The Seamstress of Ourfa

by Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss

  “Why would you do such a thing?” he asks. He reaches for another cigarette, lights one from the other and slides the pack over to Aram. “Help yourself. After this I’m back to roll ups, so smoke.”

  “I did it because if I didn’t, she would have,” Ferida juts her chin in Khatoun’s direction. “Your wife would have gone and got killed on the street and then what? Children need their mother.”

  The pot on the stove spits. Khatoun scrapes her chair back, gathers cups and spoons and starts to make tea.

  “He could be very persuasive, Mgrdich,” Aram murmurs, the good side of his face resting against the table, the puckered side up. “Even when we were small he had us organised into gangs against the Turkish boys.” He sits up, eyes red with exhaustion and reaches for his glass. He takes a swig, swills it around in his mouth – the sting good against the sharp pull of stitches. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I can imagine anyone dead except Mgrdich. He was too alive to die.”

  “Too alive?” Ferida laughs. “What does that mean? Shine too bright and God will put out your light. And if not God, your jealous neighbours.”

  “Amen.”

  “Yes,” Aram sighs, “not everyone liked Mgrdich.”

  “He was a hot head, that’s why,” Ferida says. “People died because of him. Look at the people of Garmuj. Just weeks ago. That’s her people, remember,” she indicates Khatoun.

  “Nobody could have predicted that,” Aram says. “He was holed up in the Garmuj caves because there was a price on his head. A lot of people were ready to betray him – fools who believed that if they fingered Mgrdich the persecutions would stop. It was impossible to trust anyone. And someone did betray him. When Mgrdich got to the caves the army already knew about it. They surrounded him but his men had arms and managed to hold their ground. They slipped out when the soldiers went for reinforcements. Followed them out in disguise. Walked right past the sentries and nobody realised until they were long gone. Reinforcements arrived. Caves were empty. It enraged the Turks.”

  “Who took it out on the people of Garmuj. Tortured and killed them, including the poor mayor,” Ferida says. “We know all this. But how is that protecting your people? Letting them die for you?”

  “It’s the government who torture our people, remember that,” Aram says. “And they’ll use anything as an excuse.”

  Iskender clears his throat, “Exactly. If they had caught Mgrdich in the caves they would have killed the villagers as conspirators, and if he hadn’t turned up at all they would have killed them for sheltering a criminal. They make up whatever excuse is needed at the time.”

  “You’re right, my friend,” Aram sighs. “The pressure to surrender was strong. A few of Mgrdich’s men did give themselves up just to keep the peace. They were killed instantly and still the people of Garmuj were tortured.”

  “Well, he’s dead now and that’s that,” Ferida says. “Asdvadz hokin lousavore.” She clears a space on the table for Khatoun’s tray of teacups. “And now what?” She accepts a cup, watches the steam rise for a moment then pushes her chair back impatiently. “Kaknem. I can’t sit here drinking tea. I’m going up to the roof to see what I can see.” Iskender stands as she passes, hovering over his chair clumsily. “What?” she asks him. “What do you want now?”

  “Nothing,” Iskender shrugs. “Just…keep low and…um…keep out of sight.”

  Ferida smiles. “I’ll keep low,” she says. “More importantly, don’t let your wife open that door again.” She darts daggers at Khatoun. “I’ll light the fire in the bathroom and have a bed made up for Aram. And you,” she looks across at the shattered man, “you’re not going anywhere. I want to wake up and see your lovely face for a few more years.” She gives him a disjointed grin and creaks out of the room, Grundug loping after her up to the doorway where he stands whimpering.

  “Go on. Go with her, Grundug,” Iskender tells the dog. Grundug turns to look at him. Normally, he isn’t allowed upstairs and that’s distinctly where he heard Ferida’s slippers heading.

  “Go on, go!” Iskender slaps his hand on the table and Grundug drops his head and tucks his tail between his legs. “Hayde! Oosht! Go with her!” Iskender yells and the frightened mutt finally pushes the door to and scampers up the back stairs to find his mistress, totally confused.

