Orhan's Inheritance

by Aline Ohanesian

  A dusty beam of daylight filters through the small crack in the back wall through which her keeper, the plump woman, regularly wedges small pieces of cured lamb and bread. Lucine tries to relieve herself as far away from this opening as she can, but the chamber pot sits festering in the opposite corner. The excrement, like so much suffering, is ongoing and unpredictable. It leaves her as Mairig and Anush and Bedros left her, permanently and without warning. In her arms, a silent witness to all this exorcism, Aram’s ghost gives up his screaming and sucks impatiently at her breast, the only part of her body incapable of excretion.

  At nightfall, the plump one arrives carrying her stale bread. She talks about how the gendarmes liked to lick her back and pull her hair as they thrust themselves in and out of her.

  “How are you today?” she asks Lucine, but Lucine does not answer. She hasn’t spoken since the river.

  “How is the child?” the woman tries again.

  Lucine continues rocking the phantom Aram.

  “What does he eat?” the woman asks.

  Lucine lays a hand on her concave chest.

  The woman sings, “Dandini, dandini danalı bebek. Ellerı kolları kinalı bebek.” It is a lullaby to an infant resting in a secret hiding place. When the infant dies, its mother goes mad and buries it in a golden cradle, then offers herself to the waves. A fitting ditty, only this wasn’t the exact order of things.

  Some days later, when the plump one is once again delivering her bread, Aram is gone. His screams recede from her ears to the back of her head, like church bells in a dream. The swaddling cloth lies weightless on her lap. Lucine is searching its folds for any evidence of him: a hair, a stain, but all that remains is the smell of her own vomit and shit. Still, she searches for his spirit in the now-coarse fabric of the swaddling cloth. The plump one finally pries the blue wool out of Lucine’s hands.

  “You can come out now,” she says. “You’ll live with me. I’ve arranged it.”

  Lucine cries out at the words you’ll live. A hot liquid anger courses through her veins. She strikes the woman over and over again, in the face, shoulders and chest. The woman wraps her plump arms around Lucine’s body and squeezes. She writhes and thrashes until her strength gives out and her limbs go limp with grief. There, with her head pressed into the woman’s ample bosom, and her arms pinned to her sides, Lucine succumbs to life and to living. She slides down to the earth with the woman’s arms wrapped around her.

  “We are not what is done to us,” she whispers in Lucine’s ear. She pulls something silver and smooth from the pocket of her dress. Lucine stares at the blade with relief, thinking the woman will now end all her suffering. Lucine tilts her head back, offering her exposed neck to the stranger.

  “My name is Fatma and Allah has placed you in my protection,” she says. “Gold doesn’t lose its value by falling into the mud,” she mutters to herself, scraping the flat, cool blade against Lucine’s scalp. Clumps of hair, like small rat’s nests, fall to the ground and soon she can feel the wind prickling the back of her head.

  “Now we burn these rags,” Fatma says, peeling the tattered dress off Lucine’s body. She gives her a smock to cover her nakedness and burns the dress right there on the spot. Lucine thinks of the lice in her hair and in her clothing burning to their deaths. Perhaps this was how God sent death to our door, without a single thought.

  Dressed in the plain smock, her feet bare, Lucine’s apparel is a far cry from the rustling dresses Mairig forced upon her. Fatma wraps a dark head scarf around her bald scalp and face.

  “You need a Turkish name,” she says. “From now on you will answer to Seda. It means ‘echo,’ so that you may find your voice again.”

  Lucine chews the pair of unfamiliar syllables in between her teeth and in the space between the roof of her mouth and the tip of her tongue. The name, like her silence, is comforting. It allows her to disappear from a world where children die and mothers lose their minds, where the sun continues to climb the sky and the rooster’s screech still grates against morning sleep. And for this and only this, she is most grateful. Everything else, from the head scarf to the breath going in and out of her lungs, is unwanted. All these she would gladly give back, but the name is different. The name she keeps, along with her silence.

  She follows Fatma into the moonlit night. They walk out of the orchard that housed the shed, and past a field, then into a courtyard. A boy, only a few years older than Bedros, is lying on the floor with nothing but a yorgan to keep him warm.

