Orhan's Inheritance

by Aline Ohanesian

  On the fifth day, Lucine is busy soaking lentils, delighting in the way the smooth little pebbles slip through her fingers, when Bedros walks into the kitchen. His dark mass of hair, jutting in every direction, hangs well past his earlobes, covering the left side of his face where his scar hides. Even his eyes, so black they lack irises, wear an expression of neglect. In his hand, he holds the wooden slingshot.

  “Kemal said to tell you thanks,” he says.

  “What?” She can hardly believe what has just come out of the child’s mouth.

  “For the book,” he says. She suddenly notices a small volume in his left hand. “I didn’t know he could read English,” says Bedros. “Anyway, he says thanks for lending it to him.”

  “Yes. Yes, he can read English,” she lies, struggling to think of something else to say, but Bedros has moved on, the way children do. She runs her fingers across the volume, knowing that the same palm that caressed her cheek has fingered its pages. She knows, without opening it, that the book does not belong to Kemal. Most of the Muslim villagers cannot read, and Kemal is no exception. She knows, without opening it, that the book belongs to her teacher, Miss Graffam, the missionary. It’s not just the leather binding that is exquisite and foreign but also the title, The Missionary Herald, written in English, which gives the owner away. The thought of Kemal sneaking into the American girl’s school and taking a book for her makes Lucine’s chest swell with gratitude, and she smiles at his daring. She is about to tuck the volume in her apron, when a single leaf of paper floats to the ground.

  Long graphite pencil marks, dark and light, weave seductively across the page, creating an image of her hair, wild like it was that morning. Hidden in the mass of hair is an image of her face, her deep-set eyes, mouth slightly open, an image at once familiar and disturbing. Lucine marvels at the skillful drawing she knows to be his and blushes when she tries to think about how carefully he’s looked at her. She folds the sheet of paper twice before tucking it in her sleeve.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Anush is standing at the doorway. Aram sits on her right hip, sucking at the dimpled fingers of his right hand.

  “What?” Lucine says, startled.

  “I said, what’s wrong with you?” Anush repeats.

  “I’m being helpful. Soaking lentils.”

  “Since when are you helpful?”

  “Since always.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t got your nose in a book.”

  “I’m not allowed to go to school, remember?” Lucine holds the tiny volume low so it remains hidden under the table.

  “It never stopped you before.”

  “There are people disappearing out there, Anush. The priest has lost his mind, and Mairig refuses to leave her room.” And Kemal has stroked my cheek, she almost adds. “How would you have me react?”

  “Well, you can stop sulking, for one thing. There’s no need to be walking around like you’ve got a noose around your neck. You’re scaring Bedros.”

  “She is not.” Bedros materializes from behind a bulgur barrel. The sight of him, disheveled and dirty, makes the sisters forget their differences. It is clear that despite their best efforts, the child suffers.

  “Your pants are falling off your hips,” Anush tells him.

  Bedros shrugs.

  “Come on.” Lucine places the volume in the pocket of her apron and puts an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go take your pants in.”

  She arranges four Easter cookies in front of him, two plain and two with walnuts, while she works on his trousers. “You need to eat more, Bedros,” she chides gently. “It will make you big and strong.”

  The boy nods, his mouth full of sweet dough. “When is Mairig coming out of her room?” he asks.

  “Soon. Maybe today. Tomorrow the latest,” Lucine says, dragging the needle back toward her. The truth is she has no idea when her mother will resurface.

  Just then the sound of the town crier comes floating through the window, stopping her hand.

  “All Armenian men between the ages of twenty and sixty must report to a town meeting. Town meeting at the square. Seven thirty tonight! The rest of you start preparing for relocation. Each family will be given one oxcart for their possessions. Take only what you need.”

  He shouts at the top of his lungs, repeating the phrases over and over again, until finally he goes hoarse. Bedros, who is only ten and shouldn’t quite understand the meaning of any of this, lowers his chin to his chest. Lucine stands up without a word, dropping his trousers at her feet, and goes looking for Hairig. Surely now he will take action. She finds him standing outside their chicken coop, huddled with several other Armenian men from the village.

  “We were better off under the sultan,” says Gevork the apothecary.

  “Nonsense,” says Hairig. “The Young Turks have established a constitutional monarchy.”

  “Don’t be naive, Hagop,” says Arzrouni the blacksmith. “They are more like a dictatorship, always preaching about expansion, about Turkey being a great land united by language and religion. Where does that leave us?”

  “There is nothing we can do but show up,” says Gevork the apothecary. He is still wearing the silly white coat he ordered from England, the one meant to give him the authority of a Western doctor.

  “No,” says Arzrouni. “We need to flee at once. There are men in the mountains who will help us.”

  “What men?” her father interrupts.

  “Murad the Brave and his men,” someone answers.

  “Murad and his like are revolutionaries,” says Hairig. “Fighting the Ottoman army with a handful of guns is tantamount to mass suicide. That’s exactly why they don’t trust us. Violence only invites more violence. We need to show them we are loyal subjects of the empire.”

  “Loyal subjects are not removed from their homes and deported,” says Arzrouni.

