A Religious Conundrum

“Did I ever tell you about my grandfather?”

My father sat across from me looking at an old photo of his grandfather, my great-grandfather. I thought about his question, realizing I knew very little about the Lebaredian side of my family other than my father’s siblings and my first cousins. 

I was well acquainted with other extended branches of my family, such as the massive familial unit that is my father's mother's side, which includes great-aunts and uncles, second cousins, third cousins and so on. My mother’s side was smaller, my mom’s father only had one brother and I was familiar with extended family on her mother’s side, but there too a large number were present in Los Angeles. 

By contrast, I did not meet any extended Lebaredians until I was twenty six at my cousin Ojig’s wedding as most other Lebaredians were people I never met living in Beirut, London, Nicosia and Montevideo.

“No,” I responded, wanting to add that he was known not to divulge information; but restraining myself because, well, my father was not very receptive to sarcasm. 

So my father proceeded to tell me a story. 

“My grandfather, Levon, was a very respected man in Tarsus.” 

Tarsus is a city in central southern Turkey and where Lebaredians had been for a long time prior to the Armenian Genocide and it seems Levon was a man who was sought after for his advice. 

One day a local mullah, hearing about Levon’s sage advice and wisdom, stopped by his home for a visit. The mullah, according to my dad, was a bit smug and self-important, and had come, not out of respect, but to insult and anger my great-grandfather. 

Levon welcomed him in and the two sat and spoke over coffee. Shortly into the conversation the mullah turned to Levon and asked “If a rat falls into the vat of myrrh, does the myrrh get dirty or does the rat become holy” 

Myrrh, for the unfamiliar, is a sap used by the Armenian church to produce a holy oil sacrament. My father explained the church would make them in large batches meant to last for a year at minimum. 

My great-grandfather, calm and collected, absorbed the question of this well respected holy man and pondered it. Sitting in silence for a moment, he constructed a response he felt would appease the mullah. 

My father repeated Levon's words with a smile of pride on his face the likes of which I had never seen on his before: 

“Let me ask you a question, your eminence. If I take a shit in your mouth, does your mouth get dirty, or does the shit become holy?”