Between the Two Rivers: A Story of the Armenian Genocide

by Aida Kouyoumjian

  Should she obey her curiosity and ask again? I won’t risk any more prodding, lest it revive my sister’s memories. Adrine’s gaze turned glassy, and Mannig feared the return of her sister’s bad memories. She had just gained a sister; she refused to let her be replaced by a zombie. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait for me!” Dikran called out as he ran after them, dodging late afternoon striders. “What’s the rush? Sebouh Effendi was really pleased at how we saved another orphan. He asked your name, and all I could say was, ‘Adrine, sister of Mannig of Adapazar.’ Do you know your family’s name?”

  “Dobajian.”

  “Really?” Mannig shouted in disbelief. “Dobajian? Oh, that is such a beautiful name! I love it.”

  

  Owning a last name made Mannig even more ambitious—made her want more than just being with her sister. She saw herself as grown up. Hadn’t Adrine’s khatoon eyed her with deference? I am not useless anymore. She smiled inwardly and turned to Adrine. “The orphanage will be a school soon,” she said, more a statement of hope than fact.

  Dikran stopped her. “Who told you that?”

  “Well, the Barone collected us all and put us together. He must be bringing teachers and everything.”

  “Sure,” Dikran said, pointing back at Sebouh Effendi, who was still standing at his threshold. “He just told me Barone Mardiros was sent to Singapore to collect funds for the Armenian orphans all over the world. That man will not have time for us.”

  Dikran spoke the truth. The last time she had seen the Barone, he was supervising the registration of the children at the old Armenian Church in Mosul. Still hopeful, she asked, “He intends to come back, right? And … and then, we’ll start school.”

  “Stop driving nails into the sky,” Dikran admonished her and stepped forward.

  Dikran doesn’t know. Mannig ignored his cynicism and focused on being in her sister’s company. She replaced the desire of her heart with gaining a family. Maybe Adrine will become the teacher. She managed a smile until they entered the orphanage.

  The supervisor’s exuberant welcome failed to evoke a reaction in Adrine. She reached to hug her, but Adrine tightened her narrow lips, lowered her face, and leaned away. Quickly, she squatted beside the gathering of children for the evening meal. “You must be starving, my poor child,” the supervisor said, handing her a large bowl and a big chunk of bread. “We prepared stew—especially for you.”

  The word stew in Armenian sounded foreign to Mannig. She gazed at her ration in her tin cup—squash, onions, and tomatoes surrounded a chunk of meat. Meat! She bit into it—as succulent as her meals at the matron’s, whose soles she scratched. Good riddance. She sniffed the pungent garlic. “Is this called stew?” she said, slurping a mouthful of the thick gravy. “It tastes like the murga I ate with the Bedouin. Adrine, taste it. It is delicious.”

  Adrine’s hazel-greenish eyes ignored her portion; she stared off in the distance.

  “Here’s more,” the supervisor interfered, adding a ladleful to Adrine’s already brimming bowl. “You can have more after you read from my Good Book.” She looked up at the dimming sky as the last sun rays withdrew from the balcony awnings. “Ahkh!” she sighed. “It is too late today. It’s already too dark to read anything. We lost another day without hearing the Scriptures. I shall ask the priest to bring a lantern on his next visit for bedtime devotionals. But now you must eat, my child. Tomorrow, I will make time for you to read from the Bible.”

  Adrine cocked her neck in surprise. “Read from the what?”

  Her sister’s astonishment troubled Mannig. The supervisor wanted someone to read, and Mannig had volunteered her sister. Why else had she given her blessings and sent Dikran to find her? If she could read in Adapazar, she could read here. Mannig closed her eyes. She felt compelled to divert attention. After forcing several phony coughs to override Adrine’s question, she spoke: “My sister is very confused.” She added other excuses. “Don’t you see how tired she is? She cannot even eat this wonderful stew.” Mannig paused. “Tomorrow Adrine will realize how lucky she is to be here, and we will learn how lucky we are to have her among us.”

  “You can sit on my rock,” Garina said, relinquishing her prized location to Adrine. “You can also sleep in my slot.” She scooted over next to Dikran, a sly smile on her lips. “I will find a new place.”

