Home Is Beyond the Mountains (4 page)

Samira thought of her
family. None of them were here. But she could say the name of the
village.

She whispered,
“Ayna.”

“Ayna,” said the woman.
“There was someone saying that name.” Suddenly she shouted, “Ayna! Ayna!”
making Samira jump.

Immediately the crowd of
people began to ripple and murmur. “Ayna, Ayna, where is that boy? A boy.
You know, a boy who said Ayna.”

The words flowed around
Samira like water, and then she saw a boy coming out of the crowd. She was
startled at how tall he was and how thin but she knew he was Benyamin. He
came to her and, for the first time she could remember, he put his arms
around her.

“Samira, Samira,” he said.
“You are here. But, Mama. Where is Mama?”

“She couldn't walk anymore
and she died, Benyamin. She died.” She didn't want to ask but she had to.
“Papa?”

“I don't know.” Benyamin
stopped hugging her and stood looking at the ground. “The soldiers came. We
hid in a gully but I was smaller and Papa said I could fit in the narrow
place at the end so I squeezed in. I heard the soldiers shouting and
clanking their weapons but I couldn't see anything and when it was quiet I
came out. No one was there.”

Samira looked at him and saw
tears in the dust on his face. She had no tears.

“He must be dead,” she
said.

“Yes,” said Benyamin. There
was no more to say.

But suddenly Samira knew
there was something else to say.

“I'm glad you didn't die,
Benyamin,” she said. “There are two of us here.”

Then she did cry.

The Orphan Section

September 1918

MAYBE A HAMADAN WAS A
city,
but all Samira could see were brown tents and brown late-summer fields. The
British army was camped far outside the city walls. She stayed under the
chinar trees with hundreds of other ragged people and ate stew and bread
brought by British soldiers. She was given a quilt to wrap around her at
night.

It was peaceful there beside
the British army. But after two days the journey began again. This time the
people rode in big wagons for a week until they came to a place where there
were more tents — big white ones.

This was the Baqubah Refugee
Camp near Baghdad, where they would stay until the war was over and they
could go home.

Before they could enter the
camp, all the refugees had to go through water that would kill lice and
other things that might cause sickness. The water was in a big tank. It was
cool and so deep that it came up to Samira's chin. She washed herself from
her hair to her feet with strong yellow soap.

When she came out a woman
handed her a towel and checked her hair to be sure no lice were left.

“My clothes?” asked Samira,
clutching the towel around her.

“Oh, they're gone,” said the
woman. “Burned. Go into the next tent and you'll get new ones.”

Samira was given a long
skirt, a loose blouse that hung over it and a shawl. The skirt and blouse
were too big and the fabric was rough, but Samira liked the color, a blue
that reminded her of Mama's favorite scarf. And everything was
clean.

The girls and women were
sent to tents on one side of the camp and the men and boys to the other
side. Samira looked anxiously for Benyamin but she couldn't see him
anywhere.

“Will I be able to see my
brother?” she asked a man in a uniform. He was trying to hurry everyone
along and barely glanced at her.

“We have to try to find your
parents,” he said briskly. “For now you are assigned to this tent.” He gave
her a little push toward one of the tents and turned away.

The tent was crowded with
women and children. There were women alone and others with their daughters
and small sons. There were some girls who were alone, too, but Samira didn't
want to talk to any of them. They were all strangers and they looked at her
with questions in their eyes. She found that if she sat very still no one
noticed her most of the time.

There was a stove in a
shelter outside the tent. Every day the soldiers brought food to be warmed.
Sacks of bread and kettles of soup made of beans or lentils. As Samira ate
monotonous soup from her tin cup she tried not to remember her mother's
stews, seasoned with herbs and vegetables picked from the garden.

After a meal each person
took her cup to a washing-up place. One day as Samira was swishing her cup
through the basin of soapy water, she caught sight of Benyamin walking past.
She dropped the cup and called to him.

“Benyamin, I'm
here!”

