Nobody's Child (3 page)

Once she got her bearings, Mariam realized that the bush they were hiding behind was in front of a mosque. They were in the Turkish district. Even on the best of days, Mariam would have been reluctant to be seen in the Turkish district, and this was certainly not the best of days. A shuffle of movement could be heard inside the mosque. Mariam realized that there were people hiding in the mosque just as there had been people hiding in the church at the other end of the village. She
froze in fear. What if someone stepped out now and found them?

How can we get out of this mess? she thought in desperation. She took a deep breath to calm herself. She was the oldest, and her parents trusted her to look after Marta and Onnig. She looked up at the roof of the mosque and noticed that it was not much higher than the houses in the area. It wouldn't be that hard to get on top of it. Better yet, she noticed that this was a very old style of mosque that had recently been outfitted with a new flat roof of tin, unadorned by domes and minarets. With calmness she didn't feel, she turned to Marta and whispered, “If you climb onto my shoulders, can you hoist yourself up to the roof?”

Marta looked up uncertainly, then looked back at her sister in panic. “There are people inside. What if they hear us?”

“Do it quietly,” replied Mariam unhelpfully. Then she squatted down and hiked up her sister like she'd done dozens of times when they were playing. Only this time the reward wasn't forbidden figs: if they were lucky, they might not be killed.

With difficulty, Marta silently scrambled onto the roof, scraping her hands and knees on the sharp metal edge of the corrugated rooftop in the process. Mariam looked up and saw her sister standing on the roof, mesmerized by something she saw in the Armenian district.

“Grab Onnig,” Mariam hissed.

Marta squatted down. She draped a portion of her long skirt over the sharp metal edge to protect her baby brother. Mariam had Onnig balanced precariously on
her shoulders, his eyes round with fear and his arms flailing in the air. Marta reached down and grabbed him under the arms. The sudden weight of her brother made her almost pitch forward.

“Boost him to me on the count of three,” she called down to Mariam.

Mariam had her arms firmly gripped around her bother's waist. At the count of three, she lifted him as high as she could, his feet dangling in the air. Marta pulled him towards her and she fell backwards. He flew through the air and landed with a thump on her chest, knocking the wind out of her.

Onnig was shaking with fear, and a loud sob escaped from deep in his throat. The sound of the sob sent Marta into panic mode. What if the people in the mosque heard?

She held up a finger to her lips and said, “Shhh.” Onnig gulped back another sob, then nodded to his sister. He lay still beside her on her spread-out skirt and clamped his hands across his mouth. She could only pray that the people inside didn't think too much about the noise.

Marta looked over the side of the roof to see how Mariam was doing. Mariam had managed to find a piece of wood and had propped it against the wall. Stepping onto the top of the wood, she gingerly scrambled onto the roof. She spread out her skirt on the hot metal, then flattened herself down on the other side of Onnig and closed her eyes. There the three children remained, baking in the sun, for what seemed like hours, listening to the sounds of screaming in the distance. To the sisters' relief, Onnig was silent.

The door of the mosque was pushed open. One man came out and walked to the middle of the road. He shielded his eyes with his hands, then peered out towards the Armenian district. “It is done,” he said.

When the man walked back towards the mosque, Mariam cringed in fear, hoping that he wouldn't see them. Mercifully, he didn't look up.

He opened the door to the mosque and she heard clearly what he said to the people inside: “It is safe to go home now.”

Mariam heard the rustling of silks and more footsteps as the mosque emptied. She caught snatches of conversation.

“This isn't right,” a woman's voice said. “They should never have come right into the village for the killings.”

“But how else to get to the infidels?” asked another voice. “After all, the Sultan gave permission for these killings. They were only doing their duty.”

As Mariam listened to the bits of conversation, hearing words like “traitors” and “outsiders,” she tried to piece together what was going on.

The children stayed still long after the last footsteps echoed in the distance. Finally, Mariam stretched out her cramped body and peered over the edge of the roof. “It's safe,” she whispered. She stood up on the roof. “Follow me,” she said to Marta. Then she picked up Onnig and placed him on her hip.

