Free The Doves of Ohanavank by Vahan Zanoyan

your brothers-in-law?” she asks.
    “Ruben, Martha’s husband, who is wonderful; Simon, Sona’s fiancé. I don’t know him well yet, but he seems very nice.”
    “Wow!” Anna exhales. She is an only child. Her father has treated her as if she was an enemy, and her mother has been powerless to help her.
    We are having a light supper at a coffee shop near the Opera.
    “Have you heard from your aunt’s sister in-law?” I sense that Anna is depressed thinking about her father and husband, and I want to remind her of the one person who has helped her.
    “We talk once a week. The important thing is that my husband has not tried to contact her again. I’ll be so happy if he’s given up on me, but I think that’s wishful thinking on my part.”
    “You never know,” I say hopefully. “We’re both still young, you know. We can do a lot with our lives. You’ve had a very bad experience, of course. But that’s all it is, one really bad experience.”
    “Which is not over yet…” Anna lowers her voice.
    Is living in fear like living with secrets? Anna is no less a prisoner of her constant fear of being found and reclaimed by her husband, than I am a prisoner of my secrets. But, according to Edik, secrets can also set you free; not so with fear. Even Edik could not write a poem showing how fear can be liberating. Overcoming fear may liberate, but not fear itself.
    “There is only one way to be rid of your fear of this man,” I tell her, also lowering my voice. “You have rights, you know. You can divorce him, and he cannot touch you after that.”
    “Divorce him?”
    “Sure. Divorce him, and you’ll divorce your fear of him.” I know that probably it is not that simple, but I know that technically I am right.
    Can one divorce one’s secrets too? I guess so, by just disclosing them. The problem is that exposing secrets doesn’t really get rid of them. Everything is still there; it’s just not a secret anymore. Divorcing a secret doesn’t kill it, it multiplies it, it increases it by as many times as the number of people you tell it to, and then even more as they start telling it to others. Before you know it, the secret you try to kill by sharing it multiplies like a virus.
    “I had not thought about that,” says Anna, looking at me as if I just opened her eyes. “How do I go about doing that?”
    “I have no idea,” I say. “I haven’t even been married yet! But I have some incredible friends, Anna. You’ll meet them one day. They’ll help us figure this out.”
I haven’t even been married yet
, my dear Anna, but I’ve been forced to have sex with well over a
thousand
men, and that is something that you’ll never understand, and I can never tell you. There is no ‘divorcing’ that particular fact.
    Anna looks like a huge weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She looks a lot prettier when her face is not distorted by stress. She has cut herhair very short since moving to the city, which makes her eyes look larger and more expressive, and when her face relaxes, they dance in an amazing transformation.
    Anna has seen a way out, a ridiculously simple and obvious way out. I can tell, from the ‘I just saw the light’ look in her eyes. Then she throws her arms around me and kisses my cheeks. She is so emotional that some people in the coffee shop notice and turn around to look at us.
    “You’re the sister I never had,” she says, no longer whispering.
    I feel I now have a confirmed friend, one whom I may be able help. Anna, with her reaction, has taught me the joy of helping someone whose plight I understand, and I have not even done anything yet. I’ve just given her an idea, about which I myself know little.
    As I think about my discovery, I realize that it is so simple, as simple as the advice I gave Anna, and yet it had not occurred to me before. Then I see something else: Could it be that this what Edik feels? Everyone I know who knows Edik has, at one time or another, raised the