The Sandcastle Girls

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Hello, Helmut,” Eric says. A small smile of acknowledgment forms on his lips. “We have guests.”

  Helmut returns the Luger to safety and holsters it.

  “It looks like we will be traveling light when we leave this fine city,” Eric adds.

  Kretschmer’s forehead becomes creased as he frowns, and it is clear to Ryan that he is struggling mightily to retain his ambassadorial dignity. He is a fastidious man—Ryan has always presumed that Kretschmer believes he should be the consul here, not Lange. But he can’t hide his reaction; he’s livid. Finally he says to Helmut, “I will tell you what I just told the lieutenant. We could have you both before a firing squad and shot as spies. As traitors. These pictures? They are treasonous. They’re propaganda. They don’t tell the real story.”

  “And what is the real story, Herr Kretschmer?” Ryan asks.

  The German official motions dramatically with one hand at the Turkish major and his soldiers—as if he is conducting an opera. “These people are in a brutal struggle with the Russians. And the Armenians are doing all that they possibly can to undermine their own nation’s efforts. Either they are sabotaging the Turkish war effort in the rear or they are defecting and joining the Russian Army en masse.”

  “I assure you, the women and children who have been arriving almost daily this summer had no plans to join the Russians,” Ryan says.

  The Turkish major finally speaks. “Can you say the same about their husbands and brothers?” he asks, his voice exuding the sultry aromas of sandalwood and frankincense. He is, it seems at least in his own mind, a reasonable man. His eyes have a sympathetic twinkle. “No. And we brought many of these women here to keep them safe. They were living in a war zone. And while I am sorry we could not provide better rations en route, the soldiers and gendarmes accompanying them rarely ate much better. Your country may be neutral, but the rest of us are, sadly, in the midst of a war. Things happen in a war. Terrible things. But there are thousands of Armenians now living in Syria, and they are safer here than when they were within a stone’s throw of battling armies.”

  Ryan knows there will be no reasoning with either Kretschmer or the Turks. But he wants that photographic evidence. “I’ll buy those plates from you,” he says to the Turkish major. Kretschmer may not approve of bribery, but it is one of the ways in which business is transacted here in the desert. The Turks think nothing of it. “Name your price.”

  But the major surprises Ryan by shaking his head. “No, these will be destroyed. But you are very generous.” He bows ever so slightly.

  Ryan glances back and forth between Eric and Helmut. Eric is staring down at the floor and Helmut leans against the door and shrugs. Ryan wonders what would happen if he tried to grab the crate and run from the room. Would Kretschmer or this Turkish major risk an incident by shooting him? Probably not. But the soldiers would tackle him quickly, in all likelihood before he had even reached the top of the stairs. He realizes that the plates are lost to him, and the frustration is so pronounced that he is trembling. And then, as if the major can read his mind, he orders his men to follow him from the room with the photographic images, and Ryan can only watch as the pictures of the deceased and the walking dead of Aleppo pass directly under his nose.

  AMONG THE STRANGEST, MOST UNEXPECTED ELEMENTS DEEP within my DNA is the reality that I am able to work seamlessly with phyllo dough. In all other ways I am an unbelievably bad cook and my kitchen is a very scary place. I am just like my mother in that regard. I cannot bake a cake unless it comes from a mix, I have never roasted a turkey that did not wind up dry as a bloated vacuum bag, and my rice is either soggy or burned. The inside bottoms of a lot of my pots and pans have been scorched black.

  And yet I am capable of producing savory cheese triangles that are flaky on the outside, moist on the inside, and aesthetically perfect—each an obtuse isosceles with crisp edges and sharp points. The Armenian name for the cheese triangle is boreg, and it was my aunt—my father’s much younger sister—who taught me to make them. What makes their preparation such a culinary tightrope has nothing to do with the filling; that’s easy. In the recipe my aunt shared with me, it was simply feta cheese, parsley, diced scallions, eggs, and black pepper. What makes the boreg such a feat is the necessity of working with phyllo dough, each sheet as thin as a tissue. Phyllo is the Greek word for “leaf,” and the sheets dry out and become brittle—and, thus, completely useless—moments after being exposed to the air. Phyllo can be demanding for even a seasoned baker. And so, in theory, working with the stuff should be a nightmare for a hook-handed chef like me, and the kitchen should become a Hades-like inferno of frustration. But it’s not. I seem to be able to thaw phyllo, fill it, and fold it. I seem to know precisely how much perfectly browned butter to paint on each sheet.

