Nobody's Child (19 page)

After the walk around the garden, the ladies sat together on deep cushions and a low table was placed before them. A sumptuous array of cakes and preserved fruits was laid out by two servant girls who Mariam suspected
were Armenian. Mariam sipped her glass of sherbet, but she didn't have the stomach to eat. Her stomach still hurt from the Captain's punch, and her heart ached for the people outside. She looked across the table at Ani and noticed that she too was putting on an act of contentment, but she hadn't touched her food.

T
here was a sound in the water and Kevork looked up. A wooden dinghy navigated with a long pole by an elderly man approached the shore. The dinghy was made of planks of wood lashed together with rope, then tied onto twenty or more inflated goat skins for buoyancy. Kevork was amazed that the craft didn't capsize.

The boatman was Kurdish. Kevork knew this by the man's
salvar
— trousers tight from ankle to knee and then billowing out to enormous fullness above the knee. The man wore a tunic with a wide blue sash and a tasselled fez on his head.

The elderly Kurd guided his craft to the shore, then waited with a bored expression on his face while the zaptiehs prodded with bayonets the dozen men onto the planks of wood. Once they were all on, the man dipped his long wooden pole into the rocks at the bottom of the river and pushed out.

Kevork squinted his eyes and looked at the shore as long as he could, but he didn't get a last glimpse of Marta.

The Vartabed and the other men sat down on the dinghy, and so Kevork stepped gingerly to where they were and sat next to the priest. Kevork stared out at the water, mesmerized by its coolness. Others before him must have been seduced by the water as well, because as they travelled deeper into the desert, the Euphrates was studded with bobbing corpses, bloating in the heat of the sun. Kevork shuddered, then turned his head and looked at the Vartabed instead. The priest's face was serene, and his lips moved in prayer.

Before he knew it, the dinghy bumped into the other side of the Euphrates.

The boatman lifted his long stick from the water and prodded the men to make them hurry off his dinghy. Once they had all stumbled onto dry, rocky ground, he stuck the stick back in the water and manoeuvred his craft back over to the other side. Kevork marvelled at the man's industry. To the boatman, this was just a job: get as many people over to Deir-Ez-Zor, a city in the middle of the Syrian desert, as quickly as possible. Kevork wondered if he was paid by the head.

There was a different group of zaptiehs on this side of the Euphrates, and they herded the group from the dinghy over to one side, and then stood and waited for more people to arrive. Kevork watched as a woman with a baby and two children, an elderly woman, and a handful of men stepped off the next dinghy. Marta was not in the group. He didn't know whether to be happy or sad
about that. Perhaps she had a chance to escape? The possibility was remote, but he clung to it.

The zaptiehs waited for several more dinghies to arrive, and Kevork watched, but still no Marta.

“It's time to go,” yelled a zaptieh. Kevork stood up, then helped the Vartabed to his feet. And they marched in the direction the bayonets prodded.

They marched into the depths of the desert. When it got dark, they slept in the sand. When Kevork woke the next morning, his shirt with its coin had been stolen. He walked for that whole day in nothing but trousers and the tattered rags around his feet. The sun beat down on his head and back and his skin reddened and blistered.

That night, he was too sore to lie down and sleep, and so he sat, hands on knees. He dreamt that Marta was with him. He thought he could hear her whispering in the dark. But when he woke up the next morning, he was lying on his side. His trousers and his last gold coin had been stolen. The other deportees were in the same situation as he. Kurds would come in the night and steal whatever they could, whether from corpses or soon-to-be corpses.

They arrived at the town of Aneh in the Syrian desert and rested a day. There they met up with other walking skeletons. Then they were driven like a herd of animals all the way back to Deir-Ez-Zor.

They were being marched in circles.

Every death affected the Vartabed as if it were the only one he had ever witnessed. At night, the priest would sprinkle a bit of desert sand on each new corpse and whisper a prayer. The zaptiehs laughed at him. And
while the Vartabed became more sensitive, Kevork's emotions shut down. When he thought about it, Kevork could trace back this change of heart to the day he lost Marta. It hurt too much to think of her, and when he saw others die, it made him think of her. The only way he could function was to not think.

