by Jenny White
At a signal from the governor, the gendarmes spread out and blocked the road. “I’m sorry, Kamil Pasha, but we’ve heard that they carry disease. We can’t risk letting them into the town.”
That, at least, was a legitimate concern, Kamil thought, his anger abating somewhat.
“I understand,” he said. “If they are not to go into town, perhaps a camp can be set up for them outside, where they can receive medical care.”
“We hadn’t expected such numbers. How many are there?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred? Three hundred? Quite a few died along the way.”
“We don’t have enough to feed them,” the governor stuttered, “or the resources to build that many houses. And we have only one doctor.”
“Surely as governor you can meet the expenses. This is a human disaster for which you are responsible.”
The governor shook his head and looked embarrassed. “These people are rebels. The government won’t allow me to pay a kurush to help them.”
Kamil flung his riding crop down in rage and strode up and down the row of gendarmes while the governor waited, his face twitching with anxiety. He could send a telegram to Istanbul, Kamil considered, but to whom? And what would that accomplish if the administration believed these people were rebels? He could pledge his own considerable wealth, but he worried that it would take too long to arrange. Still, he decided to try. He’d send a telegram to Yorg Pasha.
A crowd of residents began to gather behind the troops and on the hillsides. Surely they would help these people, Kamil thought. He saw several prosperous-looking men advance on the governor. They appeared to be arguing.
Kamil heard Vera say his name. Her face was gaunt, her eyes caked with pus from an infection, and her lips were chapped raw. She had trouble articulating her words. “I might have a solution,” she said. “Come with me.”
Kamil told the governor that he had business in town and asked him, for humanity’s sake, to distribute bread, clothing, and blankets to the refugees.
The governor nodded. “The residents are eager to help.” Shoulders sagging with relief, he went to consult with the local men with whom he had just been arguing.
VERA LED Kamil to a guesthouse near the port. “Gabriel told me he stayed here when he first arrived in Trabzon. Because the roads were still bad, he left his trunk behind. He gave me this key,” she said, pulling it from her pocket, “and told me that if anything happened to him to get the trunk. It was almost as if he knew he wouldn’t survive.” She regarded the house and then led him around the back and through a gate. “That must be it.” She pointed at a windowless stone shed. The key fit in the lock.
They squeezed inside. Kamil lit a lamp he found by the door, revealing a jumble of boxes and barrels and, behind them, a chest as high as Kamil’s waist.
“Gabriel said the gold from the bank would be in the chest.” Vera ran her hands across the dusty lid, her voice thick with feeling. “He didn’t have a chance to tell me what he wanted me to do with it. I know he’d approve of using it to help these people.” She looked at Kamil, concerned. “You’re not going to return it to the bank, are you?”
Kamil had no answer. Vera didn’t have a key to the chest, so he forced the lock. They drew open the heavy lid. The chest was crammed with furs and other household goods. Puzzled, they pulled everything out and examined it, piece by piece. When the chest was empty, Kamil climbed inside it with the lamp to examine the bottom. With the tip of his knife, he scored the leather lining and pulled it up, revealing a recessed latch. He manipulated it until a soft click revealed the outline of a panel, which he pushed aside. An extensive false bottom opened to view. Kamil reached in and extracted a necklace set with large emeralds, which he gave to Vera, then pulled out a handful of gold liras.
Vera stared at the jewelry draped over her hand. “God save us,” she exclaimed.
Kamil took in the sea of gold lapping at his feet. “It seems he has.”
KAMIL DIDN’T tell the governor where the gold and jewels came from. It was about half of what had been taken from the bank, and he wondered where the other half was. With some shame, but seeing no other solution, he let the town think it was his personal fortune. He implied that it had been left with Yakup, who had stayed behind in Trabzon. He had removed the emeralds from the necklace so they couldn’t be identified. Neither the governor nor the residents seemed to think it unusual for a pasha to travel with so much wealth. Perhaps they were simply too relieved at having the problem solved to inquire too closely.
