“Dove” by Mıgırdıç Margosyan

translated from the the Turkish by Matthew Lundin

As I was telling you about Kure Mama, I may have mentioned that once women here in Diyarbakir get married, they don’t wait very long before getting pregnant and becoming “two-souled.” Spring and autumn bring with them new babies with the help of Kure Mama’s magical hands and Father Arsen’s prayers. If it’s a girl then it’s a “black sheep” and if a boy then it’s a “pasha.”

If the new guest stepping into the world is a girl, the pregnancy is seen to have been a waste of time. It’s like you came away from it empty-handed. Getting pregnant and giving birth to a girl around here is a pretty normal affair. Nobody would even really think to call it an affair, it was just something that happened. A baby girl is seen as a poor creature, looked upon as glumly as if a war had been lost. A “pasha,” on the other hand, is greeted with hands thrown up in the air in a sign of victory. To put it bluntly: there wasn’t much of anything good to say when a pregnant, expecting, burdened, or “two-souled” woman gave birth to that thing called a girl. It was just another birth. If not a boy, what was the point in having been pregnant for those nine long months and some odd days? But what if instead you were somehow able to give birth to multiple sons in a row? Well then, may your femininity – your womanhood – be praised. How did that old saying go? “Beget a girl, be hazed; beget a boy, be praised.”

If we were speak about it in numbers: a half-brained son was equal to four smart girls. And against a healthy and intelligent son, well again to put it mathematically, a girl plus a girl times a girl would be equal to nil...

Just like anywhere else on the face of the Earth, the women in Diyarbakir hadn’t figured out any effective formula for giving birth to sons. I will mention that it was the good Lord, passing between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper in the skies over Diyarbakir, who was in charge of these women’s wombs. They believed that the sex of the child was in accordance with his supreme will and design. Even though Father Arsen couldn’t stand to hear all of our women's wishes and pleas as God’s earthly envoy, he himself would succumb to using this type of pleading, using expressions like: “My Lord, supreme and great God, who creates all, who decides over all, who forgives his sinful servants and who bestows upon them what he will, please preserve the unlucky ones! Because you are great...” Calling up to the heavens with the type of language he thought God would understand. But in the end, God did what ever he pleased.

And as long as we’re speaking now in the presence of the Lord, I should also mention that it wouldn’t have seemed right to stop at two or three kids either. Around here you weren’t any kind of woman if your belly didn’t swell up like a plump Diyarbakir watermelon five or six times (and preferably seven or eight). Any woman who didn’t was said to have had her field left fallow. Some thought it so bad, that a woman like that might as well have been infertile. For this reason, our women were sent off to the waiting embraces of husbands as soon as they reached the age of marriage, which around here meant around fourteen, fifteen or sixteen,  – even girls pushing up against thirteen years old. If you were to make excuses for having your eighteen-year-old daughter still living at home, saying things like “what’s the rush, she’s still really young,” then you should have our ancestors-old saying stuck in you like one of those extravagant earrings from the hunchback Minas:

“Early to rise takes the road, early to work gets the load.”

Alright, moving on... over to Father Arsen, wagging his wooden walking stick angrily at Kurdish children who had been harassing him by singing “a monk a monk, a glass in his rump.” Do you know what was written, what was commanded on the red bible with the cross on it that he kept in the pocket of his black robe, which he always wore (along with his beard and the sin of being a priest) as he went back and forth between home to church, and church to home with the punctuality of a clock smith? The phrase that was also written upon his alter?  

“Be fruitful and multiply...”

It was no laughing matter. Everyone had to get married. It had to be done sooner or later, otherwise it was well known what would happen to you – you’d end up like the story of the postman without a horse...

With such a fear in the air about the whole thing, how could brides and their mothers-in-law, mothers, and daughters be at fault for being pregnant at the same time? Did it go against natural law? Was it a sin against God and his commands, or was he pleased by it? For women “half way through the journey” (like in the poem by our famous Diyarbakir poet, Jahit Sikti Taranji), mothers-in-law by the time they reached thirty-five, do you think they would say “I finished sifting my flour so I hung up my sieve” and bow out of their work? Could anyone give up on motherhood at that age? Or how about men who had become fathers at twenty – before even having gone off to military service and eaten gruel from a mess tin – who were now grandfathers with a sack of grandkids by the age of forty, do you say they gave up on manhood?  Anyone who thinks so, who would say “Yeah, they’ve had enough” is having their brains eaten with bread and cheese. I mean they’re talking nonsense...     

