Home Is Beyond the Mountains

by Celia Lottridge

  “So he had no parents and the village didn’t like him,” said Benyamin. “Like the boy with the donkey in Ayna. Remember him?”

  “Yes,” said Samira. “I never really paid attention to him. He was just there.”

  “We didn’t think about him. We didn’t talk to him. He was nobody to us and we don’t even know why.”

  “Well, Malik is someone to us now,” said Samira. “He has to come back.”

  The road climbed, up and up. They made a rest stop in the afternoon and Samira turned around and saw the great dry plains spread out below her.

  “We’ve walked all that way,” she said in amazement.

  “I came the easy way, on horseback,” said Benyamin. “Even that was quite a journey.”

  It was nearly dark when they stopped, but the cook wagon was ready with hot stew and everyone hurried to get ready for dinner. By the time the Rooftop children had washed up, someone had laid out the mats and quilts.

  “Did you get the bedding?” Samira asked Benyamin.

  “No,” he said. “When I found the chavadar the mules were already unloaded. I came back here and everything was done.”

  “It was Malik,” said Elias. “I saw him.”

  “That’s good,” said Benyamin. “We’re going to need him. Miss Shedd told me that Ashur and I will have to help with the heavy wagons from here on. We’ll be going up and down real mountains now, and they could get stuck or go off the road. We won’t have much time to be here for the family.”

  But the next morning Malik was nowhere to be seen.

  Benyamin and Ashur were beginning to roll up the sleeping mats and quilts when Miss Shedd came by.

  “This will be a hard day. It will be mostly downhill. That might sound easy but the road is narrow and you’ll have to walk carefully. You don’t want to stumble and fall into a ravine. Ashur and Benyamin, you’ll help with the wagons so they don’t roll downhill too fast. The rest of you must look after each other. I know I can count on the Rooftop Family. You girls and Malik and Avram have managed everything so well.”

  She looked over the heads of the children grouped around her as she spoke. Samira turned and followed the direction of her gaze. There was Malik standing a little distance away. She waved at him but his whole attention was on Miss Shedd. She smiled briefly at all the children, including Malik, and then walked briskly away.

  Malik went straight to the Rooftop Family’s sleeping space and picked up a big pile of rolled bedding.

  He grinned at Benyamin and said, “Come on. I’ll show you where our mules are.”

  Samira breathed a deep sigh and said to Anna, “Malik is back.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Anna. “We need him to help keep these silly children from falling into a crevasse.”

  Anna was right. The road went along the side of a deep, narrow valley. In some places the children had to walk in single file. Samira’s legs ached from bracing herself on the steep downward slope, and progress was slow.

  By the time they reached their camping place in an old caravanserai beside a river, it was nearly dark. Everyone sat around complaining about aching muscles, especially Benyamin and Ashur. They had been walking behind the cook wagon holding onto chains to slow the heavy wagon down.

  “I ache in completely different places than I did after seven days on horseback,” said Benyamin, rubbing one of his shoulders and then the other. “But I do have good news. Miss Shedd says that we will stay here tomorrow. We can wash ourselves in the river and wash some clothes, too. And rest a bit before we start up the next mountain.”

  Everyone knew what a bathing and washing stop meant. The girls would bathe in the river first, wearing their long cotton shirts. The big girls would help the little girls, of course, handing out the soap and seeing that everyone got clean from hair to toenails. There would be time for splashing around, too. Afterward the cotton shirts would be thrown in the big kettles of hot water to be washed with the other clothes, and the girls would put on their least dirty clothes for the rest of the day.

  When the girls were finished they would go and play while the boys bathed.

  Luckily the next day was quite warm. The younger girls shrieked at the coolness of the water and splashed and giggled when the older ones tried to get them to stand still to be washed.

  Anna finally said, “Well, I guess we’ll say you are all clean.”

  They were standing on the riverbank, dripping, when Miss Shedd came along.

  “You little girls go up to the camp and play. The women will watch over you. You bigger ones can go for a swim in peace now. The boys have gone farther down the river.”

  Samira walked back into the water. It moved gently around her, and she wondered what the river would look like in the dry season.

  That’s when she remembered that she had been in this place before. This was the river near Sain Kala.

  She looked up the river. She could see water flowing down from the mountain into the pool where she was standing. When she had been here in the hot summer it had been no more than a trickle of water meandering between rocky, muddy riverbanks full of caves and holes.

  We must leave your mother here above the river.

  She remembered how they had lifted the bundle that was her mother and laid her in the hole they had dug.

  She remembered that they said a prayer, but she couldn’t remember the words.

