As the Poppies Bloomed

by Maral Boyadjian

  She gasped and sat up straight. Daron was not here with her. He was standing sentinel again tonight. Something had happened to Daron.

  She burst from the tiny room in her bedclothes, with only her hair blanketing her shoulders. Her sight blurred in her body’s race from sleep to agony, but once in the candlelit room, she spotted Daron and rushed to him at once.

  He did not look at her. His attention, and everyone’s, was turned to Mgro.

  Heghin, to the west, was under attack. Salor’s sentinels had brought the news. Help must be sent at once.

  “I will go,” Mgro ground out, his gun leaning close behind him against the wall. He was packing cartridges tightly into his pockets and into a sack.

  Anno’s eyes whipped wildly around the room as she realized what decisions were being made.

  Manuel, Kevork’s father, wrapped already in coat and hat, Mosin in hand, was clearly to go as well. That left one weapon available, for one more man.

  Anno’s head moved and tilted in inches to her left to take in Daron, who had stepped forward, toward his father. She recoiled at the fury in his face, fury directed at Mgro.

  He wants to go, Anno realized. He has forgotten me.

  She stepped away. Her body gone cold and her teeth chattering, she listened as Mgro turned to them all and announced that only he and his brother would go. The one remaining weapon would stay here, with them, to use if necessary.

  His voice dropped only slightly at this last. Then he went forward and kissed Nevart’s hands and then his father’s before turning his back on them all. Manuel did the same, with one light stroke of Naomi’s cheek as she swallowed back her tears.

  After that, their days were no longer lived but witnessed as through a veil.

  Anno waited for daybreak, to lay the table for the remaining members of the household, and then collected the dishes again. She tied a large cloth across her chest and tucked Sossè inside. She did not ask for permission and did not say when she would return. She trudged up the deserted lanes to her father’s home. She must see who was left to her there.

  Anno pushed at the door and stood in its shadow. Inside, she saw no early-morning bustle, the race to complete all their chores and to prepare their stores of food and grain. The toneer stood empty and cold.

  Yeraz turned, her empty arms slackened at the sight of Anno. They studied each other, eyes desperate, with no words to offer, no hope in their hearts.

  ANNO RAILED AT Daron. It was the darkest night. He held her tightly in her fury and rasped, “Did you want me to wait to fight them at our own doorstep, Anno?”

  She did not listen, but wrested and wrenched at him, accusing him of leaving and forgetting her, until she fell asleep, spent and broken, against his tear-soaked chest.

  Vartan had not allowed Vrej to go either. Yeraz at least still had one son. It seemed the men had planned to do it this way from the first. They would spare the youth.

  “I leave their care to you,” Vartan told Uncle Hagop before he walked away. The old man’s head dropped onto his hands.

  Five more villages were attacked, again to the west. The wounded men of Salor returned.

  A man limped in, a long stick bearing the weight of his right leg. His face was heavily bearded and he watched the ground, concentrating on each agonizing step. He progressed for several minutes and many watched from their doors as he passed. Then a squeal of shock burst from a doorway and Takoush rushed at him. “Baba! Baba!” She raced to his side and turned in surprise to see her mother running alongside her, arms outstretched.

  Unkempt and half starved, they straggled in. Haig, head bandaged, dragged a makeshift litter upon which a twisted body lay. Old Mariam could not run, but wiped at her tears and bobbed her head as his wife caught him tightly around the waist. She then gently pried his hands off the litter and heartily pulled it in his stead. She glanced back once to see who lay on the litter, but did not know the man.

  News of anyone’s return raced from house to house. Soon everyone was plying the men with questions of their own family members. Any bit of information was precious.

  “Heghin village…all seventy-five households are left with just a handful of survivors.” Mihran wept and tossed his head as he related what he knew.

  Each day more villages were attacked. And at last, one night a great banging came at Mgro’s door and a boy yelled up to Sister Nevart that her son had returned.

