Lessons from africa

HONORABLE MENTION

ARMENIAN HOLIDAYS

by Christine Moughamian, Wilmington, NC

When December days go blue and a fat yellow moon butters up the night,

When the windows are foggy and the house is fragrant with honey and spice,

When family stories swirl with a steaming cup of coffee, taste of bittersweet memories,

When my feet want to dance to old melodies,

Then, I remember my childhood’s Armenian Holidays.

“They’re coming, they’re coming!”

My ten-year old brother Philippe barged into the house with the breaking news, then ran out the door, followed by Nadine, my fourteen-year old sister. Philippe skipped down the stairs with happy cries “They’re coming from Paris,” clapped his hands in excitement, “Quick, come quick.”

Despite the cold, Nadine held the door wide open, cried back to us the news we’d all been waiting for, “They’re coming, the Godfather’s here.”

The news that jumpstarted our Armenian family reunion, shook my grandparents’ house with a commotion of loud noises and voices. A typical confusion for a typical year-end holiday, on December 28, 1968, the weekend blocked between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Everyone ‘came down’ from Northern France to Charvieu, to gather in my father’s family house in a mixed crowd of twenty to thirty relatives. We had to squeeze tight in the kitchen where tables, chairs, stools and seats of all sorts had been added pell-mell by my grandfather, Pépé Hossep, while my grandmother, Mémé Vartanouch, was busy cooking traditional Armenian dishes from scratch.

In the same sentence, my Armenian relatives could pinch your cheeks with affection and a sweet Arvorem, Yavrous, ‘I love you, Baby’ and curse every time they used a Turkish word. Mémé Vartanouch still did it – a pinch and a kiss – and I was fifteen and a half. So annoying.

Unlike Nadine, who stayed poised through it all, and Philippe, who scouted in the forefront, I retreated when Le Parrain, my father’s Godfather, entered the room with his wife and their two sons, their arms loaded with covered dishes. The loud cheering got to me, the chaos suffocated me. I recoiled to the back, curled up on the abandoned sofa, a fragile snail in her shell.

Shoulders swayed right and left, heads bobbed up and down. I should’ve been used to it by then, but it struck me again. Whether Armenian, Greek, Italian or French, all my relatives had one trait in common: black hair. My two platinum blonde aunts didn’t count. They were full-blooded Armenian brunettes. Again, I had to resign myself to it.

I was the blonde sheep of the family.

Our Armenian family stew brewed with rich flavors, odors and colors, a melting pot of accents, exotic spices and emotions. Raw emotions. The men tended to burst out in anger, the women screamed and cried in frustration, and even when talking, they all sounded like they were yelling at each other. Their passion ran skin-deep. I didn’t know if it was because they spoke fast in Armenian, or because they added dramatic hand gestures no matter what they were holding – a pen, a broom, a kitchen knife – but even an ordinary scene in their lives sounded like a direct take from Guy Marchand’s song La Passionnata, impassioned, melodramatic.

A tragicomedy.

Even though I loved them, I handled them best in small numbers.

Say, one-on-one?

“Christine, come here, oce gour,” Mémé Vartanouch called to me. With the few Armenian words I still understood, she yanked me out of my fuzzy bubble. I sprang up to my feet, snaked my way around the crowd and met Mémé Vartanouch, tall and slender, her silver locks impeccable, in charge of it all at the other end of the kitchen, next to the huge closet encased in the entire wall from floor to ceiling. “Here, thou sets table,” my grandmother said in a mixture of formal and casual French, “Vous mets table.”

It took me several trips, a few mismatched plates for the children and the help of my little cousin Cathy, whom I enlisted for the silverware, but eventually, the tables –

the usual round kitchen table and an assortment of small rectangular ones – were all set for our starving company. When I put the last glass in front of the last plate, Mémé Vartanouch, aided by my Godmother Marraine Marie, brought a heavy iron pot to the center table, steaming with the lamb roast. As if on cue, everybody sat down, squeezed at odd angles, knee to knee, elbow to elbow, or wrapped around unyielding table legs.

By then, it was dark outside, the windows were foggy, and the kitchen smelled of festive holidays.