  It hadn’t happened right here, she thought, but farther up, where the channel was narrower.

  Samira came out of the water and, with her long shirt dripping around her, began to make her way up the river. There was a path along the stream, and soon she was out of sight of the children and the mules and the cooking fires and the caravanserai.

  She came around a bend and there was Miss Shedd, sitting on a rock on the muddy bank of the river.

  For a moment she seemed not to notice Samira, but then she said, “Why did you come up here? You should be playing with the others.”

  “I’ve come to see the place where my mother is buried. It was somewhere by this river but it all looks different now.” She began to cry.

  Miss Shedd said gently, “Sit down, Samira. There’s room here on this rock.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Samira stopped crying and listened to the sound of the river flowing.

  “Did your mother die here?” Miss Shedd asked.

  “She died on the road but they buried her near the river. We put stones on her grave. I can’t see them now.”

  “But you were with her when she died?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Shedd reached out and took Samira’s hand. She had never done anything like that before.

  “My father is buried here, too,” she said. “He was like your mother. He got sick and died during that flight.”

  Samira could hardly understand what Miss Shedd was saying.

  “Your father was with us when we ran away?”

  “Yes. He came from the mission in Urmieh. During the war he tried to help the Assyrian people as much as he could. When the area became too dangerous for the Assyrians he came away with them. He hoped to see that people got to safety. But he died near Sain Kala.”

  Samira sat quiet for a long time. Then she said, “You were in America.�
��

  “Yes. I got letters from my father so I knew how bad things were here. I wanted to help but the war kept me away. Then I heard that my father had died. I couldn’t see him again. But I remembered the people I had grown up with and I remembered the city and the villages. So I always looked for a way to come back. When I saw a notice saying they needed a director for the orphanage for Assyrian children at Hamadan, I knew that was me. I was lucky. I came back.”

  Samira sat looking at the river. “If you were in America when your father died, how do you know he is buried right here?”

  “My stepmother told me. She was with him. My own mother died much earlier. But my stepmother was here and she did not die. She came back later to look for my father’s bones, to take them to Urmieh to bury them properly. But nothing could be found.”

  Samira shivered. Her wet shirt was cold on her back.

  Miss Shedd let go of her hand.

  “Go and put on dry clothes and get warm by the fire. It’s good that we can see where your mother and my father were laid to rest. It doesn’t matter exactly where they are now. We will remember them, won’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Samira. “I remember the picture of your father that was on your desk at the orphanage. He had nice eyes. I don’t have a picture of my mother but her eyes were beautiful and she always wore a blue scarf. That’s what I remember.”

  When Samira returned to the camp it was loud with the voices of children. She could smell the smoke of the fire and the stew cooking. The sleeping mats were neatly laid out inside the shelters, and the washed clothes were hanging on lines nearby.

  “Mama,” she thought, “I’m going back to Ayna. I have food and a place to sleep and people who will help me if I need it. Just the way you would help me. I think you would be glad.”

  Before dark Samira took Benyamin to the place where Mama was buried.

  “They put her above the river and covered her,” she told him. “I don’t know the exact place. I know I stood on this bank of this river and watched.”

  “Mama would be glad that we are here together now,” said Benyamin.

  “I think she would be surprised that we’re going home. Back then it seemed like the end of everything.”

  “I know. I felt that way when I was alone in the mountains. Papa was gone and I didn’t know whether I would ever see you and Mama again. Or even whether I could find my way. But this time I know that we can make the journey. It’s not the end.”

  AFTER SAIN KALA there were some golden days when the sun shone and the road leading them along the mountains was not steep, uphill or downhill. They had been on the road for three weeks now. Samira began to feel that she could spend the rest of her life moving along with the Rooftop Family, talking and singing and looking forward to camping for the night.

  One day she walked beside Malik. He no longer ran along the road guiding stray children, but she saw that he still watched constantly to be sure everyone was keeping up.

  “You don’t seem to be working so hard these days,” she said.

  “I don’t have to. The young ones remember to stay on the road now, and they’re used to walking all day so they don’t stop unless we all stop. But sometimes they get tired and I have to help them keep up with everyone else.”

  Samira didn’t want the conversation to end so she said, “Did you help people on the road when you left your village?”

  “I was alone at the beginning. Later I caught up with other people but I didn’t know them.”

  “Why were you alone? Didn’t other people leave at the same time?”

  Malik was quiet for so long that Samira thought he wouldn’t answer.

