I had instructed the gendarmes to avoid using their weapons, given our lack of ammunition and the uncertainties ahead. As such, a rifle shot’s crack, loud in the clean desert air, sent me galloping in concern to the rear of the caravan. I found Mustafa there, pulling at his beard, his mouth obscured, standing over the body of an elderly deportee.
“What happened?”
He shrugged, looking off in the distance. “She wouldn’t move.” He kicked at the corpse.
“My instructions were to use your weapon only if attacked.”
Another shrug. “You’re not growing soft, are you?” He pulled a dirty thumb at a large front tooth. “You and your Armenian whore?”
I eyed his stubby fingers, curled near his rifle’s trigger. I fingered my own weapon.
“If you disobey my orders again, I will kill you.”
A girl rushed forward, wailing, to drape arms around the dead woman. Mustafa’s lips clamped together. He pulled again at his beard. Then he strode away, as if we had not spoken.
I have kept a close eye on him since, positioning him at the caravan’s end, taking care that Araxie never comes near him. We sleep under the stars together, she and I, side by side, rarely speaking. She eats my food, the guards no longer dining as a group but scavenging about for themselves. She wears my extra clothes. I want to reach for her, day and night. I crave her breath on my neck, her arm on my shoulders. I dream of the glimpse I had on the hilltop, the small sculpted breasts, the narrow hips. Yet I never consider touching her, for reasons I cannot quite say. Guilt, perhaps, or anxiety. Perhaps something more.
“Did you go to school?” she asks, the third day out from Katma.
“Of course.”
“For how long?”
“I completed my seventh year.” Burak and my cousins attended military school.
“Do you speak other languages?”
I shake my head. “And you?” She is riding behind me, her hands clasped loosely about my waist, a posture that produces a near-constant erection.
“Yes. French and German. I would like to speak English. I would like to go to America.”
“America.”
“Yes. You have heard the missionaries, their descriptions of it?”
I have. I was warned away from the missionaries and their strange beliefs, their foreign accents, but I went anyway, to listen. The America they described merged with visions of heaven. Motor cars. Crates that flew through the air. “Things so modern,” I say now, “the people so rich. Yes—I, too, would go there.” I pause.
“Did you like school?” I ask.
“Oh, yes. I loved it.” She pauses, as if considering this statement’s finality. “I wanted to be an actress. I was always playacting in school, and for my parents.”
We continue in silence. “My father, too, has died,” I say eventually. His memory blazes within me, as if I have forgotten and only now remembered. “He died of an illness, almost a year ago now.”
She does not respond. I realize my foolish remark has clogged the air between us. I stutter on, unleashing hurried descriptions of youthful achievements, my athletic prowess, my cousins’ military advancement, my training at my father’s knife-making trade. I explain how blades are forged, cooled, and tempered, how the haft is attached, how the finished product is evaluated. I describe sabers and scimitars, swords and rapiers, knives for pruning and skinning, blades for whittling and killing. I keep to myself my hatred of knife making, the fact that I refuse even to carry a knife. My father’s death has freed me from the shower of sparks and the smell of the forge, from the dickering and tedium and pressure to measure up. My life is my own now. I am grateful for this.
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
I chastise myself immediately for raising this question, for the way it is phrased. If she does have siblings, their fate is likely not pleasant.
“I have a brother,” she responds after some time. “He is seven.” Her voice catches and trails away. “My father placed him with a Turkish family. He was required to renounce his faith, to become a Muslim. He is in Harput.”
“And you—why did you not do the same?”
I feel her hands on my back, pushing, as if attempting to drop off the horse.
“I would not turn my back on my father. Or my God.”
I twist and grab her with one arm, my head facing backward. I say nothing, even though I want to argue with her, to point out that her God, their God, has done little to help in their time of need. Her eyes have gone red now, enlarged and tearful, so clouded that the pupils appear almost common and alike. It changes her face in a curious way, accentuating her exoticism, as if she has been revealed only now as a rust-eyed alien, dropped from the open sky into the desert spread below. Her arms fall to her sides as she lifts a leg to escape. Her face tilts near mine. It is in this posture that Mustafa finds us, riding up unnoticed in a curtain of sand.
