‘No, bayim. None.’
Refusing Muslu’s offer of assistance, Jahan got to his feet and bade him goodbye. In almost complete darkness, he walked to the house on Grande Rue and lowered himself onto the front steps. The night had grown cold and the granite beneath him radiated a tomb-like chill. He sat there while the lamps in the windows went out and dense black cloud gathered above him, obliterating the stars and the night sky.
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Constantinople
October 3rd, 1916
One of our last days in this country and it has proved to be a difficult one. We have been staying with Henry Morgenthau and Josephine while waiting for a steamer to take us to Athens. One final obligation remained to be resolved, which I had put off until today.
This afternoon we went to the home of Colonel Olcay Orfalea, a man who is known to Henry through diplomatic circles. The house is a large pale stone building with balustraded steps leading to the front door and wrought-iron clad balconies on the second and third floors. It is the home of a man with ideas of status, and I was curious to meet him. A maid showed us into the salon where Madame Orfalea, a small, dark-haired woman, waited to receive us. She apologised for her husband, saying he’s an invalid and permanently incapacitated, and that she was deputised to entertain us on his behalf. Henry made the introductions and we sat in awkward silence while the maid brought in the tea things and set them on the low table before us. Lale sat quietly on Hetty’s knee, and Madame Orfalea complimented us on our beautiful child. I drank my tea, wishing with all my heart that this were over.
‘Forgive me, Madame Orfalea, for not writing in more detail,’ Henry said. ‘But discretion was essential. This is a matter of some delicacy and I think it would be better if you heard it directly from Dr Stewart.’
I put down my cup and related our story. How we had come to be the guardians of Anyush’s child, the details of the baby’s anonymous delivery to our lodgings and the note instructing us to bring Lale to the address on Grande Rue. I told her finally that Anyush’s whereabouts were unknown.
‘Why should this woman’s child concern my family?’ Madame Orfalea asked. ‘There are institutions for such children. I would be happy to recommend one.’
I explained that although we did not know who wrote the note, the child was brought to us in Gümüşhane where we believe her son, Captain Orfalea, was at the time.
‘What are you saying, Dr Stewart?’ Madame Orfalea asked.
‘We are as mystified by all this as yourself,’ Henry cut in. ‘But the note was quite explicit. The child was to be brought here.’
‘Let me see it.’
I took the letter from my pocket and gave it to her. She studied it intently before handing it back to me.
‘I do not know what you are suggesting, Dr Stewart, but this is not my son’s writing and the address is vague in the extreme. It could be any one of the houses on Grande Rue.’
‘Begging your pardon, Madame, but is that not your name on the bottom?’
‘This house is not a welfare institution, Dr Stewart. I cannot be expected to take in Armenian orphans simply because my son has a misguided sense of charity. Do you know the penalty for harbouring Armenians? I would not put you or your family in such a position and I am offended that you would ask it of mine.’
‘It is because this child is so threatened that we hoped you would feel sympathy for her,’ I said, my dislike of the woman increasing with every word.
‘Madame Orfalea,’ Hetty interrupted, ‘my husband and I are more than happy to keep the baby. Lale has been with us for some time and we have grown very fond of her. If you have no objection … that is, if there is no one in your household who has any … we will bring her with us to America. Henry has assured us he can arrange the papers.’
‘You do not require my permission. I have no claim on the child.’ Madame Orfalea smiled brightly. ‘You will hear no objection from me.’
‘Objection to what, Maman?’ Captain Jahan Orfalea, the young man I had last seen in his office at the old mill, was standing in the doorway.
‘Jahan, I didn’t hear you come in. You know Ambassador Morgenthau, of course and these are—’
‘Bayan Stewart! Dr Stewart! You are most welcome.’
The young captain was much changed. He was thinner and his face was scored with lines either side of his mouth. His hair was unwashed and his clothes hung indifferently on his frame. He had become a cripple since our last meeting, but a short leg and a pair of crutches were not what altered him. He came across the room to stand beside Hetty’s chair, his attention on the small bundle in her arms. ‘Is this who I think it is?’
