Dede started Tarik Inc. inside those walls sometime after the First World War. The company specialized in handwoven rugs and grew significantly in the mid-seventies. By the time Orhan came along, the business had moved to the city. To Orhan, the house was always a place of confinement and conflict, a place where Mustafa’s menacing rod and booming voice faced off against Auntie Fatma’s iron will. As a boy, he’d escaped to the outdoors. But as a teenager, Dede’s Leica had saved his sanity. The truth is, when he first picked up the camera, he wasn’t trying to change the world or make it better; he was trying to escape it. The Leica gave him a legitimate reason to capture the world, without having to join it.
ALL THAT WAS before he was exiled to Germany, before he stopped taking photographs. But Orhan doesn’t want to think about that. What matters is not what the world does to you but how you respond.
Upon his return to Turkey, six years ago, Orhan had imagined himself a prodigal son, returning to claim his rightful place in his country, his home, his family business, maybe even his father’s heart—that most impenetrable of caves. He flew straight into Istanbul, took a cab to his grandfather’s factory, and never looked back. He worked tirelessly and without looking up. He collected patterns from all the most remote corners of the country and mined ottoman archives for designs that would have otherwise been extinct. Recently, Orhan designed his own line of kilims. He merged ancient patterns with the clean lines and a monochromatic color palette more suitable for younger buyers. He stopped thinking about photography altogether. The business, Dede’s failing health, and his father’s incompetence left little room for anything of his old life. He chased stability like a blind dog on a scent.
And now he was sniffing his way to Los Angeles.
Orhan downs the rest of his whiskey in one big gulp and eyes his travel bag. His Leica lies on its side, on top of Dede’s sketchbook and his old portfolio. Black on black on black, a triumvirate of dark casings that contain his past. Auntie Fatma insisted that he take the camera and his portfolio with him. He hasn’t cracked the portfolio open and doesn’t plan to. Looking at the images would be like rummaging through the things of an old lover and he’s got no need for that kind of pain.
Before leaving Karod, Orhan found an old roll of unused black-and-white film. He chose a 50 mm lens and stood staring at the house of his childhood. The once mighty mulberry tree prevailed over the aging structure, its black barren branches hanging like so many veins in God’s arm. The dark downward lines crisscrossed against the bright sunlit mustard of the house’s stucco. He took the photo, thinking of all the drawings of the mulberry tree and cauldrons in Dede’s final sketchbook. He pressed the shutter release and the camera snapped and moaned, but it brought no new knowledge about the tree, the house, or the man who loved them.
CHAPTER 3
Home
SEDA FINGERS THE letter tucked inside her sleeve, where its crumpled surface has molded into the shape of her left wrist. Pulling it out, she smoothes its creases against her knee. Her eyes roam around the page, like they’ve done again and again in the past few weeks, resting on the spots where the black ink stops and begins again, then to the white spaces in between. Thinking, sometimes, there is more in between words than within them.
I am the grandson of Kemal Türko?lu . . . he’s written. Kemal’s name, warm and sweet, swims through her blood and down into her belly before it somersaults into her throat and threatens to escape. She presses her lips together, refusing to let him out.
It is a strange thing, receiving a letter from a dead man’s grandson. A letter from a place so far away and long ago that opening it was itself an act of heroism. Even in death, Kemal would not let go of her. He has reached through time and space to grab hold of her once again.
She feels the sheet of paper releasing an ancient djinn, a demon that threatens to uncover the past she’s painstakingly buried. She stares at the letter’s folds and creases, the frayed edge where it’s been torn out of a legal pad, reading the awkward English translation of Turkish thoughts.
From her room, she can see the other residents shuffling to and fro, searching for God knows what. Morning medications, breakfast, companionship, a reason to live. The first time she saw the words Ararat Home for the Aging, they were printed on a white folder sitting on the kitchen counter. Beneath a large photo of Mount Ararat was captioned: “Named after the holy mountain in Armenia where Noah’s ark is believed to have landed, the home is a refuge for an aging Diaspora.” It was the word refuge that bothered Seda the most, so similar to refugee, a word she was all too familiar with. She thought about flinging the brochure into the yard, burying it deep in that cactus soil that her niece liked so much. Ani was her only living relative, the daughter of her long-deceased younger brother. Seda knew Ani loved her. Still, a month later she found herself living in the Ararat Home. It is a museum for the living, breathing relics of an unburied past, built by a community for whom everything, from the church picnic to the baker’s son passing the bar exam, is a testament to survival.
“You coming?” Old Kalustian pokes his bald head into her doorway. The old goat thinks he’s got pull with the ladies just because he uses a fancy cane instead of a walker.