Shushan Stamboulian saw the pomegranate brooch for the first time there on the walnut desk that belonged to her father. All of the other details of that ominous day faded away, but not that brooch. Perhaps it was the twinkle emanating from the rubies that had mesmerized her, or else seeing the world around her fall apart in a day made this the only thing she could remember. Whatever the reason, Shushan never forgot that pomegranate brooch. Not when she dropped half dead on the road to Aleppo and was left behind; not when the Turkish mother and daughter found her and took her into their house to heal her; not when she was taken by bandits to the orphanage; not when she ceased to be Shushan Stamboulian and became Shermin 626; not when years later Riza Selim Kazanci would fortuitously chance upon her in the orphanage and, finding out she was the niece of his late master, Levon, decide to take her as his wife; not when she would the next day become Shermin Kazanci; and not when she would learn she was pregnant and would become a mother, as if she wasn't still a child herself.
The Circassian midwife revealed the sex of the baby months before his birth, by observing the shape of her belly and the types of food she craved. Creme brulee from posh patisseries, apfelstrudel from the bakery opened by White Russians who escaped from Russia, homemade baklava, bonbons, and sweets of all sorts…. Not even once during her pregnancy had Sherrnin Kazanci craved anything sour or salty, the way she would have had she been expecting a girl.
Indeed it was a boy, a boy born into harrowing times.
"May Allah bless my son with longer life than any man in this family has ever had," Riza Selim Kazanci said when the midwife handed him the baby. He then put his lips to the baby's right ear and announced to him the name he'd carry hereafter: "You will be named Levon."
Honoring the master from whom he had learned the art of cauldron making was not the only incentive behind this nominal choice. By naming their son Levon, he was also hoping it would be a favor to his wife for having converted to Islam.
Thus he chose the name Levon and like a good Muslim repeated it thrice: "Levon! Levon! Levon!"
Shermin Kazanci, in the meantime, remained as silent as a displaced stone.
It wouldn't take long for the triple echo to boomerang back to them in the form of a negative question. "Levon? What kind of a Muslim name is that? No Muslim boy can be named that!" the midwife balked aloud.
"Ours will," Selim Kazanci rasped in return, a defense he would repeat each time. "I made up my mind. Levon it shall be!"
But when the time came to take the baby to the Population Registrar, he softened.
"What is the boy's name?" the lanky, edgy-looking clerk asked without lifting his head from over a mammoth, clothbound notebook with a maroon spine.
"Levon Kazancl"
The officer lifted his reading glasses to the bridge of his nose and took a long look at Riza Selim Kazanci for the first time. "Kazanci is indeed a fine surname, but what kind of a Muslim name is Levon?"
"It is not a Muslim name; it was a good man's name nevertheless," Riza Selim Kazanci replied tensely.
"Sir," the officer raised his voice a notch, sounding selfimportant and knowing it. "I know what an influential family the Kazancis are. A name like Levon will not serve you well. If we write down this name, this boy of yours might have problems in the future. Everyone will assume that he is Christian, although he is a hundred percent Muslim…. Or am I mistaken? Is he not Muslim?"
"He sure is," Riza Selim immediately corrected. "Elhamdulillah. " For a fleeting moment it occurred to him to confide in the clerk that the boy's mother was an Armenian orphan converted to Islam and this would be a gesture to her, but something inside told him to keep this information to himself.
"Well, then, with all due respect to the good man you want to name this child after, let's make a slight change. Make it something akin to Levon, if you so wish, but choose a Muslim name this time. How about Levent?" The clerk then added kindly, too kindly for the harshness of the statement he was about to make: "Otherwise, I am afraid I will have to refuse to register him."
And so it was Levent Kazanci; the boy born upon the ashes of a past still smoldering; the boy no one knew his father had once wanted to name Levon; the boy who would one day be abandoned by his mother and grow up sullen and bitter; the boy who would be a terrible father to his own children….
Were it not for the pomegranate brooch, could Shermin Kazanci have ever found the urge to leave her husband and son? It is hard to say. With them she had started a family and a new life with only one direction for it to go in. For her to have a future, she had to become a woman with no past. Her childhood identity was nothing more than morsels of memory, like crumbs of bread she had scattered behind for some bird to nibble on, since she herself would never be able to return the same way back home. Though even the dearest memories of her childhood eventually vanished, the brooch remained vividly ingrained in her mind. And years later when a man from America appeared at her door, it would be this very brooch that helped her to fathom that the stranger was none other than her own brother.
Yervant Stamboulian appeared at her door with dark, bright eyes set off by black, bushy eyebrows, a sharp nose, and a thick mustache that grew to his chin, making him look like he was smiling even when doleful. With a trembling voice and in words that were lacking to him, he announced who he was and then told her, half in Turkish, half in Armenian, that he had come all the way from America to find her. As much as he wanted to hug his sister there and then, he knew she was a married Muslim woman now. He stayed on the doorstep. Around them the Istanbul breeze drew circles and for a second it was as if they were pulled out of time.
At the end of their brief exchange, Yervant Stamboulian gave Shermin Kazanci two things: the golden pomegranate brooch and time to think.
Perplexed and dazed, she closed the door and waited for the revelation to sink in. Beside her on the floor Levent crawled and babbled with unbounded enthusiasm.
She went quickly to her room and hid the brooch inside one of the drawers in her wardrobe. When she came back she found the toddler laughing, having just managed to pull himself up into a standing position. The baby stood like that for a full second, took a step, then another one, and brusquely fell back on his bottom, the delightful fear of his first steps sparkling in his eyes. Suddenly the boy broke into a toothless smile and exclaimed: "Ma-ma!"
The entire house took on a rare, almost ghostly luminosity, as Shermin Kazanci broke out of her daze and repeated to herself: "Ma-ma!" This was the second word that had come out of Levent's mouth, after experimenting with "Da-da" for a while and finally saying "Ba-ba" the day before. Now she realized her son had uttered the word father in Turkish but the word mother in Armenian. Not only had she herself had to unlearn the language once so dear to her, but now she was obliged to teach the same process to her son. She stared at the toddler, baffled and brooding. She didn't want to correct "Ma-ma" by replacing the word with its equivalent in Turkish. The withdrawn but still vivid profiles of her ancestors surfaced. This new name, religion, nationality, family, and self she had acquired had not succeeded in overtaking her true self. The pomegranate brooch whispered her name and it was in Armenian.
Shermin Kazanci cuddled her son and for three full days managed not to think about the brooch.
But on the third day, as if her mind had been reflecting and her heart aching without her knowing it, she ran to the drawer and held the brooch tightly in her palms, feeling its warmth.