Orhan's Inheritance (15 page)

“Ani,” Orhan repeats.

“Her niece. Visits every Wednesday. Good thing too,” says the orderly. “She’ll wanna know about them papers.” She looks as if she’s just cornered him in a chess game.

“Does Ms. Melkonian have any other family?” he asks before he can stop himself.

“No, just Ani. Sometimes her former students will visit.”

“Was she a teacher?”

“Um-hm,” says Betty. “Taught Armenian-language classes at one of them Armenian schools in the valley.”

“No children then,” says Orhan.

“Ms. Seda’s never been married, if that’s what you mean. Ain’t got no children. Don’t matter cause Ani pays close attention,” she says. “And so do I, so you watch yourself, you hear?”

Orhan nods to himself. He’s pretty sure the overweight orderly has just threatened him. He isn’t here to hurt anyone and doesn’t feel the need to defend himself.

“Ani’s been organizing a commemorative event here at the home,” the orderly continues, sounding like she’s describing the advanced weaponry of an opposing army. “They say the governor’s gonna come,” she says.

“A what event?” he asks.

“Commemorative. It means to remember,” explains Betty. “Everybody here has a story about what happened in the old country,” says Betty.

“It doesn’t look like they need any help remembering it,” Orhan says, eyeing the corkboard behind the orderly. It’s cluttered with black-and-white photographs of Anatolian cities and ancient family portraits. A map at the center of all this highlights deportation routes in bright red.

“Most folks here are genocide survivors,” Betty informs him.

“Bad things happen in wartime,” he says. He’s no extremist. In fact, he’s the first to admit the many shortcomings of Turkish democracy, but he still can’t help feeling insulted by these accusations of mass murder.

“From what I gather, these aren’t just war stories,” says Betty.

“That’s not what I’ve heard,” says Orhan, though the truth is he hasn’t really heard much about the Armenians of Turkey. They are a lost footnote in the story of how the republic was established.

“I don’t know about all that,” says Betty. “All I know is Ani’s putting together an art exhibit. Paintings, photographs, that sort of thing. Some of our residents will be presenting. She’s trying to get some political people to hear them stories.”

Orhan nods politely, silently wondering if this niece who collects stories and images would also be interested in collecting houses.

“Well, good luck, Mr. . . . ?”

“Orhan.”

“Orhan,” she repeats after him, only it sounds strange in her mouth, more like “Orren.”

“One question,” says Orhan. “What does Mrs.Vartanian say exactly, when she points to me?”

“Do I look Armenian to you?”

“Right,” he says, feeling stupid. Orhan quickens his pace.

The door to room 1203 is shut. Someone has taped a bright red flyer just under the peephole:

Bearing Witness: An Art Exhibit for National Genocide Remembrance Day

Special Guest: Governor George Deukmejian

Orhan fixates on the word
genocide.
Massacres abound in his country’s history, as they do in any nation’s history. But genocide is a different accusation altogether. Why do they insist on using this word? No one would argue that a great many Christians were slaughtered in the empire during the First World War, but to claim that the Turkish government was responsible for the extermination of an entire race is something else entirely.

Orhan hears a voice through the closed door, speaking in a language he presumes to be Armenian. He presses himself against the wall, feeling somewhat like a prowler. When the voice stops, he strains himself to hear a response from Seda. Instead he is confronted by a high-pitched laugh.

Moments later, a woman with olive skin and frizzy jet-black hair walks out of Seda Melkonian’s room. Her dark kohl-rimmed eyes are the only strong feature; everything from her forehead to her cheeks and lips appear blurry, and her features remind him of a collection of cushions. The confluence of dark features is exaggerated by her even blacker clothing, such that Orhan is reminded of the professional wailers at Dede’s funeral. It is hard to believe that the sharp laugh he heard earlier came from her.

The niece, who looks to be in her fifties, digs in her purse, locates a bevy of keys, and heads toward the exit. She walks with hurried steps toward the dining room. Orhan stands there a long while, following her with his gaze, wondering if she already knows about the inheritance. God knows how this Ani woman, who clings to her people’s grief, who dwells in loss and mourning—embodies it even—will react to the news. She’ll get a lawyer, that’s for sure. She might even tell the governor of California, for all he knows.

