The Seamstress of Ourfa

by Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss

  “There he is,” Azniv the Deliverer smiled. “Already knows his sister’s call. Now we can get on with business. Either we wait for him or I can make tea which brings on the pains, makes things move faster.” She sat on her heels and cracked her fleshy fingers. “So, what’s it to be?”

  Khatoun looked at her. Iskender was still in Aleppo. In his last letter he’d written a poem ‘Catching my Son as he Falls from the Womb,’ which had brought them all to tears as Thooma read it out loud, but even if they sent Iskender a telegram right now, he’d never make it in time. The journey took a good two days and nights if you travelled flat out and Khatoun couldn’t imagine being in labour for that long. “I don’t know,” she grimaced, “I’ve heard the tea makes the pain worse.”

  “Pain is pain. Without pain we don’t appreciate what we end up with. Anyway,” Azniv the Deliverer tapped the bag at her waist, “I have plenty for pain.”

  By now Ferida and the voiceless daughter were back, busying themselves with a large bowl and a pitcher of steaming water.

  “Why don’t you let me take a look,” Azniv the Deliverer said. “Lie back and bend your legs; maybe there’s something else I can do. The bowl, please.” She washed her hands, lifted Khatoun’s nightdress and immersed her arm up to the elbow. A sharp pain ripped through Khatoun’s body and a sudden gush of water soaked the bed. “There we go,” Azniv smiled, exposing her sharp, evenly spaced teeth as she washed her hands again. “Now he knows we’re here.”

  “What did you do?” Ferida asked, suspiciously.

  “Tickled him on the head. Got the sack out the way. Won’t be long now. By the way, the water was the perfect temperature, Ferida jan, thank you.” She stood up and took the blackened poker from her daughter. “Soon as the head comes out, the Devil’s ready to jump. This will confound him.” Azniv the Deliverer walked the perimeter of the room, drawing a cross on each wall with the sooty tip of the sis. “God is the deliverer. I am but his medium. God bless this child.” Her daughter followed her, sprinkling salt at her feet and spitting freely into the air.

  As she attended to God and the Devil, the house waited in a haze of bread and fennel tea. Everyone spoke in a murmur, even Baby Alice who sat in the kitchen watching the pots boil with Mertha. Ferida shuffled around the edges of the room, following the midwife, tut-tutting non-stop at the spider-like daughter. Thooma appeared at the door for a moment before retreating with a wave to smoke outside the kitchen and Seyda reappeared, fully dressed, her hair pulled back in a clean, starched head kerchief. She settled down next to Khatoun. The scent of soap and roses.

  “Are you cold?” she asked.

  “Ohhhhh,” Khatoun moaned. “Ahhhh.”

  “She’s shivering.”

  “Told you it would be quick,” Azniv said, putting the poker down, and rolling up her sleeves. “Come on, girl, let him slip into the world like a big fish!”

  The first five pushes were silent. The sixth pierced the walls and the head was out, the cord wrapped twice around the baby’s neck. Azniv the Deliverer speedily unwound it, showing her daughter how to make a hook of her finger and follow the cord around. With his body still yet to slip the stream, the baby let out a little mewl and a final push sent him skidding into Azniv’s arms. With her thumbs she rubbed the blood into his cheeks and laid him onto Khatoun’s chest where he yawned, snagged a nipple and sucked.

  “Not two breaths into the world and he’s hungry,” Mertha cried from the doorway. “Masha’Allah, Grandson!”

  After he had suckled, Ferida took the baby aside and bathed him in egg froth and rosewater. She took a small cube of fat, melted it in her fist and rubbed it all over his body before swaddling him tight. Miraculously, the baby dozed peacefully through everything. Azniv inspected the afterbirth, deemed it full of good tidings and wrapped it in cloth for burial instead of the fire. Barely two hours had passed since her arrival, but the news had already travelled and a small crowd was gathering at the walls of the compound. A healthy baby was always good news and a stream of mothers came by to drop off baskets of fruit and pastries. The huddle of men smoking under the palm trees pushed and slapped Thooma, getting overly boisterous when they heard it was a boy. At the baby’s first cry a cheer had gone up and now Ferida went out to see them. She handed sweets out to the children and almost broke into a smile as she pinched the littlest on the cheek.

