“I know you loved it, Alice,” Khatoun had told her, “but next time you get a kitten you shouldn’t take it to bed. It needs its own space to grow. It died because you kept it too close.” She’d hoped to find a replacement but no other cat would comfort her daughter and after a few years they’d given up on pets. She wonders if Alice remembers the kitten, now that she’s tasted love on her lips and heard her heart crack for a man.
There is a pause in the music and before Youseff can oblige with the next request, Iskender begins to recite a poem – one that Khatoun has heard before, a long time ago,
On the banks of the river, in the row of cranes,
That one drooped its head,
Put its beak under its wing, and with its aged
Dim pupils, awaited
Its last bleak moment.
When its comrades wished to depart,
It could not join them in their flight.
The room is hushed, the walls bathed with sunlight which hurts Khatoun’s eyes and sends her mind elsewhere, flat and white,
It is vain to dream any more
Of a distant spring, of cool currents of air
Under strong and soaring wings,
Or of passing through cold brooks
With naked feet, of dipping its long neck
Amongst the green reeds;
It is vain to dream any more!
Khatoun removes her glasses and rubs her eyes. The colours around her bleed into one another. There is white light in her head, the taste of flour in her mouth, the roar of the sea in her ears. Iskender’s voice reaches her from far away, his face floating towards her like a head on a stick,
And on the misty river-bank
Its weary wings, spread for the last time,
Point straight toward
The Armenian hills, the half-ruined villages.
With the voice of its dying day
It curses immigration,
And falls, in silence, upon the coarse sand of the river bank.
It chooses its grave,
And, thrusting its purple beak
Under a rock, the dwelling-place of a lizard,
Stretching out its curving neck
Among the songs of the waves,
With a noble tremor it expires![1]
He is applauded by a loud belch from the sofa.
“It begins with family,” Loucia says, opening one eye. “Just like an onion. The skin on the outside looks shiny and golden but it is the layers inside that make you cry. Start at the heart – make a baby, give him brothers and sisters. Close them tight with your love as parents. Wrapped around you, your own siblings and parents – tight and oily. Friends wrap around that and then acquaintances – the skin. Might look good, but flakes off like paper. That is why you need to close down and look to your family. It took you a long time to start – it’s worth an eternity to protect.”
There is a pause as everyone looks at Loucia, her plump feet dangling a few inches above the carpeted floor. She belches again and Ferida crosses over to her, her hand stretched out.
“Give me the flask from inside your jacket,” she demands. “If the whisky is that good, I want some!” She lifts the silver bottle to her lips, winks at Loucia and drinks as the music starts up again.
This time the door opens and Zagiri spins in, whirling towards Youseff, her hair loose, flicking about her like snakes. She has changed into a bright red dress with a sash tied low over the hips. She stamps her feet and lifts up her skirts, exposing her muscular calves, and a whisper trickles through the huddled girls. Ferida stares ahead, her body coiled, ready to leap forward if a single button should dare loosen on Zagiri’s dress. Zagiri whirls faster, her bare feet sending up clouds of dust from the carpet. She plunges her hand into her bodice and the girls nudge each other. Ferida takes a minute step forward. Serpuhi covers her face and Bzdig Shoushun gasps. Zagiri digs deeper into her dress, her hand scrabbling frantically at the inside of her bodice. And then she spins, her feet lifting inches above the ground as her restless hand plucks the tattered photograph triumphantly from her bosom and holds it high above her head.
“Lelelelelelele!”
The room erupts. All of the women throw back their heads and join as Zagiri ululates with joy and dances for her sister – sunlight and bare feet and dust – her upturned face a beautiful light at the centre of her dance.
[1]The Aged Crane, Armenian Poems Taniel Varoujan (1884-1915 Victim of Genocide) Translated by Alice Stone Blackwell, Published by Caravan Books Delmar, New York Reprint of the 1917 Edition. Thanks to Gerald Papasian and Nora Armani; Sojourn at Ararat.