  It’s a mystery to everyone in my family but my aunt, who—like me—had an Armenian father and an American mother. She says it’s a gene thing. Dita Von Teese (who is indeed part Armenian) can probably work with phyllo dough when she isn’t swimming in champagne.

  In any case, cheese boregs always bring me back to my grandparents’ kitchen, because it was there that my aunt taught me to make them. They are my own personal madeleines. All I have to do is reach for a box of phyllo dough in the freezer case of the supermarket and instantly I am transported back there—and to a February afternoon when I couldn’t have been more than nine. Both of my grandparents were still alive and they were caring for my brother and me while our parents were enjoying a romantic getaway at an inn in western Massachusetts. But they were elderly and so my aunt came out to spell them one afternoon. The two of us went to the kitchen to make boregs while my grandparents and my brother went to the basement to play pool. My grandparents’ pool table resided in the finished basement and was as garish as their living room. It was oak with inlaid abalone and was held aloft on legs that looked like they belonged on an Ottoman throne. The pockets were gold webbing with tassels that matched the trim along the rails. By then my grandfather was frail and mostly just leaned on the sides in his vest and watched his wife run the table.

  At one point, when my aunt had slid the last batch of boregs into the oven—a massive Bengal brand gas monster that once had been white but was now ivory with age—she wiped her hands on her mother’s red-check apron, and said, “Laura, phyllo dough and salty cheese is the way to a man’s heart.” I knew she had a fiancé at the time, a professor who taught at Columbia. I imagined her cooking for him. Then she winked and added, “Belly dancing is good, too.”

  • • •

  THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY and the physicians finally arrive, two men and a woman. It had taken them nearly a week in Cairo and Port Said to round up the food and medicine they wanted to bring to Aleppo—even with the fiscal resources of Silas Endicott and his generous friends in Back Bay. Then they were delayed four more days by both British and Ottoman bureaucrats who questioned the validity of their visas and their mission. Now Nevart stands in the shadows of a corner of the compound’s selamlik—the reception room—resting her hands protectively on Hatoun’s shoulders, and watches as Ryan Martin and the Endicotts greet the newcomers. The missionary is Alicia Wells. The doctors are William Forbes and Hugh Pettigrew. Silas Endicott is considerably more formal than his daughter, but Nevart has noticed how the young woman’s behavior grows a tad stiff in his presence. These newly arrived Americans have had a less traumatic entry into Aleppo than the Endicotts’, despite their difficulties getting here, because they were not introduced to the city when hundreds of dying women and children were camped out in the center square. This is the two doctors’ first time in the Middle Eastern deserts, and they are taking inordinate pride in the travails they have endured to journey here from Boston: U-boats, “brigands on camels,” and a dust storm that the younger physician, Forbes, insisted melodramatically had “paralyzed” their train. Alicia says she does not mind sharing a bedroom, and adds with a small laugh that rooming with Elizabeth should be no hardship after wha
t they have experienced.

  All of them, even the woman, are large; they are tall and wide and well-fed, and their voices boom inside this high-ceilinged living room. Nevart can feel Hatoun’s shoulders trembling beneath her fingers. When Hatoun was introduced to these Americans a moment ago, Nevart had the sense that they viewed the scrawny child with the sort of sympathy they might have for a mangy dog; there was at once condescension and brusqueness. The doctors were worse than the missionary; they were precisely the sort of physicians who infuriated her late husband. They spoke as if Hatoun weren’t in the room with them, as if she were a laboratory specimen. And then, when they learned from Nevart that Hatoun was not her child, they wanted to know why in the world she wasn’t in the orphanage.

