Aram would have been a suitor if Iskender had not snapped Khatoun up first. He’d been their closest neighbour when they were children, his parents owning the fields next to theirs in Garmuj, their sheep mingling during the day. They’d hated each other at first, and had only become friends when Aram presented Khatoun with a runt lamb that had been rejected by its mother. They nursed it together, named it Samra and pretended it was their child. While a group of their friends had danced and banged pots as wedding drums, Aram had lifted the makeshift veil from her face and everyone hushed, waiting to see if he would dare kiss her. He’d winked at her instead and run off with the antique lace, pursued by the gaggle of shrieking girls.
Aram had played out many different endings in his imagination over the years and was devastated to return home from college one summer and find Khatoun married and gone. He refused all offers to meet young women after that and threw himself into business instead. He secured an office next to the bank, called himself a ‘Financial Advisor’ and got paid handsomely for telling others how to save – or spend – their money. He encouraged so many people to take out policies on their life that his friends joked about the kickback he must be getting from the fat suits at New York Life.
His mother (who never forgave herself for not acting faster and nabbing Khatoun as a bride) kept Aram up to date with Khatoun’s news. Each child she saw born, “could have been yours; would have been mine!”
Even at work he heard about Khatoun through several clients who marvelled at the ‘Little Ermeni’ who had perfected couture a la Franga and could sew faster than anyone; whose dresses made neurotic women serene and their husbands passionate and fertile. And then, after almost a decade of not seeing her, before the Adana troubles had stopped her trips to Aleppo, he’d bumped into her there, in a fabric store.
She was busy haggling over silks with a shopkeeper, nodding quietly as the oily-faced Greek pulled stuff out from under the counter, insisting that she would never see anything of the kind this side of China. Standing next to her were the first and second wives of a wealthy gentleman Aram knew. The two women were quick to draw their veils as he approached and retreat into the background, but Khatoun turned to greet him, her face open and friendly.
“Where are your pigtails?” he asked, peering over her shoulder.
“Aram Bohjalian! Up in a bun,” Khatoun laughed, patting the simple twist at the base of her neck as if she’d seen him only yesterday.
Aram was delighted to find her so unchanged and deliberately missed his departure, hanging listlessly in Aleppo an extra day so that he could accompany her party back to Ourfa via Harran. The two veiled ladies pretended to be scandalised as he followed them to the khan and helped Bulbul with their luggage, and they teased Khatoun mercilessly each time they stopped and he stuck his head into their carriage to check on their welfare.
“He never married?”
“No.”
“How many years since you last saw him?”
“Eight. Maybe nine.”
“And you’re sure you never kissed him when you were a little girl?”
“No! Yes – I’m sure.”
“Hmm.”
“That’s why he looks so hungry!”
“Better not let your husband see him!”
But Iskender had been delighted to meet him, and before long Aram had become a regular fixture at the dinner table, often sleeping the night with a blanket next to the tonir and setting off for his office at dawn. One evening he took a magnifying glass to Iskender’s books and was happy to report the following morning that, by all accounts, Khatoun and family were getting rich.
“You know you should move, don’t you?” he told them over breakfast, his eye on Khatoun’s growing belly. “First of all it’s not safe to live out in the open like this these days. Politics are too unsettled. I don’t trust the Young Turks any more. Secondly, you need a bigger house for your…um…growing family, and thirdly you need the space to run a business from home. Then you won’t have to travel as much. Store, live and work under the same roof and you’ll save overheads. And, lastly, or fourthly, if there is such a thing, once you get a house with extra rooms you can always rent them out if all else fails. So,” he dipped his choereg in his tea and took a soggy bite, “come and see me when you’re ready.”
The day she felt ready was warm and humid and Khatoun was out of breath when she arrived at Aram’s office.
“Ouf!” she pushed the door open and stood with her hand on her hip, panting heavily. Aram shot out from behind his desk and swivelled his chair round for her to sit on.
“You climbed the stairs? In your condition?”