He sent Yorg Pasha a telegram to tell him he was safe and a longer letter to him and one to Feride with a ship leaving that morning for Istanbul. There was no sign of Vahid in Trabzon, although a local doctor said he had treated a man who had lost part of his hand. The sultan’s Kurdish irregulars had vanished.
OVER THE next few weeks, Kamil worked together with the governor and town leaders to erect shelters and purchase food and other supplies that had to be brought in by ship. A cold fog still enveloped the town in the mornings, but later the sun burned it off, revealing fields of forget-me-nots and wild tulips amid brilliant green meadows. Birdsong mingled with the sounds of sawing and hammering. The women refugees, now mostly widows, sat outside the doors of their communal shacks in flecks of sunlight, staring into space. Only the children, resilient as spring flowers, ran exuberantly underfoot.
Some of the money from Gabriel’s chest was used to hire ships to take people to Istanbul or other Black Sea ports where they had relatives who might take them in. Some families had decided to return to their villages under Levon’s protection. A photographer disembarked from one of the ships and, carting his box and tripod through the town, took pictures of the remaining refugees.
Kamil began to think of leaving. He trusted the governor and the sizable Armenian community in Trabzon to continue the relief effort as long as the money held out, as it would for some time yet. Kamil reminded himself that he faced a murder charge. The thought was so ludicrous that he laughed out loud.
91
VERA CRADLED the Henchak pin in her hand. She had found it wrapped in a piece of flannel in Gabriel’s chest, along with her passport, and, pressed between two pieces of cardboard, a dried daisy she had given him before their marriage as a memento of a lovely day they had spent picnicking in the Alps. He had brought this simple, fragile flower all the way from Geneva to Istanbul and from there to Trabzon. She had been married only a single night, and all the rest had been misunderstanding and needless pain. Why had she immediately assumed that her husband would abandon her?
He was like the Straw Thief, she thought, a hero who loved her and his people and took great risks to help them. He had embarked on a long road across the globe and had produced something new and wonderful for them but had made mistakes along the way. One by one, his successes had slipped through his fingers, numbed by this savage winter. She pressed the flannel parcel to her chest and gave way to her grief, whether for herself or for Gabriel, she didn’t know.
“COME WITH us, Vera.” Alicia pleaded, her eyes dull with the pain of losing Victor. Her freckles looked almost black in her pale face, and her hair blazed in the sunshine. She and Apollo and some other comrades were boarding a ship to Batumi the following morning, then traveling overland to Tiflis.
“This is just a harbinger of things to come,” Apollo told Vera. “They’ll go after the Armenians whenever the wind blows the wrong way. The villagers don’t have any coordinated defense, just bands of young men with outdated rifles. They would barely have been armed if Gabriel hadn’t brought in weapons.”
Vera didn’t point out that it was Apollo who had brought the weapons to the east.
“We have to organize.” Apollo took her hand. “Come and help us do that, Vreni. It’ll be in Gabriel’s name. He would have wanted us to do this.”
Vera thought about the women and children huddled in hastily assembled wooden shelters at the edge of town, coughing in the smoke from their braziers. W
ould forming an armed revolutionary group help them? Or could justice be had without violence? Gabriel had always wanted peace, yet his actions had led to the deaths of so many people.
“I need to think on it,” she told Apollo, her hand lingering in his. “Kamil Pasha has asked me to return to Istanbul to testify in a court case. I should do that first. Send me a message when you’re settled and tell me where you are.”
Kamil Pasha had told Vera about Sosi’s murder and the attempt to blame it on him. She had failed Sosi once, and she promised herself that she wouldn’t fail the courageous girl again. The idea of bringing Vahid to justice for what he had done to them was immensely satisfying.
Apollo drew Vera to him and kissed her on the lips. “Promise me you’ll come, Vreni.”
Vera nodded, mute with joy, now and forever adulterated with regret.
