“Zagiri, keep your clothes on,” her friend warns.
Ferida watches the strange dance. Zagiri circling Serpuhi menacingly, her skirts brushing her thighs. “Listen, you two can’t be in the streets. It’s not safe.” She clutches the package from the butcher to her heart and groans. “Got anything to eat?”
“A handful of okra I saved since Aleppo – we were going to cook it for our first meal. But where to cook?”
“Okra? There is a God. Come with us,” Ferida sighs. “Hayde, follow me. We have to move though – we’re late and people will be worried. You can share our food and have a bed for the night. Tomorrow we’ll figure something out.” She sticks her hand out and helps the older woman up. “Ferida Agha Boghos, pleased to meet you.”
“Vartanoush Maghakian. God bless you, Ferida. Agh, my bones!”
By now the streets are deserted, shuttered against the afternoon sun. Ferida strides ahead, talking as fast as she can in an effort to get everyone moving at the same speed as her babbling.
“So, you gave your lives to Mr. Leslie.”
“Everything,” the woman nods. “It was either that or the Ottoman Bank or Mr. Eckart, whom my husband didn’t trust. Many people hid things in their homes; dug holes and buried them in the yard to come back for later. I would have done except that we had no yard. We trusted Mr. Leslie; he was a personal friend.”
“Scratch your own head with your own nails!” Zagiri shouts.
“Ferida!” Serpuhi calls from behind. “She’s taking her clothes off!”
“Just keep her moving,” Ferida yells over her shoulder. Zagiri skips along between them, her dress unbuttoned, her hair loose. Vartanoush is panting with the effort of keeping up with Ferida and valiantly ignoring the girl unravelling behind them.
“How did he die, Mr. Leslie?” she asks.
“Depends who you ask. Poison is the short answer. His wife was having a baby and when she went to hospital in Aintab he stayed behind to look after the Mission. He was going to join her but the battle began in the Armenian Quarter and he got stuck here. Once it was over he was told to report to government headquarters. They were interested in his relationship with ‘suspicious’ Armenians. He was threatened and bullied. At the end of October he was found dead with a suicide note on his body.”
“He killed himself? Asdvadz!” Vartanoush cries, making the sign of the cross.
“Eshou botch he killed himself! He was a scholar. The note they found on him was a fake, written by an illiterate – my brother told me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everyone knows it was forged.”
“Why? What did it say?”
“Nobody was to blame and he was taking his own life with poison. What was fake was it referred to the battle of Ourfa as a ‘revolution.’ When Mr. Leslie was alive he was always in hot water with the authorities for calling it ‘self-defence’. You see, the idiots couldn’t even remember that and get the language right.”
“Poor Mr. Leslie. And all the stuff he kept for everyone? Our deeds and papers?”
“Stuffing the coffers of government officials by now. My brother Iskender can tell you more when we get home. He follows the news. Doesn’t talk much, so people jabber away in front of him like he’s deaf. Give him a whisky and you’ll be surprised at how much he knows. He doesn’t trust those Eckart brothers either, although by all accounts one of them is a good egg. The other one, Franz, well, he preaches all high and mighty about God but in reality he loathes us Armenians. A missionary straight from hell.”
“That’s what my husband said.”
“He was right. All the stuff given to Eckart for safekeeping just made him richer. He betrayed everyone who trusted him. Sold some of them out after giving them refuge. Lots of people have come looking for him to get their stuff back – just like you with Mr. Leslie.”
“And?”
“He laughs in their faces.”
“How can anyone be so heartless?” Vartanoush asks. “Surely someone in the government could force him to pay up. You would think that anyone who survived the marches and made their way back home would deserve a little pity.”
“Fuck pity!” Ferida spits. She stops, takes a deep breath and turns to Vartanoush, “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve had a hard day so far and profanity gives me release. Have to watch my tongue at home. Can’t say anything without offending someone.”
“No offence,” Vartanoush smiles. “I feel like that myself sometimes.”