Armed with a large kitchen knife, Pépé Hossep cut out the lamb. All my aunts served the pieces, cooked to perfection, with generous portions of rice pilaf and vegetables stewed in onion sauce – plump eggplant, tender zucchini and juicy tomatoes. They handed out full plates to our guests, who rubbed their bellies and salivated in anticipation. My uncles opened bottles of wine, poured the red beverage around, skipped the children, who settled for lemonade, “fizzy like champagne,” my Italian uncle Aldo told the smaller ones, who laughed at his joke.

For a moment, I wanted to forget that I didn’t like lamb, didn’t like meat of any kind, didn’t like pretending that I did. For a moment, I wanted to forget that I’d have to negotiate two servings of vegetables for half a portion of roast.

For a moment, I wanted to blend in – and belong.

When all were served and seated, Mémé Vartanouch took her place at the big round table by the stove, the seat of Mayrig, the Matriarch. Pépé Hossep stood at the end of the long table, a thin smile on his lips. He looked around, then sat down, without a word.

“Aman,” Mémé said with a crying voice. “All family, brings me pleasure,” she added with a roll of the tongue, then put her hand to her heart, a tear in her eye.

“Happy Holidays, Mother,” Marraine Marie said, holding up her glass, “Joyeuses Fêtes, Mayrig.”

We all raised our glasses, toasted to the holidays.

And to family.

“A la famille!”

*******

Two to three hours later, young parents and their cranky children trickled out, soon followed by le Parrain and his family, until only my grandparents, my parents and our closest relatives lingered around. Although we added up to more than a dozen, the kitchen, deserted by the larger crowd, felt almost empty.

Mémé Vartanouch picked up her plate and stood up. On her way to the sink, Tatan Achale stopped her. “Mayrig, give it to me, you go sit over there,” she said, pointing to a chair by the window.

“No, no, archig, daughter…” Mémé Vartanouch tried to protest. She insisted on cleaning the whole mess by herself, in a balance act of Armenian self-sacrifice, “No, me, me clean up,” and French hosting manners, “No, guests do nothing, rien.”

But Tatan Achale pulled her by the arm, guided her to a small table by the window, threw over her shoulder “Come on, Christine, Nadine, be nice, please help with the dishes.”

No one objected.

Nadine claimed the sink, filled up a plastic tub with hot soapy water. I piled up dirty glasses and plates onto the counter. Philippe and Cathy exchanged furtive glances, then tossed leftovers into a big trashcan. Maman covered pots and pans to put the food away.

In the silent kitchen, the clinking of dishes resounded like the toll of church bells.

Papa walked toward Pépé while his younger brother, Tonton Jeannot, arranged a couple more chairs next to Mémé.

No one had said a word about it, but we all knew what was coming.

Papa tugged at Pépé, still seated in his chair, “Baba, come on,” tried to get him to stand up, “Come on now, Father.”

Pépé freed up his arm, turned his head away, “Leave alone, tranquille,” he said, his face crunched up in pain.

But Papa wouldn’t let go, kept repeating “Baba, come on now,” switching from Armenian to French, then back to Armenian, pulling and tugging at his father’s arm.

At the other end of the room, Tonton Jeannot sat down beside Mémé Vartanouch, his mother, a monolith to motherhood, La Maman. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, spoke to her in Armenian while Tatan Achale and Marraine Marie took their seats next to them.

None of us grandchildren knew why and when it all began, but it seemed that our Armenian grandparents had always been like that, sitting at cross ends for dinner, or standing apart, an odd arrangement of tables and chairs between them. Two stubborn bookends unwilling to turn the page, they framed a world of painful memories and repressed emotions, locked in anger and resentment— their past.

Once in a while, both arms raised in typical Armenian supplication, Mémé lamented “Aman, doras, son…” only to be echoed across the room by Pépé’s complaints, “Leave alone, tranquille.” But Papa wouldn’t let go. He pulled and pleaded and tugged and towed until Pépé Hossep stood up, moved one reluctant foot at a time, took one slow step after the other, and found himself across the room, seated at the small table by the window, face to face with Mémé Vartanouch.

His wife.

Like little kids after a fight, my grandparents avoided each other’s gaze, kept their mouths shut, hid their arms under the table, their tight bodies a silent scream, a single shout around their hearts, closed for too long.

