The Sandcastle Girls

by Chris Bohjalian

  By now that pair is well on their way to the Dardanelles. A few months in that bit of hell will teach them a lesson.

  As the music comes to an end he rises, crosses his office to the column with the gramophone, and lifts the needle off the record. He hadn’t noticed this until now, but the music was recorded at the German studio in Constantinople.

  He sighs. Conscripted. It will demand a deft hand to work with the Turks and try to mitigate the slaughter. Make sure that people in Berlin know that he is willing to follow orders, but he does not approve at all of what is occurring.

  Still, he is confident that he can manage the correspondence and his reputation. He is, after all, a diplomat.

  HELMUT STANDS UP carefully as the train bounces its way through the last vestiges of the Cilician desert, somewhere between Adana and Zeitun, hoping that he can stretch the soreness from his lower back. He can’t decide whether it is the pain from sleeping on this primeval bench or the rising sun that has awakened him. Across the carriage Eric snores. So do a pair of Turkish businessmen.

  He knows the math of these train cars well. When the army uses them for transport, they hold thirty-six soldiers. You can put six horses in one. Before leaving Aleppo, he was informed by the Baghdad Railway that they were successfully wedging eighty-eight Armenians on average into each carriage. The deportees would stand for hours like cattle, unable to move or raise their arms. He has heard stories that the very old sometimes asphyxiate on their feet and the crush of bodies keeps their corpses vertical until they arrive in Adana, Aintab, or Aleppo. One railroad official bragged that on occasion they have crammed the Armenians into the double-decker cars used to transport sheep—meaning that a person couldn’t stand, even if he wanted to. Sometimes, the dead have been thrown like garbage over the railroad banks.

  He can’t believe how much rolling stock the Turks are wasting on the deportations. At any given moment the Turkish Army in the Dardanelles has barely a single day’s worth of food reserves. Why? Because the Ottoman Empire has an antiquated rail system and the government is wasting precious rolling stock moving Armenians instead of military supplies and food.

  He pulls his watch from his tunic pocket and is frustrated to discover that yesterday he failed to wind it. It stopped around two in the morning. But based on the way that the sun already is burning off the high wispy clouds in the east, it is probably six-thirty or seven. In the distance are rolling hills and wooded mountains. The train is passing through a landscape in which there are long patches of grassland and even the occasional copse of scratch pine. It is clearly cooler here than it was back in Aleppo. Thank God for that.

  He thinks of the last refugees he had photographed before the gendarmes broke his camera. He thinks of the note he wrote about one particular woman. He scribbled notes about so many of the survivors: their names, their hometowns, perhaps a line explaining who they were. Not all, of course. But a good many.

  He yawns, his breath rank with sleep, wishing once more there had been a way to find Armen after the fellow had set out. Eric had told him to let it go; there was nothing he could have done. But still …

  He stares more closely out the window at a massive pile of tree limbs—a messy pyramid—no more than thirty or forty meters from the tracks. The branches have been bleached white by the sun on one half of the mound, but are blackened on the other side, as if someone started to burn them but the fire never quite spread and eventually burned itself out. He is wondering briefly why someone cleared the few trees in this stretch of land and chose this spot to incinerate them when he realizes they are not tree limbs at all, and his gaze grows transfixed. He wants to wake Eric but he can’t move; he can’t take his eyes off the pile. His fingers are pressed against the glass like a little boy’s.

  In the end, it was the skulls that gave it away. Had he presumed at first that they were but a circle of stones designed to prevent the flames from inching into the yellowing grasslands? Perhaps. Or had he simply not noticed them, as he tried to make sense of the branches, some ivory and some ash black? The skulls had simply rolled down the pile, he surmises now. Or maybe they belonged to the corpses at the bottom ring of the mound. He can’t imagine how many bodies it took to make the hillock. Hundreds? A thousand? More?

  And then there is this mystery: why here?

