed back home.


      I waved good-buy and rolled backwards out of the driveway.  I wished there were something I could say, to make it easier for him but I knew there was nothing I could say or do.  As I slowly backed out, I watched him rush back home and disappear behind the screen door. 


     Mart iren bardaganutyun bedke gadare, iren xoskin der ulla.  A man's got to fulfill his obligation and own his word. This is what he always said and my eighty year old father knew what he needed to do. He went home so that together his wife they could take care of their son.
      



      

Azad, Adat and La Traviata

I



 


  


    The night I found out about a woman named Azat, my aunt Armen and I had gone to see the opera La Traviata.  "It is my favorite opera," she had said during the ride over to the Music Center and added that, "It was the first one I saw as a schoolgirl in Varna".

     Their days in the gymnasia, during WWII,  were described by my mother and aunt as exciting, beautiful and filled with love.  Little by little, stories would come out, such as my grandfather taking Jewish friends to the village for safety or their cousin being killed for harboring Communists. In fact, they'd say, he couldn't refuse when they'd asked to stay the night in his house.  He was innocent, they'd add.  Because nothing was ever clearly articulated by the sisters, I only know bits and pieces.  This was also the case that night at the opera.

     As we made our way to our seats, we had started a conversation while waiting for the theater to fill up and the curtain to lift.  Generally our conversations were about current events and so the subject of a Kurdish leader's return to Turkey by Germany came up.  It was all over the news and as a family we prided ourselves on our ability to sustain a conversation, no matter its direction.  Armen's role in these conversations was to proclaim one absurd theory after another. This was the case that night at the opera as well.

    "Leave those Kurds! I know all there is to know about them!" she said.  Togh drants!

    "Ehh, you are a Kurd expert now?" I asked.  Kani hat es kyankumt chanachel? "How many have you known in your life?"

    "I used to know one in prison and she drove me crazy, " she answered.  Pandum kideyi, yev inzi khentetsuts.

    "She had all gold teeth and drove us crazy.  One day, we were all standing there, ready to go to shower and she would not take her clothes off.  She was new.  She just said, 'Adat! Adat!'.  Means sin, I think.  Can you imagine?  Finally, I go to the soldier and ask, listen, we are cold, please let her just go like that.  She really just had her underpants.  You know, long, covering everything, like a peasant.  I guess that is what they all to.  Backward like that.  Hedamnats.  He let us all go, thank God, or we freeze, and she came like that."

   As Armen told the story, her sympathy seemed to be with the good soldier.  As the seats were filling next to us and people were looking at their programs, I couldn't shake the image of my aunt in this scene. She must have been either twenty four or twenty five at the time.  I felt physically uncomfortable, mostly because she was  the most prudish person I knew.

  "Some months later, I see Azad again. She was walking around, naked, like nothing.  Can you imagine?" Armen laughed and continued, "So, I ask.  I ask, listen Azad, what happened to adat and all that? She just waved her hand and said, what adat? Adat  gone.  No more adat.".

   My aunt was shaking her head in a reverie.  The people sitting next to us in the theatre could have assumed from her gestures, that she was recounting a fond memory, a cute story.

  "One time, I was sleeping, " my aunt continued.  "Azad come and wake me up in the middle of the night.  Let's go to the bathroom, she said.  Because she had her gold teeth, she was afraid to go to the bathroom by herself.  We were in the same camp again, so everywhere she went, she would ask me or one of the girls to go with her.  She was afraid that they will kill her and take the teeth. So, we go."

   "As we went to the bathroom, dark.  And then, we see and hear something.  I wait for Azad and then I stumble.  On the ground, I see a woman, not one of us politicals, lying on the ground with an axe in her head.  Blood all around."

  "There were gangs of them  You know, we kept separate, we didn't mix with the criminals.  And this one had something to do with the other ones.  They were both in contrabands or something.  We didn't mix with them.  All prostitutes, murderers.  So we keep separate.  But, I didn't see anything.  Only the body."

  "Later, at the trial, all I said was that I just saw the body.  That is all.  And you know what she said, that criminal, that thief? She was in the accused's box and I was testifying and she said, 'take that pathetic creature away.'.  Can you imagine?", Armen asked, shaking her head.

   My aunt was quiet, then she looked at me and asked, "Can you imagine? Me, pathetic... An educated, woman, pathetic, and she a murderer." 