“Little sister,” he said,
coming to her quickly. “I'm glad you saw me. No one could tell me which tent
you were in. Now I've heard that they'll be moving everyone to different
parts of the camp. We must tell them that we want to be in the same section.
Will you remember?”

Samira was indignant. “Of
course I'll remember. We have to be together. There are so many tents here
and more people than in Ayna. Maybe more than in the city! We have to be
together or we will never see each other!”

“Good. I think they'll
listen to us.” Benyamin touched her hand and was gone.

The next day a man with a
large flat book and a pen came into the tent. He went from one person to
another, asking questions and writing words in the book. When Samira's turn
came she told him about her parents and Maryam.

“They died on the journey,”
she said. “But my brother is here. Benyamin. He's in one of the tents for
the men. I know there are tents for families. Send us to one of those so
that we can be together. Please.”

The man smiled. “There are
so many kinds of people in this camp,” he said. “Armenians, Assyrians from
the mountains and Assyrians like you from the plains near Urmieh. Some are
parents with their children and others are men or women or children who are
here without their families. Each group will have a section of the camp. You
and your brother will be in a section for Assyrian orphans. You will be able
to see your brother, I promise. Now I must go and talk with someone else.”

Samira knew the word orphan.
There was a boy in the village whose parents had died of an illness. He was
an orphan, people said, but he went to live with his uncle's family. He
didn't go to a special place.

She wondered about this
place. A place for children with no parents.

The next day a woman came to
Samira's tent. She called together all the girls who were there without a
mother.

“Today everyone is moving to
the part of the camp where they will live. You are going to the Assyrian
Orphan Section. Hold hands and follow me. You big girls, watch out that you
don't let go of the small ones. I don't want anyone to get lost.”

She led them out of the
tent. They made a long line, like a snake. The snake of girls wound its way
through crowds of people who were talking and calling to each other as they
moved along. They went down a long row of big white tents, around a corner
and down another row.

The girl behind Samira
squeezed her hand and spoke in her ear.

“So many tents,” she said.
“So many people! Do you think there are any people left in
Persia?”

Samira shrugged.

The girl squeezed her hand
again.

“I'm Anna,” she said. “I
know what's going to happen. They are going to give me some little children
to look after. That's all right but I want to do it with someone like you. I
think you have good sense.”

Samira almost laughed. “Good
sense?”

“You're quiet. You don't
fuss. Shall we stick together?”

Samira turned to look at the
girl behind her. Anna had noticed her as she sat on her sleeping mat, but
she hadn't noticed Anna at all. Now she saw a girl with a round face and big
eyes smiling at her.

Samira smiled back. It felt
strange, as if her mouth had forgotten how to turn up at the
corners.

“Yes,” said Samira. “We'll
stick together.”

At last the snake of
children came to a wire fence with a gate in it. The woman opened the gate
and the line followed her through. Then they all dropped hands and looked at
a big open space with tents on either side.

The woman said, “You girls
and the littlest boys will be in the tents over there. The boys' tents are
on the other side.”

“Good,” said Samira to
herself. Benyamin would not be far away.

“There's an eating tent down
at the end,” the woman went on, “and a school tent. Right here we'll build a
playground where you can swing and climb.”

Samira understood everything
but the playground. Why would anyone need a special place to play? But the
school tent sounded promising. Maybe at last she could go to school.

The woman was busy sorting
the girls into tents.

“I want a few of you older
girls in each tent. You'll help look after the little ones.” She looked at
Anna. “I'm sure you'll be good at that.” Then she noticed Samira. “And you
can help, too, dear,” she added kindly.

Samira almost laughed again.

“How did you know that would
happen?” she asked Anna.

“It always happens,” said
Anna. “I'm only ten but I guess I'm tall for my age. Maybe she can see that
I've looked after my little sisters.” She stopped and looked away, as if she
wished she hadn't spoken about her sisters.

“I looked after my sister,
Maryam,” said Samira quickly. “She loved songs. But she's not with me
because — ”

“You'll tell me about her
when we have time. Right now we have to find our spot in this tent.”

