A Place Far Away

by Vahan Zanoyan

  “We still don’t know what has happened to her,” said Avo.

  “We don’t,” conceded Laurian, “but at least we now know that we should not just assume she’s a happy and successful model living in Greece.”

  “What do you plan to do here?” asked Avo, “I mean about Ayvazian’s operations?”

  “Right now, there isn’t much we can do, unfortunately. Let’s see how long he stays around. The word out there is that he is really furious that his cover in Sevajayr is possibly blown.”

  “But the road company backed down, right?”

  “Yes, it backed down. They won’t show up in Sevajayr again until the road repairs reach Vardahovit. That may be a year from now. But still, would Ayvazian feel safe there knowing that all the villagers now know he has armed men guarding deserted homes in the most desolate part of this region?”

  “The Ayvazians of this world don’t give a shit about villagers or what they know,” said Avo with such absolute resignation that it annoyed Laurian.

  “Still, he thought no one was the wiser about his presence in the upper villages, and now everyone seems to know, mostly due to his own temper tantrum.”

  “He doesn’t give a shit,” repeated Avo with finality.

  “We’ll see,” said Laurian. “The point is there isn’t much we can do right now. I will talk discreetly to some of my friends in the government. If anything new develops here, I’ll let you know. Don’t forget my offer to lend you what monry you need to buy a tractor with the full set of implements. You can pay me back whenever you can; no rush.”

  “Thanks,” said Avo, “but winter is already upon us and there will be no cultivation or harvesting for several months. We can reconsider that in the spring, right?” He was reluctant to accept Laurian’s offers of help, partly because of pride, and partly because of his resistance against building permanent ties with a foreigner. His visit and stay with Laurian had done a lot to melt the ice between them, but the visit would end when he returned home. Borrowing money would keep him morally tied to Laurian much, much longer.

  “Sure we can wait until spring,” said Laurian. “In the meantime, we’ll keep in touch. I’ll come visit you with my friend Gagik. He is much closer to you than I am. He can get to Saralandj in half an hour in an emergency. And Avo, he really was a good friend of your father’s. He always speaks with great affection about him. Promise me you’ll call him if you need anything.”

  “I like him too,” said Avo. “He’s a good man. I’ll call him. Even if I don’t need anything.”

  “When do you think Lara will call back?”

  “I don’t know. I got the feeling that they won’t let her have her own phone. So she is calling when she can borrow one.”

  “It’s interesting that both times she called her number was blocked. Whoever is letting her use their phone does not want anyone to know the number.”

  “I hope she calls back soon,” said Avo, “I’m not sure how much longer Mama will be around and Mama really wants to talk to her.”

  “Let’s go have some breakfast,” said Laurian, turning back toward the house.

  “I’m going to populate that entire mountainside with pine trees,” said Laurian, pointing to the northern slopes. “In a few years, when you come here, you’ll see thick forests on these barren slopes.”

  Avo stared at him for a long moment. Why did all this matter to this man? That’s what some romantic Soviet official had done in Saralandj many years ago. Why did Laurian want to see the slopes covered with forests? Why not just leave things the way they were and concentrate on securing a living for his family? Avo didn’t think he’d ever find out the answer.

  Vartiter’s table was inviting as usual, set with cheese, yogurt, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, honey, heavy cream, and fresh bread. Everything except the olives was home grown and fresh from their house. There was black tea for Laurian, and coffee for Avo. They had not realized that they had worked up quite an appetite during their walk.

  Avo’s phone rang, and he jumped. He was kind of hoping that it was not Lara; he wanted her next call to come when he was already home and could pass the phone to his mother. But it was not Lara. It was Martha calling from the post office in Aparan.

  “You better hurry back home, Avo,” she said. “Mama has been asking for you.”

  “Is she worse?”

  “Avo, she is dying. Hurry back!” Martha broke into sobs and Avo could barely understand a word she said after that.