  Her words collided with Mannig’s impressions of her bed-mate. The girl seldom slept the whole night through on their mattress, and Mannig never questioned the older girl’s nightly shenanigans. While the other girls confided in their bed-mates, Garina hardly said anything. She often elbowed between the girls at meal time so as to sit next to Dikran, assumed work assignments near him, and otherwise followed his movements literally or with her eyes. Why Garina’s sudden interest in accommodating Mannig?

  A mischievous sparkle in Garina’s eyes alerted Mannig to how speedily she bundled her belongings and darted downstairs. She seemed to be searching for a place for the night, yet she headed determinedly toward the boys bedtime enclave.

  Near midnight the orphanage chattering faded to an occasional cough, a sporadic snore, and the shuffling of a sleepwalker. Mannig reached across her sister’s resting body beside her, wanting to cuddle and whisper about her joy in their reunion. Receiving no reaction, she carefully rested her arm across Adrine’s shoulders lest she disturb her sleep.

  Poor Adrine! Being plucked out of an established home and cast with a bunch of needy children loomed as depressing a future as she had ever envisaged. The whole day must have jolted her. Why else snub the kindness of the orphanage people and ignore the joy of family togetherness?

  Cautiously, she peered at her sister’s face, still asleep peacefully but for a slit-opening in one eye. Was she feigning sleep? Guarding against rape? The violation had happened a long time ago, somewhere in the middle of the desert. The war had ended a while back. The Ottoman gendarmes had vanished since. The Armenians rejoiced at the end of physical harm. Why Adrine’s continual fear? The ensuing years had failed to bring her sister back into normalcy.

  I wish she felt as safe at the orphanage as I.

  Why had Adrine been surprised to her talk of the Bible? Mannig felt assured that once she held the book and read from it, the qualities their parents had admired—her intelligence, knowledge, and helpfulness—would be restored.

  What mattered was being together.

  16—Ousted for Sex

  Sun rays glistened off the balcony’s tin awnings. The daily clatter was far from approaching when a big commotion disturbed the entire orphanage.

  Mannig jumped up and rammed into Adrine, already out of bed and leaning over the balcony rails.

  The supervisor yelled and screamed, “You, immoral fornicator! Woe to me.” She snatched Dikran’s quilt off his bedding, exposing two naked bodies. “Woe to all of us! You have ruined my sanctuary.”

  Dikran rose to a sitting position, while the supervisor kicked the curled-up nude girl next to him.

  “Immoral fornicator! This place is NOT a brothel! You have defiled my orphanage!” she ranted, pulling on the arm of the balled-up exposed form.

  “Gari … Garina! I should have known you’d defile our reputation. You useless one. You filthy girl!” She shook her hand as if getting rid of germs. “As an older girl, you are supposed to set an example for my innocents. Vye! Vye! My poor children,” she pounded her hands on her chest like a mourner. “Is this your style now—fornicating in front of my children? You defiler of my orphans—that’s what you are.” She held a moment’s silence, looking skyward as though hoping for guidance from above. “Out with you and your lewd self! Get out of here! Fornicator! Fornicator! Out! Out! Out!”

  “What is a fornicator?” Mannig asked, nudging Adrine.

  “It is in the Bible,” Adrine said, her gaze riveted on Garina.

  “Garina is in the Bible?” Mannig asked.

  “Don’t you know anything?” Adrine grunted and pulled away. Like her ol
d self of long-gone Adapazar, so familiar to Mannig—smart, knowledgeable, and intolerant of stupidity. The courtyard happenings had thrown Adrine into her know-it-all mode. What had caused this change? Mannig wondered how her sister’s pre-deportation character had emerged recognizably normal.

  Stumbling over a garment on the ground, the supervisor grabbed and cast it over Garina’s naked form. “Scat! Out that gate before I slash your lecherous vohr. May the Lord not hold your sin against us. Out the gate, fornicator!”

  Mannig raised herself on tiptoe and whispered in Adrine’s ear, “Is Garina a bad girl?”

  “Bad?” Adrine seethed through her teeth, blood rushing to her face. “That supervisor should scream at HIM! Gendarme or Armenian—men are the fornicators. He is the bad one.”

  “What is a fornicator?” Mannig asked again.