  In a moment the train is beyond them and the bones have disappeared into the landscape. Across the train carriage his lieutenant snores. The businessmen do, too.

  I COULD HAVE BEGUN THIS STORY RIGHT HERE, WITH THIS MOMENT. I was standing in the kitchen of my own house in Westchester County—in Bronxville, just minutes away from the brick monolith on Winesap Road in Pelham where my Armenian grandfather and his Bostonian wife had lived and died—when the phone rang. It was my college roommate from my junior and senior years. I was forty-four years old. Matthew was in eighth grade and Anna was in sixth. It was the Saturday afternoon before Mother’s Day, and after watching Matthew play baseball, my family had separated into two cars. My husband and the kids went to plot some sort of Mother’s Day celebration on my behalf, and I went home.

  “Laura?” my roommate began excitedly, the moment I said hello, “There’s an old picture of your grandmother in The Boston Globe this morning. At least I think it’s your grandmother.”

  After I hung up I went online, expecting to see a photograph of Elizabeth Endicott. I presumed, based on the few things my roommate had said about the article, that it would be a story about the Boston-based Friends of Armenia. There would be a picture of Elizabeth and her father and, perhaps, Alicia Wells. In my mind I saw Elizabeth in one of her white dresses, that black straw hat in her hands. Her hair, in the black-and-white photo, would appear more dirty blond than red. I understood from my roommate that the picture had been taken in the Middle East, and so I half expected to see the Aleppo bazaar in the background, or the high walls of the American compound.

  In hindsight, I am not sure why in the world I expected any of that. There was absolutely no reason to assume that the image would have involved the Endicotts. After all, my last name was not Endicott when I was in college. It was Petrosian. That was the name that would have led my roommate to ring me.

  In any case, there were three photographs in the newspaper, all of which I had seen a quarter of a century earlier when I had visited the Armenian Library and Museum in Watertown, and one of which I recalled vividly. The woman in the image obviously wasn’t my grandmother. But she was, according to the caption, named Petrosian. And she was from the city of Harput—another detail that had not been part of the caption when I had seen the photo for the first time years earlier. Her eyes seemed impossibly large and round, her cheekbones a ledge of emaciation. According to the story, the woman had carried her infant daughter for days after the child had died, unwilling to allow the other deportees to bury the girl in the sands that separated Harput and Aleppo.

  But that wasn’t what the main part of the article was about. That wasn’t what the exhibit was about. This exhibit, called “The Apostates,” included images and documents from a variety of sources (including the German photographs I had seen in the Armenian Library and Museum), and was on display that month at Harvard’s Peabody Museum.

  Obviously, we don’t use the words apostate or apostasy much these days. As a matter of fact, in easily one-hundred-plus magazine articles and six novels, this is the very first time I have written it. It is a word that has far more negative connotations than, for instance, heresy. There are a great many souls who have taken enormous pride in being branded a heretic, but history hasn’t given us a whole lot of self-congratulatory apostates.

  No one has any idea how many Christian Armenians renounced their faith in 1915 and 1916, hoping to survive the slaughter. But the practice was rare among adults. It was rare both because the Muslim Turks seldom offered the Armenians the opportunity to survive if they converted to Islam, and because Armenians are as stubborn as anyone. Small children, however, were another story. There are tho
usands of stories of Turkish families shielding neighboring Armenian children and then raising them as Muslims. But Armenian adults? They would sooner be flogged, stripped, scorched, shot, smothered, stabbed, starved, bayoneted, decapitated, drowned, crucified, asphyxiated, eviscerated, axed, hanged, garroted, quartered, pitchforked, impaled, and (if they were female) “outraged.” (This is another word you don’t hear often anymore, at least as a Victorian synonym for rape.) They would sooner succumb to dysentery, typhus, malaria, cholera, pneumonia, infection, sepsis, and the flu. These are all of the ways in which Armenian civilians died in the First World War—at least all of the ways I came across in eyewitness testimonies. Undoubtedly, there are more.

