He tosses the object to where it lands in my lap. Even in flight I know it, know its outline and texture before my hand brushes against it, before I touch the familiar stones. The necklace is cold, oily with sweat or blood or some other substance. I trace its edges and ridges and the smoothness of its pendant, just as I did on the day I bought it, the day I gave it to her. My heartbeat pulses in my jaw, in my face, down the contours of my injured throat. I eye the knife in front of me, the dark stripes on its end.
“You recognize it, yes? A little bloody, perhaps, but still there. I wanted you to see it. I wanted you to know this, to share a little of my pain. It is so hard. Do you see? It has all been so hard.”
I nod, wheezing, my breath in ragged draws. I dig my hands in the sheet on the bed.
“What do you have to say, my friend? I do not hate you, for you cannot help yourself. A part of me says I should not even kill you. Perhaps I should only cut you, remove a piece of you—perhaps your arm? Then we would be alike, chopped by life and left to go on.” He smiles. “I must know, though, Ahmet. Do you feel it? The fear in the back of your throat, the certainty that all is now lost? The girl, your arm, even your life—do you not wish to fight for them? Let’s see who is stronger. After all, I have only one arm.” He raises his eyebrows, as if inviting me to join him. The candlelight gleams on his blade. “Only one arm.”
I fling my sheet at the candle as I dive in the opposite direction. The light flickers but holds. Mustafa seems to have expected my action, as he takes only a half-step in the sheet’s path before reversing his course and lunging toward me. I scramble to my feet, roaring, an outburst at once loud and unintelligible, dodging as he hooks the knife forward in a fierce left-handed thrust. The blade catches the edge of my forearm, turning me sideways and down, tearing skin and muscle before lodging in the wooden pallet’s base. For an instant we hang there, the knife embedded, Mustafa nearly on top of me, my arm free of the knife but afire with bright pain. I smell his foulness, his animal-like sweat. The bristles of his beard scratch my neck. He thrashes upon me, as if he seeks to punch me while I’m pinned down but has forgotten he has no right fist. His body rocks. He pulls at the knife, his teeth snapping, catching some part of my ear and sparking new pain to life.
He releases the knife and grabs for my throat. I twist sideways, my one arm caught beneath me, attempting to throw him off with my legs and free arm, but he is heavy, too heavy. His weight pins me down. I buck like an animal under a rider but succeed only in shifting his bulk, my back now more fully against him. I shake my head. He knees me, stomping with his feet, trying to gain any purchase. His fingers dig deep in my neck.
My breath contorts. Light dims. I try to roll but cannot. I jerk my knees up but fall back. With my one hand I gain small movement, enough to grasp the knife’s haft. I pull against it but have no leverage. My arm is weakened by pain. I rock the knife, bruising my palm against its tempered hardness, thinking of all the knives I have forged, formed, and sharpened—I need only this one, now! But I cannot free it. I rotate it like a pestle, concentrating my hatred of all knives upon it, but it only quivers and holds fast. My arm throbs in defeat. I cannot breathe now, I must release this and try something else, and I do feel the panic, and push one last time with the flat of my palm. The wood cracks then and splinters. The knife frees. I pick it up, reverse my grip. Mustafa must feel this, for he lifts up slightly, his hand still on my throat. I am thinking, absurdly, of what he must think now—is it anger, or doubt, or only murderous instinct? I shift beneath him. My eyes cloud without air. With a pain that spears my arm like a poker, I drive the knife backward, deep into his chest.
Mustafa stands, the knife like a rib pulled apart from its brethren. His face shows surprise, a mask nearly of pleasure. He starts to say something but blood garbles his words. Staggering, his hand out and grasping, he reaches his full length until his palm strikes the candle and the room falls into darkness. I turn but lie paralyzed, wanting to scramble to my feet, to run—is he not dead? He does not topple. I smell him, hear his shuffling feet, picture him swaying and squinting. I should scream but cannot. Something clatters, and a fresh terror seizes me. Has he pulled out the knife? His moans are almost deafening. I reach my knees but he lurches toward me, his body corkscrewing, weighted perhaps by his single arm, a force that pitches him back down on me. The knife, still embedded, strikes me full in the face, breaking my nose and front teeth as if they were sticks. Pain explodes, blinding me for some seconds. I swallow pieces of tooth. Choking, my arm almost useless, my face crushed and leaking, I push his body from mine. I struggle to stand upright.