The kind of person who’d be done with parenting would be the same kind of good-for-nothing who went around being a braggart, talking themselves up, and in the end as they say, would have to send in reinforcements on their own wedding night. Rather than face their responsibilities, they would come up with a thousand excuses in order to avoid it. As for our Kejo, what do you think they would have done in his place?

Kejo never caught a break when it came to being a father. But what had this poor man ever done to this cruel world to have deserved its scorn? He had bowed down in front of the biblical injunction to “be fruitful and multiply,” meekly obeying by getting married. And you think that’s all? He took those holy words to heart and for his efforts was given six little “black sheep” one after another. Was this God’s justice? Do you think either Hachatun, Kejo’s wife – finer than a rose,  and mother of six girls, who was only forty years old and had been as fertile as a chicken  ­or Kejo who was forty-five, do you think that either one had ever said  “the race is run, our work is done” and took a break from their duty? Being an artisan plasterer, Kejo might know the expression, “when the mortar runs out, so does the work.” But does a plasterer ever really run out of mortar?    

Try to think about what it was like for Kejo.  For just one moment imagine, for the love of God and the Prophet. You live in Diyarbakir and every morning you get up early to go to work as a plasterer. While on your way, you keep running into people you know: your wife, a friend, a relative, any number of people.  You greet some of them in Armenian with “Pariluys” and others in Arabic with “as-Sallam alay-kum.”  Then in the evening, covered in a mixture of lime, mortar, and calcimine,  you walk home again carrying enormous watermelons underneath your arms, saying “parirgun” in Armenian to some and “iyi akshamlar” to others in Turkish, and still to others saying “Evarete gher” in Kurdish. When you finally arrive after all of that hard work to see your daughters waiting for you, lined up by size like pearls on a necklace, wouldn’t you just love to see your very own dark-eyebrowed, dark-eyed pantsless little boy there at the end? Wouldn’t you long to have that kind of a greeting party? Okay, let’s suppose you don’t wish for that sort of thing. But as the master of the house, and as a master plasterer, wouldn’t it matter to Kejo? Let’s imagine for a moment that he wasn’t deaf and he could somehow hear you saying, “eh, they have enough kids.” Even if he could, the fact is that the midwife of his children happened to be Kure Mama, and every day he was pursued by her endless pleading.

“Kejo, Kejo, curse these broken hands, these damned fingers. When I look at these clumsy hands of mine, how they couldn’t pull out a little colt of a boy for you, it’s such a shame..!”

Kure Mama had pulled babies out of everyone else in town! Now her sights were set on Kejo ­or I should say on Kejo’s wife. You think Kure Mama would have left this world without having delivered a boy to them? If she died before having done so, it would be with eyes wide open. As much as Kejo had his pride, didn’t Kure Mama have her honor? Don’t you think someone should have really tried to warn him whenever they saw him heading home?

“Kejo, Kejo, my dear sir, lovely evening, might as well make the most of it, how about you set your eyes on the prize.”

After this kind of sly and subtle prodding (and the fiasco it had caused with the birth of  Kejo’s sixth black sheep), what could anyone do? What could Hachatun do for that matter? She was merely Kejo’s wife; the decision was in Kejo’s hands… Wasn’t he the only one in charge of whether or not they would have a son? If he had said come to bed, she would be ready to lay down. If had told her to get up, she would stand. If he said come back, she would return. Didn’t Kejo share a single shred of the blame? Wasn’t he at fault in this?  

Our opinion in the matter, was what Kure Mama had to say about it:

“This is Kejo’s responsibility. Hachatun is like a field; it’s up to Kejo to plow it. If a woman is a field she only gives back what she is given... When you sow barley, can you reap wheat? It’s simple, you reap what you sow...”