Once, he walked past the corpse of a mother whose baby still whimpered feebly in her arms. The Vartabed wanted to save the child, but Kevork didn't. Save her for how long? Wasn't it better that the baby die with her mother's arms wrapped around her in love? How many grandmothers had he walked past who had simply given up — sitting at the side of the road waiting to die? Sometimes wraithlike children would sit listlessly beside the old women. Kevork knew what had become of their parents.

No matter how many Armenians died, it seemed that there were always more to kill. The roads were littered with corpses, yet more deportees arrived each day. Kevork couldn't understand why the Turks didn't just shoot them all and be done with it.

These wretched walking skeletons were herded up again and made to walk all the way north to el-Jezireh, in the very heart of the desert wasteland.

Hunger and thirst, combined with burning days and freezing nights, felled the deportees one by one. Kevork noted with detachment the effect of sun and heat on the bodies of the dead. During the first day or so after death, a body would swell and puff up. After that, it would deflate, then cook in the sun. Bodies that had been exposed for several days would ooze oil that would leach
into the sand as the body decomposed. As time went on, the skin dried like leather and shrunk from the bone. Kevork had plenty of opportunity to observe this process as he and the other survivors were forced to step over the bodies of the dead.

Kevork and the Vartabed miraculously clung to life. Each night, as the priest gave the newly dead their last rites, Kevork would collapse in exhaustion and sleep wherever he fell. In the morning a zaptieh would kick them awake and force them on their march to nowhere.

After ten days of marching into the desert, the thousands of survivors had dwindled to about a hundred — a handful of starving and disease-ridden humanity. Any food or water was long gone. The cool blue wetness of the Euphrates River sparkling just beyond reach was an added torture. Crazed with thirst, each day one or more of the deportees made a run for the river. The ones who didn't make it were shot by zaptiehs who were grateful for the target practice. The ones who did make it died in agony as their stomachs swelled and burst with the sudden intake of salt water. Over the days of marching in circles past the Euphrates, more and more Armenians, desperate for just a taste of water even if it meant sure death, ran to the river.

One morning, Kevork awoke to a blood-curdling cry.

“Chechen bandits.”

The marauders fell upon the pathetic group and hacked away at them with knives and sabres. Kevork was clubbed over the head, and he fell to the ground. By the time the Chechens were finished, the hundred or so survivors were reduced to twelve: eight men and four
women. Four of the men were lashed together and led up a hill out of sight. There was gunfire. And then silence. A few moments later, the Chechens came back.

One of the Chechens pulled Kevork to a standing position, and then he lashed Kevork and the Vartabed to the two remaining men. They were led up the same hill. When they got to the top, the Vartabed fell to his knees in prayer. Because they were lashed together so tightly, Kevork and the other two men fell to their knees, too.

The Vartabed addressed one of the Chechens. “I would like to administer the sacrament of the dying to these men and myself before you execute us.”

The bandits were taken aback. Then they fell to their knees in front of the priest and asked for understanding. “We are only following government orders,” one man cried. “And the hand of God directs the Turkish government.”

“May God forgive your sins,” said the Vartabed Garabed.

Then he administered the last rites. When he was finished, he scooped a handful of sand and held it up to heaven. “This is the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, and he placed a single grain of sand on the tongue of each doomed man.

When the Vartabed had finished, the Chechens untied the men, then lined them in a row. The Chechens did not blindfold them, and so Kevork found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle. Then he heard the deafening sound of gunfire.

One by one, the men fell as the bullets hit. The one intended for Kevork whizzed past his abdomen, grazing
his skin. He screamed and fell to the ground as he had seen the others do. With none of the prisoners left standing, the Chechens left. Within minutes, another group of Chechens came to finish off the work begun by their brothers. They clubbed Kevork over the head and he lost consciousness.