  “Her son,” the boy had said. Huddled around their unlit toneer, the women stared into their needlework, into their spindles. Kevork and Daron were standing sentinel, so Mgro’s father led them down the staircase to the courtyard to wait for him to be brought in. All held their breath. Naomi grasped the boy by the shoulder. “Just one?” she implored. The boy’s eyes grew wide and he nodded.

  Figures drew closer and closer in the dark. Anno recognized Daron from a distance supporting a dropping figure, with Kevork on the other side. She did not rush forward with the others. She clung to Nairi beneath a tree and waited. Cries reached them. It was Nevart, Anno thought, doubled over. Kevork made an effort to go to her but could not. Her husband stopped her from collapsing to the ground. Someone, a neighbor, steadied her and turned her toward home.

  Anno’s eyes strained to see who it was who had survived. But she knew. Naomi clung to Manuel as closely as she could, as if she would lift him into her own arms.

  Nairi and Anno pressed closer. The child knew too.

  And now, Anno accepted, the next time help was needed, Daron would go in Mgro’s place.

  It did not take long for the front room to fill. No sooner had Manuel been laid on a mattress than people swept in. They aided with the lifting and the assessment of his leg, which, with one ball deeply embedded in his thigh, was swollen and infected.

  A few families remained with men who had not returned or who had not been accounted for. Manuel shook his head at them all, unable to help, except for Yeraz.

  She entered on the heels of Old Mariam and Anno’s eyes followed her. She did not ask details, just as she did not ask yet of Mgro’s death. They sought to make Manuel comfortable first. The details they would mill over for the rest of their lives.

  The filth of gunpowder and dirt and blood were washed from him as well as possible and he gulped tea made from boiled herbs. Then he waved all to silence. There was a will in his eyes and he needed to speak.

  “This is not as we have known it to be. The Kurds steal from us, we turn a blind eye. The Kurds steal from us, we call a clan member to mediate. They kidnap one of our girls, and she is lost, or we pay for her return.” He shook his head once, “No. By the time we neared Heghin we could see the smoke coming from the rooftops. We hid and waited for nightfall. Then we entered, once we were certain no Kurds had stayed behind. There was no one left.” He shook his head. “Entire families were slain and their blood was painted on the walls and soaked into the very soil. The houses were emptied of the best wares and bodies lay one on top of another, unburied.”

  He turned to Yeraz.

  “Mgro, Vartan, and I did not return to Salor then. This, we knew, was what they intend to do everywhere. Their joy at our extinction is absolute. The Turks are waiting to offer them assistance, but for now, do not need to.

  “The Kurds had moved on to other villages and we decided, with our guns in hand and pockets full of cartridges, we would not return home to wait for our turn. We traveled south and fought there, however we could, however anyone could. When the bullets finished, as did Vartan’s and Mgro’s, our own deaths came.”

  He allowed himself to weep, as did they all, and the last was more difficult to tell and more difficult to hear as his voice choked and he could no more control it.

  “They carried off so, so many of the girls. We three hid in the mountain range and waited for them. We sat at three separate points”—he outlined their triangle in the air with one bent finger. “When the Kurds were inside that triangle, we shot at them. We were mostly successful. They could not see us. But
then”—he held out empty palms—“we had no more bullets.”

  There was no sound in the room. Daron’s grandfather sat nodding his old head when Manuel spoke and when he did not. “Mgro’s and Vartan’s deaths were good ones. They were not found and hatcheted. They were not tied together like animals to have their throats cut.

  “Vartan still breathed when I dragged myself to him. He asked me, ‘Did the girls escape?’”

  Manuel wiped at his nose and eyes openly. He pushed away the cup of tea Naomi offered. “Yes, yes, I told him. But it was a lie. Those girls were not able to escape this time, and neither would we.”

  But Vartan had smiled at that, a victorious smile that Manuel would keep with him always.

  He patted Yeraz’s hands as she clenched them trembling before her. “They lay together. Do not worry. I saw to that.”

  MANUEL’S SCREAMS REACHED the streets below as Old Mariam and Yeraz labored to locate and remove the bit of iron that was killing him.

