I draw a deep breath. I want to ask, to explain. How could I have forgotten?
She smiles again. “I arrived in this country on October twenty-first, 1922. I was twenty years old. Do you remember how we used to speak of it, of what America would be like? It was nothing like what I expected, with its grime and its noise and its people and customs, but at the same time it was everything. It gave me a chance to remake myself, to start over, to become whole again. I had seen so much. I didn’t know what to think. I told myself I had been scarred by life.
“The missionaries that brought me to America were Presbyterians, from Boston. We went there after our arrival in New York. The children were placed in an orphanage, and I was offered a job teaching them. It was hard—I spoke not one word of English. I was homesick as well, for my family, for Anatolia, even for Aleppo. There were a number of other Armenians in Boston, so this helped. We would get together occasionally, compare notes, speak our language. An older lady, Mrs. Piranian, would make choereg for us—it was heavenly! We spent most of our time searching for loved ones, trying to find relatives who survived. I located some cousins eventually, the Elmassians, who had been in New York but moved to California. They were on my mother’s side. I visited them once, in about 1927 or so. We stayed in touch for a while, but eventually lost contact. I never heard anything about any of my other relatives. I assume they all perished.
“I thought of you often during this time. Even when I was married to Hussein, I thought of you. I imagined myself escaping, stowing away on a boat—do you remember?—traveling to America to find you. I was certain you had survived, even when I heard you were taken prisoner. I don’t know how I knew this, but I did. After the war, when I had returned to Harput and Mezre, I would often go for walks in the streets, even in the areas where Armenians were not welcome, thinking that I would catch a glimpse of you, that you would be there. But I never saw you. When I came to America, I looked for you on the streets, in Boston, in New York, even in California. I spent some time one day at Ellis Island, going through records, checking the boat logs of ships. I never forgot about you, not then, not ever. It’s why I knew you would come.
“I met a man, eventually, an Armenian man, in Boston. He was a nice man, a kind man. His name was Levon Merguerian. We married in 1928. He was in the shipping business in Boston—they shipped goods to Europe, brought raw materials from South America. He did quite well for a while. Then he lost his job. We struggled, as did many, counting our pennies. But we survived. We had two children, Sarkis and Simone. I cherished them, as I did Levon, for I had always felt rootless and alone.
“Levon died in 1978,” she continues. “His health had deteriorated.” She swallows, a tiny ripple in supple flesh. “I thought about you a lot after he died. I don’t know why—I was almost eighty by then. I found as I grew old that my thoughts often went to that time and place. Occasionally, before my sight went, I would encounter other people I had known before, almost as if I had lived a previous life. I was in Harrods once, in London, when a woman came up to me and called me by name. I recognized her when she spoke—we had worked together at the hospital in Aleppo. I ran into one of my childhood friends in a restaurant in New Jersey; we hugged and kissed and caused a big commotion. Another time I was on a subway in New York when a man jostled my shoulder as he passed. I looked up, and remembered. This man had raped me—he was one of the gendarmes. I don’t remember his name, but I hadn’t forgotten. If I’d had a weapon, I might have killed him right there.
“But I thought mostly of you. I thought of this day, when you would come to me. I have waited for you, for there’s something I’ve needed to tell you, something you should have been told all those years ago. But first, tell me—what do you remember?”
She smiles. I suck in air. She looks so familiar. The hair, the thin nose. So much has happened.
“I remember too much,” I say slowly. “It has been buried, so long, but now it comes back like the sun. I remember your eyes, the first time I saw you. I remember how captivated I was, how I could think of nothing but you. I remember our time in Katma, when we shared the small room. I remember waking to find you missing, only to discover you up on the roof. I remember when you were sick, on the road to Aleppo. I remember the necklace I gave you, the look in your eyes.”
I swallow. “I remember other things, too—unpleasant things. I have forgotten for most of my life, but now I remember as if I were there once again. Things are fresh and raw, like new skin. It has . . . it has led me to find you. I have thought of nothing else.”