A light flares. Sasha stands before me, grabbing Mustafa’s hair with both hands, pulling his body onto the floor as something—I think his neck—snaps in the process. She brings a small candle closer.
“You have enemies, I see.” She explores my wounds with her fingers, rotating the light with her hand. Blood seeps over my clothing, the exposed straw of the bed, my bare feet. I take in great gulps of air. I feel faint.
“We must hurry,” Sasha says. “Others will come.” She sets the candle on the floor, turns her attention back to me. With a deft movement she grabs hold of my shirt and rips it down its front. “Ah, your arm.” She presses the ripped cloth on the wound.
“I must go,” I say. My throat burns from the effort. I lift my legs, attempting to stand.
“Where will you go? Can you walk?”
“Yes. To her. She is . . . in danger. Araxie.” If she is even alive. I look about wildly, digging my fingers through straw.
“Wait here.” Sasha leaves the room. I continue my search, on the bedding, across the floor. The pain climbs up my injured arm, rendering it limp and useless, such that I must use my right arm, my fingers as rakes, the straw slicing under my nails. I find it half buried beneath the thick body, requiring both arms to remove it, an action producing such pain that I cry out in anguish. The room darkens, encased in a whispering black before brightening again. I hold the necklace before me.
Sasha returns. “Do you have any other clothing?”
I nod helplessly at the foot of the bed. She grabs my gömlek and swiftly undresses me, practiced hands slipping bloody pants over one foot, then the other, until I stand naked, looking down at her, any thought of embarrassment washed clean by my anguish. Sasha pulls up the pantolon, rewraps my arm, places a compress around my bloody ear, fits the gömlek over my injured head and arm. She stands before me when she has finished. Her breath brushes my face.
“Take this,” she says quietly. She places a small pouch in my hand.
I bend to examine it. A sheaf of bills juts from its top.
She smiles, a smile made sad by the candle’s dim light. The wrinkles are thick at her eyes. “I hope it takes you far.”
I search for something to say.
Sasha reaches over onto Mustafa, grunts, returns with his knife. “You might also want this.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
She kisses me on my cheek, the hard, forward kiss of a man. “Go, before someone comes.” She glances at the prostate body. “Twaqqa!”
I tumble out of the room, into the hallway, out the side door to the alley beyond. The sound of footsteps carries from somewhere. Voices dim and vanish. The first pink of dawn shows to the east, the sky above still purpled and black. The street is dark, the familiar landmarks hidden, such that I bump into a trash pile and a water barrel before I right myself, reestablish my direction. I hurry on, more by feel than by sight, my left arm dangling like a crippled dog’s leg. The arm’s limpness alters my gait, my shoulder slumped to the injury, to the point where I imagine myself a mirror image of the amputated Mustafa, his body tilted to his remaining thick arm. His face fills my mind again, his words in my ears, such that I see him again, even smell him. I picture him scouting, waiting, plotting his slow revenge. He would have obsessed over his lost limb, brooded over it, stared at the place it used to be, wailed as he considered it
s loss. I pause, searching opposing passageways in the darkness. Would I or anyone else have done less?
Objects move in the early morn, shopkeepers unlocking doors, herders tending stock, groomers preparing their mounts. A dog runs past, yelping, chased by unseen foes. The sweet smell of baked bread mixes with odors of moisture and manure. Blood enters my mouth, trailing down my face from my ear, its texture silky, its taste metallic. I hobble forward, past the Bab al-Makkam and its muttering dromedaries, the darkened suq, the shuttered homes of the wealthy. A rooster crows nearby, another farther away.