  Now Nevart leans over and whispers into Hatoun’s ear that she needn’t worry; these Americans are here to help, too. As she speaks, she notices that inside the flap pocket of the girl’s smock dress is that doll’s head. She hadn’t noticed the bulge earlier. But Hatoun continues to stare straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to Nevart’s words, watching intently as porters carry in enormous trunks and elegant valises. Apparently there is also a train car at the station right now, waiting to be unloaded, filled with nothing but flour and sugar and tea. Canned meats. Elizabeth had been nearly inconsolable at first that it had arrived so long after the women and small children had been marched from the square, but Nevart had reminded her that more deportees would be arriving any day now. It was inevitable.

  “Met anybody interesting here?” William Forbes asks Elizabeth. There is gray at his temples, and his nut-brown hair has begun to roll back along his scalp like the tide, leaving a slightly sunburned beach for a forehead. But Nevart guesses that the physician is in his mid-thirties and, clearly, grateful to find a young American woman such as Elizabeth here in Aleppo. Nevart can tell that he expects her to be his oasis in this desert.

  Before Elizabeth can answer, however, Ryan jumps in. He is oblivious to the real meaning behind the doctor’s question. “There are all kinds of interesting people here,” he says. “All kinds! The Syrians, the Turks, the Germans. Really, William, don’t judge anyone here too quickly. Recently I met some German soldiers—”

  “Soldiers?” interrupts the doctor.

  “Engineers,” Ryan clarifies. “They were as desirous of helping the Armenians as we are. One is a photographer. Unfortunately, the Turks destroyed his camera and confiscated his plates. It’s a devastating loss. But my point is that there are extraordinary people everywhere here. And Elizabeth seems to be developing a very nice friendship with an Armenian engineer, a fellow named Armen.”

  “He’s gone,” Elizabeth says awkwardly, and for a moment the room grows silent. She can feel this new physician’s eyes on her, appraising her, trying to understand from her demeanor what the American consul had meant by her friendship with Armen.

  “Of course, you shouldn’t expect to develop any enduring friendships here, either,” Ryan says. “The Germans are gone, too. Transferred to the Dardanelles. Now, tell me, Elizabeth, where has Armen gone? I rather liked him.”

  Elizabeth sighs, imagining Armen with a rifle in his hands, running toward rows of barbed wire, screaming furiously as she has been told soldiers do in the midst of an infantry charge. Sometimes she hates men. She hates their willingness to fight and to die. It is exasperating. “He has also gone to the Dardanelles,” she replies simply.

  “Is that so?” her father asks her.

  “Yes,” she says. She can see something like relief on her father’s thin lips. On this new physician’s, too. Across the room, Hatoun continues to shiver ever so slightly beneath Nevart’s slender fingers.

  A TURKISH SOLDIER, a private named Orhan, crouches low on his prayer mat, his forehead touching the ground. He prays, grateful that he is here in Aleppo, rather than in the Dardanelles where his cousin had been killed quickly in a bayonet charge in late April or in the Caucasus where his older brother had lost his left arm and then died of gangrene over the course of May. Once, like all of his friends, he had had a desire to be a hero, but no longer. Although he is only eighteen, he is grateful for every day he has in this world. He is alone at the moment in his cramped corner of the barracks and—other than his mother in a village outside of Ankara—alone in the world.

  When he is finished praying, he rolls up the mat, climbs back into his boots, and stands. He gazes out the thin slit that passes for a window in this corner and studies the minaret of the nearby mosque, and the waves of yellow and red draping the western sky behind it. Under his bunk, beside his knapsack and the unruly pile of his clothes, is the wooden crate with the photographic plates of the Armenian women and their children. He was supposed to have destroyed them, but he hadn’t been able to. He understands the images are of dead or dying infidels. He believes what his major said about their men—their husbands and brothers and fathers: they were fighting against the Turkish Army. For all he knows, it was an Armenian who launched the mortar that blasted off his brother’s left arm and eventually killed him. And yet these people look just like the women and the girls in Ankara. They look just like the women and girls anywhere. The soldier had known Armenians growing up. He had Armenian neighbors. His father, before he died, did plenty of business with Armenians. He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God—not yours or mine—approves of what you’re doing.