When he enters her room, Seda is seated in a wheelchair near a window facing the garden. He can see only the back of her head, damp, he assumes, from a morning bath. She is wearing the same dark blue cardigan, this time with a canary-colored silk scarf at her neck. The pale cream walls of the room are made yellow by the fluorescent lighting. And this saddens him; there are few things worse than bad lighting
.
Her single bed is pushed up against a wall. Next to it is a chest of drawers whose surface is almost entirely covered in a beige needlepoint, reminding him of the doilies of Karod. An old framed photo of the niece is displayed prominently in the center. In it she is much younger, wearing a blue cap and gown and holding a diploma. A golden sash draped across her chest hints of special honors. Above the chest of drawers is a generic landscape scene framed in dark wood. The only other furniture in the room is a tall bookcase whose shelves are crammed with books, both vertically and horizontally until there isn’t an unoccupied inch. He is about to approach the bookcase to take a glimpse at the titles, when Seda turns her wheelchair around and faces him.

“Good morning,” he says.

The old woman clears her throat but remains silent.

“I hope you don’t mind me visiting so early in the day,” he says, speaking into the silence that still hangs between them. “I was here earlier, but you had a visitor. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“My niece,” she says.

“Does she know about the will?” The question, out before he can restrain himself, embarrasses him. The fact that he asks it while still standing is somehow even more embarrassing.

Seda shakes her head. “No,” she says.

“It’s so sunny here,” he says, trying to change the subject. “Back home, it is raining. I live in Istanbul now, but I was in Berlin for several years. September can be a very cold month, not like here,” he says, settling into a chair next to her.

The old woman’s eyes follow him into the chair. Orhan knows she wants to be rid of him, but he goes on anyway. “I moved to Germany in 1981. I had some trouble in Turkey.” It’s more than he’s told his closest friends in Istanbul about that time. And he wonders why he finds it so easy to allude to it here, in front of this woman. “Anyway,” he continues, “I moved back home a few years ago and have lived in Istanbul ever since.” The one-sided conversation makes him feel silly, reminding him of a chatty blind date he once had. Now this old woman knows more about him than all his friends in Istanbul put together.

“I wish you would talk to me,” he says suddenly.

“There’s nothing to say,” she says, turning away from him.

Orhan follows her gaze back out the window where a bright bougainvillea bush is the star of the show. Its pink flowers are so vibrant they seem artificial, like the California sun. The composition reminds him of a photograph he once took.

“I’m not such a bastard, you know,” he says.

“I never said you were a bastard,” she says. “You’re a businessman, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he says.

“Businessmen care about results. They don’t ask why.”

He pauses, not knowing what to say to that. He starts reaching for the legal papers he’s brought for her to sign and glimpses his portfolio in the satchel.

“I was a photographer once,” he says on impulse. There is something unconvincing in the way he says the words, like he is trying to make them true.

“Oh?” she says, not sounding the least bit interested.

“I was exiled.” It is a simple declaration, consisting of just three relatively simple words, but Orhan feels as though he’s just given birth to a hairy mammal through his mouth.
I was exiled.
How many times had he tried and failed to say those words to Hülya?

Orhan was only nineteen when he photographed a group of Kurdish villagers in traditional dress. It was the sharp contrast of colors and textures that interested him. He had no idea that the stout bearded fellow standing in the back corner of the frame was a notorious insurgent. How could he know that a group of Kurdish villagers in traditional dress would be so offensive to the Turkish state?

The photograph was exhibited in a gallery in Istanbul, where it attracted the attention of the new government, which made all sorts of connections between his motley crew of creative acquaintances and the national security of the state. Within days, he was proclaimed a communist and imprisoned. That photograph earned him twenty-three days of “interrogation” by the Turkish police. They beat the light out of his eyes in that cold, soot-covered cell. He said good-bye to his youth and to all its dreaming then. There were no more photographs after that.