  “That is Ahmet,” says Fatma. “He takes care of the animals of our guests.” The boy looks at her without turning his head. His eyes are dull like an old man’s.

  The khan is a dark building made of stone and timber. Fatma walks around the main entrance and leads her to a small room in the back of the building.

  “This is where you will spend your days, ” she says, opening the little door. The lilt in her accent reveals that she is Kurdish. “Through that door is the main chamber, where the men eat their meals and drink their raki. You must never go into that room. They can’t know you are here. I’m risking my life by keeping you here. Understand?”

  Seda understands. They are the soldiers, the ones who mix suffering with sport. The Kurdish woman could be hanged for helping her. The room is no bigger than a closet. A tonir, just like Mairig’s, sits at the center of the floor, except its open mouth threatens to swallow her whole. There is a small wooden table and a single chair facing a paneless window that looks more like a hole than a proper opening. Under the table is a wooden crate. It holds two knives, a ladle, four pots of varying sizes, and clay jars of pickled cabbage. Sacks of wheat, rice, and bulgur lean against the remaining three walls. A wooden ladder rests against an opening in the ceiling.

  “Up there is my room,” says Fatma. “At night, when a soldier is visiting, you stay away. In the morning, when he’s gone, I’ll knock on the opening four times. You can come up then and clean or put away the bedding. The bedding has to be cleaned every few days. You will also be in charge of the meals. Ahmet and I will serve them, but you must prepare them.

  “Can you cook?” Fatma asks.

  Lucine has never cooked a meal all by herself. She has shelled peas, dried figs, and salted meat but doesn’t know what comes before or after any of these steps. These things were relegated to the servant, Ayse, and sometimes to Anush and Mairig and to all the other women whom she has loved and lost. But Lucine remembers that she is Seda now and nods her head yes.

  In the days and weeks that follow, Seda follows Fatma closely, does what she is told. She cleans. She cooks. She delouses yorgans. She waits for death to visit her in the night. All the while Aram’s wailing rings in her ears. The sight of his flailing arms, Anush’s waist cinched by a uniformed arm, Bedros lying prostrate on the grass, and Mairig with her crumpled Bible pages, all these she sees in the daily wash and at the bottom of the barley soup.

  Twice a week, she climbs up the stairs to the three little rooms on the second floor but only after Fatma gives her the signal. These are the rooms where Fatma entertains the gendarmes and her bey and where a wandering traveler will stay for more than one night.

  Soldiers, merchants, and the occasional missionary travel through these walls without ever seeing her. She is a spirit—a ghost—soundless and practically invisible. Existing only in the in-between spaces—between daylight and darkness, in the narrow wall between the main mess hall and the inner chambers. And though they cannot see her, she sees them.

  She sees merchants eating their watery porridge, their cunning eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. They rarely ever sleep indoors, preferring to stay with their animals and goods. The soldiers are an entirely different matter. Most are officers who, tired of the earth and sun, crave the comforts of a clean yorgan and a hot meal. She does her best to avoid them. Even when they are asleep or unconscious, they make her wild with fear and hate. She wants to cram their discarded shits back into their postcoital slac
k-jawed mouths.

  The American missionaries politely sip their tea, not knowing that hiding in the shadows is someone who can hear and understand the insults they lob at Turkish soldiers in hushed English whispers. At night, she presses her ear to the curtained wall of their chambers, drinking in the sounds of their English words. They speak and pray. They liken what is happening in Anatolia to hell. This almost makes her laugh. What do they know of hell? Hell is to witness all this and still soak the cracked wheat in water, to empty the chamber pots of fools and murderers. She wants to scream at them, Your mighty god is a joke, but to do this she would have to give up her silence. And that she will never do.

  CHAPTER 26

  Altar of Contrition

  EARLY EVERY MORNING, Ahmet goes to the well to fetch water. He leaves well before the cock crows, before the women of the village trickle down from the valley. When he comes to Seda’s little room to fetch the water pails, he makes a point of waking her with his noise.

