Nobody's Child

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  “Yes,” said Mariam. “We’ve travelled all the way from Marash.”

  “Sit down,” said the woman, patting a space on the carpet beside her.

  Mariam sat down, but Marta stayed standing. She was more interested in playing “Turks and Armenians” than talking to an old married woman.

  Onnig looked uncertainly at the little girl on the carpet playing with the nut shells, but didn’t make a move to sit down. The little girl looked up and smiled at Onnig. Then she noticed Marta’s doll.

  “Dolly,” the girl said with excitement. She reached out to touch it.

  Mariam noticed the frown that was beginning to form on Marta’s brows. Before her little sister could say anything, Mariam asked, “Would you like to hold it?”

  The girl grinned.

  Mariam gave her sister a meaningful look. Marta sighed, then handed the doll over. “Just be careful with it,” she said.

  Then she ran over to play ball with the older children, Onnig in tow.

  “My name is Anoush Adomian,” said the woman, extending a callused hand to Mariam. “And this is my daughter, Arsho.”

  Arsho was so busy admiring the rag doll that she barely looked up when she heard her mother use her name. “And that is my son, Kevork,” she said, pointing towards the boy playing ball. “The girl is our neighbour, Taline.”

  Mariam found it cool and pleasant to sit under the tree with Anoush. It was a welcome relief after so many days on the dusty road. Anoush was full of questions about life in Marash, and Mariam answered her while keeping one eye on Onnig. She listened to Anoush’s comments with half an ear. She wasn’t worried about Marta at all. Marta was certainly old enough to handle herself, but Onnig was much younger than the others. She was just waiting for a crisis. Any minute now, he would burst into tears and run to her arms for comfort, full of stories of how the big kids were picking on him.

  It surprised her, then, when it didn’t happen. Instead of ignoring the little boy and playing around him, Kevork and Taline made a point of including both Marta and Onnig in their game. They both seemed genuinely delighted to have other children to play with, even though one was so young.

  “… so it surprised me to see you,” continued Anoush.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Mariam asked.

  “With the unrest,” said Anoush. “It’s not a good time for women and children to be away from home.”

  “My mother wanted us all to stick together right now,” explained Mariam.

  “I have heard rumour of massacres,” said Anoush. “But I don’t believe it. Who would get the grain in if the Armenians were killed?”

  “Indeed,” said Mariam.

  After that first day, Mariam made a point of taking her younger siblings to the village whenever she could so that they could play with the other children. There were chores to do at the camp, like washing clothing, preparing food, and gathering kindling. Sometimes Kevork and Taline would walk up to the camp to find Onnig and Marta. Whenever they did this, Mariam was happy to let them all play while she did her chores, as long as they kept close enough for her to keep an eye on them. It was hardly necessary, though, because the children were so good with Onnig.

  One morning in the middle of April, Mariam finished her chores, then gathered Onnig and Marta and headed down to the village.

  As they approached the village gates, they didn’t stop to notice the eerie silence. The little one-storey clay homes all seemed empty. Even the goats and chickens were quiet. The children walked down the street all the way to the well without meeting a soul. The dama table was abandoned, although it looked like a game had been in progress just moments before.

  The open-air market stalls were unmanned, although there were some lemons, wicker baskets, cheese, and other goods that had been in the process of being laid out for display. Mariam looked over at the church and noticed that the doors, usually kept open, were closed tight. She walked up to the church door and put her ear to it. She could hear frightened whispers of people inside. She put her hand on the elaborately carved wooden handle and pulled, but it was locked, so she knocked on the door and called, “Is anybody in there?” The frightened whispers stopped. Mariam could almost hear a collective gasp of fear.

  Suddenly, Mariam could feel vibrations rumbling at her feet and she heard a sound — something like thunder — in the distance. It was coming from the direction of the village gates, and when she looked that way she saw a cloud of dust and angry-looking men on horses. Some of them carried bayonets, and some carried torches.

  Mariam ran to Onnig and picked him up in her arms, then she ran down the street. “Marta, follow me,” she called.

  Marta looked from Mariam to the rumbling of men, then ran after her sister.

  There was only one way to go, and that was in the opposite direction of the village gates. They ran through the maze-like streets, past the house where Taline lived. Then past where Kevork and Arsho lived with Anoush, and past the bathhouse. They passed another common courtyard area, and soon they were in a part of the village they had never seen before.

  Suddenly, a gunshot pierced the silence. Mariam instinctively placed a hand over Onnig’s mouth.

  A woman’s scream.

  Onnig struggled in his sister’s arms, trying to cry out in protest, but her hand remained clamped over his mouth. “We have to hide,” Mariam whispered to her sister.

  There was a bush not too far away, so they ran to it and fell in a heap behind it.

  “I dropped Bibi,” whispered Marta, glancing tearfully out into the courtyard at her doll.

  “Forget Bibi,” hissed Mariam.

  At that comment, Onnig bit Mariam’s fingers and wailed. “I want my mommy!”

  “Shut up,” Mariam whispered frantically. But Onnig kept on wailing. Mariam was about to slap him hard across the face but stopped, her hand poised in mid-air. “You must be quiet, Onnig. They’ll kill us if they find us.” Onnig’s eyes were suddenly round with fear, and he let out one loud sob, but then covered his own mouth with both hands. Mariam breathed a sigh of relief. She was glad that Onnig understood.

  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 h
ad 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.