Anyush

by Martine Madden

  The old woman wept as she embraced her granddaughter. Gohar and Khandut had been searching for Anyush among the people in the square, and when they hadn’t found her they assumed the worst. It was Khandut now who was missing. She had gone to look for Sosi and Parzik, hoping for news of Anyush, and had never returned. Past the back of a wagon Anyush saw the line stretch ahead of her like a snake with its head buried in the hills. A lone figure on horseback broke away from it. As he drew closer Anyush could see it was Jahan, and she stepped back into the line beside her grandmother.

  He tried to talk to her, to engage her in conversation. He spoke as if nothing had changed, as if he was not a soldier nor she his prisoner. Did he really believe their situation could be redeemed with a few meaningless words? His need for forgiveness was contemptible to her and she turned away. She had nothing to say to him any more.

  Gohar was tired and thirsty but insisted on carrying Lale, pressing her like a relic to her breast. Further up the line, bread and goatskins of water were being handed out on the captain’s orders. Gohar insisted Anyush join the queue, but she refused. She would rather starve. Some time later Jahan rode past and dropped bread and a canteen of water at her feet.

  ‘Take it,’ Gohar said. ‘For the child’s sake.’

  Anyush picked it up and broke the bread in half, giving some to her grandmother and taking a little herself. The rest she put in her skirt pocket. Only for Lale, she told herself, feeling that the bread would choke her with every bite.

  They had walked a while when Anyush noticed her grandmother’s bare foot poking out beneath her skirt.

  ‘Here,’ she handed her one of her own shoes. ‘Put this on.’

  ‘I don’t need it. My feet are as hard as leather.’

  ‘You carry my daughter, Tatik, you wear two shoes.’

  Gohar’s old face broke into a smile.

  ‘Your mother eh, Lale? Just like her father.’

  She kissed her great-granddaughter’s head, as Anyush bent to tie the shoe onto her foot.

  ‘You there!’ A soldier, the Ferret, was watching then.

  ‘You,’ he pointed his whip at Anyush. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. I gave her my shoe.’

  ‘What’s in your shoe, old woman? She put money in your shoe?’

  ‘No, efendim. A little comfort for the road, that’s all.’

  ‘Take it off.’

  Gohar levered her foot out of the shoe and the soldier peered inside. Picking it up with his whip, he raised it to eye level then flung it into the scrub behind him.

  ‘What else have you hidden under there?’

  The tip of his whip was pointing at Anyush’s skirt.

  ‘No money or silver allowed,’ he said, his eyes creeping over her.

  ‘I have nothing.’

  ‘Give me the ring.’

  Anyush pulled her wedding band from her finger.

  ‘Hand over the rest of it. Now or I’ll have to look for myself.’

  ‘I swear, efendim, I’m carrying nothing.’

  ‘Lift your skirt.’

  Gohar closed her eyes.

  ‘Lift it!’

  Anyush hitched her skirts to her knees.

  ‘Higher.’

  ‘Efendim, she was only–’

  ‘Shut your mouth, old woman. Lift it. To your waist.’

  Others were listening, their faces turned away so as not to draw attention to themselves. Anyush did as he asked. The Ferret moved closer and placed the tip of his whip against her drawers.

  ‘Take them off.’

  ‘Efendim … please …’

  ‘Pull them down.’

  ‘Hanim!’

  Jahan and a foreign-looking man trotted down the line towards them, and Anyush dropped her skirts.

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘These women are carrying weapons, bayim. I saw her trying to hide something under her clothes.’

  ‘Get back to the line.’

  ‘But, Captain–’

  ‘Do as I say.’

  ‘We were told–’

  ‘One more word and I’ll charge you with insubordination. Now find Düzgünoğlu and look for somewhere to set up camp.’

  That first night on the march the sky was clear, and stars and a crescent moon lit the faces of the people lying or sitting on either side of the road. Exhaustion had quietened the children’s cries and a hush settled over the camp. Here and there the red tips of soldiers’ cigarettes flared near the supply wagons.