“Exile? Exiled for what?” she asks, coughing into a handkerchief.

“For ‘denigrating Turkishness and insulting the state.’”

“With your photos,” she says, one eyebrow cocked.

“Yes.”

“And were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Insulting the state?”

“I was trying to understand the world through a lens,” he says more to himself than to her. “I was offering some kind of description. I guess I was framing the world in a specific way that pissed the government off.”

“And now?” she asks.

Now I make and sell kilims, thinks Orhan. “I don’t do that anymore,” he says.

“You don’t do what? Take photographs or understand the world?” she asks.

“Both, I suppose,” he says. Now that the words have escaped him, his insides feel like a cavern. Did he really understand the world back then?

“The truth is I was never really that political. Not intentionally. I have some of my earliest work here with me, if you’re interested,” he says, reaching into his satchel.

“I don’t want to see any more pictures of that house,” she says.

“Most of these are of Istanbul,” Orhan says, ignoring her.

He pries the thing open. The first image is a black-and-white photo of a horse-drawn wagon loaded with heavy burlap sacks in what looks like Taksim Square in Istanbul. The wagon has stalled in the middle of the street and behind it a man in a Mercedes-Benz is shouting out of the car window. The man and his wagon look as if some time machine accidentally spit them out into a modern city square. Orhan remembers the colorful insults the man in the Mercedes was shouting on that day. He remembers the light and the deep ache he felt in his heart for the old man trying to survive in a time and space he wasn’t equipped for.

Seda turns the pages slowly, giving each photograph its due respect. Orhan hasn’t seen the photos in years. The memories come flooding back. Each image is a living, breathing moment of his life laid bare before him. Watching her watching him as he once watched the world makes him feel transparent.

The faces in his compositions are intentionally blurred. No human expression. All eyes are turned away from the camera. All faces obscured. The black-and-white images depict a city riddled with contradiction. Crowded and forlorn, ancient yet modern. So many of the photos are architectural, devoid of their human subjects. Doors, arches, minarets, alleyways, and fountains appear against the dark sky. The few people captured in the frame are fractured somehow, blending into the structure of his compositions. Orhan realizes, perhaps for the first time, that the true subject of these photos is the melancholy that lurks mysteriously in each and every image. There, in the spaces between darkness and light, a sadness hangs in the air, invisible to the human eye yet heavy on the heart.

Then the photographs change dramatically, the monochromatic cityscapes being replaced by colorful images of village life. There is a series of photos dedicated to
tavli
players, old men wearing skullcaps and newsboy hats, bent over the backgammon table in their button-down shirts, smoking. Orhan can still hear the sound of die smacking the side of the backgammon board and someone yelling
“shesh, besh!”
above the clamor. Unlike chess,
tavli
is a game in which your kismet plays a much larger role than strategy.

“In these, I began focusing on what I called the ‘other Turkey,’” he says. “The part we don’t always like to think about. The part no tourist would want to visit. It is the Turkey of my childhood.”

“Anatolia,” she says, looking up at him.

“Yes,” says Orhan. “Anatolia.”

The old woman turns the final page of the album, where a group of peasant women sit weaving before a giant wooden loom. They are seated in a small courtyard where a rainbow of wool strings hang from hooks in a weathered wall. She stares at their hunched backs, bowing before the colorful altar, and strokes their curved spines with her index finger.

“You look as if you’re willing them to turn around,” he says, in what he hopes is a light conversational tone, but his words snap the old woman out of her revelry. She shuts the album and hands it back to him.

“You don’t take pictures anymore?” she asks.

“No,” says Orhan.

She nods her head in acknowledgment. “You want to avoid being political,” she says.

“I’ve been focusing on the family business.”

“Everything we do is political,” she says. “Even the things we choose not to do.”

Orhan remains silent.

“Do you have those papers for me to sign?” she asks him abruptly.

“Yes,” he says, “but I was hoping we could talk for a little bit. Would you like to go to the garden? I could get us some tea.”