Anna went over to the piles
of sleeping mats and quilts that had been left at the door.

Samira stood still, feeling
puzzled. It seemed that Anna didn't want to hear about Maryam. Or maybe she
didn't want to talk about her own sisters.

She took a deep breath and
went to help Anna choose a spot at the far end of the tent where they
wouldn't be crowded on both sides. They laid out their mats and put the
quilts and their small bundles of clothes neatly against the canvas wall.

When time came for the
midday meal, Samira was pleased to find that the boys and girls ate at the
same time. Every day she could speak with her brother.

It was strange. At home with
the whole family together in their little house there were days and days
when she and Benyamin hardly talked to each other. They lived separate
lives. Here in the camp each of them wanted to be sure that the other was
really there, that they were still together, so they talked often.

Most days Benyamin went out
into the camp with other boys to collect laundry or deliver food supplies,
and he brought back news and stories. One afternoon at the beginning of
winter he came with big news.

“The war is over,” he said.
“Turkey and Britain are no longer fighting.”

“No war,” said Samira. She
could hardly believe it. “So we'll go home soon!”

Benyamin shook his head.
“They say it will be a long time before everything gets back to the way it
was. We have to stay here for a while.”

“How long?” asked Samira.

But Benyamin didn't know,
and Samira didn't get a chance to ask anyone else.

The girls never had a reason
to leave the Orphan Section. Each morning Samira and Anna folded their
nightgowns, put them away in the boxes they had been given, rolled up their
sleeping mats with the quilts inside and lined everything up along the wall.
Then they helped the little children dress and tidy away their beds. They
took a turn at sweeping the canvas floor with the broom that was kept by the
doorway. That took care of housework.

Stacks of clothes that
needed mending arrived at the tent door, and the girls spent most mornings
sewing on buttons and patching worn shirts and blouses. In the afternoon
they took the smaller children outside and played games with them and told
them stories.

For a while it was fun to
try out the strange structures that had been put in the playground. They sat
at either end of a long plank and tipped up and down, or perched on a wooden
seat hung from a metal frame and swung back and forth. Sometimes boys too
old to be in the orphan tents would sneak over the fence and swing too high
or tip too hard. The boards broke. No one fixed them. The girls could only
look at the useless playground and shake their heads.

The one day that was
different was Sunday, when a priest or a missionary came to the Orphan
Section and led a church service. Sometimes the Bible stories were
interesting but, as Anna said, church services did not exactly add
excitement to their lives.

Weeks passed. It grew cold
at night and the orphans were given extra quilts. Then it started to rain.
The tents leaked at the seams and there was no way to keep everything dry.
Some nights Samira could hardly sleep for all the coughing. Nurses came to
check for signs of real illness and sometimes a child was taken to the
hospital tent, but Samira and Anna and Benyamin stayed well.

“I guess the people who run
this camp can say they are keeping us safe here,” said Anna. “But we might
go crazy because nothing happens. How long can this go on?”

Samira just shrugged. Winter
had almost passed. It seemed that it could go on for a very long
time.

One spring morning a woman
came to the Orphan Section carrying a heavy canvas bag. She gathered all the
girls who were at least seven years old and led them to the unused school
tent. She sat on a rug in the middle of the tent. The girls watched her
carefully and sat down around her.

The woman reached into the
bag and took out a book. She opened it and held it so that all the girls
could see the page. Samira saw that it had writing like the writing in the
big books in the church in Ayna. It also had a picture of a fox standing in
a vineyard.

The woman began to read
words from the book. They made a story, a little story about a fox who
wanted to eat a bunch of grapes.

When the story was finished,
the woman said, “Would you girls like to be able to read such a
story?”

Samira answered at once.
“Yes. Yes, I want to read. Will you teach us?”

“I will,” said the woman.
“That's why I'm here. Have any of you been to school?”

Two of the bigger girls
nodded. One had gone to her village school, the only girl among all the
boys.