  “It is only a temporary relocation,” says Hairig. “I say we go peacefully so that we can return to our homes when the war is over.”

  Their hushed tones and gesturing hands remind Lucine of the few remaining chickens trapped in the coop. But it is their eyes that scare her the most. In them, she sees a paralyzing and all-consuming fear. This is what Hairig means about being like a river.

  Lucine turns on her heels and walks toward the house. She takes the stairs two at a time, gaining momentum, until she swings Mairig’s bedroom door open.

  “You have to get up now,” she says to the ghost of her mother, pulling the covers up and back. “They want to take Hairig.”

  “Take him? Where?” asks Mairig.

  “They’ve called a meeting. He will go. You know he will go. It’s time for you to get up.”

  “He can’t go. What will we do without him?”

  “Get up. Please, Mairig.”

  An hour later, Mairig emerges from her cocoon, trembling fingers picking at the cross at her neck. “Don’t go,” she tells him, but Hairig is already kissing each child on the forehead. He is dressed in his finest three-piece suit, his brushed fez sitting at an angle on his head. He whispers something into Bedros’s ear but says nothing else. Nothing about the dyeing of the wool in his absence, nothing about provisions, nothing about future plans, nothing to his daughters or his dumbstruck wife.

  At daybreak, Mairig is still sitting at the oak table with a bowl of lamb stew warmed up thrice over. When she finally notices her daughters standing at the doorway, she rises. Walking past them, she says, “Don’t cut Bedros’s hair. Promise me.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Under the Mulberry Tree

  THE NEXT MORNING, Mairig’s headache disappears, along with her evening robe. The cream-colored Easter frock she dons makes her look like a china doll meant for preening. But Mairig wears it to prepare the oxcart.

  “I want everything ready for when your father gets back,” she says, her voice cheery.

  The Armenian families of Karod are all preparing their oxcarts for what the authorities call relocation. They push
the rumors of mass graves along the routes out of their heads and prepare for survival. The Melkonian wagon is nicer than all the others, with a proper door that swings outward, tiny mustard-colored tassels hanging from the window openings, and a brown velvet cushion in the front for Firat, the Turkish coachman Mairig manages to hire. She pulls a wire frame along the back, over which Anush places a blue comforter for privacy and to keep out the wind. They lay two wool mattresses in the bed of the wagon for warmth. Over these, they place a steamer rug with soapstone, a hot-water bottle, and enough food for a few days. Everything else must fit in the foot-and-a-half space between Firat and the wagon. The suitcases and provisions are piled one on top of the other until they form a wall between the coachman and his wares. Lucine places a sack of dried figs in the back, wondering how long the makeshift cushions in this springless wagon will serve as a source of comfort.

  The memory of Kemal’s hand on Lucine’s cheek presses itself upon her again and again. Each time she pushes it away, it surfaces back up pounding at her chest.

  “That’s enough,” Mairig says finally. “The rest we can do when your father gets back.” Lucine does not ask her when exactly that will be.

  “Now get your things ready for the bath,” Mairig adds.

  “Do I have to go?” asks Lucine. “I don’t want to walk all the way across town just to sit in the bathhouse with all those giggling naked girls and women.”

  “No one will be giggling,” says Mairig.

  “Is it safe to be walking about freely across town?” Lucine asks, appealing to Mairig’s fears.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Mairig. “It is Wednesday, our bath day. There is no law against bathing. We may be on the road for days.”

  Mairig and the girls make their way down a wide, unpaved road that winds through the Armenian quarter past the two-story houses, the great domed church, narrowing at every turn, so that by the time Mairig and the girls approach the market, it is only as wide as a single cart.

  Lucine tries not to dwell on the gawking villagers. Mairig lifts the hem of her cream-colored dress and walks before her daughters with her back straight. No one dares to approach her, although the cobbler’s apprentice sneers as they pass by. Lucine pretends not to hear the word gâvur, infidel, slip past his lips. She tries to keep her head down as she follows Mairig. She adjusts the linen bundle carrying the necessities of their bath on her shoulder. For the first time ever, Lucine longs for a head scarf. The bonnets that shield them from the blazing midday sun do nothing for the suspicious glares of their Muslim neighbors. They scream “Christian” to anyone who looks their way.

  “Why are we walking toward the market?” says Anush.

  “I have to see the midwife before we go,” Mairig answers.

  “What for?” asks Lucine.

  “I need her to keep something safe for me,” says Mairig.

  “Why not give it to the reverend’s wife?” asks Anush.

  “Because Iola is Greek and not Armenian,” Mairig explains, exasperated. “What’s more, she is a midwife. No one will dare touch a hair on her head if they know what’s good for their wives and daughters.”

  “Why not give it to Miss Graffam?” asks Lucine.

  “Because the school is too far. We cannot risk it,” says Mairig.

  The market is a porous borderland between the Christians and the rest of Sivas. Here all kinds of different people trade goods and words. They forge acquaintances, rivalries, and sometimes friendships. Yet it is not the kind of place for the likes of Mairig, who has always relied on a servant to do her shopping.

