The Doves of Ohanavank
Read The Doves of Ohanavank Online
Authors: Vahan Zanoyan
This book is a work of fiction. All names, persons, organizations, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events and places is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Vahan Zanoyan
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1499582749
ISBN 13: 9781499582741
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909772
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
Chapter One
O
ur house in Saralandj has two rooms. Before our parents died and Martha got married, one served as bedroom to the eight children. The other had our parents’ bed in one corner, and otherwise it was the kitchen, dining room and bath for all of us. We have no indoor plumbing. Our kitchen and bath have only one appliance, the manure-burning stove in the middle of the kitchen section of the second room. Almost every task is done by hand.
Now that there are fewer of us, my siblings have offered me my parents’ bedroom, they say because I slept there with my mother the night before Ayvazian’s men took me away. The remaining six now share our old bedroom.
My name is Lara Galian. Today I turn eighteen. I’m not big on birthdays, but my family wanted to do something special for me. My four older sisters and three younger brothers still live in this impoverished village. Saralandj used to be my home too, until everything changed
and I moved to the city after being freed. My oldest sister, Martha, is married and has a three-month-old baby girl, Ani. The second oldest, Sona, got engaged a month ago. My oldest brother, Avo, is fourteen months younger than me, but, as the oldest son, he is now the head of the Galian household.
Six months ago I was a prostitute in Dubai. When they took me there I was sixteen. People would stare at me. My manager would say it was because of my age and good looks, but I never understood what that meant. My father and mother used to talk about the legendary beauty that I had inherited from my great aunt, Araxi. That didn’t mean much to me either, because I never met Araxi Dadik.
In Dubai, I received around twenty clients a day, mostly foreign workers from Asia and other parts of the Middle East. Then my captor negotiated a contract with Ahmed Al Barmaka, a very rich and influential man, and I became exclusively his and lived in his estate. It was a relief not to have many clients every day, and although Ahmed treated me well, I guess with affection and maybe even respect (in that profession, one can never be sure of respect), the fact remained that I was his property, whom he had bought and paid for.
I betrayed his trust and ran away. I betrayed others too, including some who had been kind to me, to get away from that life and return home.
But home is not what it used to be. My mother died while I was away. I knew she was ill and it was one of my worst fears that I’d never see her again. The fear came true. Avo, who is the closest a human being has ever been to me (possibly next to my father), is different. Before Sergei Ayvazian killed my father and took me away, I had never seen Avo angry. Now he is angry all the time. He drinks, sometimes too much, he smokes, and he has participated in the killing of six people before turning seventeen. He killed these people because of me, two of them in my presence and one with my participation; he did it in order to protect our family and avenge my father’s death.
Avo has changed physically too; he has grown, his skin looks darker and more weathered, his face has hardened, is bonier and more angular. He is handsome and looks a lot more like my father now than he did two years ago. Like my father, his beauty does not seem to belong to the present; with his wild curly hair, large black eyes and eagle nose, he looks like some mythical character from ancient Armenia.
It is March, and it is still winter in Saralandj. There is a small hill of snow at the side of our house, where my brothers have gathered the snow shoveled from around the house; it reaches half way up the kitchen window. The snow starts to melt during sunny days, but then everything freezes at night, and once in a while it still snows. Spring does not arrive here until well into April, and in some years even into May. Nevertheless, the villagers are restless after four months of winter inactivity, and have started venturing out, getting ready for spring. Gardens are being raked and, by the more impatient, even tilled for late April planting, stables are being cleaned, and the remaining bales of grass and hay, gathered in late summer and early fall to feed the animals in the winter, rearranged, aired and re-stacked.
All my sisters and brothers work in the garden and the stables. Avo does most of the heavy outside work. Aram is the youngest and is the only one who still goes to school, but he is not exempt from doing his share. My sisters are also busy indoors, getting the house ready for spring; not much gets washed around here during the winter months, because it is very cold and heating large quantities of water on the small manure-burning stove is cumbersome. It is old and rusty, and its stovepipe, which passes through the first bedroom as its only source of heat, has many tears and holes, which Avo keeps repairing. Besides, they have to make sure that the stock of dried manure will be enough for heating the house all winter, and they don’t want to take chances until winter approaches its end, when they can be sure that they will not run out.