“We have visitors,” he says, pointing to a trio of camels and men in Arab headdress at the other end of the caravan.
I disengage. Araxie slides off the horse.
It is Thursday. I sit in the Piggly Wiggly. Ted accompanies me again, studying the magazines, eyeing me occasionally. We do not speak.
I have browsed the aisles, examined the teas—but there are no good teas here. I have resigned myself to a cup of coffee, testament to my despair. The liquid is vile, like oil. I sip at its bitterness.
Recep’s confirmation has shaken me. I have toyed with it, battered it, questioned it anew. Might he be mistaken? He is an old man, confused as I am. But a curtain has parted, a certain door in my mind. I am sure. I remember Burak’s death, its aftermath. The timing, the deportations beginning in early 1915, my injury in late August . . .
And then he appears, in front of me. Wilfred. He’s grown taller. His face shows the lesions of adolescence. His hair is curlier.
“Hey,” he says, looking down at me.
I struggle to stand, to speak. “It is so good to see you,” I say when my voice comes.
He nods. He looks so much older, like the young man in The Searchers.
“What . . . what have you been doing?” I sound so grasping. So elderly.
“Same stuff.” His gaze flits about.
“Are you supposed to be here?”
“Of course not.” He sneers, and his face is less pleasing. “I’m never supposed to be here.”
“Should you be in school?” He should have a job, but Violet insists on school only.
He opens his eyes but says nothing. I do not mean to frighten him, or condemn him. Just then Ted walks up.
“Hello.”
“Who is this?” Wilfred asks.
“This is . . .” I cannot bring forth his name.
“Ted.”
“Ted.”
Wilfred coughs, grimaces.
I touch his arm. “Wilfred.”
He jerks back. “Please don’t touch me, okay?”
I leave my hand out. “Okay.” I am remembering these swings now, how he switches from sunny to dark, back to sunny in flashes. I had taught him as a young boy to play chess—how it angered him to lose then! Tossed pieces and boards. I let him win some. Chess was something from the hospital in London, something known from before, for I could play even before I could speak again. Matches, even a tournament. I took a third place. There were rages, too, then, not so unlike Wilfred’s. I remember shouting, in Turkish. These lessened with time.
“You look well,” I say. “You are taller.” He will be tall like me.
Wilfred nods toward Ted. “Why is he with you?”
“He is watching. I have been sick.”
“I heard that.”
There is a pause. I glance at Ted but he does not leave. “School is okay?”
“No.”
“You must work hard.”
“I got in a fight.”
“A fight?”
I remember a fight once, in New York. A fellow plumber. A Pole. He had loosed a fitting so
that sewage rained over me, on my face, in my hair. He had done this deliberately, with malice. Why? I had done nothing to him. I went at him, the shit still in my hair, pounding my fists at his big, gloating face. Another man pulled me off. He continued to laugh, that Pole, the birthmark on his face stretched to form a pink flower. As if the gods had demanded this. As if he had launched a great joke.
“You must . . .” I begin, but Wilfred’s voice cuts me off.
“I must do nothing,” he says. “Nothing.” His eyes are bright like twin stars. “You’re just like her, like the rest—don’t you see?” He looks from Ted to me. “Everyone telling Wilfred just what he must do.”
I want to say no, that I am unlike anyone, except him. That one must fight back, that there is life in the fighting.
He turns and dashes—that is the only word for it, dashes—back to the front of the store. He looks back once, such that I fear he will crash into the electric glass door, but the door opens and he falls through it, as if through a hole. Then it closes, swallowing him. The look on his face stays with me after. It is a look of revulsion, and fear.
Ted and I do not speak on the way home. I am angry, though I try not to show it. There is no need to make things worse. Still, I had wished to be alone with Wilfred. I waited almost a year . . . and then this. I have such little time.
When I get home I call Violet. It is a fight, a brief one. I preach calm to myself. Still, I must press. “I saw Wilfred,” I say.