As they walked across the Turkish roofs, Mariam was startled to see that houses that had looked so plain from the street were actually quite opulent within their gates.

Marta caught up with her. “I want to walk in the street,” she said, her eyes round with concern.

“It's safer up here,” said Mariam.

Marta's eyes filled with tears. “But my dolly is in the street.”

Mariam opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Who was to know what they would be losing today? If she could minimize that pain for her sister by just a little bit, then why not?

“Okay,” she said. “Let's get down.” Onnig scrambled off her hip and stood beside Marta.

Mariam lowered herself over the side of the house, using a window as a ledge, then dropped down into a vegetable patch. As she reached up for Onnig, Mariam's eyes were directly in front of the window. Through the latticework, she was startled to see a woman's eyes staring out at her. Mariam stared boldly back, as if challenging the woman to do something, but the eyes disappeared. Mariam reached up and Marta carefully placed Onnig into her arms. Marta jumped clumsily down and landed with a thud in the garden. The garden gate was fastened with a large hook, so Mariam undid it, then she and her brother and sister walked out onto the street.

It was eerily silent.

As they walked down the middle of the street, more than one set of eyes stared out at them, but nobody stopped them.

Marta's doll was still in the street, exactly where she dropped it. She picked it up.

The children walked towards the burning Armenian quarters, Onnig compliant and trembling on Mariam's
hip. The wooden gate on the courtyard of Anoush Adomian's house had been kicked in. There were no chickens and no goat in the garden.

Mariam looked over to Marta with a question in her eyes, and Marta nodded imperceptibly. Mariam let Onnig down off her hip, and he grasped Marta's hand. The two younger children waited in the courtyard while Mariam stepped into the central corridor of the house. “Anoush?” she called. No answer. “Kevork?” No answer.

She stepped into the main room. There were two ovens. One was the
tonir
— an oven dug into the middle of the earthen floor that was for warmth and family gathering, not for cooking. On top of the tonir was a flat, raised, table-like top covered with a large carpet. The Adomians' sleeping cushions were still in a circle around the tonir, and there was a half-eaten piece of flatbread and a handful of figs on the table-like top in the centre.

The other oven was the cooking hearth, or
ojak
, at the side of the room. Mariam saw that a knife had been dropped on the ground in front of it, and a big clay cooking pot full of stew had smashed to the ground. The juice of the stew had sunken into the dirt floor, leaving scraps of nut and vegetable scattered about. A carpet loom had taken up a large space in front of the fireplace, but now it was mangled, and the half-finished carpet had been sliced to shreds. Arsho's cradle had been cut from the rope that suspended it from the ceiling and it had fallen precariously close to the fire. Mariam stepped over to it and looked inside. Empty.

Bile rose in her throat as she imagined what must have happened to her friends. She walked back out the door.

When Mariam stepped out of the house, Marta looked at her with a question in her eyes, but Mariam just shook her head.

Next, they checked in Taline's house, but no one was there, either.

They walked further down the street to the common area in the Armenian district. The market stalls had been kicked in and burned, and the dama board was knocked over, game pieces scattered in the dirt.

The worst was the church. The elaborately carved doors had been bolted from the outside so that no one could escape. And then it had been set on fire.

Some people tried to save themselves by jumping out the windows, but the Turks had planned for that.

Mariam gripped Onnig to her tightly as she looked at the faces of the corpses around the church. Some she recognized. There was the lemon vendor, and one of the old men who played dama.

Mariam felt Onnig suddenly gasp. She looked at his eyes and followed his gaze. He was staring at his dead friend Taline, her head at an awkward angle with a boot mark on her face. Onnig covered his mouth with both hands and stifled his sobs. Mariam rubbed her brother's back, trying to calm and comfort him, but where was there comfort? Certainly not here.

Hugging her brother tight, Mariam walked away from the church and continued down the road and out through the village gates. She had to find out whether her parents were all right. She didn't turn to see if Marta was following. She knew that her sister was right by her side. She could hear her gasping back her sobs.

