Kristina cringed when the second gendarme turned in her direction.
Slowly making his way though a cowering group of women and children, he glanced back and forth as he walked.
Kristina recognized his profile in the moonlight.
Onan walked directly toward them. Kristina’s heart pounded, but she knew what she must do. She got up and, pushing Izabella into Mikael’s lap, whispered, “Take care of your sister.”
“Where are you going, Mama?” Sirak asked.
“The gendarme wants to talk to me. Stay here. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Onan glared at Kristina through the darkness, then bent down and grabbed Anoush by the arm. He yanked her up from the ground, but she clung to her daughter’s hand. “Let go of her!” he growled.
Anoush’s eyes bulged with terror. She dropped Alis’ hand and Onan marched her away up the riverbank.
“Mama!” Alis called out hysterically. “Come back, Mama!”
Kristina took hold of Alis’ arm. “Stay here with us and your mama will be back soon,” she said, holding her close.
Nearly an hour passed before Anoush tiptoed back down the riverbank. Her hair was disheveled and her already tattered dress was torn. She hung her head in shame.
Kristina took the diminutive young woman into her arms. Anoush pressed her face against Kristina’s shoulder. “He hurt me,” she sobbed.
Kristina patted her back. “Come cleanse yourself in the river, and I’ll sew your dress.”
CHAPTER 42
Early the next morning, the weakened caravan resumed its wretched southerly journey through Syria. Day after day, the gendarmes drove the women, children and elderly along the seemingly endless road. They traveled beyond Hims through shrub and woodlands fed by the Orontes River, and then back into the unforgiving Mesopotamian desert, before heading west of Damascus along an ancient Roman road.
Depleted by starvation, thirst and ongoing attacks by tribesmen, the deportee numbers had dwindled. Kristina focused on the everyday task of finding sufficient food and water for her children. Driven by devotion to their families, she and Anoush forged a bond of mutual support and friendship. Their hours were filled with despair and the ongoing struggle to complete the day’s journey in safety. At night they were gripped with apprehension and terror as the gendarmes forced the women and children to satisfy their whims and desires. Each gendarme had his favorites, a forced harem of sorts, to fulfill his perversions. Some men favored the younger women or girls, while others fancied the boys.
Kristina and Anoush, along with an older teenage girl named Lucine, came to depend on Onan for provisions and protection out of necessity born of fear. He supplied water and scraps of food, and protected them and their children from the other gendarmes and the marauding tribes they encountered along the journey. An unspoken pact—a contract of sorts—developed between them. Onan always rode nearby to protect “his women and children,” and they served him at his beck and call.
All three women detested the loathsome Turk. They hated his fetid breath and repulsive body odor. They despised his callousness and disrespectfulness, and the way he took pleasure in humiliating them. But each woman realized that the brute’s contentment was the key to her survival and, in the case of Kristina and Anoush, their children’s survival, too.
On a hot and muggy night in late August, the caravan camped on the outskirts of a desert town three kilometers southwest of Damascus. The caravan leader announced that they were less than a two-day journey from Kahdem. Just after dark, once the gendarmes finished a supper prepared by several deportee women, a band of gypsies rode into camp. Peddling supplies and crafts, most of them left a short time later, but a troupe of musicians and dancers stayed behind to entertain the gendarmes. The encampment, positioned on the sloping edge of a broad desert plateau, was soon reverberating with rhythmic Roma music and the shouts and laughter of the performers and the guards.
Anoush looked up from her blanket. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
“I’m fine,” Kristina replied with a sigh, “but the gypsies brought wine. Do you remember the last time?”
“Yes,” Anoush replied solemnly. “That was the night Alis’ young friend, Zagiri, was raped.”
Kristina glanced over her shoulder. Sirak and Mikael were asleep on their blanket a short distance away. “That was the first time Onan forced himself on me, too.”
A chorus of cheers echoed from the encampment.
