When she and Levon started dating, she could not help but notice the difference of their hands; Levon’s fingers were short, calloused, and thick, whereas Faris had large hands, with long, smooth fingers. When she would sneak out to meet him in the middle of the night, they would walk through the neighborhood, sometimes walking up and down the same stretch of blocks. They would hold hands, their fingers laced, and Tamar loved how perfectly their fingers locked into one another’s so comfortably. She had thought it was one of the many simple, foretelling signs that they were meant to be together.
She turned off the shower and slipped into her robe. Normally, she would change in the bedroom and dry her hair. She walked to the kitchen with her hair tied up in a towel and made coffee. The TV was turned on low in the living room. She guessed Sophie was sitting on the couch and keeping herself busy. Perhaps it was the feeling of nostalgia that had overcome her, because after the coffee was ready, Tamar fixed herself a cup and sat in the backyard still wearing her robe with her hair in a towel. Although the area was fenced in and the neighbors could not see her, she knew Levon would find it distasteful of her to be sitting outside not fully dressed.
Since Araxi’s disappearance, she had stopped making a habit of waking up early. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun shined high and bright, warming the slight chill of the morning air. Let Levon walk through the gate and see her now. He was probably at his sister’s house, having run over there because of some ridiculous request. Tamar had given up that fight a long time ago. She drank her coffee, and despite the jarring phone call from the girl’s mother, she allowed herself to relax.
Years after moving to America, Tamar would look back on her life in Beirut with great nostalgia. There, life seemed to be as simple as a storybook. The men worked, the children played, and the women stayed home to look after them. There was rarely the threat of crime, for the neighborhood was a community that looked after one another. If a child was seen doing something they shouldn’t, like walking on the railroad tracks, which was strictly forbidden, they knew that by the time they reached home their parents knew about it. Children were regarded as the responsibility of the community. During holidays and special occasions there was always an open invitation to visit each other’s homes, whether the families knew each other well or not. As Tamar’s life progressed, this past life she remembered seemed as ephemeral as a dream. She forced herself to believe that the openness and freedom she so fondly recalled was an exaggerated reality she had concocted to make her present life seem more acutely unbearable.
Faris’s family and the Satamians lived in an area of Beirut that was quieter than the rest of the city. It was part of a small enclave that rested above the other neighborhoods, and overlooked the maze-like streets that were characteristic of the area. For this reason, it always took a while longer to walk to the bazaar and shop for the evening’s dinner, but by the time Tamar was twelve her mother would send her off with a list of items to be purchased. Faris would often join her. “What are we buying?” he would ask, and Tamar would repeat it back in a sing song voice that they would chant on their way to the market so as not to forget. “Bulgur-naneh-tomatoes-lentils-onions-okra-rice.”
The two had known each other since young childhood. Faris had no brothers or sisters and Tamar’s two older sisters, closer in age, had started going to school when she was barely three years old. Their mothers sought companionship during the long days while their husbands went to work and Tamar and Faris, alone without each other, played in the backyard while the women shared their daily chores to pass the time.
The small, encapsulated world in which the two occupied each other’s days had created an unfettered bond they would not realize for years. There were simple moments, like small jewels that would remain embedded in their memory. Tamar saw the first time Faris was stung by a bee and watched in amazement as the insect landed on his hand and plunged itself into his skin. Instead of screaming as she herself would have, he sucked his breath in as if trying to endure the pain, and waited for the thing to fly away. Faris accepted the inevitability of life in that way, the natural order of the world.
Unlike him, Tamar was combative. Many times after she refused to eat a certain afternoon meal or randomly declared she would never go to school again, her mother would put her in the backyard and forbid her to play with Faris as a punishment. He would sit on the ground playing with a toy while she was exiled on the farther side of the garden, sulking. The two would sit in silence and overhear their mothers talking.
The women had towels in their laps, snapping string beans from the large pile on the table.
“The first two were so easy,” Mrs. Satamian sighed. “This one likes to make me crazy.”
“It was bound to happen,” Mrs. Saleh said, chuckling. “When you have three, at least one of them is going to be contrary.”
“She just refuses to do things. There’s never a true reason behind it,” Mrs. Satamian continued. “She’s only seven now. I dread what she will be like in seven years.”
“You know what they say—if they are difficult now they will be easier later,” Mrs. Saleh replied.
“I hope so,” Mrs. Satamian said. “Even the other morning on our way to church her father couldn’t reason with her. She had decided she didn’t want to go. She saw no reason to. As we left the house, she kicked off each of her shoes one by one, leaving them on the ground, and eventually took each sock off her foot …”
As Tamar heard her mother’s account, she sensed Faris looking at her. Her face reddened and she kept her eyes down, staring at the grass.
“You took your shoes off?” he said, low enough so the mothers wouldn’t hear. “That’s a crazy thing to do,” he said, shaking his head, trying to seem disapproving, but smiling.