A Mouse Nest
Aleppo, Syria, Fall 1922
Khatoun
Something in the rafters cannot sleep. For the last two hours it’s been running the full length of the roof, pausing at each end. Either it has a nest at the far end and has discovered something delicious to eat in the roof right above Khatoun’s head, or the nest of ravenous babies is tucked in above her and some rotting pigeon carcass is wedged in a hole above another sleeping family. The cheap roofing has made it impossible to gauge how large the intruder is, its scuttling is so magnified.
Perhaps it is friendly, perhaps it is not. Khatoun keeps her eye on the ceiling, watching the cracks in the plaster, wondering if anything will show itself. If it’s a rat she’ll have to lay poison. Then again it may be a lizard – in which case that’s good. Lizards eat insects and who knows what kind of creepy-crawlies they have here. Poisonous. Burrowing. Parasitic. The scrabbling stops in their room and after a brief hiatus, takes off again, past the sleeping family, down the length of the roof to the far end of the building. Silence. Eight people sleep huddled together across the floor. The room thick with escaping dreams. This is their first night in their new home and nothing resembles the life they’ve left behind other than the colourful comforters they are wrapped in.
She’d signed the papers with an X.
“I can’t write,” Khatoun had shrugged when pressed for her signature. The Armenian clerk had opened her file, leafing back through the deeds of her home with trembling hands. One eyebrow shot up. There was her name, ‘Khatoun Agha Boghos,’ in the simple scrawl she’d been taught years ago. The clerk’s hands shook so much, Khatoun let out a laugh. He stared at her, his bloodshot eyes begging her to sign her name and make his life easy.
The other man, the one with the greasy moustache who’d come into the room half way through the transaction didn’t seem at all concerned. He reached over the clerk’s shoulder, barely glanced at the simple X Khatoun had penned, muttered “Good enough,” and slipped the papers into his pocket, yelling for more coffee as he left. That’s when she knew for sure they’d been lying. Her signature was irrelevant. The Armenian clerk stared at her mournfully, the tips of his ink-stained fingers dancing across the filthy blotter. Bang! He stamped a chit with an ornate seal and slid it to her across the desk.
“Thank you.” Khatoun smiled as she stood up. She reached over the pile of papers and shook his hand. “So, everything is in order. We are leaving of our own accord. You have the right to sell my property and will send me the proceeds. This is my receipt.” She held up the chit stamped in red.
“Correct.” The clerk nodded and bent back to his paperwork, his bald patch shining.
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. When are you leaving?” Khatoun asked.
“I’m sorry,” the clerk mumbled, his attention diverted to his suddenly leaky pen. “I can’t talk. I have a lot of people to see.”
“Yes. You do.” Khatoun slipped the receipt into her dress and reached for the door to the waiting room. As soon as she opened it, Ferida stuck her face in the gap and hissed at the clerk.
“Gagosian it says on the door. Traitorous mother-fucker is what I say!”
The clerk’s eyes never left his pen and Khatoun slipped out past Ferida and shut the door behind her. The small, stuffy waiting room was lit through a high window that
was painted shut. The heat was unbearable, the floor an unemptied ashtray. Simple wooden benches lined three of the walls, and every time someone gave up their seat the packed room shifted along a space, allowing another couple to slip in from the corridor outside. Khatoun and Ferida walked past the line of expressionless faces, out into the breezy atrium with its potted plants that dissected the municipal offices and down the curved staircase leading into the sunlit street. With a simple X that meant nothing, their home had been sold and their life in Ourfa was at its end.
They headed back to the house. The house empty now of half its occupants. Loucia, true to her word had spirited the girls away in pairs in the last two years. Zagiri and Moug happy. Lolig and Serpuhi in tears. Gadarine and Margarit straight to America on a boat-load of brides which Hasmig and Manoush had refused; pledging themselves to each other and settling in Aleppo instead. Bzdig Shoushun was in love with a doctor, Elise and Amina busy gathering books for their refugee school in Aleppo and Moug was engaged to Youseff (what a surprise!) and living with him under Loucia’s roof.