She laughs, a deep, throaty laugh, the laugh of a much older person. Silence slides through and I am buffeted by memory, by the way her hand pulls her hair. She is so young. A sliver of light slips like fog past the window.
“Did it really happen?” I ask.
Her smile fades, her lips pressed and thin. “Oh, it happened,” she says, her voice low and alive. “Don’t let anyone tell you it didn’t. It was, it remains, genocide.” The word spills from her mouth.
The room falls to silence. The anniversary, the magazine article. Young, and yet old.
“I read a story once,” she says, “about a man who could remember everything, including even his remembering. He would be surprised every time he looked in the mirror, even if it had been only seconds before, because he remembered details so minute his features would appear changed as he became slightly older. He found it difficult to think or act, to do anything in the abstract, so absorbed was he in the details and remembering. The point of the story seemed to be that to think is to forget, to filter from the mind the unnecessary. I have told myself this, repeated it to myself. I have called it our gift from God. This headlong, heedless survival.”
I squint. I am speaking again, about memory. How I have heard that each time we remember, we change the thing remembered in the smallest of ways. I bubble with words, with these things left unsaid. I tell her, “This memory that comes now, after so long withheld—it is sharp, like a dagger. I feel the sand in my face. I smell the death. But I mainly see you. I tell myself that some things—beauty and love—transcend.”
“Beauty?” Her voice shakes, her face twisting with years. “I suppose I was beautiful once. It cost me dearly. How I wanted to blend in, to be unnoticed! The eyes you mention, the exotica, prevented this. They cursed me with their uncommonness. I stood out, to Turks, to Armenians, to Syrians, to other children, to men and to women. I could never hide, despite my attempts. I prayed, back when I thought God still listened, for deliverance from this malady, for one eye to magically transform itself to be uniform with the other. At one point I even considered mutilating myself, but I soon came to realize I was already disfigured. I suppose that but for my eyes you might never have noticed me, and as such my life might not have been spared, but they caused me much pain. Although their purpose is for seeing, they allowed me only to be seen. In the end, I was not ungrateful for blindness.
“There is something else about my eyes, though, the hidden something I must tell you, the burden I’ve carried so long. My eyes are, if anything, a testament to my pedigree, a proof of my deception. For you see, I am not an Armenian—I never was. My father was a Circassian, an Ottoman from somewhere near Thrace. My mother was a Turk from Bitlis. When I was born—perhaps it was because of my eyes, at least I’ve always thought so—I was abandoned. An Armenian family took me in. I was raised as a Christian, in an Armenian family, but I was born a Turk. The story I told you was partly true—my Armenian brother had been taken in by a Turkish family, my Armenian mother did die before the deportations. But so did my father. The man you shot that night was not my father. I knew him—he was a trader from Harput, a kind man who had helped me stay safe on the journey—but he was not my father. I’m not sure why I told you he was. I think I thought it would make you feel guilt, bind you to me somehow. Perhaps it did. But in that I’ve deceived you for almost a century. And for that I ask your forgiveness.”
Another silence intrudes. I c
lear my throat again, shuffle my feet. She asks for forgiveness, when I am the monster.
“I never met my natural father,” she says eventually. “My natural mother lived in Mezre, but refused to acknowledge me. Even when I returned from Aleppo, when I sought her out, she would not speak to me. She had married, had a number of children. Perhaps she thought others didn’t know about me, but they did. She had tears in her eyes when she shut the door in my face. Those tears alone have allowed me to forgive her. My brother”—and here her voice trembles, wavering up to a new pitch—“my brother was killed while I was in Aleppo. An accident, or so I was told. A cart fell on him.” She pauses. “He was only eight or nine.” The smile returns to her lips, pained now, her chin lifted upward. “Ironic, isn’t it? I survive a death march, and he is killed by a falling cart.” She allows the smile to fade. “I’ve never understood life. After a while, I quit trying.