  “I’m leaving right now. Sorry, Edik jan,” he said. “I cannot wait until this afternoon. I have to leave right now. I think this may be the end for Mama.”

  “I’ll drive you myself,” said Laurian and got up too.

  “No, Edik jan, please,” said Avo. “No offense, but this is a very charged and emotional time for my family. We cannot fit you into this, if you know what I mean. Sorry. Nothing personal, but I better go alone.”

  “Someone has to drive you,” said Laurian. “I had arranged for someone to take you this afternoon. Let me see if he can come now. He is here in Vardahovit.”

  Avo went inside and hurriedly gathered his things while Laurian made the call. The driver’s brother was available. He made it to the house in less than five minutes in his old Russian car. Laurian gave him his car keys and saw them off.

  “Call me,” he told Avo. “No matter how bad it is at home, remember to call me.”

  “I will,” promised Avo. “Dsdesutyun. Until we meet again.”

  Laurian watched his Prado leave the main gate and then called Gagik.

  “Avo is on his way back,” he said. “They called for him. I think it is his mother. It may be the end. Keep an eye on Saralandj.”

  “Ha, Edik jan. Eghav.” And Gagik hung up.

  It was a quiet and peaceful Friday in Dubai, Friday being the Islamic day of rest. Al Barmaka was in town, but he was not expected to visit Lara. Fridays were for family; he usually visited his ailing father, who was in his eighties, and then spent some time with his favorite nieces and nephews. Sometimes he went to the Mosque to pray with his brothers. Although Al Barmaka was not religious, adherence to some of the old traditions was a matter of principle for him. This was unusual coming from the social renegade, but history and culture, in their broadest sense, appealed to Al Barmaka, even as he rebelled against the inescapable everyday implications of those same traditions.

  It was around noon when Sumaya called Lara.

  “Come over,” she said.

  Two minutes after Lara hung up she heard the car pull up in front of her house. She straightened her hair and ran out.

  “You leave next Tuesday,” said Sumaya seriously, with no excitement or emotion in her voice. “Sir is also leaving on Tuesday, in the morning. Your flight to Istanbul is very early the following morning, around three a.m. So the car will take you late at night and drive you straight to the Seef International Airport in Muscat. The driver’s name is Omar. He is Omani. He will have the Omani dress, with the Omani turban. I don’t know if you’ve seen them before, but their headdress is different from the rest of the Gulf. At any rate, he will make sure you get on that flight without any problems.”

  Lara was stunned. Her departure was only a few days away. Even though she had been getting mentally prepared for this day, Sumaya took her by surprise when she laid out all the details.

  “You’ll have two separate round-trip tickets,” continued Sumaya. “Muscat-Istanbul and back, and Istanbul-Tbilisi and back. And although both tickets are on Turkish Airlines, you still have to come out through security in Istanbul and then re-check in for the Tbilisi flight.” This was entirely unnecessary, of course, as Lara could have checked in all the way to Tbilisi from Muscat, and simply connected to the onward flight in Istanbul. But that would clearly not serve Sumaya’s plan. She needed Lara in Istanbul. And as she had suspected, Lara did not even question this; she simply did not have enough travel experience to know.

  “In Istanbul,” continued Sumaya, “our co
ntacts will meet you at the airport. The name of the main contact meeting you is Timur. He’ll take care of everything. You’ll arrive in Istanbul around eight-thirty in the morning, and you’ll be in Yerevan around nine in the morning the next day. So you’ll be home on Thursday. Now listen carefully, Leila. You will have to leave again on Tuesday. No delays. Is that clear?”

  Lara nodded, still trying to absorb all the details.