  Iskender stands, holds his drink up high and places his other hand over his heart. “My beautiful mother, Seyda Hanum, God rest her soul, told me that if I said a prayer for someone, an angel would sit on their shoulder. To the people of Ourfa, my people, may the angels please come and sit on your shoulders because I can’t think of any other prayer to send you right now. Amen.” He swills his drink around in his glass and knocks it back in one.

  “Amen,” Khatoun whispers.

  “Amen.”

  “And now…” Iskender declares to the ceiling as he pulls at his waistcoat and pats the gold watch nestling in his breast pocket, “I’m going up to the roof too.” His shoulders are at awkward angles and his shoes seem to have ants in them, and yet he doesn’t move. He belches into his cheek and blows the air out in a stream. “Aram,” he says, still looking up at the ceiling, “you are welcome in our home. Khatoun will look after you. I am going to check on the children first and then I’m going to see what is happening.” He breaks into a cough, excuses himself and is gone.

  Khatoun and Aram remain at the table, their tea untouched. The lamp is almost out and they sit in the gloom trying to make sense out of the noises that find their way in through the cracks in the walls. In the distance the demons are howling but there is a void between the warmth of this kitchen and what is taking place across town. Doors are locked and people with any sense are inside. Life has slipped underground and dares only rattle the windowpanes. It’s a long while before either of them speaks and in the silence the furniture swells and creaks, exposing the flaking blue paint of the wooden chairs, the ancient cracks that snake across plaster. Khatoun stretches, reaching her hands out in front of her and cracking her fingers. She wipes at the crust that has collected in the corner of her eyes.

  “What happened to Mgrdich’s little brother, Azdoo Peepuh? Is he still alive?”

  Aram laughs. “God’s Eyeball – what a shot! Yes, he was alive when I left him but wounded. Their sister is dead, Asdvadz hokin…she was defending the church. His wife, Elizabeth, I saw just before I came here. Alive but wild with grief.” Aram pauses, takes a rag from the pile on the table, rolls it into a little ball and stuffs it into his pocket.

  “Khatoun, it doesn’t matter who is alive now. We’ll all be dead soon – it’s just a matter of time.”

  “I know,” Khatoun nods, “but some of us will survive. Someone will live to tell the story. May God grant it be one of us.”

  “Insha’Allah,” Aram sighs.

  “Come on. The roof?” Khatoun pushes her chair back and offers Aram a hand.

  “So we can watch our city burn? Yes, we should witness it. You’ll have to push me up the stairs, though.” Aram takes her hand and staggers to his feet.

  They wind their way up the stairs slowly. Aram is exhausted. He feels as sick as the day he smoked his first ever cigarette. Heavy in the stomach and legs, weightless in the head. When they reach the roof, the sky is a murky purple, a pall of black smoke hanging over the Armenian Quarter to the west. The moon is lost somewhere and only a few stars can be seen behind the fine dust of ash that floats in on the evening breeze.

  Ferida is crouched by the balustrade, watching the sky change colour. Iskender stands further back; a tall, black squiggle silhouetted against the putrid sky. Mertha and Thooma sit huddled together under a large blanket near the wall, Mertha distraught; her hands tugging at her hair, pulling it out in strands and winding it frantically around her fingers.

  “My brothers, my sons, my brothers, my sons” she weeps, unable to tear her eyes away from the billowing cloud in the distance. “Waaaaaaa! Mybrothersmysonsmybrothersmysonsmybrothersmysons. Vay vay vay!”


  “Bastards,” Ferida says.

  “Montreal,” Iskender mutters to no one in particular.

  “Vay vay vay!” Mertha’s lament continues. “Hanum! Bayan! Ben seni çok seviyorum.” She wraps her hair into knots, her upturned face catching the dust that falls like rain. “They say they love us, but they love our blood more! I had to sit on top of her…to stop her running to the windows and looking out…‘Baby Alice, not the window,’ I said…but she saw everything…women and children, blood, blood, blood like a river, like a dream, like a game…‘It’s just a game,’ I lied, ‘only a game, they’re going to chop down trees, not people…’ but look! I lied! First they chop us with axes and now they burn us…look, look, the sky is thick with our smoke, we cannot see the stars…and my brothers, my sons, my brothers…there, out there! Waaaaa!”

  “Shush,” Thooma whispers. “Take a breath.” He wraps his arm around her and she stops wailing only to sink her teeth into his sleeve.

