Things We Left Unsaid (15 page)

She said hello to someone passing by and turned back to me. ‘Yep. We’ll hold the end-of-year celebration here in the yard. I’m building a stage for it.’ She gestured
toward the end of the yard, which was full of bricks and beams and planks. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, which was not an easy reach, considering how much shorter Manya was than me.
‘We’ll start practicing in a day or two.’ Her hand slid down my shoulder to my arm. ‘I have a neat idea for the twins. Vazgen found a pretty poem by...I forget who
it’s by, but the poem is called “The Four Seasons.” I thought it would be cute if the twins take turns reading the parts of the seasons. Armineh as spring and fall, and Arsineh as
summer and winter. That way they’ll have time to go backstage and change costumes for each season. And as for the costumes...’

I spotted Armen standing by one of the auditorium doors, talking with Emily and two high-school-age boys. With his navy blue pants and white shirt he looked more like a young man than like my
little boy. I wondered if Emily had come with her father and hoped Alice would not see Emile here. I said to Manya, ‘As for the costumes, it will naturally be me who should sew
them?’

She let go of my arm and covered her mouth to hide her tittering. ‘Yep. That’s why I was looking for you. It won’t be difficult. Four simple long dresses with wide sleeves. But
the colors should all be different. Pink for spring, for example, green for summer, orange for fall, and white for winter.’

On the other side of the yard I spotted Emile talking to the priest and his wife. Fretting again, I hoped that Alice would not show up in the vicinity. Then I remembered that, fortunately, the
two of them had not been introduced and would not recognize one another. ‘I could even sew something on each dress particular to the season. Like flowers for spring, wheat stalks for
fall.’ Emily’s headband fell on the ground. Armen bent over before the two other boys could and picked it up. I lost sight of Emile in the crowd.

‘What a great idea!’ agreed Manya. ‘By the way, Vazgen has finished the translation of
Little Lord Fauntleroy
and...’ She stopped mid-sentence, staring directly
behind me. What was she looking at with that vacant grin? When I turned my head around to see, Emile shifted his gaze from Manya and greeted me. Both of them now stood looking at me. I introduced
them and they shook hands. Manya straightened the collar that I had already straightened for her.

‘You were saying, about the translation...’ I prodded Manya.

‘What?’ She seemed to have just woken from a trance. ‘Oh, yes, the book. The translation is finished. I’ll give it to the kids to bring to you. Please read it soon and
return it. We intend to print it before the end-of-year celebration.’

Emile said, ‘I guess you are the one who planned the program tonight? Congratulations. It was very interesting.’

Manya blushed and called out ‘Coming!’ to one of the ushers who was calling to her. Then she shook hands with Emile, saying, ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance,’ and
left. Was it my silly imagination or did they hold hands for noticeably longer than was necessary?

I looked around. Fortunately Alice and Mother were nowhere to be seen. Emile was wearing a white suit with very thin blue stripes. His tie was black.

He was watching the people around us talking, smoking, and having drinks and sandwiches. He said his mother had not come, so he came to save Emily from being all alone. Well, and out of some
curiosity, too. ‘I wanted to get acquainted with the Armenians of Abadan.’ He turned around to face me. ‘If all the women here are like you and Miss Manya, Abadan is not such a
bad place.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘But between the two of us, the program was a bit tedious.’ He said he was thinking about going back home and returning later to fetch
Emily. I was happy that he was leaving, and in order to keep him from coming back and meeting Alice, I insisted that we would give Emily a ride home. He thanked me, said goodbye and left.

I looked through the crowd trying to find Mrs. Nurollahi. I did not, and so returned to the auditorium. Maybe Alice was mistaken. Why should Mrs. Nurollahi come? She did not speak Armenian, and
the ceremonies for the 24th of April were not particularly interesting.

The crowd gradually re-assembled in the auditorium. Mother was in a good mood after chatting with her friend from Julfa. Nina was making arrangements to invite Mrs. Madatian for dinner, and as
soon as I sat down, Alice said, ‘Shushanik and Janette must have made a killing! All the lovely ladies have new clothes on, head to toe. All, it seems, in black.’ Shushanik and Janette
were two of the most famous dressmakers in Abadan.