  “He used his thing to hurt her,” Adrine sputtered, getting redder with each word.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He is the fornicator … men have a tail between their legs and they make it like a stick and drive it into girls … it is horrible.” Adrine shifted her gaze from Garina to Dikran, to the supervisor and back again; she honed in on the threesome with the intensity of one utterly familiar with the experience.

  “Are you banishing her from the orphanage?” Dikran talked back to the supervisor, pulling up his baggy shalvar. “If she goes, then I must go too.”

  “You stay,” the supervisor ordered, wagging her finger at him. “We need you here, even if I must become your sentinel from now on. Go! Do your chores.”

  “I cannot let her leave without me,” Dikran objected.

  “Don’t you see she’s ruined our orphanage?” the supervisor screeched. “Only God can absolve us from her sin. She must depart immediately. SHE goes. YOU stay.”

  “I must go with her,” Dikran said. He rolled up his quilt, and with lowered head, added, “She needs my protection. She is heavy with my seed.”

  “She is pregnant?” the supervisor said, slapping her own cheeks with her hands. “Such fornication has been going on under my nose and I only discover it today?” She dropped on her haunches, her black tunic billowing in her wake. “She cannot stay … she cannot stay here … I cannot allow debauchery amid my innocent children …” She shook her head and grimaced in desperation. “Then, we must manage without you. Get your things and get out of my sight. Both of you … get out!”

  Dikran gathered his belongings into a gunny-sack. Eyeing Garina, he rolled his bedding speedily. Then he rushed to her side and helped her knot the corners of her yazma, now full of her clothes.

  “Out! Out! Out!” the supervisor shooed them—pushed, shoved and kicked in their wake until they exited the orphanage. She latched the gate behind them and fell into a body-shaking, crying torrent.

  “She is a good woman,” Adrine said. “She ousted the man. It is his fault. He is the bad person. I will go to console her … I can do the things he was supposed to do—all of his chores.” Down the stairs she darted, tripping on a lose brick. She stood, rubbed her ankle, and hobbled down to touch the woman’s shoulders. “I can do the things you need done.”

  The supervisor raised a wet face and, for a few seconds, held her breath. Pointing to the caldron, the firewood, and the gunnysack of bread, she burst into tears. “I had other plans for you …” She wiped her nose with her sleeve.

  Mannig relished her sister’s enthusiasm.

  Adrine charged from one chore to the next. She almost danced, proceeding from the task of piling chips and wood, then starting the fire. She favored one foot while carrying the caldron to the brook and hobbled back to the pit. In no time the tea water bubbled. Instead of hobbling, she shuffled her hurt foot to the bag and dumped a few palms full of tea leaves. She sniffed the aroma and asked the supervisor, “Do you have more of the thyme I tasted in the stew yesterday? It gives tea a unique flavor.”

  “We all need something special,” the supervisor replied, pointing to the storage shed. Still sobbing and casting glances at the latched gate, she added, “You can also throw extra sugar into the tea.”

  Adrine dropped a few sprigs of thyme into the boiling tea, then the sugar. She squatted and broke off chunks of bread, piling it onto the burlap sack.

  By the time the tea boiled to its rich, ruby hue, the orphans congregated around the fire pit. Adrine called on two of the tallest orphans, “One of you can ladle the tea; the other, hand out the bread.” She then hobbled to the gurgling spring and dangled her legs into the stream.

  Mannig took her ration of tea and bread and scooted beside her sister, near the myrtle tree. Handing over her breakfast, she said, “I will get mine later.”

  Despite their four-year age difference, Mannig appreciated how Adrine was living up to her Adapazar reputation—clever, expedient, and as thoughtful as an adult. Scooting next to her, she dangled her legs beside her sister’s. Unlike Adrine, whose ankles were submerged in the water, Mannig could barely touch the surface with her toes. Even so, chilly gusts of air crept up her legs. She jerked them out, disturbing a swarm of thin-legged insects that rose up and settled a yard away. “Did you hurt your foot?” she asked.

  “It is nothing,” Adrine said. “Cold heals everything.”

  She truly knows a lot. Mannig took comfort in emulating her sister without dunking her feet in the icy water. She focused on an insect sitting on a blade of grass; a long, steel-green mosquito, gleaming alluringly.

