Like Water on Stone (15 page)

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Authors: Dana Walrath

BOOK: Like Water on Stone
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Shahen
I step back to the crack
and look down inside
to where the man lies
still as stone
except for the pulse of his breath.
“Don’t you know?”
Her body trembles with knowing
as she shakes her head no.
She holds Mariam tight.
She knows what happened.
I don’t need to say it.
She saw death today.
She knows.
She must know.
“Mama and Papa killed the goat,
ran toward the soldiers
covered with its blood
so soldiers thought we were dead.”
I hear Mama’s sounds like an animal
and hear her screaming,
“You should have killed me instead.”
“And then the soldiers killed them,
so we had time to run.”
Sosi’s fingers press hard on Mariam’s arms.
Soundless tears drip from chin to chest.
Between us
I see whole families
wailing
at river’s edge.
The pot’s metal handle
cuts into my palm.
Sosi
Shahen
“They won’t be
in Aleppo?”
“They won’t
be there. No.”
“We’ll never go back.”
“There’s nothing
to go to.
They burned
all our homes.”
“I didn’t want to know.”
“I know.”
“Misak and Kevorg?”
“They shot them,
I think.”
“Anahid?”
“We can pray
that they
saved her.”
“They did.
I can feel it.
We’ll find her
someday.
She had her baby.
A girl, I think.
Her marriage
was good.
Papa was right.”
“Papa right?
If we’d left
when I wanted
they wouldn’t
be dead.
We have only this
heavy empty pot.”
This pot,
solid, black, hard,
heavy in my hands.
This pot,
Mama’s pot.
I pull it to my gut.
Hard metal
pangs shoot
up and down
my spine.
Mama’s pot.
My tongue thick,
metallic,
wet.
We have it.
It’s ours.
For the first time,
I see it
this precious pot,
this useful pot,
black and hard
like a cannonball.
We have this pot,
a solid heavy pot.
“Mama’s pot.”
“We have more,
Shahen
jan
.
I have you
and Mariam.
We have
Mama’s coins.
We have the wool
from my
dowry carpet,
respun into
a thin red thread.
In America,
I will make
a new bird
in a carpet
for you.
Keri waits for us
with his sons
tall like plane trees
who speak English
like princes.
We are going
with you to America,
Shahen
jan
,
Mariam and me.
And look,
I saved
the quill.
It’s going, too.”
Shahen
From the seam at her collar
Sosi pulls out the
mizrap
,
the one Papa used to teach me.
She touches my arm with it.
Papa’s melody
whispers inside me.
She places it in my palm.
My fingers close around it.
My heart hears the steady beat
of the
dumbek
. My lungs know
the
duduk
’s constant breath.
Papa’s song surrounds me,
fills me, its steady pulse
always here, flowing through me,
shaping my insides
like water on stone.
The truth hidden
by my mountains
at last becomes clear.
We are here and alive,
we three sisters,
crossing oceans
because of Papa
and Mama.
“More of them may come.
Let’s go now.
Together we’ll run
to America.”
DAY 61
SIMĀN MOUNTAIN
Sosi
From the final rise
a long flatness stretches.
The horizon fades and blurs.
Our climb done,
lights dot the desert.
Specks of light
must be
villages,
cities.
Aleppo?
At dawn, I look back to the north
across the sky-scraping mountains.
Miles behind them, in our fields by the river,
the sun makes my grapes sweet.
Morning light increases
the empty space ahead:
baked brown earth,
plants burnt or chewed,
so little green,
so far to cross.
With lily bulbs in our pockets, we gather stones.
Shahen makes the shape of a cross
pointing south to the church in Aleppo.
Mama and Papa can see from above,
like the eagle, he tells us.
We drink our last drops from the mountain spring,
soak and squeeze the ragged cloth to fill the pot.
We wet our clothes to suck on and keep cool.