  Back in Aleppo, Iskender had no idea he had a son tucked up safely in bed until the telegram arrived the next day.

  ‘It was early stop It’s a boy stop He misses his Baba stop.’

  That night the raki flowed and everyone ate for free at Zankagadoun, Iskender’s family diner.

  “You must go immediately!” Digin Iskuhi (landlady, restaurant help, mothersisterwife substitute) cried. “Your first son! God bless him,” she spat in between her words, burst into tears and ran from the room. An hour later, just in time for the supper crowd, she returned, pulled Iskender down from one of the tables where he stood reciting foreign nonsense and pressed a plain paper package into his hand. When he opened it a pair of sky blue jackets crocheted in fine wool fell into his hands.

  “It’s the softest wool from India,” Digin Iskuhi wept. “They comb it bit by bit from the neck of a living goat. I kept them twenty years. Ever since the twins…God bless their souls. They only got to wear them one time. Take them before the moths do. And listen to me; don’t waste your time here. Go back to your homeland. Back to your family. That is the most precious gift God can give.” She patted his shoulder and was about to plant a kiss on his lips but was stopped by the loud cheer from the other diners. “Leave us alone!” she laughed, one arm wrapped around Iskender’s skinny neck. “He’s young enough to be my son!” Then she kissed him with passion.

  When the last customer had been dragged out from under the tables and sent singing into the street, Iskender wandered upstairs to the apartment. The rooms were empty. Nothing superfluous about. There were no clothes to put away, no dishes to clean; only towers of books and that sea of paper drowning his desk. He dropped into his seat and stared at the open pages in front of him. Figures and numbers jumbled together and swept apart again. What had happened to numbers, he thought. They used to be his friends. Now, whatever he did with them, however he stacked them, they never added up. With or without a drink. It was a disease he’d picked up and couldn’t shake. Losing money. It stank.

  He was up to his neck in loans, the money that came in was never enough and the young girl he’d hired to replace Ferida in the kitchen spent more time in tears than cooking. “It’s just my way,” she sobbed into the sink, “I have inherited loneliness.”

  Iskender unlaced his shoes, kicked them off and spread out his toes. He lit a cigarette and patted the pile of papers covering the table in front of him, searching for an ashtray. None to be found. He dragged one of the ledgers over, tore a page from its string and crumpled it into a ball. Gently he tapped his cigarette into the jumble of numbers in his lap. His head throbbed, his feet smelled and he had terrible gas. As the moon sank outside the window, Iskender smoked himself to sleep in the chair.

  The next morning he composed his reply.

  ‘Stay there stop I will come to you stop.’

  Thooma was delighted when he read the news. Another man in the house! With Iskender installed he’d have someone to share a smoke with other than Ferida and they could drink together without one of the women slipping the bottle away and jamming the cork in under the table.

  “The sooner he comes the better,” he smiled. “A son needs his father. I’ll send him a letter.”

  No one knew exactly when Iskender would arrive (“I have business to settle – it will take time”) but the smell of baking greeted each day. Mutton was cured, tomatoes were dug out of the sand pit, pastry supplies doubled. Mertha even took the large key from the nail in the kitchen and introduced Ferida to the cellar under the foundations.

  “Take anything you like,” she told her, “you cook. Let’s celebrate.” I
skender’s arrival was to be treated as a new beginning, everyone together again, fat and delicious, it was agreed.

  And then Seyda died.

  It came as a surprise to everyone but herself. She’d caught a chill the night they’d departed from Aleppo and it had never left her. The frantic rains that howled around them that night had seeped into her bones, slowly working their way into her heart, saturating it. Making it rot inside her ribcage.

  Her dreams pressed down on her chest as she slept and she woke in a sweat, her clothes drenched, her bones brittle, her tongue thick with fur. Voices whispered in the shadows and followed her everywhere. Seyda was tired. Sick of wandering. She no longer knew where her home was. Even though they were back in Ourfa they were stuck at Khatoun’s family farm, far from town and the stone walls of the Armenian Quarter and her old house. It had all seemed much richer in her imagination. On arrival the fields were not quite as green, the skies never as blue. Even the hospitality of Thooma and Mertha failed to hide the shabbiness of their home. The earthen floors, the communal plates, the pervasive smell of dung.