  Sossè shuddered in fear at the sounds and Anno left the house with her daughter and Nairi. Sensing that the extraction would take longer than they hoped, they went to Takoush’s house, not too far up the road.

  Anno had expected the lukewarm welcome she had always received from Takoush’s mother, but instead the woman’s stout arms pulled the unsteady group near the fire. She pulled out blankets and bedding. Anno only remembered being awakened the next morning by Daron, who stood over them, gray-faced. He had come hours before, Anno learned, but Mihran had not allowed him to pull them away from the warmth of the room.

  Daron and Anno followed each other’s whereabouts at all times of the day and night now. Anno knew which field Daron would work each morning and then the afternoon as well. And all knew that Anno would be with Yeraz for a part of each day, as would Lucine. Yeraz had only Vrej now.

  As for Raffi, Yeraz had accepted that she was one of the many broken mothers who would live a lifetime saying that her son went and was never heard from again. Vartan, at least, lay in peace somewhere in Sassoun.

  C H A P T E R 46

  Anno beat the wool filling of their mattresses a very few times and straightened to take in the view of Salor from the rooftop. Even when she was a girl, this task had been one of her favorites.

  Early summer, every year, the mattress stitching was undone and the wool fillings were laid out on sheets on the rooftop. After a long winter, the wool had curled and lumped together. It was washed and spread evenly under the sun to air and dry. Then it was beaten lightly to flatten and separate the fibers before refilling and stitching the mattresses closed, ready for another year.

  Anno inhaled the smell of clean wool warmed by the sun and gazed at the church top, the misshapen roofs and gardens beyond. From her father’s home she had been able to see the twist of the river and the tips of the orchard, and all was surrounded and bound together by the soft rolls of the gradually expanding hills around them. She had memorized the landmarks and dwellings as seen from her father’s rooftop, and she was doing the same now, from her father-in-law’s.

  Remembering Vartan again, her body went limp as she wept. They were all left with such a constant emptiness, everywhere. Without their fathers, they seemed to push along aimlessly to the next task, and the next.

  Daron spoke yesterday of how locusts had filled the air of Armenian vilayets farther away. In the same breath he continued that the Kurds, under intense Turkish commands, had organized and mobilized and were to surround the Sassountzi stronghold around the Antok Mountains.

  Daron and Kevork now took direction from no one. Their work outdoors took longer, as did everyone’s, with fewer men to help. When the wheat and grain ripened, she and Naomi had joined them in the fields.

  “There are fewer men to work, fewer to lead, and fewer to defend when the time comes,” Vrej grumbled. Anno had found herself bent at work next to her brother. All families worked collectively now, ever more so than before.

  She felt the frustration, the fury in him. Their fathers all dead, the men woke and worked with the women and children and elderly.

  “I say we join the defense line to the south of Antok,” Vrej continued. “Let us fight them back there, because if they should ever reach here, we are finished.” She looked some rows over to see that Daron was watching them and had heard. His expression was unreadable.

  A movement on the lane below caught Anno’s attention. She recognized Takoush’s dark-blue apron. Anno called out to her, wiping her own face. Takoush shielded her eyes from the sun and followed Anno’s voice, then scrambled to the rooftop from the narrow set of stairs outside.

  Takoush’s movements had slowed. To look at her, Anno was reminded of the hollow months she herself had passed when forbidden to see Daron.

  Takoush surveyed Anno’s work. Before, she would have chided her friend’s half-heartedness and continued the task herself, all the while chattering and gesturing in the air. Now, she only seemed able to do one thing at a time.

  “I will wait with you until they return,” Takoush told her.

  “All right,” Anno agreed, “but why?”

  “I heard something.”

  Anno watched her. If there was something that concerned Kevork, then it likely concerned Daron as well.

  Takoush’s hands, agitated, caught at her apron as the breeze lifted and ruffled it.

  “What do you know?” Anno persisted.

  “I think they will be leaving soon, to Antok.”