Each step down, hot air rises to meet us.
When I spill precious drops he takes the pot.
He gives me Mariam.
He takes the pot.
We drink from the pot,
our clothes bone-dry.
DAY 63
BURJ HAYDAR
Shahen
With no place to hide from the sun, we move.
Piercing rays beat our brains to steamy hot.
Our mouths like sand, salty sweat streaks our cheeks.
Papa told me to follow the water.
Dry desert rivers make brown bands in sand.
Distant dust clouds shimmer with white flashes.
Do I see or imagine
ancient churches
rising from the earth?
Stone arches and walls crumbling,
columns without roofs.
Sosi falls and drops the pot.
I curl her fingers round the handle
and carry little Mariam
to the stone wall,
and know that it is real
from the shade
that it gives to my sister.
Empty ruined churches,
with no signs of who used them.
I go back for Sosi
and the pot. They sleep.
I follow the dry riverbed.
From brown and green specks
mixed with distant white,
Papa, my Papa, whispers to me,
“
Hos egoor
. Come here.”
Eagle flies to Papa’s voice.
I step on dry river stones,
waves of heat rising
from folds in sand.
My leather
charukh
is worn paper thin;
each hot step burns.
I beg my feet to step some more.
I see a man, his son, and their camels.
A white cloth roof rises above their cart.
The boy in white coaxes the animals:
“Yalla
,
yalla.”
Come on,
come on,
just like we said to our sheep.
Yalla
.
The father peers out from the white cloth shade.
Like Papa’s, his eyes are dark and deep.
I pull the Arab greeting from the crack
in my head that was filled before we fled.
“
Sa’alaam al leik um
—
may peace be with you.”
“And with you peace,” he replies.
Buzzing flies cease their sound
as we stare past my rags
and his robes into pure dark eyes.
Dark and deep like Papa’s.
He hands me a fresh wet cloth and a cup.
Their wetness brings Aleppo to my lips.
“Halep,”
he replies,
all other words mysterious.
I draw a cross.
He nods,
his eyes
edged in wrinkles
from years of smiling
under the Arab sun.
His eyes wrap me
like a blanket,
covering every raw edge.
“Yalla Halep,”
he tells me.
“
Yalla
. Sosi, Mariam,” I tell him.
My hands
measure the air
to show their height.
My palms move
together under my head
tilted, eyes closed.
Sosi and Mariam,
my sisters,
asleep in the sand,
waiting.
He sees them.
“Yalla
, Sosi, Mariam.
Yalla.”
Camels unfold
their legs and rise.
Camel hooves
and wheels of the cart
cover my steps.
Flames of sun
beat the sand
to burning hot.
Stone walls shimmer
in the distance.
The eagle
circles above.
They breathe
but cannot speak
when we find them.
We squeeze
drops of water
through cracked lips.
We lift them
to the shade of the
white cloth roof,
fresh wet cloths
on their heads,
drips on their mouths.
For final steps,
we three are
piled and pulled
to safety.
Sosi,
Mariam,
me,
safety.
ALEPPO
AUGUST 1915
Sosi
I wake in a bed,
surrounded by white cloths
stirring in hot wind,
Mariam tucked beside me.
Shahen?
Where is Shahen?
I call him.
I try to get up.
A woman in white
with a heavy wood cross
around her neck
runs to me.
She tells me he’s well
with the boys again,
asking for me every day.
She tells me Mariam
does the same,
that now she’s only napping.
She gives me a drink
and goes for him.
I pet Mariam’s soft clean curls.
I whisper
“Os, os, os,”
like Mama did.
Mariam sleeping
thin
pale
sleeping
safe.
“Sosig,” says Shahen,
still small,
head bare,
in trousers.
He pulls me so close.
“Mariam
jan
,” Shahen says.
“Wake up, little bird.”
Mariam
Sosi
Shahen
Bread
Tall stick, small snake
Smile, smile, half smile
Half smile, wings
Bread.

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