Olive Senior - PEN International

26
WORDS ... ESTHER HEBOYAN
Esther Heboyan
The Picture Bride
So I wrote this story, a story in black-and-white pictures of the sort purveyed over
the years by Ara Güler’s ‘Istanbul’ and Robert Doisneau’s ‘Paris’, the two sonorous
cities of my life (but that is another story; let us not get carried away). I wrote this
story about a picture bride, a type one finds in the hamlets of ancient Anatolia as
well as in the cosmopolitan quarters of Urbania.
This picture bride, known as Aghavni Tchamitchyan, wore a melancholy smile
in the pictures that journeyed by mail to strange lands, awaited by a Mardiross
in São Paulo, a Hrant in Montreal, a Zaven in Lisbon, a Dikran in Johannesburg,
a Mihran in Abidjan, a Theodoros in Salonika and, finally, a Garbiss in Vienna.
However, for Aghavni, who had been pining away in her parents’ record store at
Beyo-lu, a hole in the wall wedged between a cigarette stand and a trinket trade
of some sort, none of those fervently auditioned and photographed suitors seemed
to possess the good looks and stamina of her Elvis, the one and only, her prince,
her pasha, for now and forever.
‘I’d rather not,’ she would say to her parents, who had happily married off three
elder daughters.
Off to Melbourne flew beautiful Nadya: husband running a jewelry store, one
daughter fluent in Australian English and Western Armenian. Off to New York
sailed generous Zepur: wife to a delicatessen owner, mother of two healthy boys.
As for bright Sonya, who settled so glamorously in Vienna, going to the opera and
so on, in the wake of her husband – a doctor – she did, at one point, nurture hopes
of introducing her youngest sister to an interesting fellow versed in Mekhitarist
theology and miniature painting. But Aghavni failed to show any interest in
Garbiss the Viennese.
‘What’s wrong with you?!’ her parents would exclaim, taking turns. And then,
to each other: ‘What’s wrong with her?’
Bending over like a tilting snowdrop, elbows resting on the star-studded glass
counter, Aghavni’s brain, eyes and ears filled with the velvety voice of Elvis Presley;
the young woman thus whiled away her time in a side alley of Istanbul’s heartbeat.
Rain, sleet or snow, she was welcoming even when other people groaned and
grumbled. On such days she shut the door, which sported an unfortunate sign
– THIS SHOP IS OPEN – and ecstatically turned up the volume of the German
gramophone to rock, body and soul, to the King’s tremors, until her father or
mother stomped in to curb her foolishness. Sometimes a customer entered,
much to Aghavni’s dislike, with a view to rummaging through the vinyl singles
she had tenderly arranged. Or worse, he would dart about with lurid glances, as
though, instead of a shop entrance, he had come across a bright orange light bulb
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