Anoush peered up at the sky. “I wonder what our lives will be like in this place called Kahdem? Maybe there will be good people there—decent people who care about the suffering of children.”
“I pray for that every minute of every day. Surely God has kept us all alive for something besides unbearable misery and heartbreak.”
“Maybe there isn’t a God after all, or at least not a God who cares about us.”
“There is a God,” Kristina whispered. “I feel him here with us now. I believe that passage in Romans: All things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. Some day we’ll understand all of this. It may not be in this life, but someday we’ll all understand why we’ve had to suffer.”
“I wish I had your faith,” Anoush whispered admiringly.
“My husband, Mourad, gave me this gift. He taught me to have the faith to accept whatever life brings us, knowing, without question, that the best is yet to come for our children and us. Someday we’ll all be together again in heaven, with Jesus.”
Anoush stared into Kristina’s eyes and smiled. “I pray you’re right. In my heart I do know that God brought you and me together. Regardless of what may happen in Kahdem, I’ll always be thankful for your friendship.”
“And I yours,” Kristina whispered. She glanced back at Sirak, Mikael and Izabella sleeping peacefully on the ground. “Today, here, we are all blessed.”
Music reverberated from the gendarmes’ encampment for several hours before the lutes and tambourines finally fell silent. Drunken laughter filtered down from the plateau for a while longer before the night grew eerily quiet, except for a sporadic gust of wind that whistled through the dwarf shrubs dotting the desert floor.
Kristina lay awake anticipating Onan’s drunken arrival, but oddly, neither he nor any of the other gendarmes so much as showed their faces among the scattered deportees. Finally, she drifted off to sleep.
Three hours later, the pounding of hooves jarred Kristina awake. She bolted upright on her blanket. More than a hundred Bedouin warriors came galloping from the west across the sandy plateau. They charged into the encampment brandishing swords and erupted into a chilling chorus of cries and shouts. “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” Swinging their swords at the hapless gendarmes who ran from their tents, they rode swiftly through the camp slaughtering everyone in their path, except for a bevy of terrified gypsy courtesans who were swept up by trailing riders. A gunshot rang out, but it was only a fleeting sign of gendarme resistance.
“Oh, my God!” Kristina gasped. She jumped to her feet and rushed to her children. “Mikael and Sirak, run!” She grabbed Izabella and stumbled headlong into the darkness.
Sirak threw his knapsack over his shoulder and stumbled after Mikael and his mother through ankle-deep sand.
A large group of Bedouin tribesmen galloped down the sandy slope toward the refugees. Pleas for mercy filled the night. Killing everyone in their path, the Arabs galloped off in all directions to chase down the scattered refugees.
Kristina turned her ankle in loose sand and stumbled to her knees. Getting back to her feet, she hoisted Izabella on her shoulders and ran to a stand of brush. Mikael and Sirak ducked in behind her.
She peered through the darkness at the Bedouins attacking the refugees. Two Bedouins broke away from the others and galloped directly toward them. “Oh, my God, they’ve spotted us. Sirak, stay here with your sister while Mikael and I try to draw them away. Don’t move from this spot until they’re all gone. Do yo
u understand?”
Sirak nodded. His eyes were transfixed in terror.
“Mikael, run with me to those rocks!” Kristina whispered.
Kristina and Mikael dashed into the open and made a beeline for a dry riverbed. They only made it half way before the riders swooped down on them. One of the Bedouins flashed his sword and Mikael crumbled to the ground. The other rider jumped down and grabbed Kristina.
“Murderer!” Kristina screamed. She scratched fiercely at the Bedouin’s face.
The warrior subdued her with a powerful slap to the face. He forced her onto his horse and rode off into the night.
Izabella peered out from the brush. “Mama,” she whimpered.
Sirak drew his sister to his chest. Averting his eyes from the carnage, he brushed tears from her cheek. “Christ our God, help Mama and Mikael. Help me to take care of Izabella. Amen.”
