Bone Ash Sky (21 page)

‘They've pushed us in here to kill us, Minas.'

He let go of her hands.

‘Nonsense,' he muttered. ‘You heard Afet. The trains are coming in a few days.'

‘Minas, listen to me.'

Lilit's voice was low, and thrilling with a new, deathly intensity.

‘I've been talking to the women. This is Shadaddie. This is where three thousand of us were burnt alive only months ago.'

Minas snorted.

‘Why would they want to do that? They need us, our labour, skills, education, to help them build a new state.' He heard a shuffle to the right of his foot and felt her smear something dry and chalky onto his palm.

‘Feel it. Burnt bones. Ash. Charred bodies. We're going to die, Minas.'

Lilit woke tangled in Minas's limbs. For a moment, before she opened her eyes, she thought it was Yervan, a sleepy afternoon, his penis hard against her leg. But it was only her brother's hipbone, and she pushed him away and stepped over the sleeping prisoners toward the mouth of the cave, brushing ash from her arms and licking her fingers to wet her face. She wanted to stand in the cool air, away from the sour smell of sleep and unwashed bodies and excrement. Away from the memory of what had happened to her yesterday. And Mamma. The shapeless sense that all was not right with the world. The sun was not yet up and the desert retained the chill of night; she walked on tiptoe to the entrance and felt each grain of sand damp and clammy under her feet.

Only one Chetti guarded the cave, with a rifle across his knees. She was glad it wasn't the man who—but she wouldn't let herself think of that. He was smoking a long ivory pipe, but as he turned to look at her he placed it with careful delicacy to the ground and lowered the gun to her belly. She stood still, meeting him with a level gaze, until he placed it over his lap again and beckoned to her. She hesitated, afraid to come too close, but something in his calm, almost indifferent manner quietened her fears. So she stepped toward him and he offered her a puff. She shook her head, and seeing the hunger in her eyes he rummaged in his trouser pocket and held forward a hunk of dry meat.

She grabbed it, sitting at his feet and tearing at the goat's flesh with teeth that hurt, guilty at not waking Minas to share it with him, ashamed of accepting food from a Turk at all. As she swallowed the last mouthful she looked up at the burly man. He made no effort to smile or even acknowledge her, merely gazed ahead into the distance as Yervan had often done, but she felt safe curled up on the sand near his dusty boots; she knew the train would come now and they wouldn't be burnt, and for a moment she even felt they would be all right.

When Lilit allowed herself to witness what happened to the last living baby she pushed away all sentiment. She told herself it wasn't her fault. She'd heard the baby cry in the cave at Shaddadie, seen it survive the suffocation and heat and cold with all of them. There was no bonfire, no mass deaths, other than the daily shootings and knifings that came as a matter of course. The Turks did it only last month, the old women told her, pushed Armenians into those caves and torched them with brush fires. They heard Afet talking, telling his soldiers that perhaps it wasn't wise to do it again; there would be too much evidence.

Many of the prisoners from Van and its
vilayets
were still alive. Only a few had been left on the damp floor of the cave, expired overnight with the scattered bodies of their compatriots, strangers, sisters, lovers in death and dark. She saw the baby taken onto the train with everybody else, hidden by his mother's long hair and rags, still sucking at her flabby breast. It was hard to hold on to Minas in the crush of bodies, gendarmes pushing people up onto the carriages with their rifles, women screaming, children falling underfoot. Many refused to get on, having never seen a train before, so the gendarmes dispatched them quickly – more room for the others, they said.

Minas held on to Lilit's arm so tight she thought it would be wrenched off. She felt herself lifted headfirst into the train, Minas bundled behind her. Only when all the prisoners had been packed into the sweltering carriages and the doors were bolted did the baby begin to cry.

It might have been the sudden dark and quiet that frightened him. Lilit breathed a sigh of thanks for the tiny chink of light up high in a corner. At the same time she felt she couldn't breathe. A man pressed on her, his beard grazing her bare arm. A girl had soiled her underclothes. In the heated closeness the odour was overpowering, making it difficult to think.

The train moved forward with a shudder. There was an unfocused brutality in its movement, in the sickening, shrill sound of wheels grinding on tracks. She opened her eyes wider in the dim, searching for Minas. Hadn't she been holding his hand? People started to scream; at least, those who were still well enough to expend the energy did. She screamed with them. The mechanical movement so final. It was more terrifying than anything else, this fiery beast that held them in its belly. She saw Minas in the periphery of her vision, his mouth open and eyes blazing, perhaps he was going to die, too. The shock of that thought made her stop. She curled up on the floor, dragging him down with her and cradling his head on her lap. The noise of the train and the shouting was deafening, the baby's cries even louder.

Soon people began complaining, threatening to denounce his mother to the guards if she didn't shut him up. They now wanted silence; they wanted to talk in whispers; they wanted to sleep. Lilit trembled at the fear that Minas might betray the woman, expecting a reward of food. She bit her bottom lip and, as if reading her thoughts, he looked at her and wagged his head, dog-like, from side to side.