  “So you’ll have four full days at home. That’s all we can arrange right now. You cannot miss a single detail on the way back. I’ll be in very deep trouble if you do. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Lara, looking and sounding confused.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll give all this to you in writing,” said Sumaya with an encouraging nod. “The point is that you’ll catch a flight to Tbilisi from Istanbul. There is no faster way. But as I said, first you need to clear customs in Istanbul. Timur will help you. The flight to Tbilisi is not until early afternoon, so you have plenty of time. You will have five hours in Istanbul, to be exact. Then you arrive in Tbilisi at around 5:30 in the afternoon, and you catch the train to Yerevan at 7:00 p.m. It is an overnight train. You’ll have a well-deserved sleep. You’ll open your eyes when the train pulls into Yerevan at 9:00 a.m. the next morning. You can call your brother and let him know the plan from Tbilisi so he can pick you up at the train station.”

  “Can’t I just fly from Dubai to Yerevan?” asked Lara, exhausted by just listening to the details of the trip ahead of her.

  “Leila, we discussed this. That would involve a huge and unnecessary risk. I have gone into a lot of trouble organizing this for you. I know it is a difficult course, but that’s exactly why it is safer. Leaving from Dubai is not safe.”

  It was early afternoon when Avo reached Saralandj. The car had to stop as usual around twenty meters short of the house. He thanked the driver warmly, grabbed his bag from the back seat, and walked toward home. He could tell something was wrong even before he reached the front steps of the house. There were too many people by the window of his parents’ bedroom, and the few children playing outside seemed unusually quiet.

  As he entered the room he knew that his mother had passed away. Martha was sitting on a stool next to her bed, his sisters were gathered around her, and some neighbors and relatives were standing quietly around the room. Everyone was somber and quiet. He walked over to Martha, and saw that a blanket had been drawn over his mother’s face.

  “She just passed away a few minutes ago,” said Martha. Her eyes were red and wet, but she was not weeping. She looked angry in her grief.

  Avo gently pulled the blanket down, kissed his mother’s forehead, and covered her face again.

  “She was very peaceful,” said Martha. “Right before she died, she said, ‘Lara will be home soon,’ and smiled. Then she shut her eyes. That was it.”

  Avo contained the avalanche of emotions rising inside him. He first had to give his mother a proper burial next to his father in the family section of the village cemetery. Then he had to deal with the anger that was rising in him like a volcano. He had not made it in time to see his mother one last time, and Lara would not be able to even hear her voice as she had been so anxious to do. The fact that they had been expecting her death did not help much. Avo’s anger at first was directed at fate, at some unreachable, invisible and uncontrollable force that seemed to be causing all this from a distance. But slowly it moved toward Ayvazian, like a storm changing its direction as it gathers speed. Or maybe Ayvazian’s image simply replaced the invisible fate. Laurian’s stories and pictures hit home in a way that they had not done while he was still in Vardahovit. His anger arose from the circumstances of his father’s death, as he pictured the cliff that Laurian had shown him in Sevajayr as the likely spot where Samvel Galian had accidentally fallen.

  Avo collected himself. He had to remain calm. His family needed him more than ever now. There would be plenty of time to deal with the anger later on. As he calmed down, he realized what Martha had said about her mother’s last words. ‘Lara will be home soon.’ A chill passed through his spine. What did she know? No one knew about his conversations with Lara except Laurian. Did she feel something? Women were scary in that way; Avo had heard of some women in the village who could foretell things; they sensed things or saw events in their dreams before they happened. Of course he had never believed the stories, because men were not supposed to believe that type of stuff. And none of it had meant anything to him anyway, until now.

  That same afternoon the medical examiner and Dr. Hakobian arrived from Ashtarak, along with Gagik. The next afternoon was the funeral. Silva Galian was laid to rest in the family cemetery, next to her husband and to the right of the small head stone placed in the upper left corner of the section in memory of Araxi Dadik.

  Laurian heard the news from Gagik. Avo had not called as promised. One couldn’t blame him. He had three sisters and three brothers at home who were now his responsibility.

  The day after the funeral, the post office in Aparan called Avo.

  “The money from your sister arrived yesterday while you were at the funeral,” he said. “I did not want to bother you. You can come and collect it anytime.”