“Anyway,” Ferida growls, setting off at a slightly gentler pace so that Serpuhi and Zagiri can catch up, “there is no pity in this town. And the government is the worst thief. As soon as the resistance was over they swarmed the shopping district, sealed up all the Armenian shops and confiscated everything. A supposed ‘committee’ came from Constantinople. Thieves! First they set up headquarters, which they furnished with stuff they’d confiscated – all the best rugs and everything – then they auctioned off the rest. Didn’t have a clue about prices. Some stuff was sold for nothing, the rest was overpriced. God knows what, if anything, reached the crooks in government. The store rooms were ransacked before the auctions even began. The inventory was jigged every night so the auctioneers could line their pockets too. What was left? Iskender knows more than me, he’ll tell you everything when we get home.”
“Ferida!” Serpuhi cries from the rear. “Her underwear!” A hundred yards behind, Serpuhi is struggling with Zagiri’s naked breasts.
Vartanoush looks back and shrugs, “It’s pointless. Nobody can stop her.”
“Never mind. We’re here now. Quick.” Ferida ducks into the cool back alley that leads to the kitchen entrance. “Mind the lime on the doorstep. We had an accident this morning.” She takes the keys from her pocket, jostles with the door and hustles the others inside.
Lolig is the one to greet them, her hair undone and eyes red. She jumps up from her seat by the range as the door opens.
“Ferida jan…” she starts.
“Not now, Lolig! Go and get water so our guests can clean up. And where’s Grundug? The stupid mutt ran off again.”
“Ferida jan…”
“Not now! Can’t you see I have women here who need help?”
Lolig bolts with Serpuhi and the two women. It is Khatoun who slips back into the kitchen with the end of Grundug’s leash in her hand. She hands the slippery rope to Ferida.
“He’s in the courtyard, sister. He made it back. I think he was looking for you. His throat was cut. There were children after him. I think, maybe…I think, maybe they thought they could eat him. I covered him with your apron. In his favourite place by the fountain. Go.”
Keep Quiet and Sew
Ourfa, October 1919
Alice
I never spoke much but I could raise my eyebrow in a way that said it all and this was the look I gave Sarkis when he insisted he keep my photo, saying he’d wear it over his heart forever.
Sarkis was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. Some may have thought he was too pretty, that he looked like a girl, but to me he was perfect, like Jesus. Curly black hair, pale skin, dark eyes, eyelashes, long-long. His lips met mine often when the stars were out and the moon wasn’t looking and on those mornings I woke up damp with Umme Ferida looking at me funny. But there’s no sin in dreaming is there? He was tall and slim and as elegant as his auntie – without her sour air. Sarkis was my first love and we were engaged and torn apart without ever having spoken a word. Talking was saved for the wedding night right before you lie down on that clean, white marriage sheet. And we never got there.
I was sixteen when he asked to marry me and he was two years older – already a man. We lived in the pink house in Ourfa, in the Assyrian Quarter. The war was over and Umme Ferida kept telling us how poor we were but really we were rich because we had each other. That’s what my mother said. The churches were open again and that’s where I saw him for the first time, with his Auntie Tatou and sister Sylvie, all of them dressed up l
ike something out of a book. My brothers poked fun at them behind their backs but Ferida said they were family now and we had to be nice. Auntie Tatou’s daughter, Isabelle, had married my uncle Adom and because of that, Sarkis and Sylvie were allowed to visit our house after the sermon on Sundays.
At first I didn’t like him but then I caught him looking at me in a certain way and before I knew it, the dreams began and I became sick with his love.
It was his sister who followed me to the baths. I saw her looking at my naked body as I scrubbed in the steam, whispering to her friends and nodding as they checked I was all in one piece with wide enough hips. She smiled at me in my dress later, offered me a slice of orange and I knew she would tell him that I had pleased her.
They had no parents left, Sarkis and Sylvie, only their sour Auntie Tatou and so it was Sylvie who came to the house with his proposal, bearing gifts. Two gold bracelets twisted together like snakes with rubies for eyes that had belonged to their mother. Everyone talked. Talk talk talk and then my father took me aside.
