She walks slowly, keeping her eyes lowered to the dry earth. Determined to ignore the moaning and shuffling sounds of the company, Lucine focuses on her shoes instead. They are sturdy shoes, with leather soles she knows will take her far. She can depend on them like she can depend on little else. Her eyes rest on the scuff of her right toe, where the soft brown leather is stripped, exposing a lighter, more vulnerable layer.
But the shoes, her own and everyone else’s, are a comfort. Brown, black, heeled, and flat with an occasional sturdy boot—all proceed before her. Constant, tangible and oh so reassuring, less worn than their spirits and limbs. If she keeps her vision focused on just this one article of clothing, Lucine can pretend to ignore the fear that creeps up and overwhelms her.
Anush’s shoes, in particular, are a lovely sight. She wears a brilliant pair of dark blue suede shoes with a large silver buckle that gleams in the sun. As she walks, the sunlight kisses the sweet little buckle now and then, shooting sparks of light into the dusty air. Lucine’s eyes chase these sparks, irregular and unexpected as they are, and her spirit soars with each whimsical, short-lived dance. Her attention is so fixed that at first she does not hear the sound of galloping hooves. But the sound crescendos until both Anush and Lucine are engulfed in a dust.
“Asdvaz! Dear God!” Mairig wields her voice like a sword through the air, but the sisters are hidden in a dirt chamber. Lucine sees nothing but a uniformed arm reach down. Thick fingers clamp down on Anush’s braids, pulling at them like ropes. Anush screams, holding the side of her head where the hair is being torn out. Before Lucine can react, the great arm scoops Anush’s tiny waist up. Lucine catches a glimpse of the man’s face. She sees the hard eyes and familiar mustache of the captain who doesn’t believe in wasting bullets. Anush lunges forward, arms stretching toward Lucine, but the uniformed arm cinches like a tight belt at her waist. Lucine holds her sister’s terrified gaze for a fleeting moment before it recedes with the sound of the hooves. She is left standing only a few feet from where Anush was a moment ago, a cloud of dust settling back at her feet.
When she looks down, one dark blue shoe lies on its side, its shiny silver buckle hiding from the sun. Mairig runs up behind her with such force that they both tumble to the ground. “Aman aman . . .” Mairig screams, tearing at her hair, wailing at her deaf mute god. Lucine swallows her tears. She turns around, staring ahead back toward the road that brought them here. It is empty and nondescript. Nothing about it, not the few discarded articles on the ground nor the absence of the gendarme on horseback, hints at what has happened here.
“Get up! Keep moving!” The turbaned gendarme is yelling again. He kicks the ground and a fresh batch of dust circles the air. Lucine looks ahead for the horse-backed officer, but he has vanished.
Bedros comes running from behind, carrying baby Aram. He has left the oxcart with all their remaining provisions behind.
“Mairig, Mairig,” he calls, holding the baby out to her.
Mairig stands but does not reach for the bundled infant. She drags her feet forward in a stupor. It is Lucine who must take the baby from Bedros. She places Aram into the crook of one arm and squeezes Bedros’s hand.
“You stay close to me,” she says, looking him in the face. “Do you understand?” Her voice is louder and angrier than she intends it to be and Bedros whimpers. But Lucine is too broken to apologize or comfort him. She keeps her grip tight and wills herself to walk on.
CHAPTER 20
Empty Prayers
LUCINE TURNS HER head back again and again, scanning the line of deportees for Anush. She reminds herself repeatedly that girls who are violated in the night are sometimes returned. They weep and hide their faces in shame, but they return. The thought of Anush’s thick brown braids and warm embrace make Lucine’s insides weak. If only Uncle Nazareth or Hairig were here, things would be different. They would find Anush and get them all out of this misery. They would show that gendarme where to stick his bayonet.
