Home Is Beyond the Mountains (19 page)

Samira started to answer but
she saw Miss Shedd coming. She was walking among the children, greeting each
boy. When she got to Benyamin and Ashur she reached out to clasp their
hands.

“Welcome to our caravan,”
she said. “You did well to catch up, even on horseback. Now the chavadar
will take the horses back to Hamadan and you'll have to walk with the rest
of us.”

“How much longer is the
journey?” asked Ashur.

“We've come almost half way.
The next part will be harder because we're coming into the mountains and the
road will be steep. You got here just in time.” She smiled at the boys again
and moved on.

“Just in time, indeed,” said
Anna. “Why did it take you so long?”

“The permit didn't come for
a whole week,” said Benyamin. “We nearly went crazy thinking you would need
us and we might never get away from Hamadan. When we finally could go we were
a whole week behind you. Even on horseback we were afraid we wouldn't catch
up until Tabriz.”

Miss Shedd came back riding
on Sumbul.

“We have to keep going,
children,” she said. “We have a village baking bread for us and a good
camping place. Save your stories for evening.”

As the line started to move,
Samira could feel a change in mood. Every family had been feeling the gap
left by their older boys. Now they were together, and even though the road
grew steeper and steeper, their feet were lighter.

She looked around at her own
family. Elias was hanging on Benyamin's arm and Avram was keeping pace with
Ashur.

Malik was not with the
others. He had stayed faithfully with the family all the way from Hamadan.
Until now.

“Do you see Malik?” she
asked Anna.

Anna shook her head. “Maybe
he thinks we don't need him now that the big boys are here. He'll come back
when it's time to eat. He knows he belongs with us.”

Samira wasn't so sure. Malik
had cheese and dried fruit in his bag just like everyone else. He wouldn't
need food until they stopped for the night. Where would he be then? She
worried all day.

“Why are you so quiet?”
Benyamin asked her. “I was looking forward to all your
questions.”

“It's Malik,” said Samira.
“He's gone off on his own just the way he used to. This whole journey he's
been different. He's been with us, helping all the time.”

“How has he been helping?”
asked Benyamin.

“He deals with the chavadar
and helps load the mules. The mules listen to him and never make trouble
when he's there, so even our mean chavadar likes him. And Malik keeps track
of all the children in our family. If one strays off the road or sits down
for a rest Malik is always right there. He's never let anyone get lost or
left behind.”

“Like a shepherd,” said
Benyamin.

“Yes,” said Samira. “It's
because he really was a shepherd before he had to leave his home. I think he
spent most of his time away from his village, with the sheep. He has no
father, he says, but I don't know what that means.”

Benyamin frowned. “It
probably means that his father went away and left him and his mother.”

“He never says anything
about his mother. He lived with his grandmother,” said Samira.

“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.