Somebody flung the woman a jacket to suffocate the baby with. She let it stay on the floor. She continued to give her baby the breast, forcing her huge nipple into his angry mouth, stuffing him with it, trying to drown out his wails. The baby nuzzled at her for a moment then flung his head back again in disgust. The woman began to sing a lullaby, high wailing that filled the room.
My darling, my love, your sufferings and joys
will be many.
Lilit wanted to scream again.
My mamma sang that to me.
Where is she now?
Ossified in sand, bones picked clean by desert rats and birds. Her mamma. That cushioned lap, those strong hands, breasts she buried her face in against the cruelty of the day.

She knew the woman's milk had dried up, knew the baby would soon die. But there was nothing she could do. She thought of latching the baby onto her own small breasts, praying milk would come in sympathy, but, somehow, she was too tired. Too sleepy. Too indifferent. Too afraid of what the Turks might do again if they saw her.

Earlier in the day, before the train came, the woman had crawled over sleeping and sick prisoners to the cave mouth. The sun hadn't yet reached the rim of hills, and Lilit sat at the entrance to the cave, shivering. The woman patted her on the arm and asked her to help look after the baby.

‘I saw you watching us. You care.'

Lilit turned away, frowned. The young mother became insistent.

‘My milk's running out. Don't know what to do. He keeps screaming.'

Lilit looked down and pretended not to hear. The baby was asleep in his mother's arms, his mouth and nose crusted with scabs. She distracted herself with disjointed memories, scenes from girlhood fantasies.
I wore
a narrow band of lace across my forehead and my too-tight bodice. Yervan
took me for a walk.
Her shadow wavering then tight on the sand. She continued to look down, as if studying her own serrated outline, until the woman sighed and went away.

The train now stopped at the outskirts of another town and the gendarmes' horses were let out first. ‘Malaria,' she could hear Arabs shouting on the platform. ‘Malaria here. You must leave now.' Minas hoisted her onto his shoulders and she peered out of the tiny opening near the roof of the carriage, where timber slats had been pulled away for air – by former prisoners? Who were they? Where were they now? Little boys stood so close she could touch them, in long robes with gold-woven kerchiefs wrapped around their heads. Red dust flew about, settling in mouths and ears and the corners of their eyes. They held up white banners scrawled in green.
Malaria.

The Turks didn't care. She watched them lead their horses to the well and let them drink. Amid the stamping hoofs and coarse shouts, she felt the young mother push her aside to lean out as well. She balanced on the shoulders of a thickset man whose face twisted with the effort. The baby, bound to her body with a wide length of cloth from her skirt, seemed asleep again or dead, his mouth pinched tight. Lilit jumped down, wondering what the woman would do next. She nudged Minas. The woman seemed to wait for a few minutes, perhaps until after the animals had their fill, then Lilit saw her beckon one of the gendarmes closer with a pitiful smile.

‘I need some water,
Bey effendim
. Please. A few drops.'

‘No water for deportees,' she could hear him announce. His voice bored into her head. ‘No water until we reach our destination.'

Soon Afet let out the prisoners for a moment, if only to give them enough time to throw out any dead or dying from their carriages. Lilit saw the mother make for a well with the bundle of concealed baby under her arm. She was shaking now, her head jerking from side to side like a hen's, the movement of her legs spasmodic. The gendarmes glanced at her for an instant as if surprised by her temerity, then turned to their drinking flasks and food.

‘No water for you either,' they said, ‘so don't bother hanging around.'

But Lilit could see she was no longer waiting for their pity in a few sprinkles from soiled hands. In an instant of despair, she dropped her baby like a wishing stone into the well. He would bring her good fortune. He cried too much. She was too tired to carry him anymore. There was no milk left to give him. She wanted him to drown, have a swifter, easier death.

She could see the woman screaming now, slapping at her own face and hair and clothes, trying to fling herself down the well too and being held back by Chettis and gendarmes. It had become a loud, riotous game, the men competing to see who could hold her down long enough without being bitten or kicked. She had tapped into some superhuman strength, shrieking, scratching, teeth bared, with no fear of their whips or clubs.

Lilit tried not to look. Madness was catching. The woman seemed unaware of the blows, the bruises. Lilit studied the stones at her knee as she lay on the ground resting, flicked a lump of dirt from Minas's elbow. She picked up a smooth pebble, held it before her eyes like a talisman. Pebbles from Lake Van, oyster-grey and pink, she'd played with so long ago. The image receded, she was too tired to hold it. She wanted a pillow, soft, something she could sink into. All her energy and faculties trained upon this one pinpointed desire. A pillow. Only that. Somewhere to rest her head. She tried not to feel anything as the woman collapsed suddenly in the dust, worn out by her fighting, as the men shouldered her and took her away behind their horses. She heard nothing, but knew what they were doing.

She tried to make herself inconspicuous.
Poppies cut from the
riverbank were made into bouquets bigger than I could hold. Yervan gave
me one.
The woman was only heard at intervals now, a choked cry here and there. She lay, bloodied, a broken doll slumped on a gendarme's horse, finally inaudible as the prisoners were herded back onto the train, still further into the desert and to Der ez Zor.

BEIRUT, 1995

I
wake at sunset, sweating in dreams of D'Andrea's hands and my father's imagined voice. I must have slept all day in my dirty clothes and my mouth is dry. The dust of the Beirut day is rising, making my nose tingle.

As I rise from the bed my movements are slow and wooden, and in my mind's eye I travel long and hard across desert wastes, across white sand so fine it looks like sugar, train tracks rusted and overgrown with the sharp, spindly stalks of thistle.