  Aram limps forward, settling at Iskender’s feet, his knees hugged close to his chest. Khatoun stands behind him, letting Aram lean against her legs, one hand on his shoulder, the other snaking around her husband’s waist as they watch the sky. The cloud belches upwards, bleeding across the heavens and obliterating the moon. The distance glows orange. The Armenian Quarter crackles gently – an eerily soothing sound from this distance. It is otherwise quiet. No human sounds. Above them, night closes in and a lone swallow sings somewhere – surprised by its solitude.

  “How many people still trapped in there?” Iskender wonders out loud. “They know they’re going to die but they still have some time. What do you do with that time? Fight? Hide? Run? Sit and wait for the flames?”

  “I would run,” Khatoun says. “Not away, but towards death. I would run with an open heart, my children in my arms, rather than have it come up behind me in some ugly way.”

  “Don’t even say it!” Mertha shrieks. “Not even a word!”

  “We could have avoided this,” Aram says shifting his weight and pulling his shirt close against the chill. “If we’d listened to Mgrdich, we could have avoided all this bloodshed.”

  “Pah!” Ferida scoffs. “Avoided? How? It’s because of him the city is burning!” She twists round to face Aram, her face lit red by the distant flames.

  “This is not the time to argue,” Iskender hisses.

  “No, no, this is no argument. I’d love to hear how we could have stopped this,” Ferida insists. “Perhaps we could learn something – pass on the advice.”

  “We could have fought,” Aram answers gently, accepting another lit cigarette from Iskender. “Instead of waiting and defending ourselves we could have attacked. Fought. There were plenty of opportunities.”

  Iskender nods, his gaze still fixed in the distance. “And plenty of warnings. We should have seen the writing on the wall ever since Zeitoun. We should have followed their lead.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ferida laughs. “They got fucked in Zeitoun!”

  “Ferida!” Mertha implores, covering her ears.

  “They did!” Ferida crawls back towards the huddled group and sits opposite Aram. “The Zeitounis made their own lives hell with all their endless uprisings and, if you ask me, life more difficult for Armenians everywhere. And where did it get them in the end? Digging their own graves on the Rakka road!”

  “Exactly my point,” Aram says. “They were duped. ‘Stop resisting, leave peacefully and we’ll be lenient with troublemakers.’ Like always. The Zeitounis were the first to defend themselves. This time they listened to the Turks and fell into their trap. Trust is what killed them.”

  “Wait. You said we could have avoided this, but so far all you’ve done is show us how futile resistance is,” Ferida snorts.

  Aram is calm. “If we had resisted earlier we could have avoided this.”

  “Earlier?” Ferida laughs. “When? All the young men are taken, the weapons are called in – what are we supposed to do? Gather the old women and children together and fight with cooking spoons?”

  “Your meat cleaver would have come in handy,” Aram says. “And it may still come to that, so let’s not laugh too hard at our own jokes.”

  “Yes,” Iskender agrees. “I’m telling you, Aram is right. Early resistance is crucial.” He takes a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and spits grey dust into it.

  Ferida sneers at her brother, “What are you talking about? You never leave your room unless a hashish cloud forces you out. Talk about resisting. Pah!”

  She takes a swig from the bottle hidden in her skirts and hands it to Aram. He drips the alcohol into his mouth and cocks his head to the side, letting it bathe the inside of his torn cheek before spitting it onto the floor.

  “Beginning to hurt,” he says taking another slug and swallowing it this time. “The answer to your question is this, jan...” he hands the bottle back to Ferida. “We should have put up a fight before the boys got drafted, before our weapons were confiscated. At that stage, as you point out, it’s already too late.”

  “Put up a fight? Unprovoked? Like Van…”

  “…they won…”

  “…at what cost?…And Zeitoun, and everyone else who’s tried the same and ended up as bird food on the Rakka road.”

  “Unprovoked?” Aram holds up his fingers and starts to count them off. “Martial law. Labour battalions. Misappropriation of property. The hundreds of thousands of people dragging through here on marches. You saw them yourself! You have girls here who’ve told you first-hand what’s happening to Armenians all over the Empire. What other provocation do you want? But no. ‘Wait, wait,’ the Prelate said. ‘Don’t fight back, don’t resist, maybe it won’t happen to Ourfa.’ And then what? Our weapons were taken and as soon as the populace was unarmed, they attacked. A thousand Ourfalise dead in one day.”