“That’s what I said,” Ferida yelled, reaching the top of the stairs herself and following Khatoun into the room. “She doesn’t care. She doesn’t listen to me. We walked here. Asdvadz! All the way from Garmuj!”
It was a swift deal. Aram knew of a house already – safe in the Assyrian Quarter. He’d be back in a minute. They were to relax while they waited for him. They sipped cool glasses of water and Ferida gulped down her coffee, upending it over a saucer and nodding favourably a few minutes later, just as Aram returned with a carriage to take them to see the place.
As soon as they stepped over the threshold into the airy, tiled hallway, Khatoun felt as if she’d come home. For years she’d had recurring dreams of a house with endless corridors that led to endless rooms. In the dreams there were secret chambers hidden behind fireplaces that twisted and turned into more rooms. Every time she turned a corner, the dream house got larger, and at each junction she had the sensation that she was just about to find out the answer. To what, she never knew. But walking through the pink plastered rooms of the house with Aram at her side, she’d had the exact same sensation.
Ferida had skipped ahead, her nose leading her straight to the kitchens like a hunting dog where she slapped her face and yelped at the discovery of cavernous rooms with huge boilers and plenty of pantry space.
“Look,” Aram had pushed Khatoun along with an almost imperceptible touch, his fingers spread wide between her shoulder blades as he guided her through the rooms. “You’ll have a parlour for fittings and Iskender can have himself a library. There’s a huge salon in the back where you can spend evenings spread out like Pashas, and a handful of storerooms off the kitchen you can turn into workrooms. And then there’s upstairs with five bedrooms, so, finally, your parents can be surrounded by their grandchildren and have somewhere to disappear to when the noise gets too much. And the pièce de résistance – Ferida will love this – your own petite hamam – no, please don’t climb the stairs in your condition! You can see everything later. I promise, there is room for everyone.”
He’d already worked everything out and knew all the unusual features to the place, like the hidden back staircase, the secret storage nooks and the star shaped skylights that lit up the floor of the entrance hall. He beamed down at Khatoun and she took his hand in hers, kissed the back and then, before he could snatch it away, turned it over and lightly pressed the palm to her lips.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “I love it – I want it. The Pink House. Can I afford it?”
Aram waved his hand in the air and opened his mouth as if to speak, only the words got stuck. He began to cough and retreated backwards down the corridor.
“Yes – you can afford it,” he managed before whipping round and skipping into the kitchen after Ferida. “I’ll get the papers prepared.”
And so they had found it. Khatoun’s dream house.
They’d moved in within the month, selling the farm in Garmuj a few weeks later to a Turk, home from Mosul with his Arab wife and five daughters.
Solomon was born in the Pink House. Her third child. And in the last year, six girls had followed Lolig from the Protestant Orphanage, overflowing as it was in the aftermath of the Adana massacres. First, Gadarine and Margarit. Sisters from Sasoun; already employed as finishers for their fine embroidery and delighted to move from their c
ramped quarters into a room with natural light and air. Then the two gentle flowers, Hasmig and Manoush, swift as rivers on the machines. Bzdig Shoushun came next, and lastly Serpuhi. All of them orphans, although it seemed strange to call them that. The youngest, Bzdig Shoushun, helped with the children while she perfected her sewing but the others were already young women and the talk almost always centred on love.
The house was fat with life. Everyone had a bed that could stay put, including the girls in their courtyard dormitory. No more rolling the mats away and sweeping dirt floors. They had a bathroom, hot water and an indoor toilet. Half a dozen machines were running daily. Business was booming.
And yet, open the doors to the street and ask someone. Are we neighbours? Are we friends?
See what they say.
Khatoun can hear Ferida talking to herself in the kitchen (“I don’t talk to myself. I think out loud. It’s different,”) and gets moving. If Ferida finds her dawdling in the corridor, “Kaknem,” and “Eshou botch,” is all she will hear all the way to bed.