  “This is women’s work,” he complains.

  Seda does not rise or respond. She does not tell him how the well beckons to her, how when she wakens in the middle of the night, cursing the breath that enters her lungs, it is the well’s promise of solace that soothes her. How she regularly imagines slipping out of her room, bare feet on wet grass, past the orchard, climbing the low stone wall and falling into the depth of water until it fills her lungs. She tells him none of this.

  She turns to the cooking, instead. Beneath the cauldron, flames lick the weathered cast iron, heating the water until it scalds the cabbage leaves, releasing a putrid smell. Pungent. Not like burning flesh. No, not like that. Seda lifts the wooden spoon and places the boiled cabbage leaves, piled one on top of the other, in one corner of the tray. She lifts one, with her fingers, letting the steam prick her fingertips. The hot leaf, its translucent skin the color of rain, gives her the gift of pain, of feeling. She flattens the leaf, then places her burned fingertips in the cool mixture of the filling, but it offers her no pleasure.

  There is always plenty to eat here. Fatma’s bey makes sure of it. And though Seda spends almost all her time in this little room that is half oven, she eats little or nothing. She sees no reason to sustain this body, prolong this life.

  Sometimes the baby still visits her. She cradles him, soft and pink, inside her arms. But when she opens her mouth to sing him a lullaby, nothing comes out. Her mouth is no longer a portal. Nothing but breath comes out and very little goes in.

  A few morsels slide down her throat but only when Fatma insists upon watching.

  “Don’t you dare bring that back up,” she says, waving a stout finger in her face. “There are people starving everywhere.”

  I know. I know. I know.

  The third winter of her visit has come and gone. They say the war will soon come to an end. And yet she has hardly enough on her bones to distinguish her as female. The head scarf is the only thing that gives her away. Not that it is necessary. She is almost always hidden. A ghost vanishing into the stone walls and hidden chambers of the ancient inn. Her body receding, her voice gone.

  Hairig, I would give all my teeth and fingernails to see you again. It would be a small price.

  And he does come. Not in her sleep, like she would prefer, but while she is awake, chopping the parsley or beating the wool. He whispers in her left ear. Always the left. But instead of solace, he brings her more worry for he speaks in the foreign tongue of the dead.

  What are you saying? Please, please, tell me what you are saying. Say it in Armenian, Hairig. I would do anything to hear it in Armenian.

  On more than one occasion, Fatma has witnessed her silent begging. “Do not spend your time with ghosts. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.” But what does she know? The closest thing she’s come to a man like Hairig is her bey, that patron saint of whores and sinners.

  Nabi Bey, who thinks she’s a poor Kurd, pays no attention to her. She is like the mule in the stable, the pail in the well, a useful thing to be tolerated. He forgets she is there. Or so she thinks.

  She is standing at the table, adding onions to the pot, on the day he enters her little room. His smell, a mixture of pistachios and cured meat, fills the air between them. The stuffed cabbage leaves lay steaming on the tray. He looks around at her world before leaning against the table and picking up the tin cup she uses for measuring. He turns it around in his hand, studying it like it’s a rare thing, before putting it down. He picks up one of her rolled cabbage leaves, blows on it at length, before placing it into his mouth. He does this slowly, his eyes pinned to her face.

  Seda pours barley into the pot with the onions and, turning her back to him, takes it to the fire. He will think it rude, disrespectful, but she cannot stand him looking at her. She stirs the barley until it turns into mush. Fatma will be unhappy. Seda can hear the rustling of his pants as he shifts his weight. She knows those pants. The dark fabric of an Ottoman soldier’s uniform. Only Nabi Bey’s pants are not torn or crumpled, not stained with sweat or blood. They are always clean, always pressed, a severe line of demarcation running down the front of both his legs. Who put them there so dutifully? Not Fatma, but some other woman. Someone he calls wife. Someone who’s borne him three daughters and no sons.

  “Turn around,” he says. And she obeys.

  “How long have you lived here?” he asks.

  Seda lifts her right hand and shows him three fingers. One for each year.

  “You live because I allow it,” he says finally. “Remember that.”

