Bedros Emmi - Part 1: The Sounds of Bombs Falling

Bedros sat in the front most pew during my uncle Berj’s funeral. Beside him were my mother and her sisters, his nieces. Bedros was old, mostly blind, widowed, and his hands and legs shook constantly. As my aunts and mother cried around him he kept whispering “It should have been me.”

Stories about Bedros suggest that it is probably true.

As a child in the city of Marash, he survived the 1920 battle there by eating dry bread in his home as he awaited his mother’s return from the neighbors house. Days passed, mortar rounds dropped outside, the three year old silently waited, not knowing she had been killed trying to rush back to him immediately after leaving. They found him in the apartment and sent him to the same orphanage as his older brother.

When I was young my mom would occasionally take us to Emmi's house. At the time I had no idea who Emmi was, why we had to go, and who these people were. The apartment was long, with high ceilings in the middle of Hollywood. There were makeshift rooms, a small balcony in the rear, and a larger living room with large windows in the front overlooking the street.

The apartment, like many Armenian apartments, was overly beige, with the lights, furniture, and rugs contributing to the dull color scheme.

Emmi would sit in his chair, already in his sixties or seventies, his wife, Shnorig, beside him scowling as though she never learned to smile. Most of his children were there too. Rosaline, who was in and out, the way young twenty-somethings were. Coco, who would visit with his wife. And Harout, creepily sitting in the dark of his room listening to cassettes of bombs falling on Beirut and smiling.

Emmi was, of course, Bedros, but I did not learn this until much later due to my mother poorly explaining our family history. So for many years I did not understand what my relationship to these people were.

My uncle Berj was the first to enlighten me, telling stories about Bedros as a young man living in Lebanon, untethered to the world, floating freely from friend to family.

He lacked fear, it had been bombed out of him during that long wait in the apartment in Marash. They described him as quirky, strange, aloof, and stubborn.

One day this quirky, stubborn man, lacking funds and a place to stay, found himself loitering in front of his brother’s, my grandfather Harout’s, apartment. This apparently was a common ploy, where he would conveniently wait until either one of his nieces or nephew spotted him and brought him inside, happy that their uncle had arrived.

My grandmother, Theresa, knew this all too well, and figured if he was going to spend some time with them he might as well be of use. She handed Bedros some money and sent him to the market to get milk. Reluctantly he rose from the couch and made his way outside. Once there a cab driver pulled up next to him, looked him up and down, and asked “Want to go Damascus?”

Bedros looked around, then realized the driver was talking to him. “Sure,” Bedros said, got in, and they were off. A few hours later they arrived. The cab driver demanded his fare, which confused Bedros, as he assumed that since the driver was offering, the ride was free. With only milk money in his pocket, he was unable to pay.

The cab driver took him to a restaurant, the owner of which he was friends with. He put Bedros to work, stating he would be back in a week to collect his fee. Bedros was given tables to wait, but he messed up orders. He was asked to buss tables, but broke the dishes. He was forced to wash dishes, but either broke more dishes or failed to properly clean them.

The driver arrived a week later, and the owner quickly handed him money, with extra. “This man is a curse,” he yelled, “take him back to Beirut!” A few hours later he was back in Beirut standing in front of his brother’s apartment building. My mom spotted him and brought him in. Bedros quickly lay on the couch before my grandmother walked in.

“Where were you?” she asked. “You’ve been gone for a week.”

“Damascus,” Bedros tiredly replied.

“Did you get the milk?” she asked.

Bedros rose from the couch and walked back outside without a word.