Bone Ash Sky (57 page)

He didn’t mention little Anahit was half-Turkish to anyone. He merely told the truth, he reasoned with himself. All they needed to know was that her father had recently died. On the way back to his house he stopped at every corner, hoisting her into his arms and pointing out the street signs.

‘Look, Anahit. Kars Street. See, Adana Avenue. Every single stone here is named after a vanished Armenian town. Look down there. Rue Erzerum.’

Anahit didn’t understand but liked being held up high, and gurgled her laughter. She was still laughing when he brought her home to Urfa Street. Lilit had been helping Siran, whose large belly hindered her movements. They piled warm flat bread on the table, which Minas broke and handed first to his sister and then to his wife.

‘Not as good as my baking,’ he said, and they all laughed, nervous with each other.

They sat in the evening gusts from the open door and he passed grilled lamb in to them on skewers from the bed of coals outside, proud of his skill with spices.

Lilit and her daughter lay huddled near the door while the couple slept stretched out on mats near the central hearth, just as in Van. The timber shutters creaked and kept Lilit awake. Minas snored and then coughed as if ashamed of the old man’s noise he made. Webs of silver from the full moon outside came through the slats and rippled over Anahit’s smiling, sleeping face. Her new bracelet’s glitter mingled with the lines of light until Lilit didn’t know any longer which was Anahit and which was the night. She drew her daughter closer to her in the crook of her arm.

Minas continued to snore. How he had changed. That thin, drooping moustache he affected didn’t make it any better, either. Not like Suleiman’s: silky, short, just brushing his lips. He’d never snored, not once. Hard to believe he was dead, that there was nothing any longer for her in Der ez Zor.

She had left the house three days after his death, a week ago now. She closed the front gates behind her as she did that faraway day when she was pregnant with her first dead child. She left behind her bedroom furniture and the bolts of silk she planned only last month to have made into new Eid robes. She abandoned the loom she once chose with so much care and the fine, heavy trays for baking. So many sweetmeats for Suleiman. Gone were the heavy tunics laden with embroidery and gold thread, the sequinned slippers. Those thick unguents and perfumes that had littered the inlaid mother-of-pearl dresser by her bed.

She thought again of Fatima at the open gates, gloating. Fatima was back in favour with the French now, the remaining troops who had managed to rout the Vichy soldiers. Her household was guaranteed food and basic supplies while the other inhabitants of Der ez Zor could die of starvation for all she cared. Behind her huddled figure, Lilit saw billeted men sorting through furniture, making up makeshift beds in the courtyard. Suleiman’s body still lay in the bed Lilit shared with him, in direct disobedience of Islamic law. Fatima wanted the French to help her with an elaborate funeral and ostentatious memorial. Lilit didn’t wait for the burial. Suleiman was dead now and could do no more for her, nor she for him. She could discern a triumphant smile on Fatima’s face as she stood with her spine pressed against the doors, ringed hands folded over her withered breasts.

She sighed so loudly the child stirred in her sleep. She had so wanted to be free of Suleiman in those early years, and yet at the same time felt a fierce tenderness for his slim body, his fits of laughter. She wanted freedom and now she had it, and it was bitter and unrelenting in her mouth. She had left the house where she had spent most of her life. Another house abandoned, like the one in Van.

The morning she left, her cat lay wrapped in a square of morning sun on the fountain’s marble edge. The sound of coffee beans being ground by the cook woke the animal and it yowled, scratching at Lilit’s leg, leaving bubbles of blood through her stocking.

‘Is that the farewell I deserve, puss?’ she’d asked, but didn’t have time to lean over and caress the cat in a last goodbye. Fatima was going to be up and about soon and Lilit had known she wouldn’t be able to leave then without Fatima becoming angry and causing a scene. The cat had continued to wail as Lilit and Anahit closed the gate behind them and stood outside in the street.

Now she raised herself up on one elbow to look at the pregnant moon. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest her eyes in such light. Now another animal abandoned, as Minas’s lamb had been left to the flames. She left Fatima behind too, left her crawling on the floor and counting out the wads of money she found under Suleiman’s bed. But she hadn’t found it all, Lilit saw to that. She kept a cache of her own, more money than Fatima ever dreamed. She tried in this way to make herself feel better about leaving, kneeling at the courtyard doors and taking Anahit’s face in hers.
What a good husband I shall find you with this!
She hugged her daughter in silent vindication. Anahit merely frowned, looking up at the blank-faced sky. Other than that, she made no signs of grief or confusion. Lilit led her away by the hand, taking only what they wore and whatever trinkets they could carry between them, and made for Beirut.

Before dawn the next morning, Lilit took over the heavy duties of the household, washing her brother’s soiled work clothes, kneeling at the outdoor tub with Anahit curled up at her side, another sleeping cat. She bent her head and sniffed the metallic stink of tools rubbed constantly at Minas’s side pockets. Sour smell of Papa. In the folds of his clothes, silver dust.