As time went on, even Kure Mama lost hope and reluctantly had to give up. People started going around saying that Kejo blamed himself. They said he had secretly gone and jumped over the murky waters three times – the murky waters like in the beginning of that old folk song, “I jumped over the murky waters, I tied on the Mantin belt...” The murky waters refers to the stream flowing at the foot of Diyarbakir’s historic ramparts.  It makes its way through the various vegetables, romaine lettuce, cabbage patches, and several mulberry trees before spilling into the city’s old broken drain pipes though dregs. Then it passes through the rusted mill wheels, tired and forlorn, before finally spilling into the Tigris River.  

According to local legend, if you jumped over this water three times close to where it spun in whirlpools as it was sucked into the mill wheels, it would eventually make its way up to God along with your prayers, soon bringing back a response....

It didn’t.

After the dirty water incident, it was clear that Kejo’s fate had been written: spelled out in big letters with henna ink on his forehead. As clear as the black mole that had been on his forehead since birth...

As for our reaction to the whole affair, let me be totally frank. I might as well admit it. People  in Diyarbakir talk too much. We’re always dying to stick our noses into other people’s business. We love it.  Whatever the cause, whether it be the weather in our town, or the ice-cold water of the Hamravat river coming from Karadah mountain, or our own extravagant beliefs... whatever the cause, we just can’t get enough. So when we saw someone putting down the foundation for a new house, we’d chide the builder by saying:

“Master Norabet, for the love of God, looky here, are you going to leave this foundation stone all crooked like Kejo here?”

Around here, a fruitless tree was called a Kejo. A crooked hanging door was a Kejo. Every unfavorable situation, no matter how small, had its own little share of “Kejo-ness” in it. As old women ululated at having a new groom in the family, they would secretly pray:

“God on high, we beg you, please don’t let this bridal bed be like Kejo’s.”

Kure Mama firmly believed that Kejo wouldn’t be able to get out of his duty, but once she begrudgingly lost every last bit of hope she had for him – once she realized that all the seeds she had tried to plant in him had turned out to be hollow little “bastard” seeds – Kure Mama gave up. Proclaiming “my life no longer has any purpose,” with her eyes wide open, her heart broken, her insides sour, and calling out  “Kejo, Kejo, Kejo!..” she passed to the other side, on to the next world.

With a reading from the Bible, a few sticks of incense, a mist of rain, a prayer by Father Arsen, and the abundant tears and weeping of two generations of women, Kure Mama was given to the Earth. Her mission, now a matter of pride and honor, was inherited by the other women and widows left behind.  Having handed off such a solemn responsibility, Kure Mama could now sleep peacefully on the other side. But if they were going to get her eyes to close, the women were going to have to roll up their sleeves. Drawing on their own experiences, they set upon Hachatun, armed with the tactics that had once been used on them.

“Dearie, go cuddle up to your husband.”

“Dearie, go lay down at the side of your man.”

“Dearie, don’t turn your back to your husband in bed.”

Around here, there was no rule saying where frankness began or where it ended. In certain circumstances when people tried to be helpful, that line was never drawn. Who, why, in what measure, where, and however someone needed help, we left the rules of good manners to the side. The important thing was the task at hand. In this case, it was the task Kure Mama had failed at and left unfinished for the other widows. But even so, that still left the major question to which we should return, spell out, pick up from where we left off, and ask ourselves frankly: Who exactly could ensure Kejo a male child, a young colt, even if Hachatun was pregnant every spring? On the list of all of the widows of Diyarbakir (a list only slightly longer than Astur’s sparse beard), could anybody actually finish the job? Could nobody find a solution? Was there not a single favorable, helpful suggestion to be found in the whole of the enormous Gavur District?

Could it be?

That day the women of the widow’s ward – Gilor Enne, who lived in the ruins next to the Surp Giragos church and was better known as rotund Enne; Mrs. Aggik, better known as Mrs. Lovely; and Dzur Peran Almast, better known as crooked mouthed Almast – all sat knitting wool in the courtyard of the church. After a long talk they came to their historic decision. That spring, Hachatun would give birth to a son... and nobody other than God himself would be able to stop them. And to make sure of that, they thought of a new strategy.

