Between the Two Rivers: A Story of the Armenian Genocide

by Aida Kouyoumjian

  “You?”

  “Yes, me,” he said and helped her up.

  “And I thought you were going to steal my quilt!” Mannig said with shame.

  He grinned. “You ought to restrain yourself from fighting big fellows. It is safer to accompany lions than intrude on foraging boys.”

  Mannig’s heart skipped a beat.

  “You are fast, but no match for his size,” he said, brushing dung off her shoulders.

  Neither word nor sound of breath came from her.

  “Promise me to avoid scoundrels at all times,” he said, handing Mannig her bag.

  “He stole everything I grabbed,” Mannig whimpered.

  “You can have mine,” he said, and scooped a palmful of his collection into her bag.

  Amazing! Might generosity survive amid ruined lives? He was different from the others, physically, too. Squashed manure covered muscled arms and greenish masses smeared his hair, further attracting flies. Moist drips sneaked behind his ears, sparkling like stars. And he? He shone like the moon.

  “Come!” he said, leading the way. “I know a baker near the river who needs this kaka.”

  “What will I get for it?”

  “Bread, of course! He’ll give you a fresh loaf, if he still has unsold ones. Otherwise, he will make up for it with two loaves the next time. He is a good man.”

  Mannig looked into his black eyes with disbelief. This boy shared secrets with her about his baker. Without qualms, she followed him. He even showed her new pathways undiscovered by many foragers. She loved him.

  “We should go to the river and wash while the sun is still warm,” he said. “What is your name?”

  “Mannig. Yours?”

  “Dikran.”

  She followed him to the riverside more from awe than necessity. Her heart beat fast, yet she was not afraid. She watched his gait and followed his pace with assurance. His gallant demeanor overwhelmed her.

  By the river shore, he stood coyly behind a rock, guarding the dung bags while she waded in, fully dressed. She splashed in and out of the cold water. Every now and then, she heard him singing, “I am still here and the bags have not gone to Baghdad yet.”

  She looked toward his hiding place wondering if he peeked at her. Only his voice filled the noonday silence. She giggled. He had earned her trust.

  During his turn dunking himself in the river, he slapped the coldness of the surface a few times before swimming a speedy few yards out and back.

  How thrilling, Mannig thought. I wish I knew how to swim.

  He sat on a rock to dry in the sunshine. He is like a miracle.

  “You are very pretty,” he said, watching her squeeze the water out of her hair. “Cleanliness is Godliness and, in your case, it reveals your beauty.”

  What an exciting voice! Her cheeks burned. Propriety demanded lowering her gaze, yet her senses insisted on focusing on him lest he vanish like an echo.

  He touched her cheek.

  Her lashes fluttered up and down.

  “Yes!” he said. “Even a little smile reveals a dimple below this cheek bone.”

  Ah, his touch! Goose bumps tickled her body.

  “I found a spot for me in the khan,” he said as they approached their shelter.

  Her insides stirred.

  “I will stay here,” he said, “until the Middle East Relief Organization actually opens an orphanage.”

  Middle East Relief Organization. Hum! Where had she heard the name before?

  “We’ll see if a Barone Mardiros of Baghdad actually arrives to keep his promise,” Dikran said, more to himself than to Mannig.

  He had captured her attention a while ago, but talk of an orphanage tantalized her. That night, she lay under her quilt wearing a big smile. My hero.

  She wanted his happiness as strongly as she wanted to collect dung, seek food, or protect her quilt. Stealthily she brought out the half-loaf of bread from under her mat and took a bite. She decided to save a chunk for him, perhaps share it in the morning.

  Before falling asleep, she recalled the clear glow in his smiling black eyes at the khan entrance earlier that day. Since I’m thinking of him, might he be thinking of me?

  Dikran—named after an Armenian king. Even his name is heroic.

  5—Funeral Feasts

  The reason for Dikran’s support and care for her eluded Mannig.

  In an environment where only the self mattered, Dikran habitually shared a chunk of bread he found or a bit of dung to exchange for food. Why give anything when he himself owned nothing? Often the two began foraging the city at sunrise, returning empty-handed to the khan before the onslaught of the cold night. In her own niche in the dark, she debated disclosing the location of her grass-carpeted grave. Every morning she woke, uncertain whether to tell Dikran of her treasure, since her grass-supply was dwindling.