As the sun lifted itself from the horizon she went inside and began kneading with Siran’s coarse ingredients –
I must teach her to haggle for
the finest flour
– baking plaited loaves and pastries, delicacies she learnt to make in Syria. Siran had never seen the like. She protested, making weak, ineffectual movements with her hands, but Lilit gently pushed her aside and made her sit on the only kitchen chair and watch, with Anahit resting on her lap, in the small space left by her high, tight stomach.

‘Here, try this. It’s a special recipe for pregnant women. To ease the pain of labour.’

She stood before Siran with the ladle upraised. Siran peered into it, took in ground cinnamon, milky blandness, and cautioned a sip. Anahit nodded in her babyish way, encouraged her.

‘Mm, I think I like it,’ Siran mumbled between mouthfuls.

‘Have some more. It’s an old Ottoman dish.’

Siran took the ladle herself and began to slurp. Anahit looked on, impressed.

‘It’s really very good. I like it a lot.’

‘You won’t when I tell you what it is.’

Siran looked up, bewildered, her mouth full.

‘It won’t harm the baby, will it?’

‘Of course not. Semolina, sheep’s milk, rosewater … and chicken breast.’

Siran spluttered as Lilit and Anahit laughed.

Siran needed Lilit’s help more and more as her pregnancy advanced. Minas was away all day and sometimes most of the night, making himself indispensable at the jewellery shop. Lilit taught Siran everything she had learnt in Syria and the younger woman tried her best to absorb it, at first clumsy and suspicious then enjoying the strange new tastes and meticulous Islamic routines of hygiene and superstition.

It was Lilit who assisted with the birth of the baby. The birth was easy and quick, the pain manageable. Within two hours the baby’s head crowned and Lilit and the midwife were ready to catch it. The baby was placed straight on Siran’s breasts and latched on in an instant. Selim’s name came to Siran at that moment like a blessing, she told Lilit. It was not recognisably Armenian and Minas was quietly furious, but the women reasoned it would allow the boy to assimilate into Lebanese society.

Minas walked home from work for the half hour he was allowed to take the midday meal with his family each day. Today he walked faster than usual; the boss had proposed something to him he must consider right away. More and more as the months passed he found himself wanting to tell Lilit of his concerns, to confide in her, ask her advice. He watched himself regress into the little boy he had been in Van, jeering at his sister over the little things, yet trusting her to guide him when he stumbled under the weight of major decisions. He hoped Siran hadn’t noticed.

He was getting thin, approaching middle-age. While his friends were growing paunches and double chins he was becoming emaciated; he regarded his forearms as he lay at rest in the mornings, knotty hands almost as brittle as the newspaper littering the bed. Something was eating away at his insides; he was sure of it. He confided in Lilit and she looked at him with those great cow eyes of hers and laughed.

‘Guilty conscience, Minas,’ she whispered.

He thought about her remark as he walked home. The new frailty of his body reminded him of fears kept hidden, a young boy starving, of his vulnerability and isolation. His limbs couldn’t support him when he went downstairs to the outhouse: hollow legs, yet restless, when he lay back in bed, to be in some place far away. Twigs for arms, a thatch head harbouring only memories. He closed his swollen eyes and discovered a thousand images burnt into his retina. Soft slime of corpses, staring mouths, the high, wailing pitch of dying babies. Some days he screamed at Lilit and Siran to shut Selim up, smother him with a pillow, strangle him so his whining wouldn’t lead into more nightmares. Minas’s yelling brought on coughing fits that lasted all night, so nobody got any sleep.

The pimpled girl came to him often now, naked and bruised, with trailing hair. She came at dawn most of all, crying without sound. Her eyes were blind, she lay on top of him, her mouth open in a final ecstatic O. He tried to speak and his throat rasped with the effort.
Why isn’t your
hair bound?
She didn’t answer but indicated with her fingers that she’d been strangled to death. He remembered her weak affections, her tiny laughter, those clammy hands on his chest. His cheek wet against hers as she slept and sobbed and he lay awake and plotted escape.
Why am I
here, fed and rested and tended to by other women, while she lies dead and
alone in Syria?

He came to the gate now and peered into the courtyard before entering. He saw the pile of gardening tools lying abandoned in the corner, a tumble of red fruit near the side door. The two women had their backs to him, crooning and laughing over Selim. He saw their bent heads, Lilit’s dark braid with its glints of gold in the sun, Siran’s two plaits, black and wound into a crown, with curls escaping at the nape. He experienced a bright surge of pain at the sight of them, his family:
Whatever has happened, whatever will happen, I have this for
now.
He watched their hands flash in the sunshine as they dandled his boy, one woman holding on to each arm, coaxing him to stand on his chubby bowlegs between them and take his first step unaided. He saw the gold of the chain he’d made glint on his boy’s neck, the tiny crucifix hidden in creases of baby fat. Selim threw his head back to the sky and laughed: a full, adult belly laugh. Minas couldn’t help laughing too. Anahit saw him then and clapped her hands in delight. She loved her uncle.

After a lunch of flatbread, soft white cheese and the jewels of pomegranates, he had to rush back to work. He put his hand out to his sister.