  Usually the Turkish Army or a group of well-armed gendarmes—the provincial police or whatever male teens the Turks commandeered—would descend upon the Armenian quarter of a city or village to confiscate the Armenians’ weapons. There would be a house-to-house search. There would also be pillaging, theft, and random violence. For good measure, in most homes the gendarmes would ax a few armoires, smash a few cupboards, and rip up a few floorboards. They might toss goblets from the windows like rocks. Splinter mirrors and vases. They might outrage a few girls. If the gendarmes found weapons, that was considered proof that the Armenians were in rebellion; if they found none, it was evidence that they were hiding their arms … and proof of rebellion. Then, within days, the Turkish authorities would round up the men—again, moving methodically from door to door—and march them out of town, where they were likely to be massacred. If the Turks had machine guns at their disposal, they would use them. If not, they might gather a chete, or a killer band. Imagine an old-fashioned barn raising with all of your neighbors, except instead of raising a barn you are using shovels and hatchets and knives to murder the people who have been living on the next block or in the adjacent village. By murdering the men first, the women and children were much easier to deport—and, if the spirit moved you, to outrage once again.

  The justification for deportation was the Turkish concept of hissetmek, which gave the authorities the legal power to deport any person or any group they sensed might be a threat to the state. You didn’t need evidence; you just needed a sense. It’s also worth noting that the notion of hissetmek is not especially consistent with the rationales for the deportations that the Turks often offered foreigners at the time: they were either marching the women away from a war zone because they feared for the Armenians’ safety or they were marching them away because the Armenians were a threat.

  At any rate, there weren’t a lot of Armenian apostates among the living or the dead in 1915 and 1916. But there were some.

  Which brings me back to my family—to my Armenian grandfather and my Bostonian grandmother. Even as a little girl I noticed that my grandfather was far less involved with the Armenian Church than his Armenian friends were. My grandparents’ lives, in fact, seemed entirely void of religion, even on Christmas and Easter, which made them a real rarity in that community; Armenians of their generation often viewed the church as the fulcrum around which their lives would turn.

  But not my grandfather. Not my grandparents. I would be exaggerating if I claimed that at the time I viewed this as a great mystery. I didn’t. The questions would only come later. But I did understand that for whatever reasons, they kept their distance from many other Armenians with whom they might have been friends, and they seemed to give the Armenian Church a particularly wide berth.

  That Saturday afternoon before Mother’s Day, I printed out the three photographs from the Globe and the article that accompanied them. The woman who shared my last name when I was growing up was an apostate—though it was the German who interviewed her in 1915 who had used that term. The Armenian had simply said that she had tried converting to Islam to save her baby’s life.

  I decided I had to go to Boston to see that show, and then to Watertown to conduct a little research.

  RYAN MARTIN SITS in the civil administrator’s office in Aleppo, honestly unsure what to make of this latest official. This is a new post for Farhat Sahin; he only arrived here a few days ago. His head is perfectly shaved and his face is smooth, but for his thick black moustache and goatee. He is, like most Ittihad executives, outwardly calm and reasonable. Unflappable. Ryan has come here wondering if this new official will be more accommodating than his predecessor. So far, no Americans have been allowed to visit Der-el-Zor, but Silas Endicott has acquired food and medicine that he wants to bring personally to the refugee camp, and Ryan has decided that the worst Farhat Sahin can do is—like everyone else—say no.

  Finally the Turkish administrator steeples his fingers across the blotter on the great plateau of his desk, and Ryan realizes the diplomatic pleasantries are over.

  “I have concerns for your safety if you go to Der-el-Zor,” the Turk says.

  “From the Armenians? What threat could they possibly pose to Americans bringing aid?”

  “Oh, the Armenians want nothing more than American aid. Or visits from the Red Cross. Or assistance from any foreign nation. It’s a source of profound disappointment to me that they insist on looking beyond their nation’s borders for help. Frankly, it’s why on occasion we have to protect them from their own countrymen. It’s why they are so … alienated.”