The early rays of the sun rose over the western horizon and a bone-chilling wind gusted through the brush. In the muted light, Sirak watched in fear as three black-clad men with gleaming white turbans rode through the erstwhile gendarme camp.
Sirak glanced at his sister. Izabella was lying on her back staring up at the sky. She’d been that way for hours—trance-like, not uttering so much as a sigh. He squeezed her hand. “I’m here, Sister,” he whispered.
One of the riders, a younger man with a bushy mustache and beard, rode toward them from the campsite. Pausing beside the body of one of the deportees, he headed out to Mikael’s corpse.
Sirak watched the rider dismount and kneel beside his brother’s body. The man remounted his horse and gazed to the west. After a moment, he trotted directly toward the stand of brush concealing Sirak and Izabella.
“Izabella,” Sirak whispered, “the bad men are coming!” He pulled her up to her knees.
The rider spotted their movement in the brush and dismounted his horse. He was on them in an instant.
“Hello, little ones,” he called out in Arabic. His voice was melodious and gentle. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I’m Ammar of the Muwahhidun. What’s your name?”
Sirak stood up in the rocks. The man’s smile was warm and gentle. In an instant, Sirak knew he could trust the swarthy stranger. “I’m Sirak. This is my sister, Izabella.”
“Are you hurt?”
Sirak pointed at Mikael’s body. “No, but the bad men killed my brother, and they took our mama.”
The man stared back sadly. “You can’t stay out here alone. How about if I take you back to my house and ask my wife to make you something to eat? Then we’ll try to find your mama.”
Sirak contemplated the offer for several moments. Then he glanced at Izabella. “I can’t leave my sister.”
“There’s room on my horse for both of you.”
Sirak peered up at the man. He glanced at his sister. “Okay, as long as she can come, too.”
Ammar stepped into the brush. He patted Sirak on the shoulder reassuringly and picked up Izabella. Carrying her in his arms, he set her astride his horse and remounted. He pulled Sirak up behind him and trotted back to the other riders.
Ammar and the children rode west for nearly an hour before beginning a slow ascent into the mountains along a narrow winding road. Their route paralleled pictorial hillsides blanketed with olive and apple trees heavy with immature fruit. Nearby fields were ablaze with golden wheat swaying in the gusting breeze.
The tribesmen parted ways at a fork in the road and Ammar trotted up a weedy trail to a modest farmhouse nestled in a stand of olive trees. Izabella was sitting astride the horse in front of Ammar. Sirak rode behind the Druze, clutching his waist with one arm and the knapsack with the other.
Three girls wearing long black dresses and white scarves hurried out the front door. A middle-aged woman in similar dress followed them outside a moment later. They all crowded around the horse.
“Who are these children, Papa?” the oldest girl yelled.
“This is Sirak and his sister, Izabella. I found them stranded in the desert and they’ve had a terrible shock. They’re Armenian refugees who escaped a murderous attack on their caravan. The Bedouins killed their brother and rode off with their mother.”
“Poor little dears,” the woman cooed. She lifted Izabella down from the horse and cradled her in her arms. “Fatima, go heat water on the stove. Nazira and Layla, go find her some clothes in the shed behind the house.”
“Yes, Mama,” Nazira replied. She hurried off around the side of the house.
The woman carried Izabella to the front door of the house.
“Azusa,” Ammar called after his wife, “what about the boy?”
Azusa rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you find him something to eat? I’ll bathe this one first, and then her brother. Ali’s wife probably has some of her sons’ old clothing. Make yourself useful and go find something that fits him.” She disappeared through the door cradling Izabella.
It didn’t take long for Fatima to heat a large pot of water. Using olive oil and water, Azusa washed encrusted dirt and grime from Izabella’s tangled hair. She held the little girl in her lap and scrubbed filth off her face, meticulously dabbing at her eyes and around the base of her nose.
Izabella was expressionless and somber. She stared up at Azusa’s benevolent face, but made nary a sound.
