Like Water on Stone Read online

  this useful pot,

  black and hard

  like a cannonball.

  We have this pot,

  a solid heavy pot.

  “Mama’s pot.”

  “We have more,

  Shahen jan.

  I have you

  and Mariam.

  We have

  Mama’s coins.

  We have the wool

  from my

  dowry carpet,

  respun into

  a thin red thread.

  In America,

  I will make

  a new bird

  in a carpet

  for you.

  Keri waits for us

  with his sons

  tall like plane trees

  who speak English

  like princes.

  We are going

  with you to America,

  Shahen jan,

  Mariam and me.

  And look,

  I saved

  the quill.

  It’s going, too.”

  Shahen

  From the seam at her collar

  Sosi pulls out the mizrap,

  the one Papa used to teach me.

  She touches my arm with it.

  Papa’s melody

  whispers inside me.

  She places it in my palm.

  My fingers close around it.

  My heart hears the steady beat

  of the dumbek. My lungs know

  the duduk’s constant breath.

  Papa’s song surrounds me,

  fills me, its steady pulse

  always here, flowing through me,

  shaping my insides

  like water on stone.

  The truth hidden

  by my mountains

  at last becomes clear.

  We are here and alive,

  we three sisters,

  crossing oceans

  because of Papa

  and Mama.

  “More of them may come.

  Let’s go now.

  Together we’ll run

  to America.”

  DAY 61

  SIMĀN MOUNTAIN

  Sosi

  From the final rise

  a long flatness stretches.

  The horizon fades and blurs.

  Our climb done,

  lights dot the desert.

  Specks of light

  must be

  villages,

  cities.

  Aleppo?

  At dawn, I look back to the north

  across the sky-scraping mountains.

  Miles behind them, in our fields by the river,

  the sun makes my grapes sweet.

  Morning light increases

  the empty space ahead:

  baked brown earth,

  plants burnt or chewed,

  so little green,

  so far to cross.

  With lily bulbs in our pockets, we gather stones.

  Shahen makes the shape of a cross

  pointing south to the church in Aleppo.

  Mama and Papa can see from above,

  like the eagle, he tells us.

  We drink our last drops from the mountain spring,

  soak and squeeze the ragged cloth to fill the pot.

  We wet our clothes to suck on and keep cool.

  Each step down, hot air rises to meet us.

  When I spill precious drops he takes the pot.

  He gives me Mariam.

  He takes the pot.

  We drink from the pot,

  our clothes bone-dry.

  DAY 63

  BURJ HAYDAR

  Shahen

  With no place to hide from the sun, we move.

  Piercing rays beat our brains to steamy hot.

  Our mouths like sand, salty sweat streaks our cheeks.

  Papa told me to follow the water.

  Dry desert rivers make brown bands in sand.

  Distant dust clouds shimmer with white flashes.

  Do I see or imagine

  ancient churches

  rising from the earth?

  Stone arches and walls crumbling,

  columns without roofs.

  Sosi falls and drops the pot.

  I curl her fingers round the handle

  and carry little Mariam

  to the stone wall,

  and know that it is real

  from the shade

  that it gives to my sister.

  Empty ruined churches,

  with no signs of who used them.

  I go back for Sosi

  and the pot. They sleep.

  I follow the dry riverbed.

  From brown and green specks

  mixed with distant white,

  Papa, my Papa, whispers to me,

  “Hos egoor. Come here.”

  Eagle flies to Papa’s voice.

  I step on dry river stones,

  waves of heat rising

  from folds in sand.

  My leather charukh is worn paper thin;

  each hot step burns.

  I beg my feet to step some more.

  I see a man, his son, and their camels.

  A white cloth roof rises above their cart.

  The boy in white coaxes the animals:

  “Yalla, yalla.”

  Come on,

  come on,

  just like we said to our sheep.

  Yalla.

  The father peers out from the white cloth shade.

  Like Papa’s, his eyes are dark and deep.

  I pull the Arab greeting from the crack

  in my head that was filled before we fled.

  “Sa’alaam al leik um—may peace be with you.”

  “And with you peace,” he replies.

  Buzzing flies cease their sound

  as we stare past my rags

  and his robes into pure dark eyes.

  Dark and deep like Papa’s.

  He hands me a fresh wet cloth and a cup.

  Their wetness brings Aleppo to my lips.

  “Halep,”

  he replies,

  all other words mysterious.

  I draw a cross.

  He nods,

  his eyes

  edged in wrinkles

  from years of smiling

  under the Arab sun.

  His eyes wrap me

  like a blanket,

  covering every raw edge.

  “Yalla Halep,” he tells me.

  “Yalla. Sosi, Mariam,” I tell him.