Garnik came to the microphone and waited for the room to quiet down. Then, in a tone at odds with his usual cheerful, laughing voice, he introduced Khatoun Yeremian, from the city of Van, now
resident in Tehran. She had been an eyewitness of those bitter times and was now, for a few days, a most welcome visitor in Abadan. He gestured toward the back of the stage. We all looked in that
direction. One of the usher boys came and placed an armchair in front of the microphone. An elderly woman, walking with short, shuffling steps and leaning on the arm of another usher, came onto the
stage. She was frail and thin, wearing a black ankle-length skirt, with a large black shawl covering her white hair. With the boys’ help, she sat down. Garnik lowered the microphone for her.
The woman laid her bony hand on the heads of each usher and mumbled something sotto voce, which I took to be a prayer of benediction.

We all watched her in silence. For a few seconds she looked back at us, then began to speak in a weary voice. She spoke in a different dialect from ours, in the western Armenian of the city of
Van, saying things like ‘a wee bit’ instead of ‘a little bit;’ and ‘gusto,’ in place of ‘joy.’ She said that before talking about those days of
hardship, she wished to speak ‘a wee bit’ about the days of ‘gusto.’ She wished, she said, to journey with us to the past.

She spoke of her childhood home in the city of Van. In their yard there were two pomegranate trees, a few olive trees, and over in one corner, a brick oven in which her mother used to bake
Lavash bread. There was also a small flowerbed where they planted marigolds. She spoke of her father, who came home every day from his cloth shop in the bazaar of Van with bags of fruit under his
arms. Sometimes he brought home left-over scraps from the huge cloth-bolt rollers for Khatoun and her sister. From those scraps, their mother would make rag dolls for her two girls. Their older
brother would draw faces for the dolls with a piece of charcoal. In fact, he was always drawing or painting, using whatever was at hand for his canvas. On Sundays the whole family went to the city
church, which was on a wide boulevard with rows of willow trees and poplars. The girls, holding their rag dolls under one arm, walked hand in hand with their mother, weaving through the willows and
poplars and counting the red fezzes of the men, some of whom would stop to exchange greetings with their father. ‘Old customers of the shop,’ Father would say. ‘God-fearing and
conscientious.’ On Fridays, the sound of the muezzin could be heard from the neighborhood mosque. As the Muslim neighbors returned home from their Friday congregational prayers, Father would
tell them, ‘May God accept your prayers.’ Whenever Mother made yoghurt soup, she poured some of it in clay bowls to send to her Muslim neighbors. She would decorate the surface of the
soup with marigold petals. In return, the neighbors would send over baklava for her.

Mrs. Madatian took out a handkerchief from her black patent-leather purse. No one in the room was fanning any more.

Khatoun fell silent for a few moments. With bowed head, she twisted the two ends of her shawl around her hands. ‘And then came the black days. There came a day when Father returned home
earlier than usual, empty-handed and distraught. He told Mother that the Armenians had closed up their shops. The soldiers had set fire to the few shops that remained open, and plundered sacks of
rice and wheat from another. Father said, “We must leave.” Mother clawed at her cheeks, “We are ruined.” ’

Once again Khatoun fell silent. She drew a deep breath, slapped her knees several times with the palms of her hands, and rocked left and right, her frail body swaying. Then she shook her head
and said, ‘And we were ruined.’

As I went to open my purse, Alice held out a small packet of tissues. I took a tissue and passed the packet to Nina. Mother was shaking her head back and forth and muttering, ‘God deliver
us from evil.’

The only sound in the auditorium was breathing, inhaling and exhaling, and Khatoun’s weary voice. ‘The door of the house was wide open. Mother was crying, filling up the knapsacks
and trunks, fastening them shut. Father was shouting, “We have no room, woman. Leave this junk behind. There is not much time. Hurry.” Mother was wailing. “Wait a wee bit. Just a
wee bit.” My sister and I stood under the pomegranate trees, stupefied, clutching our rag dolls. Brother was cursing. He kicked the marigolds and spoke of revenge. We climbed on the cart, sat
on top of the knapsacks and trunks, and headed off. The streets were thronged with other carts, buggies, horses, mules, and whatever else could carry a person or his belongings. It was a maelstrom
of dust and wailing and cursing. The rag dolls got lost, and my sister and I cried. First for our dolls, then for Father, then for Mother, for our brother and for one another.’

The packet of tissues passed hand to hand and was soon empty.