Hetty looked down at Lale sitting in her lap. She held her for a moment before getting to her feet and indicating that the captain should take her place. Gently, she placed Lale in his arms. Despite the restrictions of the bonnet, Lale’s eyes were wide open and curious. She blinked a couple of times at this new and unfamiliar face.
‘She is … she looks so healthy,’ the captain said. ‘You have performed a miracle.’
I told him that Lale was severely dehydrated and malnourished when she came to us but that she hadn’t contracted any disease and was otherwise healthy.
‘And she’s stubborn,’ I added.
Lale chose this moment to vent her displeasure at being handed to a stranger. Her lips puckered and her chest heaved, and she opened her mouth and bawled.
‘Hey, hey … little one,’ the captain soothed, jogging her up and down on his knee.
Lale looked at him and cried louder, the white bonnet flopping around her wet, red face. She reached out to Hetty who stood with her arms pinned to her sides as though she had been turned to stone.
‘We will take our leave,’ Henry said. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Madame Orfalea.’
Our hostess nodded curtly and rang for the maid. Lale was crying louder, straining to reach Hetty whose lips trembled and whose eyes shone with tears.
‘Hetty,’ I said, taking her gently by the shoulders, ‘it’s time to go.’
It was Madame Orfalea who decided what friends and family would be told. She put it about that her son had married secretly in the east and his wife had borne him a daughter but had not herself survived the birth. The story caused a ripple of gossip in Constantinople’s drawing rooms for a week or two but was soon forgotten. For the family and Jahan, Lale’s arrival marked the beginning of a new phase in their lives. His sisters adored Lale, spoiling her and fighting over her, while Azize, the old nurse, was delighted to have a baby in her care once again. Jahan wrote to Dilar, who was now living with Armand in Paris, telling her about his baby daughter. She replied at length, bombarding him with questions and announcing her own imminent motherhood in the spring.
Jahan never tired of seeing Lale or of counting her small victories: her first tooth, her attempts to crawl, her shy smile so reminiscent of Anyush’s. What surprised him most of all was his mother’s reaction to her grandchild. Everybody agreed that Lale was an exact copy of her father, and it was this likeness that enabled Madame Orfalea to overlook her Armenian pedigree. Despite her protestations to the Stewarts, she took to his daughter in a way he did not remember her bonding with his sisters or himself. By the time Lale had started to creep along the floor, she invariably made her way not to her two adoring aunts but to her grandmother’s outstretched arms.
Another person who took a great interest in Jahan’s daughter was Mademoiselle Hanife Bey. She had replaced his sisters’ tutor when old Monsieur Grandjean fled the country after France joined the war. Hanife was the daughter of Jevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha and one of the leaders of the CUP. She was intelligent and handsome, and when she began to join Jahan regularly for afternoon tea his mother was more than pleased. Madame Orfalea would drop in to take Lale upstairs or for a nap or a walk in the park, leaving Hanife and Jahan to talk alone.
Jahan was not sure what his father had been told. Because of his
illness Colonel Orfalea was confined to his room and had not encountered his grandchild, but Jahan would not have brought her to him anyway. He couldn’t forgive him for what he had done and, despite his mother’s pleas, father and son remained apart.
The years 1916 and 1917 would be a bloody for the Allies, the Germans and the other Central Powers alike. Two of the most important battles of the war took place during this time, the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme. In the Middle Eastern theatre the war was being fought along the Mesopotamian front mostly against the British with varying degrees of success. It was a year that saw the first use of armoured tanks and the Germans’ highly efficient ‘Fokker Scourge’ aircraft. As an engineer it should have been a time for Jahan to prove his worth, but he had little interest in any of it. Because of his amputation he had not been recalled to active service nor had he been offered any of the desk jobs many of the injured officers were given at the War Ministry. Neither did he look for one.
His world had contracted to the vicinity of his parents’ home, and what had at first seemed like a prison was now his refuge since Lale’s arrival. He could sometimes forget what had happened beyond its walls, beyond the boundaries of the city, beyond the limits of his waking day. As the old year drew to a close and the New Year brought no signs of victory for the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers, the household of one crippled soldier and his family had found an unexpected tranquillity.