  Avo needed to clear his head anyway and decided to walk to Aparan. It was a forty-minute walk. Autumn was in full swing; he could feel nature brace for the coming winter. For Avo, the feeling had always been unmistakable; he loved this season. The heaviest work was already done, the animals were back from yayla, and enough food for the winter was already stored for both the animals and the family. And they had enough cow and sheep manure to burn all winter as well. It felt good to be prepared. He realized for the first time that this feeling had been instilled in him by his father. He had walked on this deserted road to Aparan a few times with his father, and his father had the habit of making small talk whenever he was with the children; at least it felt like small talk even if it wasn’t, because he never made a big deal of anything as he went on talking to them about life.

  When he arrived at the post office, the director asked him to come to the interior room, which served as his private office. He normally would hand the cash to him at the main office, even if there were other people around. The amounts varied between one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred dollars, sent every three to four weeks.

  “First,” he said once they were in the interior office and he had shut the door, “I want to express my condolences to you. Both your mother and your father were honorable people, Avo. I liked them a lot. Your father worked here, as you know. What you may not know is that your mother and my wife were good friends, going back to their childhood. But after they both had children, it became impossible to spend time socializing. You know how it is.”

  “I know,” said Avo, moved by the postman’s warmth. “And thank you very much, Paron Artiom.”

  “Now, for the main business at hand. Your sister has sent a lot of money this time. Much, much more than usual. The transfer service could not bring that much cash here.” He reached into the top drawer of the desk and took out a small slip of paper. It was a light blue piece of paper about a quarter of the size of a regular sheet. “You need to take this to the bank, Avo,” continued the postman. “This small piece of paper is worth eight thousand dollars.”

  “Eight thousand dollars?” Avo could not conceive of the significance of that amount.

  “Eight thousand. You need to take your identity card with you. I don’t think you have a passport yet, do you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. They’ll need some identification, even though they know you. This is a bank formality.”

  “How did she manage this?” murmured Avo more to himself than to the postman.

  “Listen,” continued the postman, ignoring Avo’s last question. “I strongly advise you to open an account at the bank and keep the money there. You can go and withdraw any amount anytime you want. But it would not be safe to carry that much cash with you. Besides, the
y will give you some interest on your deposit.”

  “Interest?”

  “Yes, if you transfer everything into Armenian drams, it will total more than four million drams. They’ll give you five to ten percent on dram deposits, depending on how long you commit the funds. That’s a lot of money, Avo.”

  As Avo was getting ready to leave, the postman added: “This transfer was made to your name, unlike all the others, which came in your mother’s name. Do you think she knows Mama passed away?”

  “I don’t know how she could,” said Avo, genuinely bewildered. He then put the slip in his shirt pocket and left.

  Avo had been looking forward to Lara’s next call and dreading it at the same time. He couldn’t wait to talk to her again, but how could he explain that she wouldn’t be able to hear Mama’s voice? ‘Take care of Mama,’ she had said. What could he have done?

  He was already out of Aparan when his phone rang. His heart jumped, thinking it could be Lara. But it was Laurian.

  “I’m very sorry, Avo,” he said.

  “Thank you. Sorry I didn’t call.”

  “I understand. How is everything at home?”

  “It will be okay,” said Avo, truly meaning it. “I think everything will turn out fine. I think Lara will be home soon.”

  “When do you think it will be okay for me to visit?”

  “Edik jan, you can come anytime you want. But I just don’t want you to go to so much trouble. It is not a short distance.”

  “I’d like to come see you and the family,” said Laurian. “Unless you think it is too early. I really appreciate your honesty when you told me the family couldn’t fit me in last time. So please tell me.”

  “You’re really welcome anytime you want. I mean it.”

  “Okay,” said Laurian. “Probably next week. Let things settle a bit. I have some ideas I’d like to discuss.”

  “Very good, Edik jan. I’ll wait for your news.”