The fields were littered with threshing tools, but not a worker was in sight.

Mariam's eyes scanned the fields. She spotted her mother's sickle. On it was a single drop of blood. Mariam picked it up and wiped the blood off with her finger, then tucked it carefully into the back of her belt as she had seen her mother do.

“Maybe they had time to hide,” she said hopefully, searching the area for possibilities.

“What about the caves?” asked Marta.

They walked, hearts pounding, toward the first cave. Marta held Onnig firmly on her hip while Mariam peered in, calling, “Mairig? Boba? Are you there?”

She looked at her siblings' anxious eyes. “I can't see anything,” she said. “It's too dark.”

The children went back to the camping area and found a candle and matches. Mariam didn't tell her brother and sister why she was doing it, but she also rooted through her mother's rucksack and withdrew a vial of oil and all three of her mother's packed veils. She put the container of oil in her pocket and tied all of the veils around her shoulders, on top of her own. They returned to the cave and again Mariam entered. The cave was empty.

In eerie silence, they searched cave after cave. Finally, they approached one that was far away from their camping area. This one looked large enough to hold many people. Marta held Onnig close, caressing the back of his neck to calm his trembling, while Mariam lit the candle, then entered.

The cave was huge and wide at the mouth, and then it narrowed into smaller pathways. As Mariam approached
one of the smaller openings, she stepped into something slick and had to grip onto the side of the cave to keep her balance. She lowered the candle to her feet and saw that the slickness was just as she feared: blood.

She swallowed back fear and sadness and anger and bile. She was the oldest, and she had to find out if her parents were here. She stood up and extended the candle in front of her as far as it would reach. Suddenly, the opening was illuminated. Armenians hacked to death. All men. She made herself look carefully at the faces. Neither her uncle nor father was in the group.

Although they were dead, there was still one last thing she could do for them. She drizzled a bit of the oil from the vial onto the tip of the index finger on her right hand. She made a circle with her thumb and index finger, and made a sign of the cross in the air. She untied one of the veils and lightly draped it over the corpses. She bent down and scooped a small handful of pebbles from the ground and scattered them on the veil, and then she recited the traditional Armenian prayer for the dead.

Not a proper burial, but at least their souls would rest in peace.

With the candle to guide her, she looked for another opening. The next one she found had no blood at the entrance, but she shone her candle in just in case. A single migrant worker dead. One of the leering men from the barn.

Because there was only one, and she could step in closer, she dotted the man's brow and hands and feet with the oil in a sign of the cross, and then she ripped a strip from one of the veils and draped it over him — symbolic
of a shroud. She finished the ritual, then backed away.

Her gruesome journey of discovery continued. Difficult as it was, she had to find her own parents. She knew it immediately when she finally found them. When she shone her candle into the opening, the first thing that set this group apart was her mother's dirt-encrusted wool skirt. She was curled into a tight ball and she looked like she was sleeping, except for the slit across her throat, and all the blood. Her father and uncle were crammed into the crevice in front of her, as if they had tried to protect her to the death.

Mariam reached in. She touched her mother's face. Then she reached to her father's face and closed his eyes, then she did the same with her uncle.

She could see the skin of water still fastened around her mother's waist, so Mariam reached in and unfastened it. With the water, she would be able to perform a more complete burial observance.

She ripped off a strip of cloth from the already ripped veil and saturated it with water. She dabbed her parents' and uncle's faces and hands and feet with the wet cloth in a ritual cleansing, and then anointed the brows and hands and feet with oil in the sign of the cross. She had her mother's last veil left, and so she lovingly draped it across the corpses.

Mariam had a feeling like being out of her own body and watching down as this strangely calm girl-woman went through the motions. She was beyond emotion, and in some ways she felt that she was beyond death. There was only one thing she could think of at the moment, and that was to give her family the traditional
Armenian burial they would have wanted. A shiver went through her as she dropped pebbles onto the veil. For a moment she thought she heard her mother's voice saying, “Look after your brother and sister.”