Mairig, who insists on walking, shows no interest in taking Aram from Lucine. Tucked under the soft folds of her brother’s swaddling clothes, below the faint scent of breast milk, is a velvet pouch containing Mairig’s hidden treasures: two gold bangles, meant for her daughters when they marry; an emerald brooch in the shape of a cross that belonged to their grandmother; and the ruby ring Hairig had recently given her. Local merchants keep approaching the caravan, selling a handful of almonds for a gold ring or six dried figs for a silver spoon. So far Mairig has kept her treasure to herself. She didn’t reach into it, even when the old women from Tokat needed to bribe the gendarmes. And it’s a good thing, because they may need Mairig’s treasure to rescue Anush.
Now and then, Lucine can hear Mairig catapulting a prayer or two to the heavens in a low angry voice. She uses words that she’s never used before, words that curse and damn things, words that she would have pulled Lucine’s ear for, if she ever used them. Mairig’s eyes have lost their focus; Lucine wishes she would stop looking past them. Not even Aram’s crying can claim her attention.
Yesterday the gendarmes led supervised trips to a public well, but by the time their turn came the soldiers had grown tired of the task. Lucine wonders if the others are as thirsty as she. If only she were bigger and less afraid, she would swallow her beating heart, which seems to be lodged in her swollen tongue. She would put it back in her breast where it belongs and find a way to protect the people she loves. That is what Hairig would have wanted. But swallowing anything, much less the lead ball lodged in the middle of her mouth, is impossible. Sometimes, if she locates her fear somewhere specific, like in the face of the thick-lipped gendarme or the uniformed arm of the man who took Anush, her fear grows smaller but more potent. It transforms into something else entirely: a hate so pure that it sustains, even nourishes, her.
When the sun starts to set, the gendarmes order the deportees to stop marching. The relief at the prospect of a few hours of rest is short-lived, for a cold desert wind begins to whip at their backs. Lucine huddles close to Bedros and Mairig in their makeshift tent. Mairig doesn’t say a word. She turns her back to them and falls asleep. Perhaps she’s right to do it. A rescue plan is better executed after a good night’s sleep.
Lucine vows to stay awake in case Anush returns in the night. She peeks at Bedros, who is also still awake.
“How can it be so cold at night when we are boiling in the day?” he asks, picking at the tear-shaped scab on his left cheek.
“The weather is fickle,” Lucine says. “Stop picking. You don’t want another scar on your face, do you?”
Bedros shrugs. “Girls worry about the strangest things.”
“Get some rest,” Lucine tells him.
Despite her fatigue, Lucine finds it easy to stay awake. Thirst attacks the remainder of her body, traveling down from her throat to cramp her abdomen and legs. Her mind drifts back to the night Uncle Nazareth was taken. She sees herself standing before Governor Muammer, like David before Goliath, aiming Bedros’s slingshot straight for the man’s forehead. Next, she strangles the potbellied fool with those yellow-and-brown marble prayer beads he’s always carrying around. Numerous versions of this heroic vignette play over and over in Lucine’s mind until her lids grow heavy with satisfaction and sleep.
She awakens in the middle of the night to screaming women and the furious pounding of hooves. There is so much dust and so little moonlight that she wonders if this too could be a dream. In the faint orange glow of the moon, four expert horsemen ride toward the caravan. They are dressed in large fringed turbans and tribal şalvar, pants so baggy and wide they look like inflated balloons. The horsemen open their mouths and let out a piercing tribal scream in a language that’s neither Turkish nor Armenian. They swarm like hornets toward the caravan.
“Bastards!” she hears someone shout in the darkness.
The few remaining oxcarts are plundered. One of the horsemen is dragging a young girl by the hair. Lucine runs in the opposite direction. She
cannot see the totality of what is happening but recognizes the backside of a lumbering ox and runs toward it. The animal moves quicker than it ever did when Bedros was driving it. Damn ox. In her haste, she trips over something or someone. It is Bedros, kneeling next to a broken wooden crate, desperately trying to put something back in it.
“Are you all right?” she asks him, forgetting about the ox.
He shakes his head in response. “Our oxcart is gone.”
“I know.”
