The Seamstress of Ourfa

by Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss

  “Stupid animal!” Ferida had screeched, dragging the slipper off her foot. “He’s been at the silversmith’s again!” At the sight of worn leather Grundug had set off around the house, bloodying nearly all of the rugs before Khatoun had been able to catch him and remove the splinter. It had taken both of them to bind the wound with rags which Grundug had immediately gnawed off under the table. Then they’d had to mop up the blood before it set into the kilims and ruined them forever. Finally, with a woebegone Grundug tethered to the back door, they’d set off for their sewing class, Khatoun unable to shut out Ferida’s invective about the dog.

  “He licks my face with stinky breath…always under my feet when I’m cooking…pisses in the doorway…he even wants to sleep with me…as if I want his fleas! Stupid animal.”

  Grundug was Ferida’s dog – her surrogate child and the love of her life. Discovered as a pup in the gutter, he’d been attached to her heel ever since. Khatoun smiles at Ferida’s complaints, unwilling to accuse her of jealousy, even though that is obviously what is wrong this morning. Grundug may love his mistress, but he has other feelings entirely for the curly-haired little bitch that sleeps in the doorway of the silversmith’s every night. Feelings that enrage Ferida who expects to wake and find Grundug at the end of her bed with looks of love solely for her.

  “Stop laughing at me and go faster!” Ferida yells, “We’re going to get an earful for this!” They break into a gallop for the last stretch, reach the heavy panelled door set in the wall of Aghavni’s house and push hard against it. It is locked. Ouf! One of them must now take the bronze hand that serves as a knocker, bang it down on the plate (“Not too hard – women are never strident!”) and announce their arrival. They look at each other. A lecture is inevitable. Tardiness. The value of time. Ladylike manners. Khatoun shrugs, reaches for the knocker and gives it a hefty bang.

  The door springs open and Digin Aghavni stands smiling in the well of cool air in the hallway.

  “Oh!” she says graciously, “What a lovely surprise. How delightful to have your company. Please, do come in.”

  Khatoun and Ferida step inside but before either of them can begin to explain, they are pinned to the wall, shoulder to shoulder and the front door bolted shut.

  “Ladies never run,” Aghavni says, “especially in public. As a married woman, you should know better,” she admonishes Khatoun. “And as for you,” she plants her face inches from Ferida’s and lowers her voice, “please remember never to run until you are married. People may think you are a loose woman otherwise. Now,” she steps back smiling again, “since this is the first time you are late, I shall forgive you. By God’s grace, it is in my heart to do so. The next time, however, you will have to do as the other girls, and stay late, unpicking seams as punishment.”

  “Yes, Digin Aghavni. Thank you,” the girls nod, bob a brief curtsey.

  “Unpicking? Me? Kaknem,” Ferida mutters into her armpit.

  “Ferida?”

  “Nothing.”

  “May the good Lord bless you.”

  “And you.”

  “And now, let us wash our hands and begin.” Aghavni sets off down the hall to the alcove where an ornate washbasin stands. She lifts the jug and pours water over their hands, handing them each a small linen towel embroidered with their name when they are clean.

  She’s a good woman, Digin Aghavni. An orphan brought up by Scottish missionaries in Marash, who’d nurtured in her a devotion to both God and the great Queen Victoria. She was once a pretty girl but her face had changed when her one, brief engagement had ended with the massacres of eighteen-ninety-five. Her fiancé, a goldsmith, had been at work, bent over his latest piece – a wedding bracelet he was setting with emeralds for her. Oblivious to the commotion outside in the street, he had looked up in surprise when the door burst open only to receive a bullet in his left eye that left the workshop wall spattered with brains.

  Her heart broken beyond repair, Aghavni had fled the city she’d once loved and moved to Ourfa. She set up business – a small trade school teaching dressmaking – and dedicated her life to bringing the love of Jesus and the morals of Queen Victoria to the girls she taught. A brilliant seamstress, she took in just half a dozen students at a time, working them hard. She showed them how to cut patterns, manage a machine and perfect their needlework, quoting either the Bible or her antiquated Scottish book on etiquette as she drifted beatifically amongst them.