I miss the smell of this house. It is a combination of dried manure mixed with hay—our main fuel—smoke, sweat and the lingering aromas of cooking and spices. As much as anything, it is this smell that signifies home for me. I missed this smell when I was overseas, first in Moscow and then Dubai, and nearly as much as my family, it was this smell that I yearned to return to.
It reminds me especially of my father, who, even though dead, was the most important influence in my life during my eighteen months in forced prostitution. I recalled the countless tales that he used to tell, and the stories that he used to read to us during holidays. My father always had something to say about any situation; he spoke casually, without showing any presumed import in his message, and I later came to understand that it was that style that allowed every word to sink in, without questioning
or resistance from any of us. He simply talked and we simply listened. I probably wouldn’t have made it back home had it not been for my father’s words and the strength that they gave me.
Almost nothing has changed in this house physically since I left for the first time two years ago. Our old bedroom has the same five beds, made a long time ago by my grandfather, from wood and plywood. The only difference is that now only six of my siblings sleep there, so only my two youngest brothers have to share a bed. Other than that, every detail is the same as when I left.
The other room has not changed either, except that next to the picture of my father on the wall over the bed, now also hangs the picture of my mother. After her death, Avo chose an old photograph of her, enlarged it, made a frame from the pruned branches of our apricot tree, and hung it. That is all. Other than that, everything—the stove, the bed, the low dining table with the low stools around it, the pots and pans stacked together in one corner, the shelves holding the jars and sacks containing food preserved for the winter, the dishes and tea cups lined up along a single wooden shelf, the large pot where we heat water for baths and where we do laundry—all are exactly where they have always been. This became my bedroom after I returned home from Dubai, and it is mine every time I visit from Yerevan. No one else sleeps here. They just use the room to cook, eat, bathe, and do laundry.
No one in this house, let alone in this village, knows or could possibly understand what I’ve been through. Most women in this village will know only one man in their lifetime, with the exception of the rare widow who remarries. I have been with more men than the entire female population of this village combined, probably a hundred times over. I used to keep track of the number in my little spiral-bound green notebook, but I stopped when I reached the first several hundred men, within a few months of my abduction. I tore those pages from the notebook. There did not seem to be any point in keeping track, and besides, it was depressing me.
Although no one here knows exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done, everyone who knows my family has lurid opinions, and some are not far from the truth. Fortunately, I do not have to admit to anything; I treat the rumors for what they are, no matter how close to the truth they may be. My sisters do not ask any direct questions of me, and they try their best to ignore the rumors. In my presence, they act as if nothing has changed,
which is not difficult for them, because in fact very little changed in their lives when I was gone, except for the fact that I used to send a lot of money home, which helped them get back on their feet financially after my father’s sudden death.
But dealing with Avo is different. He has killed for me. He and I pushed Sergei Ayvazian down a five hundred meter cliff, from the same spot where my father was pushed after he refused to let them take me away and manage my career as a ‘model.’ That was in Sevajayr, a village far from here, in Vayots Dzor, a different region of Armenia than Aragadzotn, where Saralandj is. Avo also killed Ayvazian’s nephew, Viktor, and four of their bodyguards. He could never have pulled that off had it not been for two people—a crusty revolutionary called Gagik Grigorian, who was a friend of Papa’s, and a Swiss-Armenian investigative reporter called Edward Laurian, who somehow got tangled up in our family saga. We call him Edik.
Avo knows more than anyone else, and suspects a lot more. Six months ago, when he first brought me home, he waited for a couple of days for me to recover, and then he asked, point blank, if I had been raped and whether I actually had been a model in Greece, as Ayvazian had promised, or whether the more sinister rumors of prostitution were true. My only request was for him not to ask where I had been and what I had done. I told him that in time I may be ready to tell him certain details, but I asked that he let that be in my own time. I could tell from his face that the simple fact that I did not deny anything confirmed his worst suspicions. He stared at me for a minute, then turned his back and left without saying another word.