  She knew she was dying but kept it to herself. Not even Ferida, who slept beside her mother each night, knew how ill Seyda was. She still stood tall, wore her sleeves long and kept herself shaded from the sun like a youngster. Her thick auburn hair, worn in a loose knot, was streaked with grey but nothing had dented her patrician gaze. Not for Seyda the fiery temper and broken pots of kitchen wives. She was as still and placid as the surface of Lake Van. Her rhythm, the even tick of a clock. No wonder then that her death came as a surprise.

  She had visited Khatoun the previous night, after supper.

  “All the way from Van,” she said, piling walnuts into a basin and watching Khatoun devour a handful. “Walnuts and raw onions – the best for mother’s milk.”

  “The walnuts I agree with,” Khatoun laughed. “The onions…”

  “You eat your onions and you’ll live to be a hundred, trust me. And how’s he feeding?” She smiled at the newborn in Khatoun’s arms.

  “Non-stop,” Khatoun sighed, “I put him down for a moment and he’s hungry again. It’s exhausting.” She finished rubbing Afrem’s back and held him out to Seyda who took the infant and cradled him in her lap. He snuffled a moment, gave a little yawn and punched the air before settling down.

  “Just like his father,” Seyda smiled, touching the small beauty spot on the cheek below his left eye.

  “Yes. The image of his father.” Khatoun’s fingers were busy undoing the strip of cloth that laced through the bottom inch of her braid. “He’ll be here soon. The way days and nights blend into one, it will seem like tomorrow.”

  “And what does tomorrow look like?” Seyda asked. She watched Khatoun unbraid her hair. “He had such a hunger you know, Iskender, when he was a child. And if he didn’t eat, he had the dreams. Strange dreams I couldn’t fathom. We were worried something was wrong with him. Did he tell you that?”

  “No,” Khatoun slid a comb out from under the mattress and began to work her way through her hair from the bottom.

  “Oh yes,” Seyda continued, “he didn’t speak. I tried to teach him; I sang, I laughed, I shouted at him. Nothing. He was four years old before he said anything, and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a voice like a page ripped from a book: ‘Mayrig, do you know who they are that have golden wings and kiss me when I’m asleep?’ I nearly jumped out of my skin. Asdvadz! ‘No idea,’ I said trying to stay calm. ‘And why haven’t you said anything until now, son?’ He thought for a second. ‘Until now I had no questions,’ he replied. ‘Everything was quite satisfactory.’ Four years old. Agh, Iskender!” Seyda laughed. “It was Ferida who figured it out. He was dreaming of the illuminations in the books Pastor Tovmasian showed him. The pastor was a collector. He had a small library at the seminary and Iskender loved visiting.”

  Khatoun coiled her hair around her hand and let it drop. “The only thing Iskender told me was that he wanted to be an artist. If he hadn’t had to work for his father, he said he would have studied art. Or become a writer. A poet.”

  “Oh yes. Writing. That was Iskender’s talent. And if he wasn’t the only boy maybe we could have indulged him. But poetry? Literature? Art? They don’t build roofs and feed bellies. We needed him to work. We still do.” A moment passed in silence, Seyda watching Afrem sleep before she offered the baby back. As their hands met, she grabbed Khatoun’s wrist.

  “Promise me something,” she whispered with sudden urgency, her fingers digging into Khatoun’s flesh. “Whatever Afrem wants to do, wherever he wants to go, you let him. Don’t be like me. Indulge him. Let him be who he is. One day we’re born and then the next…” she paused, her hand suspended in the air, “the next, who knows. Who knows what God has in store for any of us other than birth and death.” She stood up, the empty walnut shells secured in her apron. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” Khatoun echoed. She placed Afrem on his back in the crib and was about to stand.

  “No. You too,” Seyda smiled. “Now you indulge me. Lie down. I’m going to sing you a lullaby.” She threw a quilt to Khatoun, stood in the doorway and sang. The air turned thick, the walls closed in, people came in and out of the room, their kisses suspended on air. The songs faded, the moon slipped away, the earth turned and the sun rose.

  It was dawn. Khatoun lay tangled in the blankets, still dressed, the early morning sun slanting through the window. She couldn’t remember falling asleep, only the expression on Seyda’s face before it had blurred into oblivion. And then she heard the scream.