  Khatoun and Ferida were her newest students and although Khatoun showed great promise, Ferida was a thorn in the side with her uneven stitches and hasty cutting. She’d be far better off in the kitchen, Aghavni thought, although it was doubtful she’d ever marry with her quick temper and sour looks. Maybe that was the cause of her bitterness. Who could tell? An unmarried woman with vile language, a cack-hand and a plain face. Still, every woman had her place in society, just like herself. God bless the spinsters of the world. Amen. And now to work.

  “Inside,” she says, opening the door to the workroom and ushering them in. Four other girls are already bent over their sewing.

  “Good morning, Ferida. Good morning, Digin Khatoun,” they chime, looking up only when their next stitch is done.

  “Good morning, everyone. We apologise for being late,” Khatoun says.

  “Yes,” Ferida mumbles, “sorry.”

  “We forgive you. It’s nothing at all,” the girl on the far right smiles. “Do please join us,” she indicates two covered tables at the front of the room and returns to her embroidery. Khatoun sits cross-legged at one of the low tables and pulls the flower-sprigged dust-cloth away.

  The little machine smiles back at its proud owner. Khatoun reaches out and strokes the shiny black metal, tracing the tendrils of gold vine that decorate its sides. It had been her mother’s – passed down as a gift to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. And now she’s learning how to use it. Khatoun eases the handle forward and the needle lifts up.

  “It says ‘Singer’ in English,” Digin Aghavni says, extending a finger over Khatoun’s shoulder and underlining the word, “Yerkchouhi. And if you treat her well, she will sing for you all your life and bring your gift to fruition.”

  Khatoun laughs. “I’m not sure I have a gift, Digin Aghavni, rather a good teacher.”

  “Hmm, flattery,” Aghavni looks stern, “Unfortunately, it will get you everywhere in this world.” She lets in the glimmer of a smile before moving on to the next girl, “Keep up the good work, and the Lord will praise you.”

  Khatoun reaches under the table for her sewing. Folded neatly into a pile are the pieces she has already cut out and tacked together. An overcoat in European style. The cloth, a soft gabardine from Germany – a sample from one of the manufacturers her husband supplies. Iskender had brought the bolt home just the other day and Khatoun had calculated enough material for five coats; something small and fitted for herself, an overcoat for her mother, a jerkin for Seyda, a jacket for Ferida. The coat she is working on now is for Sophia, her sister-in-law in Baghshish. Sophia who’d looked in her coffee cup under the plane trees and said sew, sew, sew, even before Mertha had thought to pass down her machine. Khatoun fingers the soft indigo wool. Once the coat is complete with round collar and velvet trim at the cuff, she will decorate the bottom with a galaxy of silver stars, inside and out, so that when Sophia walks, the solar system will spill from her hem and catch the gaze of all she passes.

  Khatoun would like to build her life with this machine. As she feeds the dark blue thread through the intricate pattern of hooks she feels strangely at home, as if she’d been searching for something all her life and hadn’t known what until now. Carefully, she lines up two matching pieces of material under the needle and snaps the lever down, pinning them into place. Slowly, she strokes life through the smooth wheel and into the machine.

  Tac-atac-atac-atac, it murmurs under her hand. The dark blue cloth flies away in front of her, endless, like the night sky. Effortless. Easy. Khatoun could shut her eyes or sew
blindfold it goes so easily. Some things do. And others. Others do not. A bird catches in her throat, unable to fly. She’s been married for three years now and still nothing has happened. Her slim waistline – once the envy of girls – is now the object of gross speculation and gossip. Even in this room. The only married woman amongst them. Barren, just the same. Once, the thought of being a mother terrified her, but now the idea that she may never be…the bird flutters. She coughs.

  “Dust in your eye?” Digin Aghavni murmurs right next to her ear, “Be careful.” She bends in close, watching Khatoun’s stitches snake through the cloth. “A good seamstress needs nimble fingers and sharp eyesight. Take care of both and you’ll do well – you’re already one of my best students. I see an infinity of stitches in this machine. As infinite as the stars.”

  Khatoun turns to look up at Aghavni and the cloth runs away with her, her fingers narrowly missing the bite of the needle.

