Alenush jumped into her arms and said, “Auntie, shall we go for a walk?” Danique looked at Martha and winked. “Of course! After church we’ll go to Naderi Street* for pierogis. Now hurry up and put on your pleated blue skirt and a white shirt.”
Off she ran to change her clothes. Martha gave a sigh of relief. Alenush loved the jam-filled pierogis at Khosravi’s on Naderi Street.
We eat dinner and talk. We talk about school, about the teachers and the students. Then talk turns to Alenush. Danique asks, “Have you had a letter lately?”
I shake my head.
“She sent me an Easter card. Do you want to see it?”
She gets up. In a corner of the room on a round table, there must be more than twenty greeting cards, large and small. She picks one up and hands it to me. “While you’re reading it, I’ll get the tea ready,” she says, and heads into the kitchen.
On the front of the card are a few bunnies holding out big colored eggs. Over the bunnies’ heads a message is written in English: “For the best aunt in the world.” Martha, like me, didn’t have any siblings. Alenush used to say, “Thank goodness for Danique. If it weren’t for her, I’d have no one to call ‘auntie.’”
After all these years, I still don’t know if Danique herself has any brothers or sisters. I should ask when she brings out the tea. It’s a good way to start talking about what I want to talk about. I open the card. Dear Aunt Dottie…
I get up and put the card back in its place on the table, next to the others. I wonder who sent all these cards. Probably students from the school. All of the students love Danique.
Danique brings in the tea tray and sets it on the table. “Did you read it?”
She sits. She puts a cup of tea in front of me. Then she puts her own in front of herself. First mine: two and a half teaspoons of sugar. Then hers: one neat teaspoon. I stir my tea and say to myself that when she’s stirred hers, too, I’ll begin. Danique stirs her tea. Then suddenly she says, “Edmond, how long do you think you can go on this way?”
My spoon sits motionless in my cup.
“Isn’t four years enough? Four years of you being tormented here and Alenush suffering on the other side of the world?”
I look at the steam rising from the tea. What does she mean? Why does she think I am torturing myself? How is Alenush being harmed? Alenush has been leading her own life for many years now. She seems to be satisfied with it. Sometimes she writes me a letter. I answer them. What more can I do?
Danique folds her hands in her lap. “This poor girl almost died from suffering waiting for Martha to finally reconcile herself to the situation, and now you…”
After Alenush left Iran, Danique came to our house almost every day to sit with Martha in her room. When we were all three together, we didn’t speak of Alenush. I felt that when Danique was alone with me, she was uncomfortable. At first I didn’t understand why. Then one day I asked Martha, “Where is my red tie?”
Martha said, “It’s not in the closet? Where it always is?”
The tie was right in front of me.
Martha asked, “Did you find it?”
I looked at the tie in my hand for a few moments. Then I said, “I found it. By the way, could you tell Danique that unless she wants me to, I’m not going to bring it up?”
When two years had passed since Alenush left, a letter came one morning. Martha, without looking at me, asked, “What sort of wedding gift do you think we should buy for our daughter?”
Danique smoothes the tablecloth with one hand. “Four years of penance isn’t enough for Alenush?”
I lower my head, but I know that she’s looking at me. “Edmond. Martha’s death happened! It’s not fair to blame Alenush.”
My mouth is dry. The teaspoon shakes in my hand. Why did she bring it up? I don’t talk about it with anyone. I don’t even allow myself to think about it. I know it’s not fair. But it’s out of my hands.
It was early morning. Martha had been talking with someone on the phone for a quarter of an hour. When she put the receiver back in the cradle and came to the sitting room, I could guess what she had been talking about.
She sat down in the armchair facing the garden and said, “How many times do we have to explain? If only she were here herself! She could tell everyone off. I can’t do it.”
I put a cup of coffee in front of her and didn’t ask who had been on the phone. What difference did it make? It had been more than two years since Alenush left, and by now we had become used to telephone calls and chilly reactions and being whispered about. The truth was that I had gotten used to it. I had learned how to answer curtly and not to allow friends and acquaintances and strangers to talk about Alenush. But Martha still hadn’t gotten used to it. She had cut back on socializing and had even gradually stopped going to church on Sundays. The only person she saw almost every day was Danique.
Martha drank her coffee. She pulled a Kleenex from the box and wiped her eyes. Then she got up. “I’m going shopping. Will you be home for lunch?”
I looked at her. She had grown thinner over the past few years, and there were dark circles under her eyes. As she was leaving the room, she stopped and leaned against the wall, then turned around and looked at me. “I feel dizzy,” she said, and smiled.
