THREE
Not Just Orphans
Hamadan Orphanage
September 1922
BEFORE THE CHILDREN climbed into the backs of the heavy army trucks, Miss Watson came around.
“It’s not far to Hamadan, but we must go over the Assadabad Pass. The road is very steep and you’ll have to walk so that the trucks can make it to the top. We’ll camp one night along the way.” She suddenly smiled a real smile. “You children certainly know how to do that!”
The road was very rough. It seemed to Samira that the truck was leaping over the bumps. The older girls sat as firmly as they could on the benches, each one tightly holding on to a smaller child. They all swayed and bounced as the truck jolted along, churning up dust. Samira covered her mouth with her scarf and squinted to keep as much dust as possible out of her eyes, but she had to keep looking around, too.
The road went along a valley at the bottom of brown mountains. Nothing was green. The grass was dried golden, and the few bushes and trees were as dusty brown as the road. Every now and then they passed a village, but most of the houses were half fallen in, and Samira saw no people in the fields. The war had been here.
Samira had asked one of the teachers at Kermanshah why so many of the villages were ruined.
“Everywhere there was a real road the armies came and villages were fought over,” he told her. “People had no choice but to run away, and now they have nothing to come home to. Some of the villages far from roads were not so damaged.”
Now Samira thought of Ayna, her village. No one ever drove there in a truck, and it was a long day’s walk from the city. Was her house still standing? What would she and Benyamin do if they got to Ayna and the roofs of the houses were caved in and the walls were crumbling?
The truck slowed down. The sound of the motor changed, grinding and struggling. Samira leaned out to see around the cab of the truck. The road ahead was very steep.
The truck stopped and Samira stood up.
“It’s time to walk,” she said, and all the children jumped down and began to walk beside the road.
It felt good not to be bouncing on a hard bench, and at first they ran and skipped ahead of the trucks. But then the mountain seemed to be holding them back. They began to trudge up the steep slope, and the trucks slowly passed them.
As the last one ground its way past the panting children, Miss Watson waved to them from the window, pointing up ahead.
“We’ll wait for you at the top,” she called.
Benyamin came and walked beside Samira.
“We’re going east,” he said. “But if we went north and just a little west and kept going we would come to Ayna.”
“Benyamin, don’t think about it. We can’t do it.”
“I know that even better than you,” said Benyamin. “But don’t forget. We did walk all the way once.”
Samira’s eyes opened wide. Benyamin was right. They had walked all the way from Ayna to Hamadan that long time ago.
Benyamin reached out to touch her shoulder.
“I can’t help thinking about it,” he said. “But you don’t have to. We’ll be safe in Hamadan and we’ll see what happens next.”
When the children arrived, panting, at the top of the pass, Miss Watson said, “Our documents have been checked and we can go on to our camping place. Tomorrow will be downhill almost all the way.”
The next morning the travelers woke very early. They ate bread and hard-boiled eggs and were on their way as the sun rose.
Samira ached all over from the bouncing. Anna wouldn’t talk and Elias complained about having to sit down as the truck rolled along. But before the sun was overhead they began to pass houses along the road. They were almost there.
Suddenly there was a shout from the truck ahead. “We have arrived!”
The trucks slowed down and all the children stood up to get a look at their new home. They were approaching a high wall made of mud bricks. There was a wide wooden gate in the wall, and a man appeared and opened it to let the trucks bump into the yard.
Most of the children sat down so they wouldn’t fall, but Samira kept a firm hand on Elias’s shoulder to steady herself. She had a good view of the orphanage before the truck lurched to a stop.
She saw a group of low gray buildings with small windows like little blind eyes. The earth around the buildings was bare and trampled. The whole place looked lonely and empty of spirit.
The moment the trucks stopped moving, the children jumped out, and suddenly the space was filled with life. The older children stood and looked at the buildings that would be their home, but the younger ones ran and jumped and called to each other.
Miss Watson appeared with a key in her hand and unlocked the door at the end of the nearest building. She turned to Samira and Anna who were standing close by and said, “You can go in if you like.”
“We might as well see the worst,” said Anna.
Elias came and took Samira’s hand and they walked through the door. Before them was a hallway that stretched to the end of the building, with open doors on either side. Elias let go of Samira and ran the whole length of the hall. Then he ran into every room, zigzagging back and forth. She followed slowly.
There wasn’t much to see. Every room was exactly the same, square with mud brick walls and one small window that gave a glimpse of the bare yard and the wall with the tops of the mountains beyond it, far away.
Elias ran up to her. “There is a roof and windows just like you said. It’s a house for us.”