  At the base of a stony mound Gohar and Anyush sat close to where the horses were tethered. They were exhausted, and, although Anyush had alternated her shoe from one foot to the other, her feet were cut and blistered. Gohar was lying back in the sedge while Lale suckled at her mother’s empty breast.

  ‘You alright, Tatik?’

  ‘Better since the water.’

  She passed Anyush the goatskin and the half loaf of black bread.

  ‘I was at the house,’ Anyush said. ‘In the bedroom.’

  The horses’ hooves knocked off the hard ground and their bridles jangled as they nodded and whinnied into the warm night

  ‘You need to find your mother,’ Gohar said. ‘It was bad for her.’

  Early the following morning Anyush pushed past the line for water at the supply wagon. The old and the very young were still lying or sitting by the road, while the more able were gathering what belongings they had. Mothers rubbed mud on their children’s faces as protection from the sun and on their daughters’ faces as protection of another kind. The foreign soldier Anyush had seen with Jahan was perched on a low hill looking down on the caravan below.

  Further along, she spotted Sosi huddled with her mother and Havat by the side of one of the wagons. She ran over. Sosi raised her head, catching the sun full on her face. Her left eye was closed and her nose swollen into a bruised, misshapen mess.

  ‘Sosi,’ Anyush whispered, unable to take her eyes from her, ‘Did you … have you seen Khandut?’

  Her friend shook her head and turned her face towards her mother’s shoulder. Beside them Havat rocked to and fro, clutching her knees in dumb silence. Bayan Talanian’s eyes were closed, tears running silently down her cheeks. Nearby, a young woman Anyush knew from Bayan Stewart’s sewing group sat in the road like a stone thrown by a wheel. A pitifully thin child lay across her lap. The woman seemed unaware of her surroundings or the people moving in ever-widening circles around her.

  ‘Don’t go near.’ Jahan caught her by the arm. ‘The child has cholera.’

  Anyush shook herself free.

  ‘Go back to your grandmother,’ he said. ‘We’re moving on.’

  The second day was much like the first and all those that followed, though longer, hotter and more difficult. Food ran out. Children took to thievery and adults followed suit. Fights were common as the mood in the camp swung from aggression to exhaustion. No quarter was given to the pregnant, the sick, the young or the old. There were many miles to be covered in a day and everyone had to walk them.

  In the last stages of pregnancy, Parzik went into labour one hot afternoon. She walked and laboured, and walked again, and her cries could be heard the length of the caravan. Parzik’s mother and the twins had been taken in Ozhan’s convoy, so there was only her sister, Seranoush, and Anyush to soothe her in her distress. Jahan took the decision to set up camp early, and Gohar delivered a male child as the sun set behind Kızıldağ. Parzik wept that Vardan would never know he had a son. Because of her weakness following the birth, the captain allowed her to ride in a wagon on the following day’s march where she lay in a pool of her own blood calling for her mother. Following behind like a sleepwalker, Seranoush carried her new nephew for a number of days, but exhausted and too weak to hold him, Parzik’s sister finally abandoned the baby by the side of the road.

  ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘No.’

  Anyush took Lale from Gohar’s arms and sat down to feed.

  ‘Did you
look at the front? Behind where the soldiers are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have to find her. You have to keep searching.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean why?’

  ‘Why do we have to keep looking?’

  ‘Oh … Anyush!’

  ‘Don’t pretend, Tatik. She made your life as miserable as she made mine. She hated me, her own daughter. If she had her way, I would be married to Kazbek. Why should I worry about her?’

  ‘She didn’t hate you, Anyush.’