“I’ve always found it interesting that there is no blood test—nothing that I know of—to distinguish Armenians from Turks, Christians from Muslims, saints from sinners, the good from the bad. In the end, who really knows—maybe God? I find it funny that the people at my job called me ‘Turk.’ I never told anyone my story, except my family, never told anyone anything. I don’t think I look Turkish, whatever that is. But we were right, Ahmet, about America, about its beauty, its opportunity. Here you can change your name, alter your identity, construct the someone you wanted to be. A few things remain, seared so deep as to defy alteration. Will your children know your heritage? Your great-grandchildren? Will they know what you did in this life? Maybe there are some things that should be passed on, that should never be forgotten.” She pauses. “I think so.”
She looks up. “That’s it.” She is changed now, a granddaughter. She flicks her hair in embarrassment.
I open my mouth but no words break and follow. It comes back to me, this, these two different people. One dead, one young and alive. I heard . . . I saw . . .
I sway in an emptiness. I know now. I know.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for telling me. Your grandmother, she would be proud.”
“Can you forgive her?”
I tremble. The horror of it all holds my tongue in its place, but she nods her acceptance and says, “She said she’d forgiven almost everyone through the course of eighty-plus years. She held no bitterness for the Turks, or for God. She’d seen so much.”
And me—the one that forgot—how can I be forgiven? I have failed to express, to even voice my regret. I stare at this child. I am tired now. So tired.
She tilts her head. “I wasn’t sure you would come. I thought you might be imaginary—you know, her imaginary friend. But she was so certain. She told me this, all my life. It’s kind of weird, but she knew.”
All this time. Only hours away.
There is silence. “Do you miss her?” I ask. “Your grandmother?”
Her eyes cloud now, the blue and the brown. She nods and looks away, out the length of the far window.
I examine her, the dark makeup smudged.
“There is something I need to give you,” she says. She stands and turns.
I follow as if on a path. There are rooms, clothes, food on a stove. An ironing board and refrigerator. She digs through a pile of things, blankets and clothing, before pulling out something in triumph. She offers it to me, this object, this worn bit of cloth. I examine it, rub it between my stiff fingers. There is something, something . . .
“She said it was yours. Your shirt. She said to thank you.”
I exhale, my face quickly broken, the room slow and spinning. Faces pass before me, so many, detailed—I cannot keep them apart as they move close together. I strive to form words but the floor falls. Slim hands grip my shoulder. I say, or I want to, I must tell them. Please tell them. Lights flash in circles, like those of an ambulance. Odors shift, of ambergris, alcohol.
I am moving once more, my direction uncertain. I tread air and water. There is pressure against me. And then I am seated, a voice in my ear, a hand pressing again on my shoulder. My arms are trembling. Sweat falls, or urine. The voice in my ear grows more pronounced. Understandable.
“Mr. Khan.”
“Yes?” My voice is thick and aged. Where am I?
The voice is close, a face near. One light eye, one dark. A dimly lit hallway.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. Okay.”
“I think you had a seizure. Should I call a doctor?”
“No, no. No doctor. I am fine.” I rotate my head. “I have these sometimes.” My voice gathers strength.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yes, yes.” I attempt to stand, make it halfway up before falling, shake my head, rise again. There are voices, others. “Is he okay?” Is it her?
I am in a lobby, facing buttons and numbers. Then outside. I am thinking, I have found her. And yet . . . It is cold, in the darkness. My hands clench and reach from my pocket to my face. Please.
Moths dance on streetlights. Cars honk, far away.
A breeze creeps up from behind, rustling leaves or street trash. Someone is asking me questions, shining a light.
I am rocking, rocking.
What is your name? I form the words, but in Turkish.
The headache thrusts and stabs.
Then just the rocking. The whisper, and rocking.
22
I am dreaming. We are back in Aleppo, Araxie and I. We are in a line of people, moving. Moisture hangs in the air.
We stand on a ship, its decks flat and wide. Gulls flap and call in the breeze. We pause at the rail and look out at the crowds, the people behind on the shore. Working, watching, their faces small and obscured—who are they, these people? The cypresses narrow from this distance, the city in dust.