   It was at that point, that the theatre turned dark and the curtain lifted.  There was so much to think about, because for a brief moment I had found myself, inexplicably, sympathizing with the murderer.
The opera that followed, was a revelation.  I did not fall asleep as I'd done previously, but instead found myself crying and very indelicately wiping my hands all over my seat.  

   After that evening, we never discussed Azad and I never did find out what happened to her.  I wonder if she'd been Kurdish or  Kurdish Armenian.  I remember my father mentioning that among the many repatriates who moved to Armenia after WWII from the Middle East and Europe, there had been Kurdatsats Hayer -- Kurdish Armenians-- who had come across the border from Turkey and had gone to the countryside.  I wonder whether the woman that Armen had met in prison had been one of them.  I had asked once whether there were other Armenian women in the camps. Che, urdeghen! Polor rus ein, gam ukrainatsi, hrya, et bes. Minak yes ei.  "No! They were all Russian, Ukrainian, Jews, like this.  Only I was Armenian", she had responded.

      Years later, during a car ride to San Francisco, my husband Mark decided to interview her and record her with his phone.  She just started the pro Soviet propaganda, that seems so out of sync with her experience and would drive all of us crazy.  It just made no sense.  I was at the point of hitting my head on the car seat, when I remembered Sirarpi, who was a frequent visitor to Armen's apartment in Hollywood.   Sirarpi was blind, walked with a cane and I vividly remember her reddish hair.  She was older than Armen and I know she had a daughter and granddaughter who also lived in LA.

      We lived in a first floor unit of a duplex in Hollywood, with Armen living in one of the back units on the second floor.  Whenever Sirarpi came, my parents would walk her up the stairs inside our apartment and then send me to get Armen, who would then come and gently walk her up the stairs to her place.

    The way Armen behaved with Sirarpi was almost soft, a quality reserved only for dealing with small children and animals.  I honestly don't remember her acting this way with other adults, thus I knew that there was something different about Sirarpi.

   "Oh, she and I went to prison together," Armen said when I asked.  Irar het pand katsink.  Ink al noreghogh er, mdadsum eink paxchil.  Erexai bes paner eink anum.  Menk kidein vor xosall der mexk gordzel che.  Yerexai bes hekyatner ein badmum.  "She was also a noreghogh, a newcomer, and we were thinking to run away.  Childish things we wanted to do.  We thought that only talking was different from doing a crime.  Like children we were telling stories".

    It was my father who would years later shed light on this story.  When I asked him about Sirarpi, he told me that she was an Armenian from Beirut. Together with my aunt they had thought about crossing the border. Paxnil guzein.  "Run away, they wanted", he said. Bayts sxal martots archev xosetsan.  They talk in front of the wrong people. 

    "Our Armen never shows any fear," said Maro after we had come back from one of the many trips to the hospital. Mer Armen yerpek vax chi tsuyts ta.  It was a quirk of fate that during the last year of her life, she would meet as her caregiver a woman just as tough as she. Maro took care of her and saw a side that I did not.  She was the one who told me about the notebook of letters from prison friends and how Armen would spend her days, sitting on the couch and reading the words of despair written in pencil and compiled together and held together with thine.

    I was sitting next to her on the couch, when Maro mentioned her lack of fear.  Armen shrugged,  got up from the couch, reached out for an apple and calmly said , "Oh, I learned that in prison." Oh, yes ayt pan pandum sorvetsa.

    Now that all of them are gone, I understand my mother's commitment and fierce devotion to her sister.   "I saw it with my eyes," she would say. Achkovs desa. Though I never knew the full story, I do know this. She died as stoically as she had lived.  The words in the notebook are of despair, loss and physical hardship.  This is not how Armen ever told it. She talked only of things that had happened, discussing as a matter of fact  how her jaw was broken when a beam fell on her while doing hard labor.  She talked about the knowledge she had gained, like putting urine on her face to prevent sunburn.  What she never, ever talked about was loss and despair, the difficulty of coming back and dealing with society after the things she had seen.  This was never a subject for discussion, because, as she stated before dying-- you never show weakness.  This she learned in prison.
Yes ayt pan pandum sorvetsa.

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. 