  Aghavni tuts gently, “You see, never take your eye away from what is in front of you. That is what is most important. When something is hard, the breath goes. When something is easy, the mind goes. What is the time? Now. Where is the place? Here. Don’t live in your dreams, bring them home and make them reality. Now pay attention.” She moves on again, over to Ferida who is standing awkwardly over the cutting table slapping down some slippery fabric and trying to pin it into place.

  Khatoun reorganises the cloth under the needle. The machine trundles along, shaping the coat she will give as a gift. The stitches bite into the wool, creating a smooth valley that runs on forever. Never take your eye away from what is in front of you. Soon the coat will be finished and the embroidery will sparkle from the hem. Find your silver thread. Keep your needles sharp, shiny. She will pack it in vetyver and send it by mule to Baghshish. Bring them home. Make them reality.

  She tries to concentrate on what is in front of her, but it is sucking her in. She sews into the centre of her being, a dark night sky of inky fabric enveloping her. She drifts high into the solar system and hangs, suspended above the world. Weightless, timeless, a lustrous spill of stars swirling around her within a dense, moving cloud. Voices far away, too distant to distinguish. She searches and sees no one but can hear them call out her name. A name she doesn’t recognise. She must drift closer to earth through time. And then, there in the wind, Iskender singing his lullabies. The cloud around her collapsing, spinning, the other voices joining in harmony. And finally they’re there. Right in front of her. Her family. Her children. And theirs. And theirs. And theirs. And the fabric flows beneath her fingers and the needle is sharp, and her eyes are bright and the machine, warm from her touch, glows and purrs.

  Now she has heard them. Now she has seen them. And soon, once she has stitched them into her life, one by one they will come. And the needle flies, sending sparks across the dark, lush fabric in front of her as she moves forward, forward always forward in time.

  Leaving Home

  Iskender’s House, Ourfa, November 1903

  Iskender

  Iskender lies on his side, listening. He can hear her up on the roof. One, two, three, pause. Four, five, six. The footsteps stop. The skylight creaks open and the room lights up in angular shafts as Khatoun steps inside. She slides the bolt into place and sits on the fourth stair from the top – the one that always complains when anyone steps on it. He wouldn’t have to fix that now. The stairs could rot and drop away like old flesh for all he cared.

  He strains his ears. Khatoun is quiet, watching the room from her perch. Listening, as he is, to the huddle of people sleeping on their floor. The smoker’s rumble from his own chest. Stale scraps of lullaby escaping Ferida’s lips. Mertha snoring. Something, somewhere, dripping. But the room? The room itself is mercifully silent. For years the walls had echoed with whispers that seeped through the plaster like poison.

  “She’s too small in the hips.”

  “Still a child.”

  “Must live like brother and sister.” An angled brow and pursed lips.

  The stories had oozed through the cracks until their clothes were damp, the fires smoky. It was only when the gypsy with one arm put a curse on the Mgrdichjians that the attention had turned elsewhere and the gossips assumed that that was it. Khatoun and Iskender Agha Boghos were, and would always remain, childless.

  Which explains why, after six years of marriage, Iskender had been convinced Khatoun was dying. Dying the same way as the silversmith’s wife. Exhausted. Headaches. Gone. It had started one morning at the machine. He’d been watching his young wife at work, his book lowered, his coffee gone cold. She was busy attaching a bodice to a dress when she’d had to lie down for a sudden and immediate nap, one arm draped over the Singer. When she woke up again she found Iskender crouched by her side, a look of panic in his eyes.

  “My dreams were filled with sunlit shafts of water,” she told him, “and now I’d like to eat meat grilled on the bone with lemon and salt.”

  Contrary to his fears, Khatoun was not dying, but it took his wife several weeks to figure out what was happening, by which time she was so confounded by the realisation, so enthralled with her blossoming breasts, that yet another week passed before she thought to share the news with him.

  They’d eaten a huge dinner she’d had to force down, causing Ferida to hook a dripping okra under her nose, sniff it, roll it around in her mouth and swallow it with a scowl. Iskender had piled more onto his plate, complimenting his sister on her delicious stew and Khatoun had taken the opportunity to slip away from the table.