  While they were searching together for edibles in a new alley, Dikran led her to his baker. “You can give your chips to him today.”

  Mannig queried his jet eyes. He’s even divulging his food source. Should I tell him about mine?

  She took the disk of flat bread from the baker in exchange for her horse droppings. As soon as she had cracked it in half, she began stuffing it in her mouth, bite after bite. The bread really was filling—more so than the green clovers in the grave. But less reliable as daily fare.

  Sensing Dikran’s gaze, she stopped swallowing. His disheartened look pressed her to crack another chunk and give it to him while she gobbled the rest. She reached for his hand. “I will show you my hideout.”

  The cemetery brimmed over with a procession of Muslim-Arab wailers, inching toward the location of her secret grave. Her heart crumpled with the melancholic minor scale of the dirge, and her eyes widened in fear of losing her prized pit. Her soul, on the other hand, embraced the ululating waves wafting towards her. How beautiful! Musing over the melody, her body picked up a rhythm, and she swayed wide and short, in step with the procession.

  “This is bad,” Dikran latched on to Mannig’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, no,” Mannig freed her hand. “I like their singing. I want to hear more.”

  “Singing? That won’t feed us,” Dikran said, grabbing her arm again. “Let’s go.”

  “You go,” she jerked away from him. She didn’t notice him leave; so engrossed was she in the emotional display of the mourners.

  The voices rose as their bodies stretched toward the sky. In unison, they stomped; in succession, they tiptoed forward; light steps accompanied spread arms, which then fell and flapped with the rhythmic lament. Their hands slapped their chests in a regular cadence, twice in a row, and then their cheeks—men, women and children thumping themselves.

  With a tempo all her own, Mannig flowed with the mourners. She imitated their long, wavering, high-pitched sound and wondered if she, too, resembled a howling dog. Of course! Except I can’t trill like these professionals. Emitting a high-pitched voice camouflaged her failure to accompany it with a rapid movement of the tongue.

  Mannig watched closely the way women placed right hands horizontally over the upper lips, opened their mouths, and moved the tongue from left to right repetitively. Mannig tried it but produced only a sharp sound, with a variation of her own concoction. She imitated their movements but mostly improvised her own. She exuded agony with her limbs, yet cheerfulness filled her insides; she moaned for the onlookers, yet felt her core rekindling. A heavy footstep changed into an intricate gait and evolved into a graceful leap. She visualized her movements as if in a mirror, floating with surreal fervor, whirling in her yellow dress in the parlor in Adapazar.

  At the sound of piercing trills, she opened her eyes—no yellow dress, no parlor. Still in dun sack. She blended right in with the children toddling toward the entrance of a house.

  Faces peeked from window slits high in the brick walls. Female shrieks drifted in from a section in the courtyard while a host of tearful women, dressed in black muslin garments, lean
ed over the rails of the second-floor balcony, viewing the grieving demonstrators.

  The procession entered the open courtyard, Mannig in tow. She squatted with them in a circle along an array of potted pink carnations, amid dizzying fragrances.

  “So your good mother is like mine,” the girl of ten or twelve sitting next to Mannig said, rolling out her Arabic words. Not wishing to violate the respectful silence, the girl covered her mouth with one hand and pointed her elbow to a handful of women lamenting in the center of the courtyard. “My good mother scolds me if I weep with her.”

  “Did somebody die in your family?”

  “No one, good God forbid!” the girl gasped. “My good mother is a good mourner. She wails good; she moans good. When somebody dies in a good family, she weeps in their good house. The good people give her good food. I can mourn just like my good mother and do everything she does—I am good—but my good mother makes me sit and wait.”

  Surprised to hear of the reward, Mannig asked, “Do you mean people give stuff to eat for crying?”

  “Good food and good things.” The girl directed Mannig toward the lamenters.