She reaches the cavernous entrance hall where long shafts of light illuminate the floor in the outline of a star. In front of her, the heavy wooden doors leading onto the narrow street are bolted shut. To her left is the parlour, as Aram called it, decorated in European style. Khatoun and Mertha had studied several Parisian magazines before ordering the low, damask sofa and two armchairs which they’d placed at angles to each other, separated by ornate tables, as in the photographs. Potted plants stand on the floor by the widow, framed by thick, floor-length curtains held back by tasselled swags. The room is aired once a week, before the ladies come to visit. In fact, they have renamed it ‘The Ladies’ Room’, as Thooma and Iskender never venture past the door, preferring to sit and smoke in the room filled with books across the hall that Iskender calls his office.
Khatoun climbs the stairs. Stone gives way to wood, silence to the creak and whisper of escaping dreams. The upper floor curls like a snail around the central courtyard and Khatoun takes the long way round so she can pass each bedroom before she reaches her own.
First, her parents’ room. Her mother wearing dresses now, the village shalvar put aside. Finally, in their old age, a large wooden bed that stays put day and night. It sits on high legs, away from prying insects, and is situated near the window for air. Her father’s satisfied snores reverberate through the door.
“May the light greet you tomorrow,” Khatoun whispers, “and God age you on one pillow.”
Along the corridor to Ferida’s room; her slippers, as always, by the door, ready to go. Inside the room her belongings are still in bundles even though they moved in over a year ago. And no bed for Ferida, who prefers the cotton-stuffed mattress on the floor she swears helps her back. At the end of the corridor is the hamam with its large copper boiler. Once a week the girls light the wood fire under the water tank and the whole household files in, two by two, to sweat and scrub in the little room. The rolls of black sweat and dirt sluiced down the drain with silver bowls. The knots in Khatoun’s back unravelled with olive oil. Bath nights end with the smell of peeled oranges and the clatter of wooden shoes down the stairs.
Next to the bathroom is a spare room, filled for now with household linens and Ferida’s unused bed frame. Bzdig Shoushun is currently ‘borrowing’ the bed while on night-call for the children. Next to the small room is a large dormitory, the children’s room. Khatoun opens the door. Empty. She checks under the beds. Pokes at the quilts. Nobody hiding.
Around the corner she pushes through the double doors that lead into her bedroom. It is dark, fragranced by shoes. Iskender lies across the bed fully dressed. Earlier tonight he’d written a poem to his Trio of Innocents and there they lie, a tangled mess of limbs and damp hair, including the baby. Solomon is surrounded by pillows, safe in his own little cocoon, his lips occasionally moving as if latched on to her breast. Alice and Afrem are uncovered – their blanket wrapped around Iskender’s head like a turban. Khatoun moves towards them wondering whether to take them to their own room or leave them be. She sits on the bed. She could just lean over and squeeze in at the very edge, right next to Solomon. Maybe head to toe. The floorboards groan. Iskender moves.
“Christ has risen,” he says. “He’s taking me with him. You can’t judge a book by its cover. There are pages and pages and they all stink. May you live in the light, Amen.” He clutches his stomach and groans.
“Did you eat onions?” Khatoun laughs. Iskender opens one eye and looks at her through layers of sleep.
“You can crack an egg but not an onion, thanks be to God,” he smiles, then crumples into a frown. His hand reaches out and pats Baby Alice on the leg. “Ah, the little lamb. Let’s slaughter the lamb for lunch. Put the blood of the lamb on the door. Keep the locusts away. Bring me the knife. Quick.”
Khatoun heads out into the corridor once more. She will wake Bzdig Shoushun and get her to help move the children. On nights like these, the demons have found their way into their haven and she’ll have a hard time undressing her husband and getting him to sleep again. Who knows what it is tonight. The house is safe and she has come home. But walls are only stone and plaster, and life and death can slip in through the cracks. Damp patches take a while to show. Within the walls may seem like paradise, and tomorrow’s sun will shine bright and light up the world in a perfect dawn. A simple spinning orb. But the sun, in all its blistering simplicity, like most things, can lie.
Am I Still a Woman?