“Non.”

“Non, I won’t forgive you,” Mémé’s white line of a lip said to her husband. “No, I won’t forgive you all the pain you caused me.”

“Non, I can’t forget,” Pépé’s fists yelled to his wife from under the table. “No, I can’t forget the hurt.”

“Non.”

No one had said a word about it, but we all knew what was coming.

Philippe and Cathy sat on the sofa in the back of the room, Maman walked away with an armload of covered dishes, Nadine, busy at the sink, kept her back turned to us, and I was absorbed in cleaning the tables. Or rather, I pretended to be. A wet sponge in one hand, a small tray in the other, I moved with long strokes from table to table until I stood only a few feet away from my grandparents. Head down, I bent over the table, shot quick glances at them over my shoulder.

And then, it happened.

With two words.

“Mayrig,” Marraine Marie said, and Mémé Vartanouch, a pressure cooker with no safety valve, let out the steam in heated Armenian.

“Baba,” Tonton Jeannot said, and Pépé Hossep exploded with shouts, shook his fist in the air.

It took two words only, two simple words to break the dam around my grandparents’ hurt.

Mother.

Father.

They kicked and screamed, poured their hearts out, spilled out their guts in a torrential avalanche of accusations. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I could feel their pain. And I could feel the pain of their children, my aunts, my uncle, and my father.

My father.

Like a child, my father begged and pleaded, like his brother and sisters, all children, pleading and begging, all children, touching an arm here, holding a hand there, all children, crying. Trying to stitch their parents back together, all children, brothers and sisters, mother and father, parents, all, all children.

Their tears, all their tears, my father’s tears…

My little heart couldn’t take it any more. “Mémé, Pépé,” I said with a trembling voice.

And then, between sobs and sighs, hands reached out, arms hugged, and somehow, we all united again as one big family. Just like Mémé Vartanouch had said at the dinner table, one hand to her heart, “All family, gives me pleasure.”

It wasn’t quite back to that magical moment, but at least, the gnawing pain had lifted.

At least for a night.

*******

Armenian cooking was a mystery to me.

The next morning in the kitchen, it was just me, my grandmother and her battalion of cooking utensils, her oversized pots and pans fit for an army’s canteen, her huge wall closet that guarded the secrets of sweet halva and apricot paste, her cool pantry lined up with strings of sausages hung there to dry, spiced up with the peppered smells of bastorlma – some kind of cayenne-cured ham.

I looked around and knew. That day wouldn’t unveil any more mystery to me than the all too familiar “Pour water, mix flour” of my childhood cooking lessons.

Especially not that day, the strategic Sunday to mobilize les grandes manœuvres, the big maneuvers before New Year’s Eve. While I dried the few dishes left on the rack, I considered the ammunition of ground walnuts in a large bowl, the heavy artillery lined up on the counters, cast-iron pots, massive skillets, weighted lids. Mémé was about to turn her kitchen into a culinary boot camp, deploy her batterie de cuisine, marshal her ingredients in orderly reams and rows, and expect obeisance from her troops, which right then meant – me.

I still wondered how my grandmother could make cheese out of sour milk in a dishcloth hanging over the kitchen sink – and have it turn out into her savory ténékébanir. Or roll dough so thin you could see through – without ever tearing it. Not to mention the beurrègues, those flaky chaussons filled with ground beef and onion, or cheese and chives (my favorite) and the parsley-scented meatballs she rolled in the palm of her hand with boulghour, then cooked in bouillon for hearty winter soups.

From entrée to pièce de résistance and dessert, Mémé Vartanouch had a dish for every occasion, and a story for every dish. If she ever saw me idle in the kitchen, Mémé might tell me a tale about a prince, a genie and a lazy maiden – not unlike me. Or, she’d get me back to work with a not-so-subtle clue like “Person no can clap with one hand.” And I’d resume my task, peel vegetables, stuff grape leaves – with both hands.

“Yavrous, Baby,” Mémé Vartanouch said as she came in. She pulled me out of my rêverie, gave me a pinch and a kiss on the cheek, put a huge round baking pan in my hands.

“Sarlborlma,” I exclaimed, “We’re going to make sarlborlma.”