I was lining up the children at school one morning when the call came. I rushed to the hospital, and from then until the fortieth-day memorial for Martha – and for a long time afterward – life was a nightmare that just wouldn’t end.
I am still looking at my cup of tea, which is no longer steaming. Danique is still talking. Some of her words I have heard, some not. She finishes with, “Instead of reassuring her that it wasn’t her fault, you want to pour salt in the wound?” I raise my head.
My right leg has gone to sleep. Danique gets up, puts the untouched tea on the tray, and takes it back to the kitchen. I get up, go towards the table in the corner of the room and once again pick up Alenush’s card. I open it. Dear Aunt Dottie… Her handwriting is just as it was when she was a child. The same uneven curves, illegible here and there, with no punctuation marks.
Alenush was in third grade when Martha started nagging her about her handwriting. “Isn’t it shameful that the daughter of the school’s principal writes so badly? What will people say?”
Alenush started to cry. “What did I ever do to deserve being the daughter of the principal? I wish I was Margar’s daughter!” Margar was the school’s janitor.
Danique puts a tray of fresh tea on the table. I spoon sugar into both of our cups.
When it’s time to go, I push a few strands of white hair back from her forehead. I hold her hands for a few moments in my own, and say, “Thank you.”
She raises her thin eyebrows and laughs. “For what?” She fixes my scarf, puts a little package in my hands, and says, “Happy Easter, Mr. Principal.”
I open the box in the street. What a fool! I didn’t even take her any flowers. I remember that I still need to buy a gift for Mohammad’s wedding. In the little package there’s a bottle of green ink, and I stand still for a few moments, smiling, then start walking again. “Tomorrow,” I say aloud to myself. “Tomorrow I will buy Mohammad a gift.”
The morning of the day after Easter, I sit at the dining-room table and look out at the garden. The violets lean this way and that in the breeze: it’s as if they’re finally at home in their new place.
On a piece of white paper, in green ink, I begin a letter: Dearest Nunush…
Glossary
Places and proper names of people and foods that anglophone readers would not generally find familiar are identified in the text by an asterisk, and briefly explained below.
* SULTAN HAMID II: Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842–1918) was the ninety-ninth Caliph of Islam and the thirty-fourth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which he ruled from 1876 until his deposition by the Young Turk Revolution in 1909. He was the son of Abdul Mecid I and an Armenian member of the royal harem, named Tir-i Mu
jgan Kadin Efendi. He was replaced by one of his brothers, Mehmed V.
* SHERBET: a cold refreshing sweet drink made from fruit juice or fruit syrup, similar to lemonade, but made in various flavors, such as rose water, sour cherry, and plum.
* GILAKI: the Iranian dialect of northwestern Iran, in the Caspian province of Gilan.
* DOLMA: stuffed vine leaves (usually with rice, onions, and herbs). “Dolma” may also refer to other stuffed vegetables like sweet peppers or eggplants.
* EJMIATSIN: formerly Vagharshapat (the name of the Arsacid king Vagharch I, 117–140). Ejmiatsin (also spelled Echmiadzin) is a town to the west of Yerevan in Armenia, home to the Mother Cathedral of Holy Ejmiatsin, a church built circa 303 ce that remains the central seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Chief Catholicos of all Armenians, who is the chief bishop, or pope, of the Armenian Church. In 2000, this complex of religious buildings was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* MOUNT ARARAT: Mount Ararat (Turkish Ağrı) is a snow-capped dormant volcano in Turkey (formerly West Armenia), formed of two peaks. The largest of the two is called Greater Ararat, or in Armenian, Grand Masis, which is the highest peak in Turkey standing at 5,137 m or 16,854 ft. The other, with an altitude of 3,896 m or 12,782 ft, is called Lesser Ararat, or in Armenian Petit Masis.
* KAKACH: the Armenian word for tulip.
* 24 APRIL: this day is observed in Armenia, and by Armenians in diaspora, as Genocide Remembrance Day, and commemorates the victims of the Armenian genocide. On 24 April 1915, “Red Sunday,” the Ottoman government in Istanbul rounded up and later executed some two to three hundred prominent members of the Armenian community (religious, political, and educational figures). Estimates of the number of Armenians killed in Ottoman territory during 1915–18 run anywhere from half a million to 1.5 million.