Samira looked at his grubby, shining face and thought, “He can’t remember a house with rugs on the floor and cushions and an oven to make it warm. He only remembers tents.”
When they were back outside she looked around the empty yard and asked Miss Watson, “Why is everything so bare? People lived here, didn’t they?”
“During the war these were barracks where soldiers from India lived. They were part of the British army and they went home when the war ended. The buildings have stood empty for the past four years. Finally the army has decided to give them to us to use for the orphanage.”
She sighed. “We would have liked to have the orphanage inside the city walls where there’s a school and a hospital, but Hamadan is crowded with thousands of refugees. They ran away from the war, too, and they’re still stuck here. There is simply no place in the city to put all of you. We’re lucky to have these buildings, and it only takes half an hour to walk into the city.”
“The camp was better than this ugly place,” Anna said stubbornly.
Miss Watson frowned a little. “When I come back to visit I’m sure everything will look very different.”
“You aren’t going to stay?”
“Oh, no,” said Miss Watson briskly. “I have to go back to Baghdad. I came to help you make the journey. But I’ll leave you in good hands. The new director will arrive soon and get things fixed up. In the meantime, Mr. Edwards will be here.”
As the children sat on the ground eating their noon meal, Miss Watson told them that five buildings would be used as dormitories. The girls would have three buildings because some of the smallest boys would stay with them.
“Two or three to a room,” she said. “I’ll assign the rooms after you eat and then you can get yourselves
settled. I’ll come by later to see that everything is in order.”
Getting settled took only a few minutes. Samira and Anna unrolled the sleeping mats, spread out the quilts and arranged the clothes bundles against the wall, as usual.
When Miss Watson came in she looked at the three beds. “I suppose that soon Elias will go and live with the boys. Do you know how old he is?”
“He was a tiny baby when he came to the camp at Baqubah,” said Samira. “He was there for three years, like us, and then he was at Kermanshah.”
“So he’s about four years old,” said Anna.
“Of course,” said Miss Watson. “All of you have been in camps for four years. I knew that but I never thought of a child spending his whole life in camps. And you girls were quite young when you had to leave your villages. You must remember very little of your lives before you came to Baqubah.”
Samira and Anna didn’t say anything. Why should they tell her what they remembered?
Miss Watson glanced around the room again. “You’ve made it very neat but that floor will need more sweeping. I know the relief people tried to clean this place before you came but it really is disgracefully dusty.” She shook her head and went off to check the room next door.
Samira made sure that Miss Watson couldn’t hear her before she said, “Miss Watson doesn’t know anything about dirt floors, does she?”
“Always dusty,” said Anna. “We need rugs, not sweeping.”
“I guess we remember something about our lives before Baqubah,” said Samira. “Now let’s find Elias. It’s bedtime.”
The next morning Miss Watson left and Mr. Edwards arrived.
“I’m your director again,” he said. “But this time it’s definitely temporary. You’ll be getting a permanent director before long. But we’ll get things started as best we can.”
Samira and Anna looked at each other. They could tell he was hoping the new director would arrive soon.
“Mr. Edwards doesn’t know what needs to be done for winter,” Anna said later. “It’s going to be cold and nothing is ready. Not even our feet!”
Samira looked down at her own brown, dirty feet and nodded. The shoes made so long ago in Baghdad had worn out on the stony fields at Kermanshah.
“We just have to wait for the real director,” she said. “I hope he knows what to do.”
Mr. Edwards did have plans. He asked Benyamin and Ashur to explore and make a list of all the orphanage buildings and what was in them.
“We don’t really know what’s here except for ten barracks we can use as dormitories,” he told them. “I’ll tell the caretaker to unlock everything. You take a look and report back to me. I have to get busy organizing supplies.” And off he went.
When Samira heard what the boys were doing, she said to Benyamin, “Anna and I will come along. We might see something you miss.”
After opening one heavy door after another and walking through dust that hadn’t been disturbed for years, they made a list. There was a kitchen with stoves and shelves, a big building that was completely empty, another big building with broken furniture heaped at one end, and two small buildings that looked like houses in a village. One of them had two rooms and the other only one.
When Mr. Edwards read the list he said, “Good. We’ve got a kitchen and a big room for eating. The other big building will be the schoolroom and recreation room combined. That building with two rooms can be used for the director’s office and a place for the doctor and nurse to work. The other can be a store room.”
“All these buildings are empty,” said Anna. “There’s no furniture that isn’t broken and we have no rugs or cushions.”
“I have a plan about furniture,” said Mr. Edwards. “Rugs and cushions will have to wait.”