My grandmother’s honey-luscious, walnut-crunchy, lemon-scented dessert. In anticipation, I beat the worn-out tin bottom, all dented and stained from countless hours in the oven, raised it up to my ear and swirled a couple of times around the kitchen, like a gypsy girl by a campfire.

Mémé opened her tall closet, handed me a jar of honey, a kilo of sugar.

“Wait, Mémé.”

A bag of lemons.

“Wash lemons, cut, for juice.”

In a quick move, I obeyed her command.

Meanwhile, Mémé prepared an assault on the round table covered by la toile cirée, the plastic tablecloth that bravely resisted her many baking campaigns. She cleared out her battlefield, leveled the terrain with sprinkled flour, dropped the dough in the center, flattened it out with her hands. By the way she kneaded it, all knuckles fused to the mélange, you’d never know she was missing a finger.

Years ago, her right index finger got caught in a machine at the plant, all three knuckles torn off. But Mémé Vartanouch, born Sahakian in 1906 Asia Minor, had left Armenia at thirteen, changed her age to sixteen at the French border, learned to speak French, married in the Armenian Quarter of immigration, birthed seven babies, lost two infants, and raised five children on her own during World War II. She was not to let a missing finger stop her.

My grandmother braved pain, endured suffering and soldiered on.

She never complained about “phantom finger pain” but learned to use her spidery fingers and that shiny round knob of hers, with dexterity. And now, with nine fingers and a turn of her baton, she rolled the dough flat, stretched, folded and floured, then rolled it smooth, metered her cadence to her movements –shuff-shuff-whuff – until she abandoned her rolling pin for a guerilla roller, a custom-made three-meter-long weapon, undoubtedly retrieved from a secret arsenal.

Endlessly, Mémé kept rolling and folding the dough, stretched it rounder and rounder, wider and wider over the whole table until the only thing bigger and rounder in the whole kitchen was la toile cirée. Though big and round it might be, the tablecloth was no thinner than the dough, which spread, glorious, one millimeter-thin – two perhaps – on newly conquered territory.

From the corner of her eye, Mémé caught me standing at ease.

“Christine, s’i ‘ou plaît, thou boil water, put sugar, juice of lemons, for syrup.” The way Mémé would mispronounce s’il vous plaît, like a little girl, usually made ‘if you please’ sound more endearing.

But right then, I couldn’t smile. Mémé should’ve known I couldn’t boil water for café, let alone for lemon syrup. What if it hardened into caramel, or burned into charcoal? And what about the honey? I couldn’t take risks with sarlborlma, her signature dessert.

“Mémé, listen.” A car stopped in the front, doors opened and closed. I ran to the window. “Maman’s back,” I said with a skip and a spin.

I didn’t even attempt to hide my joy. Maman would make the lemon syrup. She entered just in time to save me from boiling hell.

Or potential disciplinary sanctions?

Mémé was the undisputed victor of la pâte feuilletée, the puff pastry dough she’d stretch to the limit, one paper-thin sheet she’d fold over her thin roller, arms open wide to the sides, then lift off the table for inspection, a veil of mystery drawn over her secret tactics. With a single fold of her sarlborlma, Mémé would defy scores of flaky croissants, layers of crisp chaussons and even the Mille-feuille, the thousand-leaf custard-filled delicacy of the French Emperor.

Baking General Vatanouch won her stars in the trenches of Armenian exile. In the end, I knew my grandmother’s culinary art of war would defeat the best puff pastry Chef, and her sarlborma, the greatest Napoléon.

*******

“Tchitcherlqueri,” Mémé said, roller pointed to a glass jar.

Tchitcherlqueri was the Armenian password to the best honey you’d ever taste this side of Asia Minor.

Tchitcherlqueri, the old beekeeper, lived a few houses down the corner. I picked up the jar, held it up to the light, looked at its treasure, enveloped in a fold of liquid gold: a marvel of insect engineering, Tchitcherlqueri’s honeycomb.

I popped the lid off, breathed in the smell of beeswax mingled with red clover, lavender, wild roses. I walked to the stove where Maman was already mixing her ingredients in a pan with the lemon juice. Ever so slowly, I started pouring in Tchitcherlqueri’s gold. Luscious, lavish, life-giving. The hot lemon awakened the honey, which blossomed with the scents of a meadow in bloom. I bent over the pan, closed my eyes, filled my heart with the golden fragrance.