“No more sitting on my knee,” he teased, “you’re getting married, little girl.”
The priest conducted the engagement ceremony under a fat moon on our roof and we exchanged rings. Plain gold for him, an emerald for me. We didn’t speak but I knew that he loved me. I knew he was the one that had sent Sylvie to spy on me, and the thought that she had seen me undressed made me burn, as if it had been him. When I shut my eyes I could see our future together – all the places we would go. I could smell it in his hair as he brushed my cheek with his lips that night, the night we were promised to each other and the dancing began. My life was before me and it smelt of the sea.
The days that followed were like a dream. I had never been in love before and here I was – first time and already loved back. My father was happy, my mother too. My brothers – they teased me about indelicate things, made me blush and Umme Ferida curse. She slapped my head for listening and dragged me into the kitchen to cook. And with my mother I began the embroidery for my chest. Flowers and stars and the letters of our names twisted together in silk thread. S.A.S.A.
And I was going that way, like a blind girl, all foolish, chest open to his love, dreaming of our future together and suddenly-suddenly they told me it was over. Poof. I was no longer engaged.
I sat at the machine and cried into my sewing until my mother took all the silks away from me and gave me calico instead. She said she was afraid I’d ruin her orders and we needed them badly.
I felt sure Sarkis had loved me but he’d dropped me just like a stone in a well. Hadn’t even come himself – only sent Sylvie one evening to return the engagement gifts we’d given him. I knew it was her fault, us breaking up, and after that day I never spoke to her again. Strange spirits follow bad energy. We knew always to be careful of what we said in troubled times, lest we inadvertently curse someone, what with all the strange spirits agitating around us. Even at the baths we kept our backs turned and Sylvie came late to church and stood apart from us, near the door.
It was my little brother, Solomon, who told me about the letter. He said it was from Sarkis and he’d read it but that nobody knew. He’d found it in our father’s office, partly burned. I waited for someone to mention it to me but my parents never said a word. They acted as if Sarkis were dead. Nobody talked to me about my heart, only Solomon, who asked if I had heard it crack when it broke. He offered to teach me chess to heal it. Pawn, king, queen, but my mind wouldn’t stay.
Eventually my mother told me about the letter because she couldn’t take my tears any more. She said Sarkis had pleaded in his letter to come and talk to me but my father had refused. “He’s nobody to us,” he’d said and thrown the letter into the fire.
It was Umme and Mamma who agreed to let Sarkis come in secret after I begged and begged and begged them. They arranged it for one evening at ten o’clock when my father and brothers would be asleep.
The three of us, Mamma, Umme Ferida and I were sewing when Sarkis knocked on the back door. Umme Ferida let him in and brought him to the workshop. He’d brought a friend – a boy I had never seen before. They’d just finished work and had run to the baths before coming. They entered our house in a cloud of cologne and cigarette smoke. I could see Sarkis had been crying like me. Mamma stood back. Umme Ferida stood between us and acted the go between.
She told the boys it had not been necessary for them to come. She was behaving as if this were a small problem that hadn’t even bothered us. She said that since the engagement was over Sarkis could no longer visit but he’d been allowed this once as a favour since he was a relative. Then she asked him what he wanted.
Instead of replying to her, he came over to the sewing machine and asked me to stop what I was doing. I did, but kept my eyes turned away from his. I could hardly hear his words because of the roar of the sea in my ears.
“Speak to me,” he said. “I just want to hear the beauty of your voice. Please. Say something.”
I leaned over to Umme Ferida, who had followed him over, slipping her body like wire between us, and whispered in her ear.
“Alice wants her photograph back,” Umme Ferida said, straightening up, her hand already out.
That’s when he burst into tears right there in our very room.
“No! Her picture will stay with me until the day I die,” he shouted. “Since I can’t have you, the photograph will be my love and it will stay here.” He banged his fist to his heart.
