The white cones of Mount Ararat and Little Ararat cut into a blue Armenian sky, suspended on the wall above Cindy Adroushan’s bed. There she lay silent and warm under her grandmother’s coverlet of Armenian lace. Her mother’s shadow lay across her, with the ambient light from the hallway drawn out in a folded and warped rectangle that spilled across the woven throw and climbed up her bed and the wall in steps. Siranush Adroushan stood in the doorway, awash in adoration. “Siran?” her husband Garegin called her in a voice intended to slip through the house, more to let his wife know he was coming than to call her to him. He noticed her just as he turned into the hall, and stepped silently behind her to join in her reverie.
Garegin kissed Siran and bade her a good day as he left for work. He was a history teacher at Slough City High School. He’d been teaching there over the several years since receiving his history degree and credential from Fresno State. Being Armenian, history was something he’d been immersed in since childhood. It was understood among his elders that a career in teaching history, though not lucrative, would be a means to communicating the truth about the Genocide. Young Garegin enjoyed history, and he was as natural a teacher as most, so he received the role of teacher with the consent of his nature as well as the blessings of his elders.
Garegin and Siran had met at Fresno State, and quickly became close. Siran had not been terribly put off by the fact that Garegin had not set out to be a prime breadwinner, so long as he didn’t mind her seeking to win some bread on her own. She had been studying to be an architect, though she would too soon find herself putting family life before her career.