The convoy set out: Gilor Enne rocking back and forth, Mrs. Aggik strutting flirtatiously, and Dzur Peran Almast trying to smooth out her crooked mouth a bit. Full of optimism, they headed over to the house of another widow, Hent Agavni.

Hent Agavni (which if we said it in Turkish would translate to Crazy Agavni) was actually stark, raving mad. She was an old loon, a dried up mulberry. But the widow’s ward, paying no mind to the old mulberry’s age, snatched her up and brought her to Hachatun’s side. Their decision was final. And they believed it was based on a rational argument.

“Seeing that all of our efforts have come to no good, up against the prayers of a thousand souls, the prayers of a crazy person would have to work better in being heard up in heaven...”

Hachatun didn’t object by saying “nooo, definitely not.”  Neither did she say “che” in Armenian or “nabe” in Kurdish. There wasn’t any good reason for her to do so. On the contrary, she appreciated their efforts. They had dropped everything they were doing in order to find some remedy to her problems, for the sake of her happiness. Their deeds would soon be noticed up in heaven and they would certainly be rewarded for being so kind. It would have been at the very least a sin and a crime against Kejo if his wife had said “che, chem uzer” in Armenian (“no, I don’t want to”). For Kejo’s wife, who was finer than a rose, to give him a chubby little baby boy to set upon his lap, wouldn’t it be like bringing him back to life? After six daughters – six unhelpful children – to give birth to a boy on the seventh try would be like laying a Persian rug at the head of their room. Oh, what a great joy! By God how delightful it would be!

Agavni had come from around Tokat and settled down in Diyarbakir during the Great War (the First World War) in around 1915. It was said that she spoke English, French, or some other foreign language. But there weren’t many who had actually heard or seen her speak any of them. Most of those who had heard or seen her speaking any of them had gone to heaven a long time ago. But it was said that she had been a cultured and smart woman. One day after she had lost both her husband and son in the War, she was bathing in the Pasha Hamam in the Gavur District and all of a sudden began to shout “where is my bowl and my comb, where is my house?” and ran out into the street butt-naked. She went on running all over town, going into every Armenian house as though it were her own. She came in completely relaxed, going into their store rooms without permission, and eating her fill. Her fate was just as black as Kejo’s.

As sane people we might not know much, but crazy people always know exactly how to set to work. For them, time is of the utmost importance. Hent Agavni knew why she had been brought there on that day and in such a rush. She would get right down to business.

But first, she made sure to fill herself up on Hachatun’s grape molasses “Malez.”  After having eaten the fruit paste and walnuts off the top of it, she remembered the task at hand. Agavni was very happy with her life. She reveled in taking charge of such important tasks. She was reveling in it now. She would use prayer to erase the black ink of fate off of Kejo’s forehead, and to absolve Hachatun’s womb. The widows had waited impatiently for the ceremony to begin, and felt relieved when they saw a sign from Agavni. Agavni’s first signal was to close her eyes and begin to whisper something inaudible, which probably would not have been understood anyway. After putting her dirty, jittery hands on Hachatun’s head, and taking an extremely serious pose, she called out to the widows:

“Bring me an onion!”

Gilor Enne began to run (or rather began to spin like a ball) over to the pantry. She brought back an onion as round as her, holding it out to Agavni. Agavni took the onion, and after smelling it three times called out:

“Give me a knife!”

This time, Mrs. Aggık went strutting  towards the kitchen in the yard, and not able to find a knife, brought back a huge meat cleaver and handed it timidly to Agavni.

“And also bring a slice of bread.”

It was Dzur Peran Almast’s turn. She also ran immediately to the storeroom. She was able to find a piece of bread in the “tesht” bowl. After holding up the bread in her crooked hands and kissing it three times, she ran back and gave it to Agavni. Agavni looked it over intently, then took a bite. Dissatisfied, she threw it out into the yard yelling angrily:

“This bread won’t do! I want dry, stale bread!”

The piece of bread landed in a drain pipe. Dzur Peran Almast thought that this type of behavior was sinful and would probably negate the power of Agavni’s prayers, but she kept it to herself.