92
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kamil stood on the pier and watched a group of refugees and the surviving members of Gabriel’s commune board their ship. Omar had learned that they planned to organize an armed resistance against the Ottomans, coordinating and arming all the small village-based groups like Levon’s. As an Ottoman official, Kamil knew he had a duty to stop them. As a representative of justice, he had no idea what the right thing to do was.
He was spending the empire’s wealth—the proceeds of a robbery that he had been charged with solving—on saving these Armenian refugees, who in the future might well turn on the empire. He had helped them while they used illegally obtained weapons to defend themselves against the sultan’s irregular troops. Worse yet, he had subverted his soldiers to fire on their own. The sultan could exile him or even have him shot for any of these offenses. Yet he felt he had done the right thing. Did moral decisions have to be worked out along the way, or could one rely on a set of moral principles that applied under every circumstance? He found himself thinking that what was right today might not be right tomorrow depending on the circumstances. He wondered uneasily where such a relativist attitude might lead him.
Kamil raised his hand in farewell, then turned and walked away through the morning mist. “A magistrate without principles,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “What’s left?” he asked, louder. His voice echoed between the houses in the early-morning stillness.
ELIF HAD returned and was waiting for him in the dining room, where Yakup had laid out breakfast. The sight of her slight form and keen eyes was as heartbreakingly lovely as the flower-strewn meadow outside his window.
Elif stirred her tea. Kamil sat down and for a moment was captivated by the delicate clink of her spoon against the glass. “So fragile,” he said, half to himself.
“What is?” she asked, handing him the glass of hot tea.
The best-brewed tea is the color of rabbit’s blood in the glass, Kamil remembered his mother saying. Not knowing what to answer, he drew Elif close, then closed his eyes and sipped the scalding liquid.
VERA SAW Chief Omar on the docks that morning, supervising the loading. Now clean-shaven except for his extravagant mustache, he leaned on his staff and bellowed orders. The local doctor had cleaned his wound and rebandaged it. It seemed to be healing, but the police chief had been warned to watch for infection. Vera was amazed that after all their travails, the eight remaining soldiers from the pasha’s force of thirty were still willing to march in formation as if they made up a company. In two hours they all would embark on new lives, but, she was sure, not lives any of them would have recognized two months earlier.
93
SULTAN ABDULHAMID RECEIVED Kamil in his private quarters. Kamil could hardly believe three months had passed. Everything looked the same: the furnishings of the receiving hall, the sultan’s formal gold-braided suit, the tip of his sword embedded in the pile of the carpet. Enormous gilt-edged mirrors at the sides of the room reflected each other, as if opening a tunnel into the void. Dozens of officials and servants stood in formation along the walls, with Vizier Köraslan by the sultan’s shoulder. Only this time the French doors to the garden stood open, admitting a soft breeze. Birds rioted in the hydrangeas.
Kamil bowed before the sultan, then stepped back, keeping his eyes lowered.
The vizier walked over and closed the French doors. Kamil’s ears rang in the sudden silence.
“I’m glad to see you returned safely, Kamil Pasha.” Kamil thought he heard a trace of genuine concern in the sultan’s voice. “If you would be so kind, sit and tell me your account of events in the east.” The sultan indicated a brocaded chair.
As Kamil sat down, he felt the full weight of the exhaustion that had dogged him since his return. He straightened and took a breath. “From my inquiries, I estimate three to four hundred dead, most killed by the Kurdish irregulars, but many refugees died on the road of hunger, cold, and disease.” He couldn’t think what else there was to say.
The sultan waited for Kamil to continue. When he remained silent, Sultan Abdulhamid asked, “And what of the revolt? That was your purpose, was it not, to investigate the revolt?”
Kamil looked up into the black eyes of the sultan. He could read nothing in them, neither concern nor interest. “There was no revolt, Your Highness.”
“We have reports that there were hundreds of weapons in the villages as well as in the monastery where your supposed socialists set up their commune. I suppose those weapons all grew in the meadows like spring flowers.”