  “Tell me more about a fornicator,” she whispered.

  17—Another Language

  Life without Dikran shaped itself into a routine.

  At midday, the smells of the orphanage lifted high. Summer scents mingled with the sharp odors of dung fires and wood-smoke. Adrine charged from one responsibility to the next, assisting the supervisor, often directing the older girls to carry wood, lug water, or help reorganize for the next day. Even her meager culinary experience contributed to the piquancy of the stews and soups—wild mint sprigs added to the rice and yogurt soup was greeted with oohs and aahs, but unfortunately didn’t guarantee a second bowl. Her most remarkable efficiency was demonstrated by her housekeeping skills—never taught to the orphans before. Mastering them required extra time, testing Mannig’s patience. Nevertheless, she tailed her sister everywhere.

  The supervisor pulled Adrine’s sleeve, stopping her from intervening in a quarrel between two girls. “Let them resolve it,” she mouthed in a whisper—more audible than shouting above 200 voices prattling like geese. She waved a frayed leather-bound book at Adrine’s face and added, “Let’s sit and read.”

  Unlike other books, this one reminded Mannig of what Haji-doo had carried in Adapazar—and always clutched to her heart. Unlike her grandmother, the supervisor gave it to Adrine.

  Mannig stopped sweeping the stairs and set the palm-frond broom against the wall properly, according to Adrine’s instructions. She followed the two toward the brook.

  Adrine thumbed through the frayed, yellowing pages. “I cannot read this,” she said.

  Why is Adrine lying? Mannig remembered her sister sitting at the edge of the divan in their parlor and reading without paying attention to the music, chatter, or the silliness occupying Mannig and her brother Setrak.

  “You don’t know how to read?” the supervisor’s voice lifted an octave.

  Will she reprimand me for assuring her that Adrine knew how to read?

  “I know how to, but what language is it?”

  “Armenian, of course. This is THE Bible,” the supervisor said, retrieving it and placing her lips on it. “What other language could it be? I’ve heard it read to me all my life. I have memorized many verses. If you know how to read, then you can read this.”

  That’s what I thought, too!

  “The script is so elaborate, I can’t decipher the alphabet,” Adrine explained.

  “If you’ve gone to school, then you can read.” The supervisor told Adrine to squat beside her by the clump of myrtle and pa
ssed the Scriptures to her again.

  Adrine turned to page one. “It may be in Armenian, but the characters are so ornate I can barely recognize the letters.” She hesitated and flipped the pages past midway in the book. “M-a-t-t-e-o,” she spelled aloud.

  “Matteo!” the supervisor said jubilantly. “The book of Matthew—the first book in the New Testament. You DO know how to read!”

  Phew! I am a truth-teller. Mannig relaxed about her own relationship with the supervisor. After all, the woman’s allowing her to venture into Mosul in search of her sister depended upon Adrine’s education.

  Adrine read from the Bible—more or less. Never having examined it before, she stumbled over every word. She sounded each letter, often audibly, repeating each word then the whole line to adjust to the cadence of the sentence. At the end of each verse, she read from the beginning again—somewhat smoother. The verses memorized by the supervisor went fast, as the two assisted each other reading through chapter one of Matthew. Adrine questioned nothing, and no discussion followed. Afterwards she said, “Perhaps I ought to practice reading on my own, before we meet for these sessions.”

  The supervisor nodded.

  The Biblical vernacular, indeed a language in itself, made no sense to Mannig even when she heard Adrine practicing a chapter several times in anticipation of the next meeting. Nevertheless, Mannig liked those sessions. She admired how Adrine put the individual letters together in her head and then sounded them out as a word. “Can you teach me how to read, too?” she asked.

  “I am not a teacher,” Adrine dismissed her sister, then concentrated on the next word.

  Sitting by the myrtle doing nothing, just listening, was entertainment for Mannig. She often wondered if a cluster of orphans also liked hearing the text. Most just sat like her, focusing on Adrine’s lips. But did they understand anything? They were lulled into doing nothing—except Lala, an older orphan. She brought her needlework. Day after day, her handiwork produced intricate doilies and collars for ‘the future,’ she asserted.