O
ne thing that Mariam had trouble getting used to in the haremlik was the lack of privacy. The room that she and Ani shared had two doors in it, but no locks. At various times of the day, Guluzar Hanim, Ede, or Nura Hanim would burst through unannounced. Sometimes it would simply be to walk through to another room, but at other times it was to sit and chat. Everyone knew everyone else's business.

Living in an orphanage, and a crowded house before that, Mariam was used to having lots of people around. But at Anahid Baji's or even at the orphanage, there was a deep sense of the individual. Here in the haremlik, it was as if no one had the right to private thoughts.

So Mariam was surprised when she heard a tap-tapping on the door one day as she sat alone in the room, staring out the latticed window. Who would be knocking? she wondered. She walked over to the door and opened it, and there stood Rustem Bey.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Mariam opened the door wide and stepped aside so he could enter, her face flushing hot at the thought of being alone with him in a room where the main piece of furniture was a bed. Rustem seemed to understand her discomfort, and he took two pillows from the bed and positioned them on the floor facing each other, and then he sat down on one of them. Mariam sat down on the other.

“I am sure the ladies have told you that I like you,” he said.

Mariam looked up at him and smiled. “It seems to be all they talk about,” she said.

“I wanted to formally have my family ask your family for your hand in marriage,” Rustem Bey continued, “but then the deportations began.”

Mariam could feel the heat of embarrassment on her face. She looked down at her hands.

“So I must ask you this,” said Rustem. “It doesn't matter how you answer. You are welcome to the safety of my house as long as you wish.”

Mariam stayed silent, dreading the question.

“Would you want to marry me if you were asked?” he asked.

Mariam's mouth filled with tears. No words came out. She shook her head no.

Rustem Bey's shoulders sagged in defeat. “I thought that would be your answer,” he said.

Mariam took a gulp of air, then wiped the tears from her eyes. “It comes at the wrong time,” she said. “I cannot think of marriage when death surrounds us.”

“Then you may have said yes in different circumstances?” he asked.

“I must be honest,” said Mariam. “I could not live like this, sequestered in a garden and a set of rooms, with nothing more than sweets and kittens to keep me occupied. I respect you, but I don't like this way of life.”

A frown of hurt formed on Rustem Bey's face. “It is wealth, not culture, that keeps our women idle. Wealthy Armenian women are no different.”

Mariam could have blurted out that wealthy Armenian women were mostly dead or worse right now, or marching towards the desert, but she held her tongue. “I like you as a friend,” she said. “And I thank you for saving my life.”

Rustem's frown disappeared. He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I will always be your friend.” He looked into her eyes and said, “I am sorry that you are not happy here.”

Mariam regarded him with surprise. “Happiness is not important right now,” she said. “I am alive. But when I look outside, I see Armenians being rounded up. Deported. I feel guilty being here. And I feel useless.”

Rustem Bey was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “I've been thinking the same thing.”

“You have?”

“Yes,” he said. “I feel useless, too. I asked Miss Younger if I could do something to help, but she told me no. To only keep supplying food. I would like to do more.”

Mariam squeezed his hand. “Could you take me there?” she asked.

“To the orphanage?” asked Rustem Bey. “You would be arrested.”

“But if I were fully veiled and accompanied you on a food delivery, couldn't I go?”

Rustem Bey nodded. “If you wish,” he said. “But it would be risky. You would have to pose as my odalisque, and you would have to let people think you had converted.”

“I could do that,” said Mariam.

“Even with Miss Younger,” said Rustem Bey. “If word got out that I was harbouring Armenians, my house would be burnt down, you would be executed before my eyes, and then I would be killed.”

“I understand,” said Mariam firmly. “I will play the part.”

Mariam found the heavy veiling oddly cool and comfortable as she took Rustem's hand and he helped her step up to the wooden bench on the oxcart. It was piled high with flour and raisins and olives and other foodstuffs. Rustem pulled himself up beside her and then took the reins.