Home Is Beyond the Mountains (11 page)

Anna was not sewing. She was
learning how to take care of babies. It seemed that there were some Assyrian
orphans in Hamadan, most of them very young. They would be coming from the
nursery in Hamadan to live at the orphanage soon.

“But these babies weren't
even born until after the war was over,” Samira said. “How did they come to
be orphans?”

“Miss Shedd says it's been
very hard here,” Anna replied. “Some people were weak and sick when they
came and they didn't survive. Like Elias's mother. Miss Shedd says we have
to do our best to give these babies a good life.”

Samira felt a little jealous
of Anna. Taking care of orphan babies was surely more important than sewing
clothes. Then one afternoon Miss Shedd came to the sewing room.

“Without warm clothes and
sturdy shoes children will be cold. Some might get sick,” she said. “So I'm
counting on you to do your work well.” She smiled. “I would even say that
what you are making is essential to the children's survival, at least to
their healthy survival.”

Essential to our survival.
Samira liked those words. She repeated them and wiggled her toes inside her
new flannel-lined shoes as she watched the sewing-machine needle go up and
down. She was making a pair of blue trousers for a little boy. When she came
to the end of the seam she held them up. They were thick and warm and the
seams were straight.

“These trousers would fit
Elias,” she thought. “Maybe they would even help him survive.” She decided
to sew a pocket on each side so that the little boy who wore them could keep
his hands warm, too.

Benyamin and Ashur had been
given the task of weighing each load of wood, charcoal and wheat brought to
the orphanage on mules. The mule drivers unloaded the bundles or bags and
the boys weighed them in a big scale that dangled from a post in the yard.

Miss Shedd was there to
record the weight of every load so she could pay the men exactly the right
amount. Some of them argued with her, wanting more money, but she never gave
in. She pointed to the figures she had written down. The men stared at the
numbers. None of them could read, but they shook their heads and argued some
more. Then she told them that the orphanage could only deal with honest
suppliers. If they wanted more business they should take their payment and
go.

“She never shouts but she
never backs down,” Benyamin told Samira. “And she's a woman. The men are
very surprised.” He shook his head. Samira thought he was surprised,
too.

The boys stacked the wood
and charcoal and covered the stacks with canvas. They carried sacks of wheat
into the schoolroom and piled them between the sewing and the shoemaking.
Then they put big trays on the floor and emptied grain onto each one. Eight
women came to clean the grain and each had one of the younger children
working next to her. They had quick fingers and sharp eyes, Miss Shedd said.

Their job was to look
through the grain and pick out pebbles and chunks of mud. Once in a while
one of the children forgot and tossed a pebble at another child, only to
have his hand slapped by the woman beside him.

When the grain was clean,
the boys poured it back into the sacks and took it to the storage building,
where it stayed until it was taken to the mill to be ground into
flour.

One afternoon after Samira
had been sewing for several hours, Hanna said, “You've done enough for
today. I brought some almond cakes. Take one for yourself and one for your
brother, too.”

Samira took the small golden
cakes and thanked Hanna. This was a real treat. Something a little sweet
with the rich taste of almonds. She nibbled on her cake and went in search
of Benyamin.

He wasn't hard to find. He
was sweeping loose dirt out the door of the little storage building and was
happy to stop.

“This floor isn't just dirt,”
he said. “I've found a part that's made of wood.”

Samira handed him the almond
cake and went to look. Houses never had wood floors.

She bent over the place
where Benyamin had swept away a thick layer of dirt. The wood underneath was
old and splintered. With her fingertips she scraped away more dirt and found
a small round hole that might have been made by a nail.

“Benyamin, come and look! I
think there was a handle here. This isn't a floor. It could be the door to an
umbar.”

Benyamin came and squatted
down. His fingers found three more holes.

“You're right,” he said.
“The handle is long gone but it's definitely a door.”

“Can we open it?”

“Not by ourselves. It will
have to be pried up. I'll go and tell Miss Shedd.”

Miss Shedd came at once.

“An umbar! I hope you're
right, Samira. We need more space for our winter food supplies.” She stopped
for a moment, looking at nothing in particular. “I remember going into the
umbar at the mission with my mother and sneaking some almonds while she
scooped wheat from the big sack.” She gave her head a little shake. “Go and
tell the men who are unloading wood for the window frames that we need them
to come with a crowbar and a lantern.”

When the door was pried up,
Miss Shedd lit the lantern and held it over the hole in the floor. They could
all see stairs leading down into darkness.

“We have to go down,” she
said. “I'll go first to be sure it's safe.”

In a few moments they heard
her voice echoing beneath them.

“It's an umbar, all right. A
big one,” she said. “It has an earth ledge around the sides and there are
some old clay jars. Empty, of course.”

She came back up the stairs.
“Someone must have lived in this house long ago. The Hindu soldiers never
knew. But now we know and we have plenty of things to store in an umbar. Do
you want to take a look? After all, you found it.”

Samira followed Benyamin
carefully down the steps that were cut into the earth. She remembered how
high each step was in the umbar at home and how her mother held the lamp so
she wouldn't stumble. These steps were much lower.

No, she was much taller, and
it was Benyamin holding the light.

“Don't be disappointed,” he
said. “There's nothing here.”

Samira knew he was thinking
of all the dried fruit and grain and oil that had been in their umbar when
they had to leave the village.

“The people who lived here
were lucky,” she said. “They took everything with them.”