The neighbours had vanished in waves, their homes emptying in the night as families despaired of there ever being peace in Ourfa. There were no goodbyes. Everyone had their own private deals, their slipping out under a blanket of darkness, and each morning found another home emptied, the doors locked for a brief spell before they were prised open again and the contents ransacked.
Who stands looking across the city from her rooftop now, Khatoun wonders? Whose washing already slapped in her wind?
Empty of people, the rooms of the large house had echoed. The house with pink walls that coiled round its own heart – the courtyard – where she’d nursed and eaten and sat in the cool spray of the fountain. Where old Grundug lay buried under a flagstone and Ferida had grown medicinal herbs and potions. The bedrooms, shabby without beds, the spiders spinning madly in the eaves. The shadows slipping up and down the curved staircase, searching for footsteps to follow. The resplendent Ladies’ Room with its carpet faded in blocks – darker where people had once sat on furniture that had been sold and transported in one go, like a theatre set. The curtains that had disintegrated when touched, a mesh of sunlight and cobwebs. The library, the office, all those books, that writing. The girls’ rooms. The workroom. The machines. The fabrics. The buttons. The needles. The pins. The stitches. Who had it now?
It was Celine the Arab with the cobalt eyes who’d finally convinced Khatoun to leave. She’d spoken to her quietly as they sat on the roof, splitting seeds between their teeth, collecting the shells in their skirts. It was a late summer evening and the sun was operatic, streaking the sky ridiculous shades of magenta and orange as it disappeared.
“They won’t be happy until Turkey is free of all Christians,” Celine the Arab said, sweeping her arm in an arc across the rooftops. “That means everyone. Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Americans. You’re one of the last – I don’t know why you even stayed this long.”
“I had to get the girls out first. And this is my home.”
“Your home! Just like my mouse. I catch her all the time, take her miles away in my pocket and let her loose in the fields. A few days later she’s back in my kitchen, laughing at me. ‘This is my home,’ she squeaks. It drives me crazy. If my husband finds her he’ll crush her with his boot.”
“What about the missions?” Khatoun asked, handing over more seeds. “The orphanages?”
“The Near East Relief is already packed up and heading to Lebanon.”
“Are you sure? We hear so many rumours…”
Celine the Arab shrugged. “Who knows what’s rumour any more? Who cares? Stories all come to the same end. But my husband told me to come here and convince you. He says to get out now and he’ll help you. With his new job supplying the government…we hear things. Rumour, fact, the only thing we do know for sure is that everything is about to change with Mustafa Kemal.”
“Iskender says he’s a great man.”
“Undoubtedly.” Celine the Arab split another seed. “He has a vision – no more Empire, no more Sultan. And no more foreigners. In a matter of months Turkey will be born again. There will be chaos and bloodshed and this time you won’t survive. Sell what you can immediately but set aside your most precious items. My husband will organise safe passage out of here for you and your family. With your valuables.”
Khatoun laughed. “Valuables? What’s the point? We’ll be robbed on the road like everyone else. I’d rather travel light, take what is immediately useful. I don’t want this life to follow us anyway.”
“Khatoun Hanum, you don’t build a new fire with old ashes, that’s true, but take some things. Your sewing machine, at least. Take what you want. It will be safe, my husband promised. He’ll send a wagon here to fill with your valuables. Quietly. But do it soon. We’ll keep your stuff at our farm until you’re ready to move. When you’re prepared, we’ll send another wagon with two gendarmes – friends of my husband’s. They’ll accompany you to the border. When you cross into Syria you’ll meet up with the rest of your belongings and stores of food.”