The lieutenant left Anyush in the care of his widowed uncle, Hasan Kadri, a wealthy merchant in the town of Gümüşhane. Kadri was about to leave for his summer home in İskenderun and agreed to take the Armenian, disguised as a Muslim servant.
In the Kadri household she had been taken under the wing of Nevra, the cook, who fed her, deloused her and asked no difficult questions. The other servants were not friendly but mostly they left her alone. Once in İskenderun, Kadri arranged passage for her on a boat leaving for Beyrouth, and after procuring the necessary travel permits and her ticket, he left her at the dock.
She waited by the booking office where she could see the boats coming and going into İskenderun sound. Dressed in her abaya and burqa, she looked no different to other Muslim woman and sat near a family group who were waiting for the same boat. In a small bag at her feet was a change of clothes, a small sum of money and her ticket. She sat looking at the water, watching the surface lapping greasily against the dock wall, when a shadow fell across her.
‘We were never properly introduced,’ the man said. ‘My name is Armin Wegner.’ He removed his hat and the sun shone on his cropped hair and pale face. The German soldier looked different somehow, his uniform hanging loosely on him and his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. He seemed diminished, as if the people in his photographs had claimed part of him for themselves.
‘I am in your debt, Armin Wegner,’ she said. ‘How did you know it was me?’
‘The man who bought your ticket at the booking office … he called you Anyush. I wasn’t sure but I hoped it might be you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m working at the cholera hospital. At least I was.’
‘I thought you had been arrested in Gümüşhane.’
‘For a time, yes. They found out about my pictures and I would have been court-martialled if Von der Goltz hadn’t intervened. I was sent to work at the fever hospital in Sivas and then the cholera hospital here. I’ve been ill so they’re sending me home.’
Behind him, stevedores were unloading crates from a cargo ship when one fell and broke open, strewing the quayside with bananas. The family next to them rushed over.
‘My train leaves tomorrow for Berlin,’ Armin said. ‘I was killing time wandering around the port when I heard that man mention your name. It’s an unusual name.’
Shouts and curses from the crowd gathered around the broken crate carried to them on the wind, and small boats tugged at their moorings like dogs chained to the harbour wall. Rigging clattered and clanged in the breeze blowing off the sea, and a ship sounded its bell as it passed the breakwater and reversed its engines to berth.
‘Do you know what happened to the others?’Anyush asked. ‘To Captain Orfalea?’
‘I’ve seen him. He was operated on in Sivas. They did the best they could, but he lost the leg. He’s been sent back to Constantinople.’
‘He’s a cripple?’
‘Yes.’
Turning towards the water, Anyush could see the outline of a ship on the horizon. It appeared to hang between the sea and sky while the sun shone in bright flashes around it.
‘Did he mention Lale to you? My daughter?’
‘He spoke about her. He said she was given into the care of an American couple. A Dr Stewart and his wife.’
‘Dr Stewart? Are you sure?’
Armin nodded.
‘But I thought …? Did Jahan go back to Trebizond?’
‘No. The Stewarts were in Gümüşhane.’ He looked at her for a moment. ‘They were leaving for America.’
Out at sea the ship had become indistinct. It grew hazy and pale, fading into the horizon until it vanished from sight. From behind her burqa Anyush watched it disappear, too far to identify any more. America was on the other side of the world, an unfathomable distance away, but Lale was alive. Nothing else mattered.
‘There’s something I would like you to have,’ Armin said, taking the rucksack from his back. He opened it, took out a book and leafed through the pages. A photograph fell from it and Anyush picked it up. It was a picture of Jahan and his lieutenant. They were standing side by side, caps straight and uniforms buttoned. Lieutenant Kadri looked solemnly at the viewer but Jahan appeared to be smiling.
‘And take this,’ Armin said handing her a fistful of money. ‘You’ll need it.’
‘No, you have done enough.’
He pushed it into her hand as the siren blew to board the ship. ‘You’d better go. Get on now, before the others.’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled, though he couldn’t see it. ‘Thank you Armin Wegner.’