  When he followed her into their room he found the contents of her pockets emptied onto a tray next to the mattress – a balled handful of pilaff, a hunk of bread, two peppers and a pickle. She lay face down, buried in the cool eiderdown, turning over only when Iskender let out a long wheeze and perched at the end of the bed, shifting from side to side with indigestion.

  “Don’t,” he grunted as she stretched out her foot and nudged him in the small of the back, “I ate too much. It hurts.”

  She did it again.

  “What?” he turned to look at her over his shoulder. She stared back at him.

  “What is it?” he asked. She raised her eyebrow in response.

  “Are you alright?” he asked nervously. “Is it another headache?”

  “No. No headache. Just tired.”

  “Good. Rest,” he patted her foot and turned away with a sigh, loosening his collar with one hand before bending back to his shoes. Ouf, his belly hurt. Khatoun pushed the end of her foot further under his bottom and wriggled her toes.

  “What?” he turned back, irritated this time, “Why do you keep poking me?”

  She slid her eyes down to her belly then up to his face. Back to her belly. Back to his face. He watched, confused and then, “Oh!” his fingers flew like a girl’s to his lips.

  “Yes,” Khatoun nodded. She shimmied off the bed and stood in front of him. Peeled the fingers from his startled face and placed them around her hips, kissing the bald spot on his head as he buried his face in her skirt and inhaled. When he looked up she saw he was crying which made her laugh as she sank into his lap. They slept that night curled up in a tight ball, his hands cupping her like a fragile egg. The next morning he was gone and it was the sound of his sister’s raging that woke Khatoun.

  “You stupid dungulugh!” Ferida yelled as she kicked the door open and entered backwards with a tray in her hand, “Why didn’t you tell anyone? What if you’d lost it! Asdvadz bahe!” She passed a bowl of soup under Khatoun’s nose and set it down on the table. “Tanabour. Eat that and stay in bed until the midwife has been…wait…what?…what is this? Asdvadz, you’ll strangle our baby before it’s even born!” She pulled Khatoun into a sitting position, slopping soup all over the sheets as she yanked feverishly at Khatoun’s buttons.

  “Our baby?” Khatoun laughed, realising she had fallen asleep still fully dressed, “I thought it was mine!”

  “Yours? Kaknem! Who’s going to feed it and bathe it?
Who’s going to wipe its kaka-vorig while you daydream and sew nonsense? Me!”

  Ferida grabbed Khatoun’s clothes and spun out of the room, the door slamming a shower of plaster loose from the ceiling. Iskender, who’d been standing in the hallway throughout the whole exchange, reached for the door, opened it tentatively and stuck his head in the room.

  “Sorry, jan…” was as far as he got before Ferida pushed him aside and marched back in wiping her face with the back of her hand.

  “Here, let me help you,” she said, suddenly uncharacteristically calm, “you need to eat if your son is to grow.” She sat at Khatoun’s side, spooning barley gruel into her mouth, a single tear suspended from her nose the whole time.

  The summer blazed by and on a scalding afternoon in August the baby came, slithering into the fat meaty hands of the midwife who hoisted it up by the feet and slapped it hard on the bottom.

  “It’s a girl! A real fatty! Park Asdoudzo! Praise God!”

  And thus Alice was born.

  Iskender was delighted. The women had convinced him the baby would be a boy, mapping out his glorious future over the kitchen table – Goldsmith! Scholar! Engineer! – but secretly Iskender had prayed for a girl. Something small and manageable. A little boubrig like his wife.

  Every evening, as soon as he finished with the books, he’d hold Baby Alice to his chest and sing, drowning in the soft, fat folds of her flesh, addicted to her velvety blue-veined skin. He smiled those days. Clapped everyone on the back, tipped waiters outrageously and whistled all the way home. And as soon as he knew everyone else was asleep he’d open another bottle, drink himself into a stupor and cry inconsolably into his dreams.

  You see, life had always seemed extraordinary to Iskender. There appeared to be a universal law that not everything could be perfect at the same time. God gave gifts of love at the most unexpected moments but Fate dictated that life itself become more fragile with each shift of the heart. These thoughts, previously just late night ruminations over a game of chess, had become concrete shortly after he first met Khatoun, when he realised without a doubt that he had fallen in love with her.