  Now the vendors who usually shout above one another slouch behind their sparse stalls. There’s only a handful of haggling women, and the vendors seem nostalgic for more formidable opponents. An old widow in a black head scarf answers their prayers by complaining about the price of garlic. Since the war began, food is scarce and whatever is left is triple in price. But the Melkonian women do not want for money, nor are they here to purchase food. They need only to pass this place safely.

  A lemon vendor near the entrance sits in front of the bright yellow pyramid of fruit. He squeezes one golden lemon in his left hand, turning it around and around in his palm, his eyes never leaving the three women making their way toward him. Mairig looks directly in front of her, leading her daughters past him when the lemon comes flying from behind her, hitting her squarely on the back of the head. Lucine rushes to her mother’s side, but Mairig only stumbles for a moment. She presses a palm to the back of her head. Saying nothing, she turns her back on the jeering of the vendors and resumes her straight-backed walk through the market. Lucine stands frozen, her closed fists pulsing with rage. She makes a sharp turn to face the vendor, when Anush steps before her. “Don’t,” she whispers, resting her hand on Lucine’s chest.

  They see Iola’s son, Demi the half-wit, first. He stands at the front door of the apothecary’s house, something he does whenever he accompanies his mother to work. Lucine blushes, remembering an old joke of Uncle Nazareth’s. He liked to say that Demi had seen more bare-breasted women than any eunuch in the sultan’s palace.

  Gevork the apothecary is with all the other men of the village, but a few feet away his elderly father, one of the few Armenian men not called in for the “meeting,” paces back and forth. Normally there would be a half-dozen women bustling about, carrying news of the birth out of the house, to the expectant father and his male relations. But today, the old man waits alone. In his arms, he holds the apothecary’s precious white coat, the Western symbol to announce his status to the world.

  The apothecary’s father lifts the coat up like a sacred shroud. “He left his coat. Pray for a son so I may pass it down.”

  Mairig seems confused by his words. “He will be back shortly. You can give him his coat then,” she answers him. Then, “We’ve come to see Iola.”

  “Yes, yes. She’s been in there all morning. My wife is inside helping. Any minute now they will come out with the child.”

  A guttural scream comes from inside the apothecary’s house.

  “We better go in and see if she needs any help,” says Mairig.

  Inside the dark inner room, Iola squats before the wailing woman. Gevork’s mother scatters bread crumbs and sprinkles water around the room, warding off the evil eye. Iola’s seven birthing brooms hang from the walls, along with ropes of garlic. At the foot of the bed lies the Koran and the Bible, over which is the largest string of blue beads in Sivas. No one, Christian or Muslim, dares protest over one item or another.

  A moaning from the mother escalates until an infant’s wail cuts through the air. Iola pulls the baby out and places it right on its mother’s chest. Pausing briefly in front of Gevork’s father, Iola makes the sign of the cross. “A son,” she says simply. “May God bless him.”

  The old man hurries back into the house, and Iola turns her attention to Mairig.

  “Wise at birth,” she says in Turkish. “Didn’t want to enter this black little world. Had to pry him out. His first memories will be on that dusty road, poor thing.”

  “Yes, we are to leave tomorrow,” Mairig says. “I have a favor to ask,” she adds, pulling a scroll of paper from her bosom. Lucine reads the words New York Life Insurance Company typed in block English letters.

  “Will you keep this safe?”

  Iola looks at the scroll with great suspicion. Everyone knows that few things mystify the midwife like the written word. “I don’t bear other people’s talismans,” she says finally.

  “It’s not a talisman,” says Mairig, though from what Lucine understands, that’s exactly what life insurance is. If anything happens to Hairig, this piece of paper from America ensures that the family will not be destitute. At least that is how Hairig described it.

  “It is a paper from a sultan in America,” explains Mairig. “It says that Hagop’s life is valuable. You can give it to the American missionary. She will keep it safe.”

  Iola considers this for a minute. “W
e who know him shall determine his life’s value, not some sultan in another sea,” she says.

  “Hagop would be grateful to you, Iola,” says Mairig. “He would want you to do this.”

  “Your husband has been very good to my Demi. Give it here,” Iola says, taking the scroll. “We’ll give it to the American. Won’t we, Demi? Now you can do a favor for me. Take this,” Iola says, extending a hand out to Lucine. “Throw it in the river.”

  Lucine takes the dirty rag from the midwife’s outstretched hand immediately and follows Mairig and Anush back toward the road.

  “What is this?” she asks when they have crossed the central square. She can feel something soft and lumpy under the dirty rag.

  “Göbek bağı, an umbilical cord,” says Mairig.

  “From the apothecary’s son?” Anush asks.

  Mairig nods.

  “And why am I throwing it in the river?” asks Lucine.

  “The umbilical cord has the power to influence a child’s future,” Mairig says. “If you bury it in the courtyard of a mosque or church, the child becomes devout. If it’s buried in a school garden, the child becomes educated.”

  “And if you throw it in the river?” asks Lucine.

  “Then the child is forced to search for his or her destiny elsewhere, far away from here.”

  “Do you believe in such things, Mairig?” asks Lucine.

  “I believe what my Bible tells me to believe. But just in case, throw it as deep into the current as you can, my love. May the water carry it as far away from this cursed land as possible.”