Even after the two started going to school, they continued spending time together. Sometimes it was during the early evenings when Tamar’s mother sent them off with her list of groceries. They would run into their fathers who both worked at the same small mill as carpenters, despite the fact that it was not their trade. From a distance, the men resembled one another so closely that at first it was difficult to discern one from the other. Both were slight in frame and height, with dark eyes and swarthy skin darkened from hours spent working under the hot sun. As the two walked home, they discussed the usual concerns of men their age—politics, soccer, and work. They spoke mostly in Arabic, although Faris’s father knew Armenian fairly well. He was not Armenian, but had been raised in an area of Beirut where most of the neighbors were. Faris and Tamar would race past them, waving along the way.
The two men did not discuss the growing friendship between their children. These matters were usually left for the women to deal with, if they needed dealing with at all. Artemis Satamian assumed that some unspoken natural law would preserve his three daughters for Armenian husbands. His friend and companion did not think much of the idea either way. God had given him and his wife only one son, and he learned to be grateful for it. He also knew and respected the customs of the Armenians, and although Artemis had not spoken of it, it was known that like many Armenians who lived in Beirut, he and his family had escaped the genocide. Many had fled to different parts of the world; Artemis and his family had gone first to Musa Dagh. For this very obvious reason, Hatem Saleh knew that Armenians maintained the tradition of marrying their own. It was a fact that he did not question or secretly resent.
Had it not been for Anahid, the eldest Satamian daughter, no one would have suspected that Tamar and Faris’s friendship had already sparked into something more. One afternoon, as the girl was walking home from school, she spotted the two walking down a narrow alley holding hands. She was tempted to follow them, but went home instead and waited for her sister.
She took her into the bedroom.
“I saw you with Faris today,” Anahid said.
Tamar stayed quiet and gazed at her sister’s face.
“You were holding hands with him,” Anahid continu
ed. She waited, but Tamar stood saying nothing.
“I’m going to spare you years of heartache,” Anahid said, not sure if Tamar would grasp the gravity of her words. “You have to stop holding hands with Faris. When you get older the holding hands will become more. And eventually you will be old enough to get married, and he is not the person you should marry.”
Finally Tamar spoke, “That’s a long time from now,” she said. “We were just playing.” Certain that Anahid could somehow also peer into the past, she tried not to let her voice waver and betray her memory of Faris kissing her two days ago.
“I would try to spend less time with him,” Anahid advised. Nearly sixteen, she had already experienced the triumphs and disappointments of young love. Hoping it was the end of the conversation, Tamar said nothing and watched as Anahid finally left the room.
Three days earlier, as she was leaving school, Tamar’s friends had watched as Stepan, one of the handsomest boys in their class, asked if he could walk her home. Not knowing what to say, she agreed. A block before reaching Tamar’s house, the boy said good-bye, knowing that customarily it was the older boys who were courting that walked their girlfriends all the way up to their homes. He asked if he could walk her home the next day and again, without knowing what to say, she said yes. She wondered as she trudged up to her house what she would tell her girlfriends at school the next day as they were sure to have questions. Before her mind could wander very far, she saw Faris standing near the narrow alley by her house.
“Hi,” he said.
She smiled at him. He did not smile back, but instead stood stone-faced, his face pink and damp as if he had been running.
“Who was that?” he asked, when she finally reached him.
“Stepan,” she said. “From school.”
“You let him walk you home?” he asked.
For years to follow, Tamar would remember Faris’s face that afternoon. The worry in his eyes and the corners of his downturned mouth almost put her in tears. Oblivious to what troubled her friend so, she wanted to console him.
He took her hand gently and led her down the alley.
“Please,” he said, now holding both her hands, still gently, lightly as if holding a delicate piece of jewelry, “don’t let anyone walk with you.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Please,” he said, and leaned toward her, kissing her softly on the mouth.
It was true that the kiss had surprised Tamar, but even more surprising was that she was not alone in her daydreams of the moment it would happen. She had heard from her friends who had brothers how immature boys were, how they didn’t think of things like kissing or love until they were older. And here she was, kissing Faris, whose feelings she had never suspected.
Tamar stood in the bedroom and thought of what Anahid had said to her: When you get older, the holding hands will become more. It already had. What she planned to do about it was not something she was concerned with. Her thirteenth birthday was a few short months away, and what she could not foresee were the many years that lay ahead. There would be a civil war in Beirut. She and her family would leave for America. And somehow Faris, or at least his presence, would loom over her well after she married Levon and gave birth to two daughters.
Levon
Parts of Sunnyside were comprised of a small community of Armenians that had emigrated mostly from Eastern Europe and some areas of the Middle East. With the help of a relative’s friend, Levon and his family had secured a two-bedroom apartment in a small building near the subway. In the mornings, Levon and his father would leave the apartment together and walk through the neighborhood to look for jobs. They did not speak English yet, but knew the managers or owners of various stores in the area who were also Armenian, and if they themselves did not have jobs to offer, they perhaps knew of someone who did.