  ‘You have another name for it? I will never treat my daughter that way. Never! If I hadn’t had you, Tatik–’

  ‘If you hadn’t had me, you might have known her better. How much she cares about you.’ The old woman gripped Anyush’s arm. ‘I’m a stupid old woman, Anyush. Stupid and selfish. When your father died somehow I blamed Khandut because it was easy to blame a woman I never liked. She didn’t want to marry your father but I was one of those who insisted on it. The marriage was to settle a land dispute between our two families and it suited both sides. Everyone except Khandut. She was always different. A little strange because of what happened to her as a child. She was attacked in Kazbek’s wood at nine years of age and it left its mark. As time went on she became more peculiar. She never liked the company of men and found herself forced to marry one. It was an unbearable situation for her. But your father did love her. That was the tragedy of it. He saw a different side to her, a gentler side. He believed she would change. That she would come to have feelings for him.’

  Anyush wasn’t paying attention. The past was a place that didn’t concern her any more, only the present.

  ‘Anyush, listen to me. When your father died and you were born you looked so like him I felt I had my child again. I wasn’t about to lose him a second time. Nobody was going to take you from me, not even your own mother. There were times she tried to get close to you. Many times, but she found it hard. She didn’t trust easily and I made sure she got none from you. I came between you.’

  Lale had finished feeding and Anyush held the baby against her shoulder, but Gohar wasn’t done.

  ‘When the soldiers came and took her into the bedroom, I could see what I had never seen before. That she was only a child herself. A girl who never had a chance. But it was too late. There was nothing I could do for her. God forgive me, it was too late.’ Gohar shook Anyush’s arm. ‘You have to find her. Promise me, Anyush.’

  ‘Tatik–’

  ‘Promise. You must promise.’

  ‘Yes … yes, I will find her. I promise.’

  As darkness fell on the sixth day the convoy stopped for the night just short of a mountain pass. They were now in bandit country where the Shota tribes held sway. Rather than enter the defile as night approached, the captain decided that the caravan would pass through at first light while the sun was still low in the sky. Gohar’s progress had noticeably slowed by this time and she collapsed onto the roadway when the caravan halted. With very little water in the goatskin, Anyush had barely wet her lips all day so that her grandmother might have more. She had also been carefully rationing the bread and had almost lost it to the pilfering hands of an old man sleeping near them. What little was left she kept hidden in a fold of her skirt. Between stops she made her way to the wagon where Parzik lay in a fever. She no longer recognised Anyush or Seranoush, but called in a weakening voice for her child. Her two thin arms reached out for Lale, nestled in the sling at her mother’s breast. Anyush laid her daughter beside her friend, and Parzik smiled, kissing the baby until they both closed their eyes.

  Over the past few days Lale had become quiet, so still that Anyush could scarcely feel her breathe. Every now and then, Anyush would stop walking, pressing Lale tightly against her until she felt the small chest move against her own.

  In the evenings, at Gohar’s urging, she searched for her mother. Looking at the faces she passed, the dead as well as the living, she could find no trace of her. Khandut seemed to have vanished. Cholera and dysentery were spreading rapidly through the camp and on that sixth evening it claimed Parzik’s godfather, Meraijan Assadourian. His body was left at the side of the road when the convoy marched into the gorge the following day.

  The five-mile ravine was almost in full shade in the early morning, but by noon the sun was directly overhead and burned through headscarves and clothes. People cried out for water, but there would be no stopping. The captain announced that the convoy had to be fully through the gorge by nightfall. With Lale slung across her back, Anyush linked her grandmother’s arm and urged her to keep walking. Some time in the afternoon Gohar whispered that she needed to relieve herself urgently. Squatting down by the side of the road, the old woman clutched onto her granddaughter for support as evil-smelling diarrhoea splashed onto her legs and feet. Anyush struggled to keep them upright, watching the old woman clutch at her belly in pain.

  ‘Please God,’ Anyush prayed, cleaning her grandmother as best she could with a piece of her own skirt. ‘Please God, may it not be cholera.’

  The old woman’s legs were shaking as she tried to stand, and Anyush tipped the last dregs of water into her mouth.

  ‘I have to sit down. Just for a minute.’

  Gohar’s breath was coming unevenly, and Anyush lowered her gently to the ground.

  ‘You. Get up.’ The Ferret walked over, whip in hand. ‘Captain says no stopping. Get up, I said.’

