ered with panic.
Barsam wondered if his ex-wife was playing games. He tried not to sound irritated. "No, Rose, she decided to go back to Arizona. She is spending the spring break there."
"Oh my God!! But she is not here! Where is my baby?! Where is she?!" Rose started to sob, falling into one of those anxiety attacks she thought she had long ago left in the past.
"Rose, will you please calm down? I don't know what's going on, but I am sure there is an explanation. I trust Armanoush with all my heart. She won't do anything wrong. When did you last speak with her?"
"Yesterday, she calls every day-from San Francisco!"
Barsam paused. He didn't tell her that Armanoush had been calling him too, although from Arizona. "That's good, it means she is fine. We need to trust her. She is an intelligent, dependable girl, you know that. Next time she calls just tell her to give me a call. Tell her it is urgent. You got that, Rose? Will you do that?"
"Oh my God!" Rose started to cry louder. But then all of a sudden it occurred to her to ask: "Barsam, you said there was bad news. What is it?"
"Oh. . " A heavy pause. "It's my mom…" He could not finish his sentence.
"Just tell Armanoush that Grandma Shushan has died in her sleep. She did not wake up this morning."
Fifteen minutes had never passed so slowly. Armanoush paced the room under the worried gaze of Asya. Finally, it was time to give her mom another call. This time Rose picked up the phone instantly.
"Amy, I will ask you just one question and you will tell me the truth; you promise you'll tell me the truth."
Armanoush felt a wave of worry well up in her stomach.
"Where are you?" Rose rasped, her voice breaking. "You lied to us! You are not in San Francisco, you are not in Arizona, where are you?"
Armanoush swallowed hard. "Mom, I'm in Istanbul." "What?!"
"Mom, I'll tell you everything but please calm down."
Rose's eyes sparkled with pure indignation. How she hated to hear everyone telling her to calm down.
"Mother, I am terribly sorry for worrying you so much. I should never have done this. I am so sorry, but there is nothing to worry about, believe me."
Rose put her hand over the phone. "My baby is in Istanbul!" she said to her husband with a hint of a reprimand as if this were his fault. Then she yelled into the receiver: "What the hell are you doing there?"
"Actually, I am staying at your mother-in-law's house. It is a wonderful family."
Flabbergasted, Rose turned again to Mustafa and this time scolded harder: "She is staying with your family."
Then, before an ashen and alarmed Mustafa Kazanci could put in a word, she said, "We are coming there. Don't disappear anywhere. We are coming. And don't you ever turn off your cell phone again!" With that she hung up.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Mustafa squeezed his wife's arm, harder than he intended. "I am not going anywhere."
"Yes, you are going," Rose said. "We are going. My only daughter is in Istanbul!!!" she screamed, as if it meant Armanoush had been taken hostage.
"I cannot leave my job now."
"You can take a few days off. And if you don't, I will go alone," Rose, or someone who looked like Rose, snapped. "We will go there, make sure she is safe, pick her up, and bring her back home."
Late that night when they were about to go to sleep the Kazancis' phone rang.
"Inshallah it is nothing bad," Petite-Ma whispered from her bed, a rosary in her hand, a shadow of anxiety on her face. She reached out for the glass of water with her false teeth inside and, still praying, took a sip. Only water could quell fear.
Still awake, it was Auntie Feride who picked up the phone. More than anyone else in the family, she was the most talkative and communicative when it came to phone conversations.
"moo?
"Hi, Feride, is it you?" the receiver asked in a male voice. And without waiting for an answer, he added, "It is me… from America… Mustafa…."
Thrilled to hear her brother's voice, Auntie Feride grinned. "Why don't you call us more often? How are you? When are you coming to see us?"
"Listen, dear, please. Is Amy-Armanoush there?"
"Yes yes, of course, you sent her to stay here with us. We love her very much." Auntie Feride beamed. "Why didn't you come with her, you and your wife?"
Mustafa stayed put, his forehead buckled with discomfort. Behind him in the window lay the Arizona soil, always dependable, always secretive. In time he had learned to appreciate the desert, its infinity soothing his fear of looking back, its tranquillity easing his fear of death. At times like this he remembered, as if his body reminisced on its own, the fate awaiting all the men in his family. At times like this he felt close to committing suicide. Finding death before death found him. He had lived two very different lives. Mustafa and Mostapha. And sometimes the only way to bridge the gap between the two names seemed to silence them simultaneously-to bring both of his lives to an abrupt end. He shunned the thought. A sound similar to sighing. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps it was just the desert.
"I think we are. We will come for a few days to pick Amy up and to see you…. We are coming."
These words seemed to come effortlessly, as if time was not a sequence of ruptures but an uninterrupted continuity, easily bendable even when fractured. Mustafa would visit as if it had not been almost twenty years since he had been home.
FIFTEEN
Golden Raisins
The miraculous news that Mustafa was coming to visit them with his American wife instantly instigated a series of reactions in the Kazanci domicile. The first and foremost one involved detergents, washing powder, and soap flakes. In two days the whole house had been thoroughly cleaned from top to bottom, windows scoured and buffed up, shelves dusted, curtains washed and ironed, every tile on all the three floors scrubbed and mopped. One by one Auntie Cevriye wiped the leaves of every houseplant in the living room, the geranium and the bellflower, the rosemary and the sweet woodruff. She even wiped the leaves of the touch-me-not. Meanwhile Auntie Feride surprised everyone by taking out the most precious latticework in her dowry. But it was no doubt Grandma Gulsum who was most thrilled with the news. At first she refused to believe her only son was coming to visit them after all these years, and when she finally was convinced of the news, she incarcerated herself in the kitchen amid the dishware, cutlery, and ingredients, cooking the favorite dishes of her favorite child. Now the air inside the kitchen was heavy with the scents of freshly baked pastries. She had already oven-baked two different types of borek-spinach and feta cheese-and simmered lentil soup, stewed lamb chops, and prepared the kofte mixture to be fried upon the guests' arrival. Though she was determined to make ready half a dozen more dishes before the end of the day, undoubtedly the most important item on Grandma Gulsum's menu was going to be the dessert: ashure.
All throughout his childhood and teens, Mustafa Kazanci had relished ashure more than any other sweet, and if those terrible American fast-food products had not messed up his culinary habits, Grandma Gulsum hoped, he would be delighted to encounter bowls of his favorite dessert in the fridge, waiting for him, as if life here were still the same and he could pick up from where he had left off.
Ashure was the symbol of continuity and stability, the epitome of the good days to come after each storm, no matter how frightening the storm had been.
Grandma had soaked the ingredients the day before and was now getting ready to begin cooking. She opened a cupboard and took out a huge cauldron. One always needed a cauldron to cook ashure.
Ingredients
1/2 cup garbanzo beans
1 cup whole hulled wheat 1 cup white rice 1–1/2 cups sugar