  Then he said, “It was my grandmother. The other people in the village were leaving and I tried to get her to come, too. She said that she would rather die at home than in some strange place. I said that if she stayed I would stay, too. But she packed up some food and a knife and an extra shirt. She handed me the bundle and said, ‘Go, Malik. Life will be better for you somewhere else.’ Then she went into the house and locked the door. Everyone else in the village had gone so I traveled alone. I don’t know what happened to my grandmother.”

  He walked silently for a minute, then suddenly pointed ahead and said, “Elias and David are trying to trip each other up. I’d better stop them.”

  He dashed off. Samira wasn’t surprised. She had never heard Malik say so much. She watched him run up to the little boys and lift Elias and then David into the air, making them laugh. Then he said a few words to them and they all walked on down the road together.

  Later she told Anna about Malik’s story.

  “He’s always had to do things on his own. No wonder he used to try to get away from this crowd.” She pointed at the long line of children ahead of them.

  “What will happen to him next?” said Anna. “By now he probably has no one to go home to. But then, what will happen to any of us?”

  That night clouds blew in and the next day started badly, with a heavy mist that took all the warmth out of the air and left the children’s clothes soggy and heavy. Gradually the mist turned to cold rain.

  The road got steeper and the rain fell harder. Samira began to feel that she could hardly move her feet.

  “How can I be so tired before lunch,” she thought crossly. Then she looked down and saw that her shoes were thickly coated with mud. She was lifting a mud brick with every step.

  Miss Shedd came by on Sumbul and looked down at the Rooftop Family.

  “I’m sorry this is so hard,” she said. “Even Sumbul is having trouble.” She pointed to his hoofs lifting a big ball of mud with every step. “We’ll get through today and then it won’t be long before we start going down into the valley that leads to Tabriz. Just keep your chins up and keep going.”

  Samira found it impossible not to look down at her feet squishing into the mud, but she did keep going. The younger children didn’t seem to mind the mud so much but they were getting cold, and it was impossible to go faster to warm up a little.

  Miss Shedd came by again.

  “Stop for a few minutes and eat your lunch. That will —”

  She stopped and listened intently. Then they all heard the sound of hoofs coming along the trail toward them. They had passed a few strings of mules as they traveled, but these were horses, galloping fast.

  Everyone stopped walking. Samira could feel her body wanting to run or crouch down to hide, but the sound was louder now and there were voices, too. There was no time to do anything but jump to the side to get out of the way.

  Suddenly a horse and rider appeared. The horse was black. Samira was sure of that. But the rider seemed to be clothed in white mist. In his hand he held the pole of a green banner.

  He did not look down at the children or at Miss Shedd sitting on Sumbul. He looked over his shoulder and called to someone behind him. Then he was gone, and another horse followed and another, each bearing a misty rider carrying a banner of green silk.

  There were ten or twelve of them. Samira lost count.

  When they were all gone, Samira felt her heart pounding in her chest. Looking down, she saw that her hands were trembling, and she reached out and found Elias and pulled him close. She wondered whether the sound of horses’ hoofs would always bring to her mind the pictu
re of soldiers galloping along a line of people, firing their guns.

  Miss Shedd was looking down the road after the riders. They had disappeared around a curve.

  “Were they ghosts?” Elias asked. “They were all white but their horses were real. I could smell them.”

  “They weren’t ghosts,” said Miss Shedd. “They’re pilgrims going to a Muslim shrine. That’s why they were carrying green banners. They weren’t interested in us at all. But we do have something to worry about. They were white, all right. White with snow! We’re heading into a snowstorm and we had better get going. We need to get to shelter for the night.”

  As they got underway the rain started again, but before long it wasn’t rain anymore. It was snow. It clung to the children’s clothes just as it had clung to the cloaks of the pilgrims. Pretty soon they all looked like ghosts.

  Benyamin came to find Samira.

  “I didn’t think things could get any worse,” he said, “but we’ve caught up with the cook wagon and it’s stuck in the mud. Miss Shedd says we have to bring the pots of stew with us and keep going. We’ll come back and push the wagon out in the morning.”

  When they finally got to the camping place, they found only one building with a roof. All the others were nothing but sagging walls. The outriders had built a small fire in a corner where it could burn in spite of the snow. The cook put the big stew pots in the ashes to warm, and the big boys and girls started setting up the tents.

  Snow got into folds in the canvas and down the backs of the children’s necks, but at last the tents were up and there was hot water for tea. Samira thought she had never tasted anything so good. When the stew was finally dished out it was barely warm, but just having it in her belly was comforting.

  When the stew was gone and the cups were washed, everyone was ready to sleep. Only the sleeping mats and quilts had been unpacked, so the children took off their jackets and shoes and crawled under the quilts with their other clothes on.