  Astonished, Mannig watched the professional mourners strip their top garments to the waist. So many breasts! Bare and bobbing—some up and down, others helter-skelter, each woman’s uniquely shaped. The elongated swung from side to side; others, nearly flat, stuck to the ribs; and a couple of pairs were bloated with milk, ready to fill a pail. The women surged upward and bent deep; they picked up handfuls of ash, and strewed it on their long black hair. Their faces and chests, streaked in gray lines, shone with sweat and tears. With shredded mourning sackcloth, they wiped their faces. In deference to the grieving family on the balcony, they wailed great cries—sharp, shrill, and ear-piercing shrieks. They sustained trills, while the women folk of the dead intoned with prolonged ululations.

  “The good dead, up there,” the girl pointed to the sky, “they appreciate these good lamentations.”

  Mannig focused her attention on the mouths of the mourners, and her lips mimicked their words. Her shoulders lifted up and down with the tempo, and her head swirled and whirled, repeating the phrases of the rhythmic chant:

  Oh my Hassan—my son, my son,

  Would God, I had—had died for thee,

  Oh my Hassan—my son, my son,

  Gone forever—not your glory.

  Mannig nudged the girl. “What is Hassan?”

  “Hassan is the good name of the good dead of today,” she said. “We change the name of the good dead at other good funerals. Tomorrow my good mother laments for Ibraheem, another good dead.”

  “Hassan died in the war,” murmured a child nearby.

  “My father fought in the war,” said another. “But God spared his death. He was the one who brought the sad news about Hassan’s death. Poor Hassa …”

  Two maids appeared in the courtyard. They hauled a huge metal serving tub, taking short, heavy steps. A whiff of rosemary and roasted lamb preceded the servants. Crossing over to the grieving mother, they placed the tub before her.

  Chunks of meat steamed atop a heap of pearly rice while the grease-drenched, fried eggplant-wheels shone around the base of the white mound.

  Hassan’s mother wiped her tears with her robe and motioned to the grieving family to surround the tub.

  Mannig’s eyes widened; a burst of saliva flooded her mouth at the arrival of a similar tub, heaping with butter-soaked grains of rice. They carried it outside the house to the alley for the cluster of men grieving amongst themselves, without the guidance of professional mourners.

  “The men do it differently,” the good girl whispered. “They lament for Hassan by bubbling smoke in their water pipes. Every now and then, one man recounts Hassan’s excellent deeds while the rest nod with sadness and smoke their narguilla. The gurgling stops, and all eyes focus on the maids with the food.”

  The smell of steaming fluffy rice wafting with the third tub’s content brought Mannig to tears, even as the food was placed in the center of the courtyard for the wailing women. She sensed the good girl preparing to pounce when her mother had uttered her last shriek. The professional mourners scurried to form a thick circle surrounding the tub and, with a loud thud, dropped their haunches onto the brick floor in a show of exhaustion. They dipped their hands into the rice and its trimmings.

  The good girl darted to her mother, and the rest of the children, tailing theirs, slithered between the bodies to reach the food.

  Mannig pretended to be swept along with the wave of dashing children. She hovered around from woman to woman until she found a large person engrossed in her own eating. She won’t notice a scrawny girl huddled behind her. Mannig extended her skinny arm against the woman’s hip, groping for an opening to the tub. Her nose was muffled in the folds of the woman’s black robe. Will I suffocate? How else can I reach the food? She held her breath, closed her eyes, and pushed her hand farther. Amahn! Her fingers touched the moist, warm grains. She cupped a palmful and, clasping her fingers tightly, retracted her arm. She panted a few big breaths before letting the pungent rice slide down her throat.

  Then and there, at that very moment, she knew the taste of heaven—a taste that could not be satiated with one bite alone. She pushed her arm in and out, back and forth, and stuffed her mouth with handful after handful.

  I must savor this feast of life tomorrow.

  6—‘Small Wit, Active Feet’

  Wailings beckoned Mannig.

  As freed soldiers from the defeated Turkish army returned home in 1918, bearing the bad news of those killed in action, lamentations filled the skies of Mosul. To Mannig, crying voices meant a banquet of steamed rice and promised an end to stomach-growling hunger.