  Seda stays right where she is, bracing herself for him to approach, remembering that other time, when Bedros stood above her exposed body, holding a giant rock. But within seconds she hears the door slam shut and he is gone.

  Fatma enters soon after that. In her hand, she carries two nails and a metal latch.

  “Give me your rolling pin,” she says, and Seda obeys.

  Fatma pounds the nails into the door and wall, creating a makeshift lock from the inside.

  “Use it every day. In the morning and at night. Whenever possible.”

  Seda furrows her brow, demanding further explanation.

  “Nabi Bey thinks you should start earning your keep.” Fatma’s eyes glide over Seda’s body.

  Seda understands. She places the blade of a knife at her wrist.

  “Don’t be dramatic. I didn’t save your life to offer you up like a platter of cheese.”

  Why did you save my life? Am I an offering on your altar of contrition?

  “I told him you were diseased. God knows you look it. But you’ll have to be more careful. I don’t know how I’m going to protect you.”

  It is true that Fatma is protecting her, but it is also true that, in her own way, Fatma loves her bey. Seda has seen the way she sniffs at his collar when serving him his soup. The way she insists the sheets stay unwashed after one of his visits.

  “I don’t suppose you have any people left,” Fatma says.

  Seda shakes her head no. Everyone is dead and gone. Hairig’s older brother may be somewhere in Constantinople, selling his textiles, cloth that was once meant for Mairig’s trip to Paris. But that was a long time ago, an entire dream ago. Besides, what would she tell him if she found him? Where would she begin accounting for all the dead? No, better to remain here, slowly disappearing.

  “I have enough troubles of my own,” Fatma says, handing Seda the rolling pin and collapsing onto the floor cushion. She is always tired lately, and her breasts are more swollen than usual. She has taken to wearing a flowing robe of brown wool that wraps around her thickening middle.

  Seda feels a pang of worry. She takes two steps toward Fatma and, kneeling, gently places a hand on her stomach. Fatma looks straight into her eyes and sighs.

  “At least there is no danger of you telling anyone,” she says and then, “It is the bey’s doing. I am sure of it.” She brushes the hair away from Seda’s forehead. “He doesn’t know. Thank God. He won’t marry me, of course.
Calls me a whore. If it’s a girl, he will discard me. If it is a son, he will surely take him from me. Either way, I will be destroyed. And you along with me. The quality of gold is distinguished by flames and the quality of humans through misfortune. You and I are made of solid gold.

  “He will be traveling to Sivas next month for a meeting of some sort. That will give me time to think of a plan.”

  Seda gasps at the mention of her birthplace. Her hand flies to her mouth.

  “What is it, child? Don’t worry. I will think of something,” she says, caressing Seda’s worried face. “For now, just keep away from him. Use the lock. Understand?”

  Seda nods. That is when the thought comes to her, like a fly buzzing in her ear. The bey is going to Sivas. If she went with him, she may find Nazareth or Bedros or Kemal . . . She may yet go back to being Lucine. But the thought instantly vanishes.

  “Fatma, bring me some porridge.” The bey’s voice comes booming through the thick walls of the inn. Seda shoos her thoughts away and ladles a healthy portion into a large clay bowl. She holds it before the sitting Fatma, but before handing it to her she bends her head into the steaming porridge and, keeping her eyes fixed on Fatma’s face, spits into it.

  Fatma laughs her hearty laugh. And Seda is surprised at her own pleasure in hearing it. It must be hard to please others for a living, she thinks, to be a source of pleasure and hate all at once.

  CHAPTER 27

  Spilled Porridge

  THERE ARE RUMORS that Ahmet is an orphaned boy, another victim of the deportations, hiding behind a new Muslim name. There is a new name for survivors like Seda and Ahmet. They are now known throughout Turkey as “remnants of the sword.” Seda once heard the bey use the term when he was telling Fatma not to take in any more strays. Whatever his story, the stable boy is trapped in his own world. He rarely speaks to Seda and, then, only when it’s absolutely necessary. They have an unspoken pact to manage their miseries separately and with silence.