“We don’t have stores of food,” Khatoun laughed again. “A pocket full of bulgur, some lentils…”
Celine the Arab shook her head. “Hanum,” she smiled, “for a clever woman, some simple stones fall from your mouth. We have a farm. You will have stores of food.” She licked the salt off her fingers and wiped them on her skirt. “Think about it. It needs planning. Send word with your youngest son. If anyone asks – he’s delivering my dresses. But you should decide soon. Once rumour becomes fact it’ll no longer be possible to sell anything.”
“I’ll talk to Iskender.”
“Good,” Celine the Arab nodded. She bunched her skirts together in her hand and stood. “I know what you’re thinking, hanum. Why me? Why should some man I have never met go so out of his way to help me?”
“It is generous…”
“I’ll tell you why,” Celine the Arab smiled. “There are three reasons my husband holds you dear to his heart.” She held up three fingers. “Duman, Galip and Hasad. Every time you made me a new dress I fell pregnant – including on my wedding night. Now I have three sons and a secure future and my husband blames it all on you!” She chuckles and extends her hand, helping Khatoun up off the floor. “Also, and this makes him angry – this new patriotism – getting rid of all foreigners? If I wasn’t married, it would include me.”
“But you’re Muslim.”
“I am now. But my family are Maronites. They never forgave me for changing my faith. My mother told me I was a fool to marry for love and my father simply turned his back on me. They live in Beirut, but when I visit my own city I am forbidden to see them. My parents have never met their grandchildren and they are so old now…Insha’Allah. So, hanum, my husband knows what it is like to be able to leave of your own free will, rather than be forced out of your home at dawn. He is married to it. Think about it and be in touch.”
She crossed over to a bucket near the stairs and shook the seed chaff from her skirt. The sky shimmered mauve and the smell of cooking wafted up from below. Khatoun joined her, sweeping up around the bucket with a little broom and pan.
“A little supper before you leave?” she asked, dusting off her hands.
“No, no. I must be on my way. I’m staying with family tonight. Tomorrow I set off early, back to the farm.”
“Tell your husband I’ll think about his kind offer,” Khatoun said. “I need to talk to mine first.”
“Of course, hanum. But soon, yes? Soon.”
Khatoun took a few days before going to Iskender. He barely looked up from his book as she slid into his cramped office and stood by his chair. He’d been ready to leave for a while – ever since Loucia had come to them two summers ago with the same story. Since then he’d slowly turned into a wraith, hardly leaving his room and eating only sporadically. The nights were filled with his ramblings but during the day it was not unusual for him to sit silent until the sun san
k again. He surrounded himself with the shadows that had scared him for years. Now they were his friends. He nodded distantly at what Khatoun had to tell him, his eyes fixed on a crack in the plaster that snaked down from the ceiling behind his map of the world.
“Saskatchewan,” he murmured, his finger still hooked in his novel. “Minn e so ta.”
Khatoun took this as his tacit acceptance.
She began by visiting the handful of friends she held dear in the city, urging them to pack up and leave. Even at this point some refused to consider it. Their homeland was on the brink of a new era, everyone sensed that, and many believed modernisation would end their troubles and they’d be able to live peaceably with their Turkish neighbours at last. For others, the mere whisper of the word ‘exile’ was enough to send them deep into their homes from where they disappeared without trace during the night.
Khatoun spent the rest of the summer stripping the house bare and selling what she could. She started with the Ladies’ Room; the European furniture transported by mule and set up almost identically in Begum Șenay’s quarters.
“Take this,” Begum Șenay had muttered, handing a bag of gold coins to Khatoun. “That’s for the furniture. And this – this is very important.” She pressed a tight bundle into Khatoun’s hand. “You must pack this with your belongings when you travel. Don’t look in it now – just trust me. And if you take anything valuable don’t hide it up there. That’s the first place they’ll look, eshou botch bastards. If you have to, the other end is safer. They like that less, unless you’re a pretty boy.” She wept as she watched Khatoun leave for the last time, the marble corridors echoing her footsteps, the grille work around her seemingly alive.
The Seamstress of Ourfa Page 31