* NADERI (CAFÉ) / NADERI STREET: Naderi Street is one of the old streets in the historic center of Tehran. Located just north of the Grand Bazaar, many Armenians settled in this area in the last century. Café Naderi, opened in 1927, was the first European-style café in Tehran, and is a favorite meeting place for Armenians. Before the revolution of 1979, it was famous for its gardens and regular nightly entertainment. Throughout the twentieth century, it was a popular rendezvous for intellectuals and the middle-class residents of old Tehran.
* VIGEN: Derderian (1929–2003) was a very popular Iranian singer of Armenian background. After singing in pubs, he was spotted by Radio Tehran, and went on to introduce original pop songs along Western lines into the Persian language. He also starred in over thirty Iranian movies in the 1950s and 1960s. His tall good looks and his career as an actor and singer earned him the title of the Sultan of Pop, and “the Elvis Presley of Iran.”
* Fearless Pilot, The: the name of a comic-book series that appeared for many years on the last page of Children’s World, the Junior Kayhan newspaper.
* PASKA: a sweet Easter bread similar to the Italian panettone, flavored with orange zest. At Easter, you will typically find a paska on the table of Armenian families in Iran, the surface decorated with crosses and flowers.
* NAZOUK: an Armenian rectangular butter pastry, close to the French millefeuille.
* GATA: a kind of Armenian puff pastry, round and about the size of a small plate. There are many varieties: some are made with a sweet filling, whereas others are unsweetened, or “salted.” Sometimes, as with paska, we spread them with butter for breakfast.
* IRIS: a type of confectionery like a marshmallow, square-shaped, about half the size of a matchbox. It is served wrapped in paper.
* KUKU: a kind of thick omelet, rather like a Spanish omelet. It can be prepared with a variety of ingredients, for example, herbs (sabzi), potatoes, etc.
* NIOC: the National Iranian Oil Company. Prior to 1951, when it was nationalized under Mossadegh, it was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
* GHORMEH SABZI: a Persian lamb-casserole dish made with kidney beans and sautéed mixed herbs such as fenugreek and parsley, served with rice. It is a popular dish in Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, and is often said to be the Iranian national dish.
* KARAJ: a town about twenty kilometers west of Tehran, in the foothills of the Alborz mountains. Today it is the fourth-largest city in Iran, and has become an extension of metropolitan Tehran. In the past, it was a popular resort for Tehranis, especially in the summer, with its large gardens and cooler climate.
* ANAHITA: an old Persian word (Nahid in modern Persian) denoting an ancient Persian deity venerated as the goddess of the waters and associated with fertility, healing, and wisdom. Compared to the Semitic goddess Ishtar, Georges Dumezil has demonstrated that Anahita also corresponds to the Indian river goddess Saraswati. The second-century bce Hellenic-style temple of Anahita at Kangavar (Iran) is one of the most important dedicated to this goddess. It is located halfway between Hamadan and Kermanshah. There is another well-preserved temple dedicated to Anahita in Bishapur near Kazeroon, south of Shiraz in the Fars province.
* ST. THADDEUS MONASTERY: a famous Armenian monastery in Iran’s western province of Azerbaijan, twenty kilometers from Maku. Armenians believe a church was originally built on this site in 66 ce, dedicated to the martyred apostle, St. Thaddeus (also called St. Jude), but it was extensively rebuilt in 1329. The earliest parts of the church were built of black stone, hence its Turkish name, the Black Church. In 2008 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
* Alik: an Armenian newspaper, founded in 1931, and published in Tehran. It is distributed throughout Iran.
* QAVAM AL-SALTANEH: this street is located in central Tehran, perpendicular to Naderi Street. It is now called 30 Tir Street.
* NOROUZ: the Persian New Year, a big national and largely secular holiday occurring at the Spring Equinox.
* MUHARRAM: the first month in the Islamic (lunar) calendar, it is a month of remembrance or mourning.
* SHOLEH ZARD: a popular Persian dessert of sweetened boiled rice flavored with saffron and rose water.
* KHORRAMABAD: an ancient city, the capital of Lorestan Province in southwest Iran, it is located in a scenic area on the road that goes up to Andimeshk Arak in the Zagros Mountains.
* NADERI (CAFÉ) / NADERI STREET: Naderi Street is one of the old streets in the historic center of Tehran. Located just north of the Grand Bazaar, many Armenians settled in this area in the last century. Café Naderi, opened in 1927, was the first European-style café in Tehran, and is a favorite meeting place for Armenians. Before the revolution of 1979, it was famous for its gardens and regular nightly entertainment. Throughout the twentieth century, it was a popular rendezvous for intellectuals and the middle-class residents of old Tehran.
Zoya Pirzad, The Space Between Us
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