“They’ve taken our pot and the ladle but left all our grain,” he says.
“Kurds,” says Lucine, her eyes searching the ground. “It is against their custom to take our food.”
Lucine stares into the wooden crate where Bedros has managed to collect two sackcloths of bulgur grain and one plum. What kind of custom allows you to take a girl but not her bulgur?
That is when she remembers Mairig. Only after she has surveyed the remaining food supply.
“Mairig!” she yells, ignoring her burning throat. “Mairig!” Lucine runs toward bodies rising from their crouched positions. She scans their grimy, stunned faces. Tearless, because their bodies are just as parched as their souls.
She finds Stepan the sheepherder flat on his back, his hands still folded together in sleep. Lucine touches his peaceful face with the lids sealed shut and decides to wake him before seeing the wound at the side of his skull where an animal has trampled him. Lucine remembers the heavy-footed ox clamoring for safety and feels strangely responsible for Stepan’s fate. This thought and the blood, so dark and sweet smelling, make her fall to her hands and knees, heaving.
This is how Bedros finds her. “Come, she’s here,” he says, leading her by the elbow to a wooded area. “She’s over here.”
Mairig sits with her back against a tree, her legs spread wider than Lucine has ever seen them. Aram lies squirming beside her, his swaddling clothes loosened. Mairig is holding something tight in her two hands, but Lucine cannot see what. Lucine stands before Mairig in the darkness, taking in her matted hair and sunken eyes. She shudders at the sight of this stranger who has replaced her mother.
“Did they take our water?” asks Mairig, pushing the words past her parched lips.
Lucine does not know how to respond. They have had no water since the incident with Firat and the broken jug. Bedros runs before her and wraps his arms around Mairig’s shoulders.
“Listen,” says Mairig, pushing Bedros away from her. “You should leave now. Let me rest. Take good care of the baby. I will catch up later.”
“Catch up? When?” asks Lucine.
“In a little while. Or you can return for me when you find some water. That would be better.”
Bedros looks to Lucine. They both know she isn’t making any sense.
Mairig reaches into her bosom where a few gold coins are hidden. “Here. Take it. The rest is with the baby.”
“We should stay together,” Lucine insists.
Mairig shakes her head. Then she does something she’s done before. She closes her mind to the world and to her children who remain in it.
“What will you eat?” Lucine whimpers.
“This,” says Mairig, looking down at her hands. In the moonlight, Bedros sees the New Testament open in her palms. Mairig’s delicate fingers lift a page and rip it loose, releasing a sound like a slap in God’s face. She crumples the page into a tiny ball and, lifting it up to her lips, presses it into her mouth.
“What are you staring at?” she snaps. “If God will not eat his words, then I will do it for him. Now go. And take Aram with you.”
CHAPTER 21
God’s Will, Inşallah
LUCINE LEAVES MAIRIG on the open road, under the eye of a merciless god. She leaves her own heart there too. It lies beating in the cradle of Mairig’s cupped palms. She tells herself that the heart is a burdensome organ and leaving it behind is the best thing to do. The rest of her body moves forward, following the hunched backs of other deportees but her thoughts are like a whirlwind, circular and fierce. She’s glad The Missionary Herald is gone. She was stupid to take it in the first place. What good did she think it would do her on the march? For that matter, what good will Kemal’s drawing do, still tucked inside her dress? Where would Aram and Bedros be now if she had listened to him?
She carries herself, head heavy, reluctant lids lowered.
When she does look around, Lucine sees everything differently now. Everywhere she looks, in every face and every pebble, is an opportunity for death or survival. Bedros and Aram are no exception. She sees hope’s ghost circling around their shrunken faces. Every now and then, Bedros tries to pry his hand from hers, but she only squeezes harder. Aram is fastened to her back now, wrapped and propped up by their only blanket. Two long sticks protrude from the blanket, parallel to the ground. She plans to use them to hold up the blanket, transforming it into a shield against the biting desert wind. Two largish leaves are pressed flat against her belly. She can use them to clean the baby when they finally rest. Eyes shrunken, lips dry, she isn’t sure if he will survive.