Ourfa, June 1912
Khatoun
A cool breeze drifts in the window. A flap of light hovers birdlike above the bed, spilling across one eye. Early morning. Downstairs, in the street below, the bustle and cry of life continue. A snatch of conversation, the clattering of hooves, the arched song of a vendor. They reach out to her but are far away, removed.
Khatoun knows Ferida is there; can hear the shuffle of feet on the kilim, smell the starched cotton tucked around her as calloused hands turn her first to one side and then the other, removing the bloody sheets from beneath. A damp cloth sweeps across her brow. The room is thick with orange blossom and antiseptic. Footsteps retreat across the wooden floor. The door cracks open and in the gap between her and the rest of the world she hears the cry of a newborn child. And the sky clouds over and the rain drops hard and her whole life becomes a dream. A patchwork of faces that blend into one.
Unlike his two brothers with their lusty cries and pummelling fists, he’d come late, Voghbed. Khatoun’s fourth child. He would be her last. A small, dry baby that was slow to cry and quick to sleep. Before he was born, Afrem, now an inquisitive seven, had lain next to Khatoun, one hand resting on the tight globe of her belly, watching the small movements become agitated after a meal.
“Is the baby eating too?” he wanted to know. “Is it hot in there? Or cold?” And when his mother was asleep and couldn’t answer any more questions, he’d pester big sister, Baby Alice.
“How did it get in there?”
“Daddy kissed Mummy.”
“Do they still kiss?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“At night. You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“Will I get a baby if Umme Ferida kisses me?”
“No – it’s a special kiss.”
“I want one.”
“Shut up and go to sleep!”
Solomon, barely three at the time, was confused. Brothers and sister were bigger than him. How could another one fit inside his mother’s stomach? As the youngest, he was used to getting spoiled, and instinctively knew that this would come to an end as soon as that baby got out of his mother’s belly and into his bedroom. Solomon had been asleep between Iskender and Khatoun; sailing across the world on the huge wooden bed that had been built inside the room, jealously clutching his mother’s hair when her labour had started.
Khatoun had been dreaming – searching for a quiet place to relieve herself. Every time she found a deserted spot and was jus
t about to lift her skirts, someone appeared and struck up conversation. She eventually woke up sweaty and desperate. She untangled herself from her son and sat at the edge of the bed searching for her slippers with her foot when a familiar, sweet smell invaded the room and soaked her legs.
“At last,” she said, rubbing her belly.
Iskender rolled over, his arm landing across Solomon’s chest. “What is it? Asdvadz!” he yelped, his fingers flying to his face. The previous night he’d walked over to Ephraim Terzian’s place after supper, begging him to use his tools to dig out the tooth that had been nagging him for months.
At first Ephraim had refused, “I’m a silversmith, not a dentist! A bangle or a candlestick and I’m your man, but a tooth, no. I’d rather poke your eye out with a sis.” It wasn’t until a couple of drinks and a game of dominoes later that he’d agreed to peer into the gloomy recess of Iskender’s mouth.
“Bad news boss,” he’d said, straightening up and mopping his face. “It’s not just one but four that need to go.” He’d disappeared into his workroom, returning minutes later with a leather roll of implements that he unfurled across the table. “Suck these, drink this,” he’d said, handing Iskender a handful of cloves and a glass of raki. “You’re going to feel as if a mule has kicked you in the face for a while, but by the end of the week you’ll be fine.”
Iskender had only just got to sleep when Khatoun’s voice broke into his dreams, and jumping up in a panic had made him feel worse. The vinegar soaked rags draped over his jaw were nauseating. He needed hashish for the pain. He hobbled out to the balcony to raise the alarm, crept back into the room and curled up on his side next to Khatoun, where he lay until Ferida finally kicked him out. He dropped into a chair on the landing, balancing his forehead on his knees, and found that if he moaned like a cat in heat, it helped. He was still there an hour later when the midwife hurried past, rolling her eyes at his sorry state. Ferida stuck her head back out the bedroom door.
The Seamstress of Ourfa Page 14