  It would be easy to point out the absurdity of the contention, but Ryan restrains himself. His goal is to obtain permission to transport the aid that Endicott has gathered, and disputing the administrator will not help his cause. And so he asks simply, “What precisely are your concerns? From whom might we be in danger?”

  “The desert is awash with unsavory characters. A line of wagons filled with food and medicine? That is very easy prey.”

  “I am willing to take the chance. So is Silas Endicott.”

  Farhat Sahin smiles. “Ah, yes. Your benefactor.”

  “He is a very resourceful man.”

  “And a friend to your Armenians.”

  Ryan waves a single finger good-naturedly. “A friend to your citizens.”

  “And you are quite certain you understand the risks?”

  He nods. “Yes, we do. We all do.”

  The Turk is silent for a long moment. Then he parts his hands and shrugs. “Very well then. I will draw up the permissions—a special passport—for your passage to Der-el-Zor. You understand there will be stipulations?”

  Ryan waits. When Sahin remains silent, the American says, “I would expect that.”

  “No photographing. No reporters. No interviewing the civilians we have resettled. No weapons.”

  “We may not protect ourselves? You said it might be dangerous.”

  “No weapons,” he repeats.

  “All right.”

  “How many of you will there be?”

  He counts the party in his mind. “Six of us, plus the porters.”

  “And how many wagons?”

  “Seven to ten, I would estimate.”

  “Oxcarts?”

  “Horses, I presume.”

  “Of course. You’re American,” the administrator says, and then stands. The meeting is over. “Eight wagons. Eight porters. Six Americans.”

  “You are very gracious. Very kind. I am deeply grateful.”

  “I’ll have the papers ready tomorrow. You may send a boy by for them.”

  Ryan reaches across the desk and shakes the official’s hand. He hadn’t expected this victory. Sahin leans into him. “Consul?” he says, the single word the prelude to a question.

  “Yes?”

  “You will be careful, won’t you? You never know whom you might meet as you near Der-el-Zor.”

  Something in the Turk’s tone disturbs Ryan, almost—but not quite—ruining the moment. Still, Ryan merely nods and reassures him that they will be vigilant.

  “IT SEEMS I am finding ever more ways to be useful,” the American consul says lightly to Elizabeth later that afternoon as he strides across the library to the chaise on which she is resting before she returns once m
ore to the hospital. “I have a letter for you. It arrived in the diplomatic pouch from Cairo.” He smiles a little knowingly as she thanks him for the envelope, and then continues on through the compound to his office.

  She sits up, her feet flat on the carpet, and then remains very still as she gazes at the way Armen has written her name. This is not the first letter that she has received from him; one arrived three days ago that he had posted from Jericho through the regular mail. But this is the first one that—because of its source—indicates that he has made it safely across the border into Egypt. She sighs and says a small prayer of thanks that he didn’t die in the desert. Then, as if she were a little girl, she tears it open enthusiastically, setting free her giddiness and joy that he is alive.

  Her happiness dissipates almost instantly, however, as her eyes scan the words he has written in thick pencil:

  There were still children alive, and the older ones were wailing among the corpses. Witnesses said the younger ones were sitting silently, not mature enough yet to realize that the adults were never going to wake up. They told me there were no infants in the pile because Talene and the other babies had been dead for days.

  Talene. The name stops her. She reads the sentences over and over, as well as the ones that precede that paragraph and the ones that follow.

  I almost told you about Talene when we were together in Aleppo. It was not just Karine who I lost. It was Talene also. Our baby daughter.

  The idea leaves her devastated, her mind spooling back to the hours and hours she had spent with Armen and this burden he had shouldered all alone. She wishes he had told her, wishes it madly, and tries to imagine those moments when he had come closest to unleashing what had to have been torrents of loss.