Azusa wrung out the washcloth and scrubbed at Izabella’s hands. “Oh, my precious child, what have your sad little eyes seen? It was God’s will Ammar found you and you’re safe now. One day, God willing, you’ll smile again.”
Izabella and Sirak did smile again. For fourteen years Ammar and Azusa cared for them as if for their own children. Sirak labored beside Ammar in the olive groves, apple orchards and wheat fields. In the dormant months, Sirak attended the Druze school in the village.
Azusa and her daughters doted on Izabella, but the little girl never recovered fully.
Ammar and Azusa called themselves Muwahhidun. One is not able to convert to Druzism; one must be born into it. Since Sirak and Izabella would never be accepted into their adoptive parents’ religion, Azusa encouraged them to read the Bible Kristina had given to Sirak. It was difficult, however, as their understanding of the Armenian language was limited.
When Sirak was on the verge of passing from boyhood into adulthood, a life-altering event thrust him from his adoptive home. This experience, like the others before it, took him to a place he never expected to go....
CHAPTER 43
June 16, 1996
Richmond Heights, Ohio
Keri rapped on the door and glanced back at David and Michael. His sons were gathering up half a dozen old newspapers scattered across the yard.
David set his stack on the top step. “Maybe Papa Sirak should cancel the newspaper if he’s not going to read it.”
“He loves the paper. He must not be feeling well.” Keri knocked on the door again. Standing on his tiptoes, he peered over the curtains into the darkened kitchen.
Michael set his newspapers on top of David’s. “Maybe he forgot.”
“I just reminded him on Thursday. Let’s go around back.”
They walked around the side of the house and headed down the weed-studded brick driveway. Rounding a twisted dogwood tree, they spied a lone figure slumped in a lounge chair in the shade of a massive oak tree.
Keri rushed across the yard and gently gripped his father’s arm. “Papa,” he whispered.
Sirak awoke with a start. “What is it?” he gasped.
“Happy Father’s Day, Papa. The boys and I are here to take you to lunch.”
“It’s Sunday already?” Sirak wiped the sleep from his eyes and turned in his seat. “Hello, Michael. Hello, David.”
“Happy Father’s Day, Papa Sirak,” David replied. “You don’t look well.”
“I’ve had a fever the last few days, but I’m a little better today. I don’t think I should go out, though.”
“That’s fine, Papa,” Keri said. “We‘ll stay here. Do you have anythi
ng to eat?”
“I’ve got Choereg bread in the freezer and a couple cans of beef stew.”
“That’s perfect. Let me help you into the house.”
Keri helped his father up from the chair and led him to the back porch. David and Michael followed them into the malodorous summer room. Several garbage bags were strewn across the floor.
“Open some windows, David,” Keri said. “Michael, could you take those trash bags out to the curb?” He led Sirak through the living room and into the kitchen and seated him at the table. Then he opened a window and set about preparing the stew.
Keri ladled out four bowls of beef stew and David helped him carry them to the table.
Michael was chattering about the upcoming sixth game of the NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and Seattle Supersonics.
Keri sat down beside Sirak. “There you go. Be careful: it’s hot.”
Sirak slurped from his spoon. “It’s good. I haven’t eaten much these last few days.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Papa? You call me from now on if you get sick. Okay?”
“You’re busy, Son. I hate to bother you.”
“It’s no bother. I want to know...or do we need to think about other living arrangements?”
“Okay,” Sirak groaned, “I’ll call next time.”
“Should I cancel the paper for you? All the issues from the last week are out on the porch.”
“No, I’ll go through them once I get better.”
Conversation was subdued at lunch. David and Michael didn’t know what to talk about in the face of their grandfather’s obvious infirmity. Keri talked mostly about the summer activities of his grandchildren. Sirak listened attentively and asked several questions. Finally, a hush fell over the table.
The Ghosts of Anatolia Page 29