Benyamin swung the beam of
the lantern around the room. A round shape caught Samira's eye. Something
was buried in the earthen floor.

“Bring the light over here,”
she said and knelt to look closely. The thing she had found was small, no
bigger across than the palm of her hand, and made of dull metal.

“It's not a golden
treasure,” said Benyamin. She scrabbled in the dirt and finally dug up a
shallow metal cup. It was badly dented, but Samira knew what it was.

“It's a measure,” she said.
“For measuring out something like pepper or cloves.” She held its round
shape in her hand. She could imagine a woman coming down into the umbar and
scooping out spices. Then one day she dropped the measure and never came
back to get it.

Samira turned back to the
stairs and was glad to get up into the light.

Miss Shedd looked carefully
at the metal cup. “I agree with you. It's a measure. Would you like to keep
it? It should be yours.”

“Yes,” said Samira. She took
the little cup and held it carefully in her hand.

Miss Shedd set the wooden
door over the stairs. “We'll fill this umbar with the food we need for the
winter,” she said. “And I promise you that when we leave we'll take
everything with us. The umbar will be left empty for someone else to
use.”

Samira stared at her.
“Leave? Are we going to leave? Will we have to go to another
orphanage?”

Miss Shedd frowned a little.
“We'll only leave when I've figured out a way to get you home.”

“I want to go home,” said
Samira slowly. “But I saw ruined villages along the road when we came here.
Our house might be falling down and we are orphans. How can we go home?”

Now Miss Shedd really looked
at Samira and at Benyamin standing behind her.

“I know that your parents
are gone,” she said gently. “But I'm sure that most of you have relatives or
even family friends who would be glad take you into their families, maybe in
a nearby village. That's the way the Assyrian people are. I just have to
figure out how you can get there.”

Miss Shedd went on, but now
she seemed to be talking to herself. “The problem is I could never get
enough horses and wagons to carry everyone. Or even mules.”

Benyamin took a step
forward. “Miss Shedd, we don't need wagons.” Then he said again what he had
said to Samira when they were leaving Kermanshah. “Most of us walked from
beyond Lake Urmieh to Hamadan four years ago when we had to run from our
villages.” He took a deep breath. “None of us want to make a journey like
that one again, but we walked all the way.”

Miss Shedd looked at
Benyamin for a long time. She nodded once.

Then she said, “Yes. You
walked. I won't forget.”

LIFE IN THE HAMADAN
Orphanage went on as if the children would be there forever. Every child was
busy learning to read, practicing writing, stitching clothes, making shoes,
storing food and doing the regular chores of cooking and cleaning.

Carpenters from the city had
finished making frames for windows in the dormitories and were ready to put
them into the openings. Samira was hoping for glass windows. She had never
seen one until she went to the orphanage in Baghdad. But the day the windows
went in she saw that the Hamadan orphanage would have to make do with thin
fabric stretched tightly inside the window frames.

“At least the cloth is
white,” she said to Anna. “It lets some light through and it will keep out
the worst of the cold wind.”

Next, eight women from the
city took over the sewing space and began to stitch rolls of wool batting
into thick warm quilts. They could sew much faster than the girls, and
winter would not wait. Quilts piled up at one end of the room. At the other
the shoemakers kept making more and more shoes.

“Why so many shoes?” said
Anna one day. “Every one of us has a new pair already.”

“There are more than one
hundred pairs sitting there,” said Samira. “I counted. I'm very sure Miss
Shedd has a plan for those shoes.”

One morning after lessons
Miss Shedd told them who would wear the shoes. “All of you children came
from the Baqubah camp,” she said. “Now one hundred and fifty children from
other camps will be joining us here. Because of all our hard work we're
prepared for them. The rooms in the empty dormitories are ready and we have
plenty of food stored. Fortunately these children already have new clothing
so we didn't have to make extra.”

“And we have shoes waiting
for them,” Samira whispered to Anna.

Miss Shedd heard her.
“You're very observant. We made extra shoes for the new children. But there
is one thing we don't have. Our schoolroom is not big enough to hold all of
you plus the new children. So starting tomorrow if you are ten years old or
older you will go the Assyrian school in the city. You'll walk down the hill
in the morning and up the hill at night. Girls on one side of the road and
boys on the other. Mr. Althius, who will be teaching the boys, will go with
you. I count on all of you to behave well and study hard. I also expect you
to welcome the new children to Hamadan Orphanage when they arrive in four or
five days. Please make them feel at home and help them get settled here.”

She pointed to a big piece
of brown wrapping paper she had tacked to the wall.

“There's one more job to be
done. With the new people coming I think we need some rules written down so
that they will know what's expected of them. If you think of a good rule,
write it here.” She stopped and smiled. “Now, for the very first time since I
have been your director, I can say, ‘There's no work to be done. Go outside
and play!'”

Before they went out, Samira
and Anna and Benyamin and Ashur looked at the big piece of paper.

“There's room for a lot of
rules,” said Anna. “Why does she want us to make up rules, anyway? Teachers
and people like that make up rules.”

“Miss Shedd wants us to
think,” said Samira. “If we just hear the rules or read them we won't think
about them.”

“I don't want to think about
rules,” said Ashur. “I want to start up a game out in the yard.”

He led the way outside. The
yard was still bare but there were a few benches against the school building
and a big box with balls in it. Ashur grabbed one of the balls and the boys
began to kick it around. The younger children were playing tag.