The Bastard of Istanbul

A group of intellectuals gather at Café Kundera in Istanbul. They talk intently about the origins of the café’s name. The Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, who presides over the group, offers that the establishment’s usage of Milan Kundera’s name may be code for boredom. He sits a table with his friends—the Nonnationalist Scenarist of Ultranationalist Movies and his latest dull girlfriend, The Closeted Gay Columnist (his surly attitude toward the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist masks a secret crush), The Exceptionally Untalented Poet, and the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist’s more talented wife. 

Asya Kazanci enters in a huff over her family. She announces to the group that it’s her birthday and appreciates how no one “[tries] to hug her or suffocate her with kisses” (88). Instead, The Exceptionally Untalented Poet reads her a bad poem, and The Dipsomaniac Cartoonist’s wife draws a caricature of her as an ill-tempered young woman with a large bust and a wild shock of hair. Finally, the group covers her share of the bill. 

Back at the Kazanci konak, it’s 9:00 o’clock at night and Asya is blowing out the candles on the unwanted carmelized cake. Auntie Feride asks how her ballet class went. Asya lies and says that she learned new moves and explains them by their French names. Everyone is impressed and convinced, except for Zeliha, who demands that Asya show them what she has practiced. Asya complies. She rises from the table and positions herself so that she is “romantically poised” while “her mind [swirls] with rage and resentment” (90).

In San Francisco, Armanoush Tchakhmakchian is preparing for a date with Matt Hassinger, a law student, though she would much rather stay home in bed with the books that she’s just purchased from A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. She selected two from her favorite author, Milan Kundera—The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and Life Is Elsewhere.  

Armanoush is a bookworm. Both her mother, Rose, who calls incessantly from Tucson, and her Armenian aunts worry that her bookishness will frighten away potential suitors, who may be overwhelmed by both Armanoush’s striking beauty and strong intellect. The Tchakhmakchians also have lingering memories of the persecution of intellectuals in Armenia. 

Armanoush’s aunts help her dress for the date and serves her ekmek khadayif (Turkish bread pudding) so that her breath “will smell of pistachios” (102) and not like the pungent garlic in the manti (Turkish dumplings) that they’re serving for dinner. Her father, Barsam, arrives before her date, as apprehensive as his sisters about the mystery man.

Matt arrives at 7:32pm, dressed in a “dark brown lambskin blazer and Ralph Lauren honeydew pants” (105). He holds “a huge bouquet of crimson tulips in his left hand, [smiles] at Armanoush, then [notices] the audience in the background” (106). The family overwhelms him with their curiosity, but Matt and Armanoush finally make it out of the house at 7:45 and head to the restaurant, Skewed Window, where they will have dinner. Matt drives a red Suzuki Verona. 

Skewed Window is popular with “urban intellectuals and artists” who appreciate the creations of the Dutch chef—a failure at becoming both a philosopher and a painter—who rematerializes abstract art through cuisine (107). Armanoush eats tuna tartare modeled on Francesco Boretti’s The Blind Whore, while Matt has a rib-eye with hot mustard cream sauce based on one of Mark Rothko’s color-field paintings, Untitled.

On the way back home, Armanoush spots one of her favorite books in the window of City Lights Bookstore: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich. She describes the story to Matt, and gives him a brief overview of Eastern European literature, all the while thinking about breaking her promise to her mother not to discuss books with men, at least not on the first date. 

When they reach Grandma Shushan’s door, they exchange a polite kiss, which confirms for Armanoush that she will not fall in love with Matt. Just then, he puts an arm around her and notes how she smells “just like pistachios” (111). Armanoush enters her grandmother’s house at 11:15 and finds the living room “dark and empty” (111). Armanoush takes an apple from a plate on the table and nibbles it while she thinks of how she will soon have to return to Arizona and “her mother’s encapsulating universe” (111). She likes San Francisco but feels that something is missing within her, making the city feel somehow lackluster. 

She goes to her room, slips on a pair of silk pajamas, and logs in to the chat room Café Constantinople. She goes to the Anoush Tree—a forum for those with intellectual interests. There, under the nickname Madame My-Exiled-Soul, inspired by Zabel Yessaian—“the only woman novelist the Young Turks put on their death list in 1915”—Armanoush talks to other Armenians about how the Turks have denied the genocide (113). She’s particularly fascinated by messages from Baron Baghdassarian, a fellow grandchild of genocide survivors. He introduces her to Janissary’s Paradox—the feeling of being torn between clashing cultures and burdened by the pain of history. 

During her online chat, Armanoush realizes what she needs to do: go to Istanbul for 10 days during her spring break and discover her “Armenianness” (119). She won’t tell her family; her father will think that she’s in Arizona and her mother will think that she’s still in San Francisco. Her friends in the chat room support her decision, as does Baron Baghdassarian, who implores her to take care of herself and not to let the Turks treat her badly.