For a moment, I knew exactly where I was.

I was in heaven.

I could even hear music, memories of an Armenian folk song strung out on a wooden oud, a pear-shaped guitar with a rounded back the color of… honey.

For a moment, I felt I belonged.

For a moment only.

Too soon, I would open my eyes, hold my breath and pour again from the fount of liquid gold. Maman would stir her mixture with a wooden spoon for smooth lemon syrup with the distinctive flavor of Tchitcherlqueri’s honey.

Too soon, I’d have to come back to the kitchen and grease two baking pans with rich yellow butter.

Meanwhile, with a turn of her roller, Mémé folded the dough over, lifted it off the table. She gave it a final inspection. Not a tear, not a bubble, not a ripple. Nothing disgraced the paper-thin sheet. Satisfied, Mémé unrolled it back on the table, laid it flat and wide, open to receive the filling. First, trickles of peanut oil, directly from the bottle, then the ground walnuts, sprinkled generously on the whole surface.

“Jeannine, s’i’ou plaît, you can to help with fold.”

With perfect synchronicity, their four hands gathered the dough, pleated it, plaited it, crinkled it, ruffled it in one long undulating wave. On cue, Mémé picked up one end, Maman the other, both of them supporting the middle section. I brought over the big round pan, placed it before Mémé. She lowered her roll, and, beginning from the outer rim, she coiled it around and around, spiraled it in to the center in one flowing move.

Then, with her four fingers, she pinched it cut, complete, curled upon itself, with no beginning, no end, a DNA strand of Armenian heritage, a custom link passed on from generation to generation, unchanged, unbroken.

“Jeannine, you can to make other sarlborlma.”

The invitation sent sunshine to Maman’s face, who replied “Yes, if you want,” then motioned me with her chin to the second baking pan. I was quick to grab it and put it under her hands.

Maman liked to say she learned to cook with her mother-in-law. She was proud to demonstrate with field practice. With caution, she anchored her roll to the outer rim, then like Mémé before, she lowered it around, with applied attention, the tip of her tongue pressed to her upper lip. She took her time, curled one slow spiral after another slow spiral, coiled it in all the way to the center, where she slipped the end under for a tight fit.

“Bravo,” I exclaimed, clapping my hands. “It’s so beautiful, like basket weaving.”

“Pretty job, Jeannine.” Maman was beaming.

“Can I pour the syrup, Mémé?”

“Not finished, bake first.”

Of course.

Maman opened the oven door, Mémé slid in the two pans, and I set the timer for fifty minutes. The three of us circled around the kitchen, cleaning table and countertops, washing pots and pans, putting utensils and supplies away.

From the oven, a swirl of sweetness rose, floated up, enveloped us with bewitching insistence. And I imagined that, long ago in Armenia, sarlborlma was certainly the wish of a young Aladdin, once granted by a gourmet genie.

*******

In a strange moment of respite, with no resounding cacophony, no children running around, no one standing at the sink or stove, we were all sitting at the kitchen table, my grandparents and my family, seven of us engaged in one soothing activity: savoring the sarlborlma.

I bit into my piece with gusto, then let it melt in my mouth, a delight of pastry artistry, a sarlborlma fondant, triumphant. Nectar oozed down my throat, saturated me with sweet fragrance, filled me with the desire for more.

But we all knew Mémé couldn’t sit for too long. She sprang to her feet, a dirty plate in her hand, hit me with “Christine, you make café.”

“Mémé, how about I wash the dishes, and you make Armenian café? Like that, I can watch you and learn.”

“You want learn, sure?”

How did she do that? It was uncanny.

I abandoned my piece of sarlborlma, put dishes in the sink, tied an apron on my waist. At the stove, Mémé was already stirring coffee in the big djezve, her tin coffee-pot with a narrow neck, a fat base and a long thin handle. A whiff of bean roast floated up, warm, rich, dark. My grandmother’s lips were moving to the whispers of an Armenian prayer. Watching her entranced in her recitation, I was reminded that back in Armenia, coffee-making was a serious ritual not to be tempered with.