  As she became a professional mourner, Mannig wept and feasted with them. Grieving families stopped shooing her away as an intruder, and the ululating coterie, in the heat of their emotional outbursts, overlooked her presence. Mannig discovered a steady source of food in homes of the rich, in hovels of the poor, among small families or amid the entourage of clans. Their sorrow ensured her joy; her exuberance, their comfort. Dikran? He provided her solace.

  Like the Moslawis, she excelled in wailing and lamenting. Visualizing herself dressed in her yellow organdy dress twirling in the parlor of her Adapazar home, she invented unique moves. Her improvisations blended with the steps of the professional mourners. Soon, she modified their standard routine with distinctive touches of her own. On occasion, she stepped into the lead and gained a front seat next to the tub of rice.

  Upon concluding one feast in a new neighborhood, she recognized Romella’s house. Stomach full and anxieties lessened, she sauntered toward it. Seeing her kindergarten teacher bent over kneading dough in a tub in the courtyard, she approached.

  “Such a long time since I have seen you,” Romella said, lifting hands sticky with dough. “Let me hug you with my elbows.”

  More than the smell of yeast, or the soft folds of the blue, floral tunic, Mannig clung to Romella’s breast. In the comfort of her embrace, all tensions disappeared. Am I in Mama’s arms?

  “Let me look at you,” Romella said. “The color in your cheeks tells me you are well.”

  Mannig nodded and followed her across the courtyard to the sunken baking oven—a meter-deep hole dug in the ground and plastered with clay.

  Romella crouched beside the mouth of the pit and peered in. “Oye!” She pulled up. “The kaka coals are still very hot. I have to wait until the flames stop licking.” Resting on her knees, she slapped the surface of the dough, collapsing its puffed-up dome.

  Mannig had learned how to bake bread during her stay with the Bedouin. “May I help?” she asked, crouching beside Romella.

  “My khatoon dislikes others touching her dough,” Romella said, scanning the balcony of the courtyard. She pinched a wad of dough, balled it into an orange-sized chunk, and laid it on the flour-sprinkled cloth. She placed six other balls beside it then covered them with a blanket.
“They need a short nap.”

  Seeing a bit of dough left in the brass bowl, Mannig said, “There’s enough for another one.”

  “That is the starter for tomorrow’s batch,” Romella said, and tucked it into a moist and yellowing cheese-cloth. She picked up a wooden dowel and rolled one of the dough-balls into a large, thin disc.

  “The Arabs used their hands to flatten it,” Mannig said.

  “In Mosul, we are civilized,” Romella snickered, waving the slender walnut rolling-pin. “This, you must admit, is twentieth-century progress.”

  “I’m making progress in my life, too,” Mannig said. “I’ve gone beyond foraging for food. Instead, I go to funeral feasts. They’re everywhere.” She chuckled and added in Arabic, “The good dead die every day.”

  “Where did you learn to say such things?” Romella scowled. With a toss of her beautiful copper-red hair, she giggled, inducing Mannig to laugh as if sharing a secret.

  Mannig felt a new closeness. Knowing and loving her teacher so dearly stirred a yearning to stay near. Belonging to someone meant staying well and alive. She ached for a lasting bond. It hurt as fiercely as if she were receiving the slaps Romella gave the flattened, round dough she applied to the walls of the hot oven. “Can I live with you, Miss Romella? I promise I will lighten your chores. Fetch firewood for your cooking? Do whatever your Khatoon needs to be done. You don’t even have to feed me. I can get my own food as long as people die in Mosul.”

  “I, too, want you to live with me, Mannig-Jahn,” Romella said. “The Khatoon of this house forbids it.” Within a minute, she peeled a steaming golden round of Arabic bread from the pit. She tossed it onto a basket made of date-palm fronds and fanned her oven-heated face. “One day, Allah Kareem, as the Arabs plead for God’s mercy, I will have my own house, and you will become my daughter. Now tell me more about your—what did you call it?—Ah, the funeral feasts.”

  “The mourners cry for the dead. That’s all,” Mannig answered half-heartedly, rolling her shoulders as the mourners did. “I know how they do it. Do you want to see?” Before waiting for an answer, she jumped to her feet, wailing high and low, stepping lightly then stomping her feet. She raised her fluttering arms with a rhythm she had devised, “Oh, my Hassan, my son, my son ….”