“Where?”
“The store.”
“The store?”
“He comes there sometimes.” I realize, too late, that my call has betrayed him.
“When? Just now?”
“Yes.”
“He’s supposed to be in school. Why do you encourage this?”
“I do not encourage . . .” My breath shortens.
“Papa, we’ve been through this. He has enough problems without sneaking off and skipping school. Whenever he sees you he gets all hyped up—you know this. The doctors have him on a regimen. I ask that you honor it.”
Honor? How does seeing him show dishonor? He is my grandchild, grandson. The only male left to follow.
“I would like to speak to him.”
“Well, he’s not here—he’s been off with you, when he should be in school.” Her breath rattles the phone and there are clicks, the sound of things dropped. “Look,” she says, and smoothness enters her voice, “I’ll bring him over to visit soon. Okay? With me. The three of us can visit, together.”
I chew my lip. “He says he was in a fight.”
“Yes. It’s a problem, Papa. I’m dealing with it.”
“He must fight back!”
“I’m handling it, okay?” Her voice is harsh. “If I need . . .” She halts herself.
I ask, “Do you need money, for this treatment?”
“No. I don’t want your money. Can you understand that?”
“Yes,” I say. “I—”
“Papa, I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’ve got to go.”
I make popcorn, and Ted and I watch The Untouchables. Lissette calls again, this time talking longer. I hear the guilt in her voice and am glad. I drink some tea, the scene playing back. “Please don’t touch me,” says the voice, his voice again. Hers. I rise and make my way back to my room, to my bed.
7
The lead Arab is tall, with a single sharpened tooth that peeks between his chapped lips. He speaks no Turkish, relying instead on a smaller, darker man to provide a rough translation. The third man, really just a boy, tends the camels.
They make their intent known immediately. They seek young women, for which they will pay. The smaller man extends a brown palm, shows me six coins. The leader eyes the deportees. I draw back to think.
Mustafa rides up, eyes alight, lips twitching beneath his beard. “How much is he offering?”
I shake my head. The smaller Arab approaches again, assuming my hesitation to be negotiation. His palm now holds eight coins.
I shake my head again. “None are for sale.”
The smaller man frowns, not understanding.
Mustafa glances from me to the Arab. He grabs my shirt, a child pleading with a parent. A twist of his wrist brings me closer.
“What are you doing? This man offers money, and you say no?” A spray of his spittle wets my shirt and neck. He whirls to face the Arab, whose palm remains outstretched. “I will take your offer.”
I raise my rifle, pointing it at Mustafa’s back. The Arab withdraws. The lead Arab, who has been watching from one side, flashes his solitary tooth and moves to join his comrades. Mustafa turns slowly around.
“Why?” His face is red beneath his beard, his eyes glassy and large. “They will die, anyway. What do you care?” He advances toward me, tendons working his neck. “It is her. I know it.”
“No.” I back away, arcing the gun to cover both him and the Arabs. The lead Arab has turned to his camel, reaching for what might be a weapon. I have no doubt they will be willing to take what they want if it is not offered for sale. Mustafa turns, sensing this, too. Even Karim pokes his head from his wagon. But the lead Arab merely clambers upon his camel, reaches for the reins, and coaxes the animal into a stiff-legged walk. The smaller man and the boy follow suit.
The taller man says something to the smaller, who shouts to us in his broken Turkish, “We have other opportunities. It is your loss!” The camels pick up speed, stretching their pitching strides. The tall man’s dirty kaffiyeh disappears below an outcrop.
Mustafa turns to face me, his skin still inflamed. Karim climbs down from the wagon, holding his weapon, unsteady on his feet. He totters over to stand at our side.
“They will be back,” says Mustafa, his voice soft and dead. “They will take what they want, tonight. And I will give it to them.”
Karim looks from him to me.
I pull my gun to my side, my finger still on the trigger, ready to raise it if either shows movement. I clear my throat.
“I have given my order, Mustafa. We will not be selling anyone. As I told you before, if you disobey me, you will pay with your life.”
