Krikor Bedrossian Draft

Description

A small, extremely neat Armenian of about sixty, who books other men across eighty-four miles of desert he has never once seen.

He works at a table rather than a counter, in the second of two rooms, with the shutters half closed against a light he has spent forty years not being in. Wire spectacles that came from Vienna and cost more than the table. A writer’s callus on the side of his right hand, and ink worked so far into the skin around the nail that it has stopped being a stain and started being a feature. He is always the tidiest man in any room in Cairo and he achieves this by never going anywhere.

He speaks careful, correct, beautifully constructed French, learned properly and used precisely, which makes him the only man in the Frank Quarter whose French is better than Bruyère’s and one of the very few things that has ever amused Bruyère.

He writes everything twice. Once in Armenian, in his own book, for himself. Once in French or Italian, in the client’s copy, for the client. The two books agree. He has never been asked why he does this and would find the question strange.

Background

Bedrossian’s people came out of Julfa generations back and reached Cairo by way of Aleppo, and he was born in this quarter and has never left it in any direction that mattered. The Armenians of Egypt sit where they have always sat in this part of the world: inside the trade, holding the paperwork, trusted by everyone precisely because they belong to nobody’s side of the argument. He books passage. Beasts, water, escort, caravan master, stages, and the price of each, for men going east who cannot arrange any of it themselves.

He has done it for forty years. He has never crossed the desert. Not once, not partway, not as a young man. He has never been past the last houses of Cairo in that direction. He knows every stage of that road, every well, every price, every season, the difference between a good skin and a patched one and what happens to the man who cannot tell, and he knows all of it from other men’s mouths and from his own two books. He does not ride. He does not intend to start.

He keeps the Armenian church’s calendar, which is why he is at his table during Eid al-Fitr while every other trade in the city is with its family. His Christmas falls in January. The feast going on outside his shutters is somebody else’s, and he wishes them joy of it, and he is working.

Motivations

• Precision. The world is chaos, a ledger is not, and the ledger is the part he is responsible for. Everything else is weather.
• Be the honest house. He takes a commission and he will tell any client exactly what it is, to the piastre, because concealing it strikes him as vulgar and because a house that must hide its cut is a house that will not be here in ten years. He has been here for forty.
• Get the parts right that kill people. He is relaxed about his own margin and immovable about water, escort, and the caravan master. He has a very clear idea of which items on the list are money and which items are lives.

Connections

• Frank Quarter — his two rooms, his whole world, three streets from the inn.
• Sergeant Bruyère — thirteen years of professional dealing and no friendship whatsoever. Bruyère sends him guests because the man does not lie about water. Bedrossian takes them because Bruyère does not haggle. Neither has ever been in the other’s home.
• Hassan — one of the caravan masters he contracts, and the one he uses when the party matters.
• Auberge du Muski — a steady share of his trade walks out of that blue door.

Appearances

Session Appearances

Session 5 (Cairo, 16–20 Sept 1814): Adrien and Katherine engaged him at his office in the Frank Quarter, and found him writing simultaneously in two ledgers in two different alphabets. He booked the party’s passage — seven people, caravan to Suez departing the morning of 20 September, under caravan master Hassan al Rashidi, other Europeans travelling along, water not provided (the party brings its own). He named his price without inviting haggle; Adrien signed and paid. This confirms the booking previously only planned.

Relationships

• Located at Frank Quarter — Keeps a two-room office three streets from the Auberge du Muski; open through Eid because the Armenian church keeps its own calendar
• Knows Sergeant Bruyere — Thirteen years of Bruyère sending him guests and him sending Bruyère nobody. Not friends. Each considers the other the only honest man in his trade.
• Employs Hassan al Rashidi — Books caravan masters for the Suez crossing. Hassan is one of several he uses and the one he uses when it matters.
• Borders Auberge du Muski — Three streets away; the inn's guests are a steady share of his trade