   

 
   
  

Snow Falling



My Grandfather Medzadur (photo not dated)

I  put my hands against the cold glass by my bed.  It wasn't a bed really, but a lezhanka under the window.  It was my lezhanka, to the left of my parents's bed, and under the window of our bedroom. The window had one of those huge sills, so if you wanted, you could even stand on the lezhanka and put your elbows on the sill and look out the window.  But on that day, I didn't put my elbows on the sill.  Instead, I stood on the lezhanka and put my hands right on the glass and blew on it.  On the glass.  My breath left a foggy mark on the glass, because it was so cold.  The glass, not my breath.  And the reason it was so cold was that it was winter.  And the reason, I was standing on the lezhanka and looking out, was that it was a really, really big day.  It was winter. And not just winter, but it was big day, because it was (are you sitting down!), because it was the first day of snow.  Snow was coming.  It was falling softly, so softly, that it seemed like the fog of my breath on the glass.  It came down so softly that it was like many little breaths having come together and suddenly covering everything. You could see through it, the fog, but it touched everything.  The snow came and came, and came.  And, I just stood there.  On the lezhanka, with my hands on the glass, with my mouth open.  Watching. 

 

Tereshkova, first woman in space

  

  "You know how you were born?", my mother asked. 
I knew I had been a quick delivery, but liked hearing the story anyway. My mother had a way of describing my birth as though it had been someone else's. My childhood, my cuteness, my curls were described as a matter of a past long gone and belonging to someone I didn't know, even while talking to me. It was always a fun story, though, so I smiled and nodded in return to her question.  She looked into the air in front of the couch where we were sitting  and continued.
     "I go to the hospital and they just call Herminka, and we were waiting for her". It had taken me years, literally decades to figure out who these people were and how they interconnected.  Since no one told me anything, I sort of had to do it all myself.  Herminka was my mom's OB/GYN and also a childhood friend from Bulgaria.  I saw her in Sofia as an adult and really liked her.  She'd left Armenia in the late 60's to go back to Bulgaria, something she was envied for as I remember. I grew up with her memory, along with the many other ghost members of my parents's community of friends.  Memories of these ghosts always accompanied events, conversations and all interactions in general.
    Remember, when so-and-so was in Varna or Cairo? Oh, they weren't stupid enough to come here.  No, they go to Lebanon or Canada or Australia. Such and such see them at airport in Paris, on way to New York or maybe Brazil, al chap chem kider... that much I don't know...  This is what I heard all the time, and so the confusion was overwhelming and it took me a couple of years to figure it out. To be honest, it's still a work in progress.
     "Herminka go to hospital, we start talk and then before we even have a room, PHOT, you were there, like gymnast!". My mother smiled at the image.  I smiled too.  I liked the onomatopoetic "PHOT", a short version of "PHOT DEI", to describe a sudden event. I liked the image of a baby catapulting into the world. Catapulting like a gymnast landing a summersault off a balance beam.
     "They call you Tereshkova," she said.  "You know who that is?", she turned to ask.
     "Yeah, the first woman in space," I nodded.
     I wanted to ask how she'd felt when first seeing me, but all I could do was smile. Tereshkova, hmmm.  So, that's what my name was.  Not bad.
     All these years, I had thought that I had had no name. Literally.  I hadn't been properly named when born and the issue of my name had been a point of contention.  The top contenders were Hripsemeh and Verjine, but these didn't work. Thus, I walked around for a year with no name. Finally, through no fault of my relatives, a name took.  This was my family's lore.  A tale told at parties and dinner, about how they couldn't think of a name and no one could agree.  There were other contenders as well.  Gayane was my brother's choice and Knarik was my uncle's.  In fact, there was even a gift sent from the guys at the factory where my father and uncle worked.
    "What's the child's name?" my uncle was asked.  Not being certain, he said, "Knarik". So they sent the gift to little Knarik.
    Eventually came a point when a decision had to be made.  I was beginning to respond and walk. They had to call me something. My uncle apparently started to call me "Anahit". This is one version of the story.  Other people had started calling  me by other names, but finally something took. As different names mutated and changed while completing the circuit, something took.  Anna.
    So, that's my name now.  Anna.  I like it, but to tell the truth, I have always found it odd that it was a process and not an act. For the longest time, I thought this was how it was for everyone.  Imagine my surprise upon seeing a name book and learning that for most people it worked out differently.
     When my mother told me the Tereshkova story, I somehow felt more complete. My name, the thing that came to people's mind when I sprang into this world -- literally, according to my mom-- was Tereshkova.  The first woman in space.  Not to shabby, I'd say. I was so excited, I could have burst.  Tereshkova. Wow.