The first cries of the muezzin fall as I reach the broad expanse of the Bab al-Faraj, brighter now in the dawn, its sediments of people stirring and unfolding, gathering with the start of the day. I halt, aware of how my injuries must look. I glance around for a place to wash but find nothing. Instead I join the rotation toward Mecca, the wait for the recitation of words familiar even in Arabic. I remember, as the supplication begins, the morning in Katma when I thought I had lost her, the prayers, the sight of her up on the roof. I glance up now but find nothing, only the gray edges of once white buildings, the stirrings of pigeons and doves. My mind, so compliant till now in avoiding thought of the necklace, bursts forth in unleashed agony, imagining her garroted, stabbed, or otherwise hurt, her body left to rot in the street. What had Mustafa said, that he had been helped by a kind man? I toss this about as I kneel in the mud. Blood wells in my nose, spattering in droplets on the ground just below.
I rise afterward, shaking. Others on the street watch. I cross the boulevard, edge around a dusty date palm and the debris spread beneath it, past deportees, dogs, and old women, past carts and donkeys piled high with cotton, until I stand before the hospital itself, its window holes open like eye sockets. Walking around to its back, I search for the house she’d mentioned, the doctor’s house, only to find three adjacent dwellings: a nicer two-story, with a small balcony and pitched roof, and two smaller bungalows. All are shuttered, and dark, as if their inhabitants are asleep or wounded, or dead.
I knock on the door of the two-story, wait, knock again. My hand goes to my face, the dried blood that has stiffened. I catch sight of my injured arm, red beneath the wrapped cloth. My breathing is loud through my crumpled nose. I knock again.
No one answers. I glance at the hospital behind me, at the doors, the open window holes, the figures occasionally passing. Perhaps Araxie and the doctor are already at work. I wait, hoping to catch sight of her—even a glimpse will release me—but my distress breeds impatience, and I knock on the other doors, my fist hard on the wood. I expect no response and receive none. Everything is quiet. Eventually I turn, my heart thundering, my breath loose and shallow. I make my way to the front of the hospital.
A group of men stand in the hospital’s doorway. The breaking dawn leaves the entrance in such darkness that I cannot see or identify them, only the red embers of their sigaralar, rising and falling, rising and falling, hands to mouths to dark sides. Some part of me sounds a warning, a message dulled by pain but shrouded even further by fate, by a certain inescapable ruin. I recognize the men’s uniforms as I reach them, the olives and tans, the red epaulets and braids of Ottoman military officers.
“Well, my friend! We’ve been waiting.”
I make a motion to retreat but stop myself. There are four of them, two of whom shift quietly, encircling me.
“We have been told you are a Turkish soldier, a deserter. Is that true, Mr. Khan?” The man flicks his dying cigarette into the street.
Some reservoir of strength fires within me, finding its way to my voice. “Who told you this?”
The man laughs. “Does it matter? Are you or are you not? Do you have papers?”
“I was a gendarme. I brought a group to Aleppo.”
“Did you receive permission to stay, or to leave the service of the gendarmerie?”
“I did not.”
“Then you will come with us. Your country needs you, at least what is left of you after your punishment. You see, Ahmet Bey, this is a serious matter.” He moves closer to me, such that his face is more visible, tobacco-laden breath blowing in toward mine. I do not recognize him.
“In addition to deserting, you appear to have consorted with enemies of our country. This, as you know, is treasonous. You could pay with your life.”
He gives a head signal to the other officers, two of whom grab my arms. I gasp at the pressure, the onslaught of pain.
“I see you’ve been injured.” He evidently says or motions something to the officers, for the crushing grip slackens, and I am boosted upright. We begin shuffling down the walkway to the boulevard, half walking, half stumbling. Early-morning pedestrians crane to look.
“Tell me, Ahmet Bey,” the lead officer says, twisting his head to look at my face. The insignia at his shoulder appears to be that of a colonel, though it is hard to tell in the darkness. “Was it worth it?” He offers a half-turned smile, as if we are privy to a great secret.
I do not answer. From up in a hospital window comes a voice, in languid Armenian. I look up, as do the others, to see a woman standing there, a stout, older woman.
“She is gone,” says the woman, her voice chopped and broken.
17
A hand brushes my shoulder.