Mustafa’s head remains down. Karim sways on his feet, his stomach gurgling, distress audible even at a distance. He skips sideways, pulls at his pants, takes a few steps with his buttocks outstretched before showering the ground in yellow feces. Mustafa, mouth tight, walks away.
I relax my grip on my weapon. I scan the camp, in search of Araxie. I worry anew of Mustafa’s revenge. To my right, an old woman’s wrinkled bottom lies exposed, her fouled clothing stripped away. Others lie moaning beside meager belongings, too exhausted even to put up ragged tents. A number of the children and some of the adults are naked, their clothes stolen or worn away, their bodies smeared with mud and excrement. Everywhere people hunch, clutching their abdomens—the dysentery has spread so that many even in our group now defecate almost constantly. The flies that plagued Katma have found us, swarming our eyes, nesting in our hair. Lice spread like raindrops. Everything stinks, of defecation and human despair, like the last excretions of a dying body. I consider for a moment whether I have made the right decision, whether life as a slave or concubine might be better than this. Mustafa was right about one thing—many of these people will die.
I stride back through the rubble, searching, eyeing the group. By my calculation at least half are ill, a quarter barely able to walk. We will be forced to slow our pace even further, to leave more behind. I prod prone forms with my rifle, looking for telltale clothing, a wisp of familiar hair, a glimpse of an exotic eye. Occasionally I turn over a dead body, its tongue thrust forward, the skin patchy and gray. It is near one such corpse that I find her, huddled against an older, squat woman, her hands gripping her sides. She stares up through lidded eyes, her face marked with pain.
“I have it,” she murmurs, as the older woman smoothes her brow. “The illness.”
I stand again in my garage. It is hot. I am thinking. It is strange how life
works, all one’s life looking forward, until at some point a clock shifts and there is more past than future. A long life means death—of companions, compatriots. And the swiftness! Ninety years in an eye-blink, and still things surprise me. These dreams that come late and play out like a movie—The Big Sleep, perhaps, The Best Years of Our Lives. So real, then. I wake and don’t know myself. I must think, remember, sort out, catalog. Regain my mental order, after ninety-two years.
I stare about me at boxes. I pull things, unearthing paint cans, old financial matters, things I had been through when Carol passed away. A bicycle rests against one wall, its tire flat; I had ridden it a month ago on a bet then with Carl. Photo albums, furniture. Toys. My old tools. Nothing from the start of my life, nothing hoarded and then forgotten. I examine the gray box again, but find nothing more. I find much that reminds me of Carol.
I had given away most of her things when she died: her jewelry, her pictures and dresses. I offered these up to her sisters, but a few things I kept: a painting she had given me, a stuffed animal I won at a fair. I rearranged the furniture as well. I bought nothing new, only changed things to change them. I did not wish to think of her after her death. The music she liked, the perfume she wore, even things with her handwriting—I scrapped all of these. Her memory comes back now in pieces, like splinters. The day Violet was born. A trip to a park in New York.
And London. The headaches now, the hospital stay bring me back there. Awakening, in a drafty ward where everyone spoke an odd language. The terror in not remembering, a void so large as to be wounding itself. Was I sane? I feared I would be killed, by both doctors and patients. At first they thought I was faking, that I was pretending to forget to protect vital secrets. They brought in a Turkish speaker to translate, an old man who reeked of tobacco and regarded me with a certain disdain, as if I had betrayed something or shown weakness. He repeated questions or instructions and reformulated my responses, all without looking at either me or the doctors, as if he had been forced to do this, as perhaps he had been. Was he a prisoner? I was a prisoner, an enemy soldier, a fact that made my recovery all the stranger and more difficult. Had I, only weeks before, fired a gun at these men, causing their injury or them mine? I had no recollection of it. Some of the other patients knew of my status, or came to know of it. Some showed friendliness, others hostility, but all in a language I could not comprehend. A guard was posted nearby, for my protection or that of the others, and after one memorable incident when a man screamed and pounded my ribs with his crutch, I was moved to a separate room off one side of the ward. There I met Carol.
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