He told the boys to take all the broken furniture into the yard and spread it out. There were banged-up tabletops, chairs with broken legs and many oddly shaped pieces of wood.
“Just junk,” said Benyamin, but Mr. Edwards reached into the pile and pulled out a large flat piece of wood.
“We’ll make a table out of this,” he said. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to build furniture. I used to teach carpentry back home, and now I’ll teach you.”
He brought back some tools the next time he went into the city, and soon the boys were busy making table legs out of scraps of wood.
“We’ll need cupboards for the schoolroom and a few chairs for the teachers,” said Mr. Edwards. “Luckily you kids sit on the floor.”
September passed, but except for the new furniture Samira saw that most jobs were still being put off until the director came.
“It’s October,” said Anna one day. “At home we would be almost ready for winter by now. The wheat would be stored and the grapes would be drying. And the grape syrup would be made.”
“I know,” said Samira. “My father said that a full umbar meant a happy winter. We always had plenty to eat.”
She thought of the cellar under the terrace in Ayna. The door was set into the ground and it was too heavy for her to lift, so she never went down without her mother. But when they went down the steep stairs with a lantern to light their way, she was in a magic place. There were bags of wheat and dried beans, oil in jars as tall as she was, dried fruits and pickled vegetables in crocks. It smelled wonderful.
Grape vines heavy with grapes festooned the walls. The grapes dried very slowly under the ground, and the raisins were juicy and delicious. Before Samira and her mother returned to the bright world above, they would pick a few of the grapes and chew them slowly, remembering the summer.
“I think there’s an umbar here,” Samira said. “People must have lived in those two small buildings before the barracks were built. They would have needed a place to store food.”
“People like Mr. Edwards would never think of an umbar,” said Anna. “They didn’t store food for us in Baqubah or Kermanshah and they won’t here. They’ll send food in. Endless lentils and onions, probably.”
Samira made a face. “It would be better if we had some food stored up. Something we could count on, the way we did at home. We live here. It should be more like home.”
THE TRUTH WAS THAT the orphanage didn’t feel like home. The rooms were dark and bare. Cold wind from the mountains blew through the open windows. The children shivered under their quilts at night and dressed quickly in the morning to run to the eating room where hot tea and warm bread would be ready for them.
Mr. Edwards kept saying that the director would arrive soon. But the director didn’t come.
One morning in the middle of October, Samira woke very early, knowing that something had disturbed her sleep. She listened intently. On one side of her Anna was sleeping quietly, but on the other side Elias was coughing and breathing heavily.
Samira went over to him. He was hot with fever, and she could hear his breath rasping in his throat.
She woke Anna.
“Elias is sick,” she said. “Go and get Mr. Edwards.”
Mr. Edwards slept in one of the boys’ dormitories, in a room right beside the main door. In only a moment he was kneeling by Elias, feeling his forehead.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll send the caretaker to the city. I hope the doctor can come very soon. How are you feeli
ng?”
“I’m worried about Elias but I feel fine,” said Samira, and Anna said, “Me, too.”
“That’s good. Stay away from the other children until we find out what this is. But you can fetch some breakfast from the kitchen.”
Samira sat down beside Elias. His face was flushed and he muttered in his sleep.
Samira remembered Maryam’s face as she lay in their mother’s arms. But she was so still. Elias could not be as sick as she was.
The doctor didn’t come until nearly noon. Samira made herself busy wiping the little boy’s hot face with a damp cloth and keeping the quilt from tangling around him as he moved restlessly. Anna brought her a piece of bread and a bowl of yogurt.
When Samira set them down uneaten, Anna said, “It won’t do any good for you to get sick, too. I’m just as worried as you are but remember, Elias is a strong boy and he hasn’t been running through the wilderness to save his life.”
“I know. I just can’t help remembering.” Samira leaned back against the wall and ate the food.
When the doctor finally came she waited outside in the corridor with Anna. It seemed a long time before he came out with Mr. Edwards and closed the door.
He smiled at them. “The news is good. Elias is a sick little boy but he doesn’t have typhus or any of the dangerous illnesses we watch for.”
Samira took a step toward him. “You’re sure? He won’t…” She stopped.
The doctor looked at her seriously. “No, Elias won’t die. He’ll be miserable for a few days but he will get well. I’m wondering whether you two girls would look after him? The important thing is to keep him in bed and give him plenty of cool, weak tea to drink. Moving him all the way to the hospital wouldn’t help.”
When both girls nodded he went on, “Take turns being with him. I don’t want either one of you to get worn out and pick up what he has. I’ll be back tomorrow to see how he’s doing. If he’s sicker I’ll take him to the hospital.”
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