  His hateful, animal face leered down at them. Anyush wanted to shout at him, to scream that her grandmother was old and hungry and sick, but she bit her tongue and whispered in Gohar’s ear. ‘Come on, Tatik. Let’s get this rat off our backs. Up you get. Lean on my arm, that’s it.’

  The Ferret covered his nose with his sleeve. ‘Wallowing in your own shit! Armenian sow!’

  Spitting on the ground at their feet, he backed away.

  The caravan struggled on and they clung to the base of the defile where shade was starting to creep across the valley floor. Jahan, the lieutenant and the German soldier rode up and down the line, scanning the slopes either side and shouting at the marchers to keep moving. For a time Jahan rode at the back where Anyush was walking with Gohar, holding her by the arm and urging her to walk just a little further. Something fell on the ground near her feet. A piece of salted meat wrapped in oilcloth and a water bottle. Anyush dived for them.

  A progress of sorts had been made. Despite the diminishing water and food supplies and the outbreak of cholera, the convoy had marched enough miles that reaching their destination began to seem possible. If Jahan could maintain this pace for four or five days more, they stood a good chance of reaching Gümüşhane. It would take another six days to get to Erzincan, and at a terrible cost. For every mile marched there was a slew of bodies in their wake. Disease and hunger, exposure and dehydration would claim many more. The number of marchers falling ill grew daily but there could be no stopping. He had to keep them moving. In open countryside they were an obvious target.

  Jahan hadn’t spoken to Anyush since leaving the village but watched from afar as she tried to keep her grandmother on her feet. They were separated now by a new reality, hunger, fear and desperation. All they had was this unending present where time existed only in miles. He watched her become frail and thin, weakening like the others. It was only in her eyes that he recognised something of her. Her eyes gave him hope.

  The broad expanse of plain was tantalisingly visible beyond the valley walls when he spotted the first of the Shota at the mouth of the gorge. A second group closed in behind where Anyush and her grandmother brought up the rear. The convoy was surrounded. A wall of mounted bandits was strung across the valley, shaded by the mountain behind them. Jahan scanned the long line of faces. To look at, these men might have been musicians or entertainers who trawled the bazaars and marketplaces in the towns. They wore colourful waistcoats, wide-sashed breeches and blue caps, which lent them an almost comical air. In contrast to their style of dress they carried belts o
f bullets across their chests and rifles at their sides. Far and wide these men had a reputation for rape and murder. Jahan and his sisters had been reared on cautionary tales of their brutality, and even the dogs on the street lived in fear of them. Word spread quickly down the line. Women stifled screams and those children who had mothers clung to them.

  Two men, one older and broader than the others, broke away from the Shota line and rode towards the caravan. Ahmet and Jahan moved out to meet them. The older man greeted the captain in Kurmanji.

  ‘Merhaba,’ Jahan replied, noticing the bandit was missing his right hand.

  Murzabey smiled, revealing even white teeth. ‘You are travelling with quite a following, young captain. Where are you making for?’

  ‘I was about to ask you the same question.’

  Murzabey threw back his head and laughed. ‘This …’ he gestured to the flat expanse beyond the valley, ‘is my country. I cross it at will.’

  ‘On the contrary, this land belongs to the Ottoman Empire of which we the soldiers of the 23rd Regiment are a part.’

  The Shota’s smile never faltered as his eye travelled over the line of women and children at the captain’s back.

  ‘The convoy is going to Gümüşhane and then Erzincan, by order of Colonel Abdul-Khan,’ Jahan said.

  ‘Then the colonel is an expedient man. You are carrying very little provision for such a journey.’

  ‘We have enough.’

  ‘I hear Gümüşhane is not a very welcoming place. It would be too bad if you were turned away on empty bellies. My friend the colonel tells me it’s a rough town.’ A ripple of laughter spread through his ranks. ‘But I will tell you, my friend, what I will do. I will relieve you of your charges. Take your men and ride on to Gümüşhane, and my men …’ Murzabey paused as more Shota appeared along either side of the valley walls and bolstered his rear. ‘My men will give you safe passage.’