Much like when Levon had lived in Romania, the seasons in New York shifted with intensity, and the cool perfumed air of the spring flowers became oppressively hot and still as summer approached. Levon found himself waking up too early from the heat and lay in bed waiting to hear his mother in the kitchen preparing breakfast. This particular morning he had woken up earlier still, and without much reason he got dressed and went to sit on his building stoop. Usually, there were people outside, mothers talking to each other and fanning themselves as their children played up and down the block, where they could still be supervised. Old men set small chairs and tables on the sidewalk and played backgammon and drank sourj, Armenian coffee, discussing politics and other topics of interest. All of them were Armenian, and it pleased Levon to hear the idle banter in his own language.
It was still too early for anyone to be outside. Levon stood and saw daylight peering through the dark sky, and watched it bloom with colors. From the brightness he saw a figure speedily walking down the block in his direction. It was a young woman not much younger than him, with long brown hair parted in the middle. She was preoccupied with thought, her head bent and her hair tucked behind her ears.
“Paree looys,” he said.
She jumped and looked up. “Paree looys,” she said quickly. Good morning.
He watched her walk past him, intrigued by her urgency. She stopped two doors away from his stoop and as she started up the steps, the front door opened. He was surprised he had never seen her before. A woman emerged and stood in front of the girl. She was wearing a light pink housedress, and her hair was tied back in a bun.
“Tamar? What are you doing out here?” the woman asked sharply.
“I couldn’t sleep,” the girl said. “So I came outside to get some fresh air.”
Levon was amused once again to hear this in his own language.
“So you lay in bed a little while. You don’t come out here in the street, standing outside like an orphan. Your sisters are still sleeping and so is your father. Go upstairs before they start asking questions,” the woman said, and waved the girl inside.
Before the girl followed her mother inside, she turned her head and looked at Levon, aware that they had unwittingly indulged him with some entertainment. She half smiled and disappeared. He wondered why he had never seen her before. He asked his mother later on that evening.
“You probably saw one of the Satamian sisters,” his mother said. “They’re from Beirut.”
He could tell from her tone that she didn’t like them. He also knew it was for a reason that he personally could not understand. Even among such a small people there was prejudice, and because years ago the Genocide had flung Armenians to different parts of the world, there were stereotypes based on the country from which they came. In addition to speaking the language of their new countries, they all spoke Armenian, more or less, with only two dialects that set them apart.
“I saw one of the daughters this morning,” he continued.
“I’ve seen her early in the morning too,” Anoush said. “She’s been seeing this Arab boy who lives in the neighborhood. Everyone is talking about it.”
“What’s the big deal?” he asked.
Anoush set down a small plate of cheese and bread in front of him, and then explained as he began eating.
“The boy isn’t Armenian. But they all know him because he’s from the same neighborhood back in Beirut.”
“Is he Muslim?” Levon asked.
From a distance the rapid sound of firecrackers rang through the air, like little pistol shots. Anoush jumped and rushed over to the window. She felt her hands shaking and put them inside her apron pockets.
“What is that?” she asked. Her mouth was dry. Again, another succession of popping noises went off. These sounds were those of her childhood in Romania. She wanted to run into one of the bedrooms and lie under the covers. She had been ten years old when the terror of the war had infiltrated the small village she lived in. She remembered crouching beneath a window with her mother and peeping through the curtains as men dressed in Soviet uniforms walked through the streets.
“They’re firecrackers,”
Levon said, interrupting her thoughts. She looked out the window one last time and walked back to where she had been standing. “It’s 4th of July, Ma. That’s how they celebrate here. Back to what I was saying—is he Muslim?”
“Who?” she asked, and then remembered their conversation. “No, he’s Christian. There aren’t any Muslims in Beirut really. But the family doesn’t want him because he’s not Armenian. He speaks it just fine, but they don’t want him. So when you saw her this morning she was probably coming back from sneaking out with him,” Anoush said. “Everyone knows about it. But they can’t do much. The girl is almost twenty. Her two other sisters are engaged and almost out of the house. Two less pairs of eyes to watch over her.”
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“Because I listen, but I don’t repeat what I hear,” she said. “And I know what you’re thinking,” she said, as Levon’s face began to redden. “But don’t. I don’t want any trouble, and on top of that they’re Beirutsis.”
Armenians from Beirut were known for having a lot of kef, fun—dancing and drinking with too much merriment for Anoush’s taste. In Bucharest, her community was a people of a practical nature, hard-working and always planning ahead. Although the Satamian father seemed like a serious man, who knew what kind of shenanigans he pulled after a few glasses of oghee?
His father emerged from the bedroom. Since leaving Bucharest and coming with his family to live in the States, he had become more temperamental. Uprooting himself and his family during a time in which he thought he should have been profiting from his years of toil, Bedros’s outlook, as if overnight, had turned bitter. He no longer felt himself to be a strong, capable man in his late forties. He had endured great losses in his country, where after all the years of secretly saving money under the leadership of a communist government, he had had to leave everything behind in order to come to America.
The Legacy of Lost Things Page 3