  “I tried to sit on her,” Mertha cries. “‘Baby Alice! Don’t look!’ But she ran to the window and saw everything! Vay vay vay!”

  “We here survived by luck alone,” Aram continues indicating their group with a circled hand. “Maybe we woke up late and weren’t in the street that day. Who knows what stroke of fate saved us. And since then? All of us prisoners in our own homes.”

  “Except for you. Out, playing with the bad boys.” Ferida spits on the floor.

  “I had no choice. They were making arrests. My name was on a list. I chose to disappear instead.”

  Thooma lets out a long sigh, breaking his silence from over by the wall. “We live with our heads in the sand.”

  “We do indeed, Baron Khouri,” Aram agrees, his voice becoming more animated, unlike the Aram they thought, up until now, they knew. “We could have – no, should have – acted earlier. It was the church elders that held us back. They said that unless a specific announcement came that Ourfa Armenians were to be exiled, Mgrdich was to sit tight.”

  “A raft, floating in the sea,” Iskender mutters to the sky.

  “Despite all the arrests, the deportations, the witness reports, no one was ready to listen to Mgrdich until after the notice went up to hand in our weapons,” Aram continues.

  “Well, that’s the final step isn’t it?” Thooma says. “Make people defenceless, then go in for the kill.”

  “I don’t understand why everyone agreed to hand in their weapons,” Khatoun says. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Because failure to hand over metes out punishment,” Iskender replies. “Another dozen killed. There were plenty of villagers who bought guns just to donate, to avoid trouble.”

  “Anyway, it was after that that people finally began to listen to Mgrdich,” Aram says. His voice flows with excitement. His hands flutter and dip into the folds of his shirt, twisting the ends around his fingers and letting them go again. “In order to gain time, Mgrdich told us to donate our guns, but only those that were defective or broken.”

  “That’d make a good pile!” Thooma laughs. “I had a pistol, belonged to my father once. Useless. The on
ly thing it ever killed was a rat – I hit it over the head with the handle. It must be somewhere.”

  “Find it!” Aram jokes before continuing. “So, as the government began to confiscate weapons, Mgrdich began stockpiling them, preparing for battle. A lot of people still held on to the hope that we wouldn’t get the same treatment as in other towns.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand,” Thooma exclaims. “The Armenians always think other people are reasonable and level -headed even though there is evidence of their brutality right in front of them. We’re stupid; as a race we must be amongst the most stupid people in the world.”

  “Thooma,” Mertha cries, “please!”

  “We’re not stupid,” Aram shakes his head. “Just stubbornly optimistic.”

  “What? Giving up all means of defending yourself and hoping that no one will harm you is optimistic? It’s downright stupidity,” Thooma shouts. “As soon as we were unarmed Talaat let all the miscreants out of jail so they could carry out his dirty work. And there you have it, a thousand of us dead in one day.” His arm sweeps out in a large arc as if he were clearing a table of its contents.

  “I knew it was coming…that day the moon covered the sun…it was warning us. I tried to sit on her…” Mertha wails, “but she ran to the window to see…‘Baby Alice, not the window,’ I said…but she saw…men with axes and bayonets…knives from the kitchen…blood, blood, blood like a river…”

  “Khalil Bey and Ahmed Bey,” Ferida spits into the ground. “Kaknem peruned. I shit on your faces.”

  “The Armenians are not stupid,” Iskender says calmly, ignoring the passionate outburst surrounding him. “There was confusion over the fate of Ourfa. The orders from the government were for total annihilation, kiamilan imha, of Armenians in the provinces of the Empire but kusman imha, partial annihilation in other places. Particularly places populated by a lot of Europeans. Look at the big cities. Look at Constantinople where there are foreign witnesses. The Armenians there are treated differently. We were outside the boundaries here – that’s why we believed our fate could be different. Then the borders were changed which included us in the province of Diarbakir and at the same time the order was issued that all Armenians were enemies of the Muslim State – to be eliminated. It opened the gates.”