Agavni didn’t think twice about sins or good deeds. At that moment she had already begun thinking up her next command. The widow’s ward all went down into the storeroom, rummaging through everything but still unable to come up with a single slice of dry bread. Hachatun was sitting on her knees in front of Agavni, watching the events unfold silently. At that moment she muttered in a low voice and with a sense of embarrassment:

“You should take a look in the henhouse.”

The women bolted out to the henhouse. The rooster inside began to warble from happiness at the sight of three widows joining the ranks of his three chickens. The chickens sat silently on their perches, jealous to see their rooster so excited, refusing to acknowledge the widow’s presence. The widows didn’t notice any of this as they turned the henhouse upside down looking for a piece of stale bread. In the end, they finally found a piece.  

But that wasn’t the end of Agavni’s demands. The women were about out of patience. They had realized too late that this was the price of working with a crazy woman. There was no longer anything more they could do. As they say, once you’ve started down a path, there is no turning back. They had already girded their loins at the banks of the stream, and it was well-known that one shouldn't change horses while crossing one. Hachatun was in pain. Like a sheep at the butcher, she squat down in front of Agavni, putting her faith in the woman’s prayers. For poor Hachatun’s sake, the widows were willing to put up with this crazy woman. It would be worth it.

“And bring a handful of salt.”

The widows hoped this would be Agavni’s last request. From the green enamel jar in the storeroom they brought a rock of salt in the palm of their hands and handed it to her.

“Quickly, light the fire!”

Light the fire, and quickly? No no, she had truly lost her mind...

Without any explanation, she wanted them to light a fire? What was the point of dropping everything to do this? And you couldn’t just snap your fingers and make a fire appear... you had to light the coals, get a lülük (one of those flute-like tubes), fill your cheeks with air, and then blow through it nonstop. If there was even one coal left burning in the habesh, you’d be lucky. Otherwise you had your work cut out for you.

They lit a fire... Agavni may have been crazy, but not crazy enough to keep a fire lit all by herself.

Her demands finally came to an end and the ritual could proceed to the second stage.

Being left-handed, Agavni, brought down the meat cleaver in her left hand with a sudden blow onto the onion lying on the ground. Miraculously, it split the onion right down the middle. The widows looked at one another in shock and not a little fear. Agavni slowly withdrew the blade then unexpectedly threw it into the well. The widows were sad to lose their meat cleaver, but their sadness was far outweighed by the relief at knowing it would never again be able to cause harm, wielded by that crazy woman. Agavni took the bread and salt in her left hand, grasping them tightly, and holding it over Hachatun’s head she began to recite an unending string of prayers. Nobody dared interrupt her. They all found new lengths to their patience... When Agavni did finally open her eyes, it appeared as though the prayers had ended. The final prayer resembled the final litany in Father Arsen’s Sunday service. Agavni’s right hand thumb and pointer finger made a cross in the air, crossing the yard, and then she said “I entrust you to God.” After showing reverence for Father Arsen, she approached the glowing fire in the habesh, narrowed her eyes, and for a short while stared into the flames. The women, who had watched the beginning of the litany but had no idea when or how it would end, stood there waiting. As the darkness of the evening began to close in slowly, Agavni passed the salt in her hand three times over the head of Hachatun and then tossed it into the fire. The large chunks of salt sizzled on the glowing fire. The sound of the sizzling salt punctuated her prayers.

“Out with the bad, in with the good.”

“Out with the bad, in with the good.”

Once the salt had burnt up, Agavni ripped off pieces of the dry, moldy bread and gave it to the women to taste. This last act was reminiscent of the ritual on Sundays when Father Arsen gave holy bread (the body of Christ) out to those who repented their sins. And just as this marked the end of the service in church, all of the Armenians present took this to be the end of the ritual.

Hachatun got back up from the place where she had been kneeling down. Gilor Enne, Mrs. Aggık, and Dzur Peran Almast all repeated Agavni’s last phrase together:

“Out with the bad, in with the good.”

The bad did not go, and the good did not come. In the spring, Hachatun gave birth to her seventh daughter. Kejo never got word of the incident with Agavni.

We have no idea what our heavenly father might have whispered in Kejo’s ear. But for his part, Kejo decided that “it all ends here” and gave his daughter the name Agavni, which means “dove”...