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  • Bringing Ararat
  • Armand ML Inezian (bio)

On the friday that they received the money from his father, Harrut had gone for a swim. He got off work in the early afternoon, stripped to his boxer shorts and dove, crashing through some shallow waves, into the sea. He was athletic, with a long, lean body and could kick out great distances. The water off Beirut was warm for most of the year, and he would sometimes bring a net and knife in case he was lucky and found a patch of sea urchins that he could pick and sell to a young Syrian street vendor. Or sometimes he would cut the urchins' mottled shells and suck down the raw, salty flesh; the texture it left in his mouth was somewhere between steak and cream.

This time he didn't look for urchins. Instead he closed his eyes and felt the warm water rushing over his chest and groin. He went out several hundred yards, until his calves burned and sea foam hissed, dissolving in his ears, and then he turned to face the city, with its endless mix of shanty and establishment. This was 1964, before the militias and economic snafus, when people called Beirut the "Paris of the East." Somewhere behind the waterfront and the birds and vendors was the apartment he shared with his sister, knots of highway passes being built, and beyond that Mosha's, his girlfriend's, apartment with its wide front porch. Banks, restaurants, churches and people everywhere, coming and going.

When he came home, he found Flori, his sister, cooking: grilled lamb with salt and pepper; its fatty aroma hung in the air. She wasn't much for housework, but she liked cooking. On the counter beside her there was a large, opened envelope, and she was smiling. News, Harrut thought. Flori always smiled when there was news of some kind—good or bad, it didn't matter. It was an attribute she shared with many of the women in their extended clan, the group of people that Harrut simply thought of as the Family—the way things were dealt with before modern psychology came to the fore: the women generally smiled, and the men were generally reserved.

He walked into Flori's maybe-good-maybe-bad smile with a sense of tension. He gave her the usual kiss, crossing from one cheek to the other. "God, you should have seen the birds down at the shore today. Millions. They were fighting and screaming," he said. They usually spoke in Armenian but could switch to Rumanian, not common in the area, if they wanted privacy. [End Page 142]

He walked past her to the icebox and fished out a jug of pickled vegetables. He forked into the mass, picking out carrots and cauliflower. He made a lot of noise eating.

Flori laughed at the way he ate, laughed at how he loved his meals. She was seventeen, seven years his junior, but her personality vacillated; at times she seemed twelve, at others, thirty. Sometimes Harrut could not believe that this dyed blonde who wore American-movie-inspired dresses with silver clasps was his sister. On the increasingly rare occasions when he went to restaurants with both Flori and Mosha, he would imagine that he had somehow fallen into a Hollywood film with a lovely starlet on either side. He would notice other men watching jealously.

"Do you want?" He thrust a forkful of cauliflower at her.

She handed the envelope to him. It was covered with stamps in English, Arabic and French.

The letter wasn't much of a letter, really—only a few paragraphs in his father's hand.

Dear Son,

In her big, looping handwriting, his mother had added: Everyone is well. Ardash is well and Manole is well. Anahit was sick again, a little, but she is feeling better. There are so many poor people here, more than Bucharest. I will send you candy.

There were photographs: about half a dozen color shots on heavy paper, and then there was the money. It wasn't in the envelope; Flori had it in her other hand. She warily held it out to him...

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