“The guns were taken from the arms shipment the police intercepted in Istanbul in January.”
“I thought the police had confiscated those,” the sultan exclaimed, turning to Vizier Köraslan for explanation.
“The cargo was moved to Yorg Pasha’s warehouse,” the vizier admitted. “The British company wanted its ship back, and we thought that was the best place to store the guns. As far as I know, they’re still there.”
“You didn’t know they had been stolen?”
The vizier flushed.
“What of your Akrep sources?” the sultan asked impatiently. “Surely they knew. This was under their jurisdiction.”
Vahid had let the vizier down, Kamil thought with satisfaction. The Akrep commander had been away in the east. Did Vizier Köraslan know that?
“Perhaps Yorg Pasha didn’t report them stolen. I’ll find out, Your Highness.”
“Do.” Sultan Abdulhamid turned back to Kamil. “Hundreds of weapons in the hands of Armenians in the east, right on the border with Russia, and yet you claim there was no revolt.”
“The weapons were distributed only after word spread of an impending attack on the villages.”
“How do you know that?” the vizier snapped.
“The news of the attack was in a telegram waiting for me in Trabzon. I have it here.” He handed the vizier the telegram. “By the time I arrived, the entire region had learned of its contents.”
“The villagers, led by these Armenian socialists, attacked our troops.” The vizier’s face was flushed with outrage.
How do you explain a massacre, Kamil wondered, except in parables? “Your ten-year-old son is feeding the cow,” he began, “and a soldier kills him with an ax to the back of his head. You go to protest, and you too are brought down. All the men of the village and older boys are herded together in the square and killed. Not shot, but axed, to save ammunition. Then the soldiers break down the doors shielding the women and girls. Their fate is worse.”
“What in Allah’s name are you talking about?” Vizier Köraslan shouted. “How dare you profane the padishah’s presence with such nightmarish lies?”
“If you could get hold of a gun, what would you do?” Kamil continued calmly.
“That is not the behavior of an Ottoman soldier,” Sultan Abdulhamid said, his voice tight. “Are you insulting our army?”
“No, Your Glorious Majesty. The Ottoman army is a professional force. The soldiers you sent with me were obedient, dutiful, and fought bravely.”
“Who were they fighting?” Vizier Köraslan asked triumphantly, so tha
t Kamil knew Vahid was back in Istanbul and had told him.
Kamil lowered his eyes and answered in a soft voice, “The wolves of the steppes devour the lambs and blame the shepherd.” He felt very weary and incapable of explaining.
“Stop talking in riddles,” the vizier snapped. “You suborned the sultan’s household troops to fight against the empire.”
Kamil raised his eyes and looked Vizier Köraslan full in the face. He saw fear behind his arrogance. “The Akrep commander led the offensive against the population, so you can place blame either way.”
Kamil saw the sultan glance sharply at Vizier Köraslan, and the vizier grow thoughtful. Vahid was rapidly becoming a liability, Kamil reflected with a trace of smugness.
“Kamil Pasha”—the sultan leaned forward, and Kamil heard a thin vein of compassion in his voice—“I understand you have been through a difficult time. I have also heard that you used a great part of your own fortune to save the lives of the refugees that descended upon Trabzon. Let us leave aside the question of who shot at whom and deal with the matter immediately at hand. I commend you for your humanity and your generosity. You are a true Ottoman.
“Once the engagement was over, the women and children deserved bread and a roof over their heads. If you hadn’t stepped in, the loss of life would have been tremendous. The empire has already come under attack by foreign journalists for supposedly attacking defenseless villagers. Whether or not they were defenseless is a question it seems we must disagree on. But if many more had died on the outskirts of Trabzon, the consequences for the empire would undoubtedly have been severe. Britain or Russia might have felt called upon to intervene. As it is, the newspapers took note of your admirable efforts and the world has already forgotten the Choruh Valley. You are quite an international hero, you know.”