“Hey! Time to wake up!”
I turn, careful of my injury, surprised at the absence of pain.
My fingers trace my wounded ear. It is whole, likewise pain-free. I sit, eyes open to a spare bed with white cotton sheets, purple fluorescent lighting, a thin man with a scabbed nose. My eyes cloud, refocus. John Paul speaks.
“They’re taking us outside again. Nap time’s over.”
It all comes crashing back then, the white walls and ceiling. The slippered feet of the asylum, the smells of excrement and ammonia. The metal bedposts perched above linoleum floors. I should be back—fighting, overcoming these soldiers—but I am here, only here. I close my eyes and lie down again, wishing the dream back upon me. Where have they taken her? What can I do? A renewed prodding interrupts, and I lift my arms at it, flailing. The bedsheet billows and cracks.
“Hey, now. Easy.” Lawrence’s drawl edges farther away. “I’m just waking everyone to go outside.” He holds up his hands against me, a tamer facing a lion. “Actually, you have a visitor. If you’ll follow me, you can see her now.”
But the dream! Lights flash, settling as I stand, stars retreating to individual lights, three doors merged now to one. John Paul’s head peeks from behind Lawrence, his eyes in narrow scrutiny. I clear my throat.
“Who is my visitor?” I ask. Is it she?
“It’s your daughter.”
I follow into the brightness of the dayroom, past others in line for the excursion outside. I see a head near the front, a glimpse of Sasha’s oversized jaw, and I am frozen, the thought twisting and circling that this man had helped me, helped me. And for what? I remain still, then, slowly, step forward.
Victor/Sasha shifts his head. His eyes are dulled, diluted by pain, but the same—gray and oval, wide set under leathery brows. I find myself unable to speak, only to stare, the pressure in my forehead bringing pain to my cheekbones. He returns my gaze, his expression firm and without acknowledgment, but nor is there any surprise. I want to touch him, to laugh. Questions gurgle and die in my throat.
“Thank you,” I say finally, my words thick with moisture. “Thank you for what you have done.”
His stare remains, his expression unchanged. Others are there, giving ground, eyeing us both with some measure of curiosity. He does not look at them—only at me, for what may be seconds, perhaps minutes. I hear Lawrence calling, the scuffling of feet, the sniffs of growing impatience, but we remain locked, connected by current, until the barest shift of his head releases me.
I step toward Lawrence, past blank stares and mutters. My feet make a flapping noise on the floor.
“Are you okay?” Lawrence’s brow dips lower than ever.
“Yes. Okay.�
�
But unsettled by this past newly found. Those who had helped had not known of my transgressions. No one knew except Allah, if he still cared to watch. Except her. Am I now like the man who sees, too late, his own errors? These things, this certainty I have sought all my life, but now when they come they bring pain.
I am led through the outer door, the same glassed-in room. Violet rises when I enter, dabbing at her hair with one hand.
“Hi.” She leans forward to peck at my cheek. The wrinkles around her eyes are deep and dusted in makeup. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
Her smile fades.
“How are you?” I ask. My voice is weak, as if my vocal cords have been damaged.
“I’m okay.”
“Have you checked on Sultan?”
“I asked your friend Carl to do that.”
“Have you told Lissette . . . of this?”
She looks away, then back. “I told her you had to be hospitalized, for observation. I didn’t tell her it was here.”
I nod. She has put me here, my protector. My Violet. But I must protect her. Protect them.
She presses her hands together. I struggle to stay in the present.
“And Wilfred?”
“He’s okay.”
“Tell me, please,” I say. “Tell me Wilfred will never be put in a place . . . like this place. Tell me you will not bring him here.”
She looks down. “He’s okay,” she says. “He’ll be fine.”
“But tell me. Make me this promise.”
She stares at me, her neck flushed. “What promise, Papa? That his life will be grand? That he will never have issues? That the issues he has won’t get worse? I don’t think he would ever have to be put someplace, but if that’s what’s best, then that’s what we’ll do. I can’t promise anything.” She pauses. “Does it hurt you to know that? To know the truth?”
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