This is when I turned to face him and gave him my eyebrow. I don’t like exaggeration, even when my heart is broken.
“You may not believe me,” he said, “but I mean it. I love you. It wasn’t me…it was…it was…it was the worm came out of the tree and ate the tree.”
And then there was silence. We waited for an explanation and he opened and shut his mouth and twisted the buttons on his coat and tried to force out a sound but although his heart was full, his mouth was empty. After a while, my mother stood up. Usually she didn’t say much, just watched everything and I wished she hadn’t spoken then because I really did want to wait and hear what he had to say. But my mother always chose her moments carefully.
“Never mind, Sarkis,” she said. “Go with God’s blessings.” Then she turned and left the room.
This left Umme Ferida and me alone with the boys. Sarkis was so close I could have reached past Ferida’s shoulder and touched his beautiful face. I could smell his sweet breath, could see the blue vein beating in his neck. His hands were trembling and I thought he would do something stupid at any minute and I prayed that he would.
Umme shuffled her feet and put her hand in her pocket. “To conclude this visit,” she said, “I think you should have this back.” She held my emerald ring out to him but he shook his head.
“I want her to keep it,” he said, “as I intend to keep hers.” He pulled a chain out from under his shirt and the ring I had given him was hanging there. I saw his flesh, his sweet collarbones and the soft black hair at the top of his chest. I turned away from him again and pushed at the wheel of my sewing machine. Tac-atac-atac-atac, it sang.
“As you wish,” Umme Ferida said, dragging him by the elbow to the door where his friend stood waiting.
I could feel his eyes on me the whole time. Sick black birds burning a hole in the back of my dress. I wanted to do something but I couldn’t. The air was thick like molasses and I was pinned to my seat with no air in my throat. Tic-tock tick-tock I heard the clock and tac-atac-atac-atac, the machine, and then a cold breeze and slam! the door shut and only then did I turn around and he was gone and my mother was there in his place.
She walked over to me, her arms stretched out wide and she took me in and held me close, and then came Umme and she was crying and that made me cry too. We sat at the machine, all of us, and howled like dogs and if Grundug had still been alive he would have trembled at our feet. The ceiling above us creaked and shed plaster and my father shouted over the balcony, wondering what the hell was h
appening now! and Mamma went out to the fountain and looked up and said we were telling sad stories and remembering friends no longer with us and to go back to bed. And she looked at me and put her finger to her lips. Be quiet, she was saying. Not just for now, but for ever.
So I will keep quiet and sew. What good are words anyway? Words are nothing but hot air and vibration that disappear into thin air. Not like people who can appear forever in dreams. Hot and wet and smelling of the sea. Words are nothing but dead birds dropping. Words get you nowhere.
Words
Ourfa, November 1919
Khatoun
If she could take a needle and thread to her lips she would. She’d stitch the top to the bottom with precise, even stitches. Black thread, a sharp needle, done. Khatoun studies her face in the mirror. Startled hair, puffy eyes. She’s had eyes following her all day long. Ferida, watching her silently, her mouth thin and puckered. Alice, trailing her like a shadow, weeping pools of grief. A hundred guests shifting their eyes to the floor whenever she passed and Adom, her own brother, covering his face with his hands, the look in his eyes haunting her nonetheless. For was it not his wife and unborn child under the earth today? And were they not Khatoun’s words that put them there?
She drops the cloth back over the mirror. All the mirrors will stop today along with the clocks, and, uncounted and unseen, the day will disappear into the air like ether and only foolish gossips will keep it alive – passing it down generation to generation with their embroidered truths. Khatoun snuffs out the lamp and steps outside into the alley behind the kitchen. She’ll need to walk far to outrun the shadows tonight. She turns south towards the Dergah Gardens, holding close to the wall, eyes sharp, voice buried, mind busy-busy.
It had been spring, a full moon, when Ferida had come muttering to Khatoun that Alice was sick.
The Seamstress of Ourfa Page 26