  He rubs at his eyes and tries to think. He can’t keep the crate here; it’s far too dangerous. He understands that he can’t give it to that American. But he knows also that he is never going to follow orders and destroy the plates. The key is to find a new place to store them while he decides what to do.

  THE GERMAN CONSUL, Ulrich Lange, sits alone in his office, the light outside fading but the Aleppo air finally beginning to cool, and dips his pen into the black ink and writes the following sentence to his superiors in Berlin: “In the absence of menfolk, nearly all of whom have been conscripted, how can women and children pose a threat?” He stares for a long moment at the word conscripted. He chose it carefully so that the report, should it be intercepted and read, would not enrage his Turkish hosts. At this point, even the Armenian men who had been conscripted have had their weapons confiscated and been executed. Or they are slave labor building railroads. But this has all gone too far and Berlin needs to know what is occurring. He is going to make it clear that he disapproves of the deportations of the remaining survivors.

  He closes his eyes and listens to the 78 rpm disc, a renowned Jewish soprano from Istanbul singing Turkish folk songs because Muslim women are not allowed to record. He had been listening to the Sultan’s royal band, Mizika-i Humayun, but the record was nothing but marches, and it had grown unbearable. The gramophone and these records were a gift from the Turkish governor-general here in Aleppo. The gramophone is unashamedly ornate. It sits on a stone column (also a present), because in the governor-general’s opinion, the gramophone itself is as beautiful as any music it will play. The case is handcrafted from oak and has delicate wild roses carved into the walls and painted salmon with a precise hand. The horn, though brass, is shaped like a calla lily. The tone arm is sinuous, snake-like.

  There is a knock on his half-open door and he looks up. His secretary, a short, stocky fellow with an air that is perpetually and incurably apologetic, stands in the doorway, waiting. Lange had told him to return at this time because he had presumed he would have completed his report by now, and the young man would be able to type it and send it for him. It’s after eight. They both should go have their dinner.

  “I should be done in a few more minutes, Paul,” the consul murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s a beautiful song.”

  “Yes, it is. The woman has a lovely voice.”

  “Armenian? Gypsy? Jew?”

  “The latter.” Then: “Why don’t you go to dinner? Go find Oscar. The two of you should eat. At this point the dispatch can wait until the morning.”

  “Are you sure, s
ir?”

  “I am,” Lange says.

  “I hate to leave you here working.”

  “Go, go,” he insists, waving the back of his left hand at the air.

  His secretary nods, bows ever so slightly, and retreats. When he is gone, Lange gazes once more at the word conscripted. He isn’t sure who has angered him more: the Armenians or the Turks. The Turks have been as bureaucratically inept and as barbaric as ever. Usually he has found the regime merely one or the other. But in their handling of the Armenians? Both. At the same time, how could the Armenians have missed the small detail that almost the whole continent was at war, and the Turks—who had never much liked them—were going to use the conflict as a pretext to rid themselves of Christians and create what they believed would be a suitably homogeneous country? Why more Armenians hadn’t left years earlier is a mystery to him. It’s maddening. For all he knows, they really were planning an uprising. At least some of them. Look at the fighting that had gone on in Van that spring. Was it a coincidence that the Armenians had held out long enough for the Russians to capture the city for a time? Of course not.

  Regardless, the carnage in this corner of the empire disgusts him. The last thing he wants is to be linked to it. As a career diplomat he hopes that his future posts, especially when this war is over, will be in far more civilized environs than this appalling desert throwback to the Middle Ages. He sees himself in France. The United Kingdom. Perhaps even the United States. The irony that his country is at war with two of those three nations right now is not lost on him. But alliances change all the time.

  And so he must balance a variety of issues: He must keep Berlin apprised of the nightmare that is occurring here in Aleppo. But he must simultaneously support the Turks, a German ally, as need be. This is his job. His duty. And yet he wants to be sure that he is neither linked to the Armenian slaughter nor held responsible for evidence of the atrocities filtering out to the rest of the world. This is self-preservation. Yet news already is leaching out. Just the other day his assistant, Kretschmer, told him of two well-meaning idiots—German engineers!—and their Ernemann camera.