  It was poor Ferida who discovered her mother was no longer alive. Seyda lay flat on her back, arms at her side, her hair spread out around her in a sea of flame. She had dressed in clean underwear, crisp from the washing line. Around her neck, a simple gold cross and by her side that old Bible she carried everywhere wrapped in a shroud. Her skin shone and a smile lit up her face. The lines around her eyes had faded and the dusting of freckles across her nose made her look young again.

  Ferida had been sleeping next to her dreaming of food – peeling an onion slowly, taking one layer off at a time. Her mother had come to her in her dream and laughed at her tears.

  “This is how to stuff an onion,” she’d said, pushing Ferida aside, “First you flake the golden skin off and then, with a sharp knife, make a slit in the top. Boil a pan of water, drop the onion in and let it cook for one minute. When it has cooled, take a linen cloth, wrap it around the onion and hold it firmly in one hand. Squeeze very gently and the next thing you know, the onion will pop out and you will be left with an empty shell in your hand. Then you can stuff it.”

  Ferida was badly irritated by this dream. No one knew how to stuff an onion better than she did. Seyda had shown her the semi-boil trick years ago. She was getting old, repeating herself. Ferida had shooed her out of the kitchen with a clattering of pots that she knew gave her a headache. In the morning, when it finally dawned on her that Seyda was dead, Ferida let out a dreadful scream of remorse. She had sent her own mother away with an aching head.

  Ferida’s sobs swept through the house as she washed her mother’s corpse. Khatoun and Mertha helped with the shroud, tying it under Seyda’s naked feet in double knots so that the last storm that swirled all bodies together on judgement day would not disperse her limbs.

  She was buried in the same grave as her husband, surrounded by friends. Khatoun stayed at home and left her room only to greet the funeral procession on its return. All day a steady stream of mourners made their way to the compound. The older women, who remembered Seyda as a girl, wept most. They had lost a friend, and with her gone, their own future was an open book.

  Thooma found himself haggling with the toothless postmaster, trying to put into words what had passed, so that the news would reach Iskender as gently as possible without costing the earth.

  The second telegram arrived and Iskender pinned it on the wall next to the first. Birth and death stared back at him, side by side. It was his do
ing. He was the one that had pulled his family apart looking for a better life. He’d uprooted them and scattered them to the wind. What was it his mother always said? ‘Together we are a bundle. Apart, a bunch of sticks.’ He wanted to see her smile again, but in the only photograph he possessed of her, Seyda looked faded and serious and from now on always would. Iskender searched for a cigarette, eventually lighting the longest stub he could find on the windowsill. He was done with Aleppo. For the last ten days he’d been trying to get a decent offer for the restaurant. Whenever he thought a deal was struck he woke up the next morning unable to remember who had promised what the night before. If only he wrote things down. And the loan…Enough with haggling. He stubbed his cigarette out, smoothed down his moustache and eyebrows in the mirror behind the door and, pulling on a clean jacket, went to see his friend Dickran Domasian. A bottle of raki later and the restaurant was gone. No more Zankagadoun. Baron Domasian had wiped the debt clean in return for the papers and keys.

  Digin Iskuhi almost ruined the provisions she packed with her floods of tears.

  “A mother is the eye of the needle through which the thread of life passes. You’re on your own now, son,” she said clutching Iskender to her chest and dragging her runny nose across his clean shirt.

  He took few possessions with him, preferring to scatter them amongst his good friends in the city instead. A book here, a collection of letters to the Prelate, most of his clothes to the church. He left at dawn on a friendly mule, his remaining belongings packed behind him. The sun rose as he climbed the hill and the sweat trickled down his face and into the open neck of his shirt. The sour smell of his own armpits burned in his nostrils and brought on a black depression.

  He took longer than usual to reach Ourfa, worrying everyone who was expecting him. He’d stopped at Baghshish on the way to spend time with Sophia and found himself unable to leave. Sophia, big sister, met him at the door in matriarch black. All of the children, even the Pests (who were no longer pest-like but quite sensible for their age) were in mourning for Seyda. Abdanour and Sammi both took time out from the fields to sit around the fire with Iskender and Old Glore Boghos opened his best bottle.