Bedros does not ask for water. He does not ask her when they will go back for Mairig. He does not ask her anything and for this she is most grateful. His silence is so merciful that if she had a heart left, there would be tenderness in it.
One of the old women from Tokat walks beside them. Lucine keeps her eyes fastened to the earth and does her best to discourage conversation. “Daughter, water,” the woman says, extending an open palm.
Lucine shakes her head and looks away. I am no one’s daughter now.
A man she does not recognize, one of the few male deportees left, turns around.
“There is no water yet, Auntie,” he says. “But we are soon approaching the Tokma Su River. There will be water there.”
“Eh, Inşallah,” she responds with a sigh. “May God will it.”
God’s will. Inşallah. The phrase rings in Lucine’s ears like a familiar and angry bell. This mysterious and vengeful god and his unpredictable will have been evoked every day of her life. In moments of grief and exaltation, in casual comments exchanged without much thought, and in solemn whispers uttered every evening in the Lord’s Prayer. Lucine hears it whispered to her as an infant. May she be a lucky child, Inşallah. And it continues from there, every day, until this dirty miserable day when she is walking hungry and desperate with no parents and two younger siblings, the sun at her back and dust at her feet. Suddenly she is swollen with anger. If God’s will materialized as a pitcher of water, she would throw it back up to the sky. Wasn’t it his will that placed her here? His will that killed Hairig? His will that took Anush, broke Mairig’s spirit, and caused her to give up? No, Lucine will no longer pay any attention to him or his will. She discards his will, exhaling it out of her body in the form of her breath. She drops it to the earth and steps over it, feeling lighter and more in control.
The caravan from Sivas follows a narrow bend in the road that widens suddenly, revealing the bridge at Tokma Su and the vast plain beyond. A slow-moving line of oxcarts as far as the eye can see proceeds before them. Lucine thinks longingly of their own dumb animal, whose burden she now carries herself. The people with oxcarts are members of an earlier flock, deportees from some other province of Turkey who share the same fate. As they approach the bridge, Lucine begins to see the bodies of those who came before them, who succumbed to hunger or thirst and now lie dying or dead on the side of the road.
To her immediate right, a pair of vultures pulls at the intestines of a woman’s body. The larger one is perched on the woman’s chest, his black tail feathers batting at what was once her chin. Lucine places a hand over Bedros’s eyes.
Neither one of them mentions Mairig, but the image of her is there before them, perched under a tree, an open invitation to friend and foe alike. Perhaps Hairig’s ghost will hide her. It is a comforting thought and one Lucine holds on to. His words drift back to her now: Sometimes we have to be like a riverbank, twisting and turni
ng along with the earth, withstanding swells and currents. Enduring.
The plain on either side of the bridge is dotted with villagers, their white şalvar pants blowing in the wind. Some launch insults and stones. The more ambitious pick at the bodies of those not yet dead. Two village women, their heads covered in piety, think nothing of stripping a fallen deportee of her clothing. The younger of the two does the stripping, while the older one checks for hidden seams and pockets filled with loot.
Lucine removes Aram from his place on her back and presses him to her chest, her arms forming a makeshift fence around him.
Miss Graffam runs up and down the bridge, trying to make sure no one is badly hurt. She looks and behaves so differently than she did in Lucine’s classroom; gone are her pressed skirts and even more pressed manners. The calm authority of her once-serene face is replaced by wild eyes. The only thing familiar about her now is the big hat on her head. It impresses a handful of Kurdish villagers enough to sell her some water, which she offers to her former students. Lucine accepts without a word. Putting the wet ladle to her lips brings forth a kind of anticipation akin to joy, but her swollen tongue lets in only a mouthful of water at a time. It’s as if her throat forgot how to swallow. Lucine does her best to drink what she can, taking care not to make eye contact. The days when she strove to catch her teacher’s eye are gone. Now she wishes only to be invisible.
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