On board there are sailors and crew. People march down steps toting large loads. The ship is now moving. The sea swells beneath us. I look at her, I cannot help but look at her. My heart beats in time.
I hear voices from somewhere, some future. Men rustle. “Can we move him?” A pain pricks my side.
But then quiet. It is quiet here, on the ocean. The waves are small, the sway the push of a hammock. She is leading me somewhere, a room, deep below. There is the thrill—the old thrill—of being with her, of freedom.
She opens the door. There are others inside. They stand as we enter, a ripple of foreheads. I pause, surprised. My head knocks.
Again come the voices. “Easy now, Mr. Khan.” “You’re okay.” “Lie down now.”
But I recognize these people. They are there, from the trek. The man I shot at the fire, the baby’s mother at the river, the women dancing, the prisoners on ropes. There are hundreds, melting, giving way—the pregnant woman left behind on the road, the others floating up in the river. And more. I see Ani, Dodi. But still, giving way.
And then Carol! Her nurse’s outfit, her smile fixed and bright. She is looking away, out at boats on the water. She starts to say something, then stops. Behind her come others—Lissette, then Violet. I stare at my daughters. What . . . what is this dream?
They stand there, expectant. I struggle to wake. I must ask their forgiveness, but my voice will not come. I am mute, dream-mute. My throat burns with the effort.
Their eyes begin closing. First those in the back, then row upon row, like blinds being pulled or sails furled and drawn. The ship bucks and slides, crashing them one into another, fading but not eliminating. They do not disappear. Still, the lids shut—now Ethan, the black man. John Paul, his wrists high. Wilfred, a smile forming. I twist away but still look. Carol, eyes closing. All shut now, all shut.
Until only she remains. She stares, like the blind. She is younger, with eye shadow. I say to her, I want to say . . . But it is late. It is late.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to many people, including Perry Mustian; Kenneth Fuller, M.D.; Gerald Kadis, M.D.; Steven Johnson, M.D.; my Turkish and Syrian traveling companions Will Butler, Brya
n Desloge, and Bill Law; Peter Garretson, Ph.D.; Jeff VanderMeer; Paul Shepherd; the folks at Putnam, including Halli Melnitsky, Victoria Comella, Ivan Held, and the wonderful Amy Einhorn; my agent, Scott Mendel; and most of all my wife, Greta, who puts up with all of this.
I am deeply indebted to others’ descriptions of the Armenian tragedy (many of them recollections of relatives who survived the brutality of the trek), including David Kherdian’s The Road from Home; Peter Balakian’s Black Dog of Fate; Mae Derderian’s Vergeen; Antonia Arslan’s Skylark Farm; Micheline Marcom’s Three Apples Fell from Heaven; Grigoris Balakian’s memoir, Armenian Golgotha; Margaret Ajemian Ahnert’s The Knock at the Door; Rafael De Nogales’ Four Years Beneath the Crescent; Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller’s Survivors; Clarence D. Ussher’s American Physician in Turkey; and others. These works reflect the resilience of the Armenian people amidst unbelievable suffering.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
All my life, people have asked if I am Armenian. I’ve always replied that I am, that most names ending in “-ian” reflect the old Armenian word meaning “son,” though my Armenian heritage is distant—my paternal great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. Until I reached my thirties I never thought much about my ancestry, until one day someone asking this same question also asked if I had read Peter Balakian’s book Black Dog of Fate. I hadn’t, and did. I learned then the awful fate of the Armenians at the beginning of World War I, and of those, including Peter’s grandmother, who survived the forced trek into Syria. I was mesmerized, and read more. How could this horrible thing have happened, and so few (including me) know anything of it? I read survivors’ stories, transcripts of oral histories, memoirs, and history books. I learned of the denial of the Turkish nation, and of the fact that to speak of the Armenian deaths as genocide remains a crime in Turkey to this day. Eventually, I hit upon the idea of writing a novel about the deportations, but approaching it from the point of view of one of the policemen, the gendarmes, who escorted these groups from the country. Several years later, The Gendarme was born.
The Gendarme Page 24