  Takoush hated watching Anno’s eyes darken. She dropped the stick she was holding and Takoush moved to her side. Arms linked, they watched the paths below.

  The beauty of their village was not lost to them, even then, as emptied as it was of their fathers and brothers. The sun was dropping well west and the contrasting blues and greens of the sky and hills matured and deepened. The birds swept and perched on rooftops and hollows they had claimed as their own. The oxen and donkey brayed and slapped their tales along the road home and children scampered as far as they dared, snatching minutes of games before their absence was discovered.

  Anno recognized Daron’s walk, straight-hipped and sure. He and Kevork carried farm tools on their shoulders and their shirts and shalvars hung dusty and dark with perspiration. Daron’s cap was pushed back and Anno thought how long it had been since he had held a razor. It would be a full beard in just one more week, she reflected, as he neared. She would not mind.

  Daron had seen Anno on the roof. She knew just when that moment had been. His chin had lifted and for a second, it had been a happy moment. Then he took in her stance.

  The farm tools were dropped somewhere near the house. Takoush rushed down the stairs. She and Kevork would speak somewhere less visible. Anno was alone when Daron wearily dragged himself up the last steps to her.

  She had thought to say so much, so much to remind him of Sossè and Nairi, of their extreme losses already, and of the Kurdish camp a riverbank away, but she did not. They folded into each other’s arms and sank to the floor, staring into the bundles of wool.

  “How will I rise each morning without you, Daron?” she whispered.

  Her heart thumped in her throat.

  “I will come back to you, Anno.”

  She moved in closer.

  IT WAS TOO delicate a morsel for hands such as his, accustomed to gripping ploughs and oxen the day long, or his wife’s wide, swinging hips. The pads of Haig’s fingers bore into the creamy layers of halvah and sesame oil glistened on his cut and chipped fingers.

  They marched over and around the stubborn, misshapen stones the earth yielded. They were all there, Daron, Kevork, Vrej, and nearly thirty others.

  Mihran, his limp hardly noticeable, carried a strangely curved blade sheathed at his side. Its only use had been, until today, to harvest honeycomb.

  “Keep that halvah for later, for while you fight,” someone called out to Haig.

  “It will keep best in my belly,” he retorted and tipped his head back to pop the entire chunk i
nto his mouth.

  Their laugh mingled with the wind and lifted to the tips of the firs and cedars of their mountains.

  C H A P T E R 47

  The days grew intensely hot once Daron left, once they all left. It seemed to Anno that they were all gone, but it was not so. Their own village would not be left completely unprotected. Avo had remained behind. He and his family would help harvest Vartan’s crops and fields along with their own.

  Yeraz had stared at her remaining son with stricken eyes when Vrej told her that he too, would go.

  “I have carried this name…this name, revenge, all my life for a reason, have I not, my mother?” he asked. “I can at least fill my brother’s place.”

  Yeraz’s head fell. “My son. We had not named you so in hope that one day you would go to fight the Turk! We named you in hope that you would live and love and build a large family of your own, right here on your own land, in spite of them.”

  How wrong she had been thinking that God intended to spare her children.

  The sun beat down on them like a single ball of fury. It forced everything to ripen at once and Anno and the women left their homes to harvest the grain and pluck fruit from the branches. But, most dangerously, it forced the shepherds to move their flocks to higher ground looking for land less parched.

  At night, Nairi slept beside Anno, taking Daron’s place. Anno pulled Sossè’s cradle close to her other side, and feeling some reassurance at both their closeness, slept.

  Uncle Manuel lay in the front room, no longer bargaining with death, but simply waiting his turn. He had buried two men and then dragged his wounded leg through two days of brush and mountainside. The infection was beyond any help Mariam or Yeraz could provide. He lay covered in a clean sheet, a fetidness seeping into every corner of the house.

  Anno listened to Nairi breathe beside her and twisted her silver bangle on her forearm. Her neck and shoulders were strained and burned from bending and pulling crops all day and she lay flat on her back, waiting for the pain to ease.