Five years later
Beyrouth, nestled in Saint George Bay, was clapsed like a lover in the arms of the Chouf Mountains. Beyond the boats and tin shacks of Batroun Harbour, tall buildings of pale stone and yellow brick lined the wide paved streets. The town was once grand, but when Anyush stepped off the boat and saw it for the first time, it was not as she had imagined it. Because of the blockade set up along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts, Beyrouth was in the grip of a famine. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese had died of hunger before the end of the war, and a cholera epidemic had overrun the city so that bodies lay rotting in the streets as fodder for the rats. That first day it seemed to Anyush that she had returned to the scene of her worst nightmares.
For six weeks she slept under a bridge with three other Armenian families who offered her the protection of numbers. She was hungry and cold and never less than afraid, but a chance meeting with a woman from Trebizond resulted in her moving to the Armenian Refugee Camp. It was located on a patch of waste ground in the Beyrouthi suburb of Karantina, where jumbled-together shacks and lean-to cabins were fashioned from iron sheeting, old doors and loosely stacked concrete blocks as well as the remnants of Red Cross tents. A few chickens pecked at the dirt, and clotheslines stretched from dwelling to dwelling, crossing the spaces like a badly drawn spider web. At first, Anyush shared a hut with five children and three adults, but the removal of a bone from a child’s throat brought her to the attention of Dr Altounyan, the Armenian doctor who ran the orphanage and held clinics at the camp. He offered her the job of nurse’s assistant at the orphanage hospital, but by then word had got around that she had worked for Dr Stewart, and she found herself in the role of camp nurse and first-aid doctor. Dividing her time between the hospital and the camp, she was given the privilege of a shack to herself – one room, just wide enough that when she lay down her head and feet touched the opposing walls. She had a bed-roll to sleep on, an upturned crate for a ta
ble and a box to hold her tin cup, her plate and her old abaya and burqa. Food was cooked outdoors over fires or stoves, and a trench dug at one end of the site served as a latrine.
Anyush was happy in Karantina. Nobody in the camp spoke about what had happened but they were drawn to each other, to memories played out alone and in silence. On quiet nights when Anyush could hear the distant sound of waves breaking on the shore, she thought of the village. Of her family and the faces of her friends. Of her old school classroom and the first time she had ever seen Dr Stewart. She remembered the feel of wet sand beneath her feet and the taste of Gohar’s lavash and the early morning smell of sap oozing from the pines. She thought of her old life like a story in one of Bayan Stewart’s picture books, and, though she mightn’t have wished to, she thought of Jahan.
The orphanage where Anyush worked took up one side of a sunny square in Bourj Hammoud. Known locally as the children’s hospital, it had been housed in an abandoned convent of Catholic nuns. The building was three storeys high, made of cut stone and with arched and barred windows that faced onto a central courtyard. Surrounded on all sides by the city, a newly chiselled block of granite over the door informed the visitor that this was the Armenian Orphanage Hospital of Beyrouth, funded by Near East Relief. Two security men sat in a small hut at the gate.
‘Günaydın, Anyush,’ Arshak, the younger man, greeted her.
Ohannes also lifted his hand and smiled.
Arshak had come from Adana on the Mediterranean coast and was almost completely blind. Matron Norton had nicknamed him Caesar because she said he reminded her of a bust of the Roman emperor she had once seen in a museum. He had a noble head, the shape visible beneath his close-cropped hair, but it was the white discs of his almost blind eyes that most resembled an ancient statue. Arshak didn’t live in Karantina with the other Armenians but slept in the security hut on the hospital grounds and still managed to work as a messenger boy and handyman. He was devoted to Matron Norton who had taken him in even though he was over sixteen and should have been sent to the Home for the Blind. British soldiers had found him wandering alone in the Syrian desert where he had survived for two years on grass, roots and herbs. He had some sight in his left eye and none at all in his right but had the ability to hear what no one else could through walls and ceilings and doors. Arshak never spoke of how he had come to be in the desert, but it was said that he had lost his entire family in the concentration camp at Deir al-Zor. The older man, Ohannes, was Lebanese by birth, Armenian by birthright and a relative of Dr Altounyan.
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