That evening I stretched out my feet on the coffee table and leaned my head back against the sofa cushion. I twisted my hair around my finger and looked at the painting above
the television. It was a watercolor of the Ejmiatsin Cathedral in Armenia. I don’t remember who had told me that the church in Abadan was modeled on Ejmiatsin. I wondered why Manya was
flustered when Emile came over to us. Good thing that Alice had not seen Emile! Why did Emile tell me the program was tedious when he told Manya it was interesting? I spoke aloud to the painting:
‘Poor Khatoun.’

From behind his newspaper Artoush inquired, ‘What’s that?’

‘Poor Khatoun, her mother, her father, all those people,’ I said. ‘You should have come.’

A page turned.

I was looking at Ejmiatsin. ‘All those people, living happily side by side for all those years. What happened? For what reason? Whose fault was it?’ I was twisting a lock of hair
around my finger. ‘We can’t do a thing about it except pay our futile empty respects and hold memorial gatherings. You should have come.’

Another page turned.

I said, ‘You’ll never guess who came. Mrs. Nurollahi. Alice saw her. But maybe she was mistaken.’

He folded the newspaper, played with his beard and laughed. ‘So she came after all? She asked me for the day and time of the commemoration. When she saw that I didn’t know, she went
to ask some other Armenians. Shall I get the lights or will you?’

‘How come you didn’t know the day and time? Why isn’t it important to you? Why didn’t you come?’

Artoush stood there. He stroked his beard and looked at the painting of Ejmiatsin. Then he asked, ‘Do you know where Shotait is?’

When I did not reply he put his hands in his pockets and went over to the window. He looked out at the yard for a while. Then he turned around. With the point of his toe he drew a circle around
one of the flowers in the design of the Persian carpet. ‘It’s not far. Right next door, about four kilometers from Abadan.’ He looked out at the yard again. ‘If you want,
I’ll take you, so you can see for yourself. Ask Madatian and his wife to come, and Garnik too.’ He turned around to look at me. ‘Women and men and children and oxen and goats and
sheep all live together in a hut.’ He took his hands out of his pockets and undid the band of his wristwatch. ‘We’ll have to go in the daytime, because they have no electricity in
Shotait. Remember to bring water, too, because they don’t have plumbing.’ He wound up his watch. ‘We have to be careful not to shake anyone’s hand or caress the children,
because we could get either tuberculosis or trachoma.’ He started walking toward the door. ‘Tell Mrs. Madatian not to bring English chocolates for the kids there, because I don’t
suppose the children of Shotait have ever seen chocolate in their lives. And tell Garnik not to wear his Italian shoes because the mud and dung will come up to his ankles.’

I was staring at Ejmiatsin. Artoush reached the door, then walked back, stood right in front of me, and stared me in the face. ‘Tragedies happen every day. Not just fifty years ago, but
right now. Not far away, but right here! A stone’s throw from the heart of green, safe, chic, and modern Abadan.’ He strapped his watch back on. ‘And at the same time, you are
right. Poor Khatoun. Poor mankind.’

And he left the room.

I was making Chombur for the children’s after-school snack: breadcrumbs with cheese and ground walnuts on top. I heard the drawn-out hiss of the air brakes of the school
bus in the street.

I wiped my hands on my apron, waiting for the sound of running footsteps. Hearing nothing, I went to the hallway and opened the front door. They had reached the middle of the path and Arsineh,
head downcast, was crying. Armineh was carrying both their satchels in one hand. Her other hand was resting on her sister’s shoulder, and she was whispering in her ear. There was no sign of
Armen.

Alarmed, I ran out to them. ‘What happened? Did you fall down? Did you have a fight with someone? Are you sick?’

Her crying intensified and in between sobs, she stammered out, ‘What did I do? I didn’t say a thing. It was the kids at school who said it. They’re the ones who laughed.’
The intense crying made her cough.

Armineh quickly confirmed, ‘Arsineh’s right, Arsineh is right.’

I washed Arsineh’s face and hands, sat her on a chair in the kitchen, made her swallow a few gulps of water and said, ‘Now tell me what happened.’

They looked at one another. Arsineh looked straight down, laced her fingers and twisted her hands. Then Armineh thrust out her chin, took several steps back, set her hand on her hip and took a
stand right there in the center of the kitchen.