  My hands

  measure the air

  to show their height.

  My palms move

  together under my head

  tilted, eyes closed.

  Sosi and Mariam,

  my sisters,

  asleep in the sand,

  waiting.

  He sees them.

  “Yalla, Sosi, Mariam.

  Yalla.”

  Camels unfold

  their legs and rise.

  Camel hooves

  and wheels of the cart

  cover my steps.

  Flames of sun

  beat the sand

  to burning hot.

  Stone walls shimmer

  in the distance.

  The eagle

  circles above.

  They breathe

  but cannot speak

  when we find them.

  We squeeze

  drops of water

  through cracked lips.

  We lift them

  to the shade of the

  white cloth roof,

  fresh wet cloths

  on their heads,

  drips on their mouths.

  For final steps,

  we three are

  piled and pulled

  to safety.

  Sosi,

  Mariam,

  me,

  safety.

  ALEPPO

  AUGUST 1915

  Sosi

 
; I wake in a bed,

  surrounded by white cloths

  stirring in hot wind,

  Mariam tucked beside me.

  Shahen?

  Where is Shahen?

  I call him.

  I try to get up.

  A woman in white

  with a heavy wood cross

  around her neck

  runs to me.

  She tells me he’s well

  with the boys again,

  asking for me every day.

  She tells me Mariam

  does the same,

  that now she’s only napping.

  She gives me a drink

  and goes for him.

  I pet Mariam’s soft clean curls.

  I whisper “Os, os, os,” like Mama did.

  Mariam sleeping

  thin

  pale

  sleeping

  safe.

  “Sosig,” says Shahen,

  still small,

  head bare,

  in trousers.

  He pulls me so close.

  “Mariam jan,” Shahen says.

  “Wake up, little bird.”

  Mariam

  Sosi

  Shahen

  Bread

  Tall stick, small snake

  Smile, smile, half smile

  Half smile, wings

  Bread.

  ALEPPO

  SPRING 1919

  Shahen

  War is done.

  We wait,

  me with my

  Arab baba.

  He took us in,

  all three of us,

  when Ottoman orders

  came to march

  the older orphans

  into the desert

  and to make the

  young ones Turks.

  To stay safe,

  we dress as Arabs.

  Sosi wears a hijab,

  her head and neck covered;

  I wear a thobe

  over my pants,

  a keffiyeh on my head.

  We each keep

  a smooth round coin

  from Mama and Papa

  tucked into the lining

  of our clothes,

  one a piece.

  We work in the shop

  in the Souq al-Attareen

  selling nuts and spices.

  Me out front,

  Sosi and Mariam

  grinding

  in the back.

  Each day we saw

  the battered marching

  to the desert,

  to Deir el-Zor,

  what could have been

  our fate

  but wasn’t.

  Each night

  we shelled

  pistachios

  for those

  who starved,

  small, dense food

  to sustain them.

  The Near East Relief man

  reads the names on letters.

  No mail could move

  beyond the Ottoman borders

  for all the years of war.

  Each orphan prays

  for living family.

  Sosi, Mariam, and I

  have each other.

  But to find Keri too,

  my old dream.

  Papa would be proud.

  I found a street in Aleppo

  with a tea shop

  where a man

  plays his oud sometimes.

  My fierce left hand

  learns the notes.

  I have no neck to hold

  or strings to press.

  But I tap the patterns

  onto my leg

  as I watch him.

  At the shop,

  when it is quiet,

  I practice

  on the counter.

  Between songs,

  I push my fingertips

  onto the counter’s sharp edge

  to make my calluses strong.

  When I hold the quill,

  Papa’s quill,

  loose between

  my fingertips,

  the duduk, oud,

  and dumbek

  blend into

  a rooftop song.

  I dream of Keri.

  We wait for him.

  But finding us

  could be too much luck

  for one family.

  Others here have

  no one

  anywhere.

  Three seasons of apricots

  have already passed.

  Baba gives us dates.

  We are clean and well.

  He takes us

  to the mosque to pray

  so no one questions

  who we are,

  each bow

  followed by

  forehead

  chest

  left

  right

  and three taps

  on my heart

  in my mind.

  My sisters grew again.

  I did too.

  I’m taller than Sosi.

  And bristles,

  I have some.

  Mama would smile.

  We are the lucky three.

  With each name read

  by the Near East man

  I shrink

  until I hear it.

  Shahen Donabedian.

  My Arab baba hugs me.

  The relief man says it again

  before I can breathe

  and stand.

  Shahen Donabedian.

  A letter from our uncle

  with tickets

  to America

  for Mariam

  for Sosi

  for me.

  A letter from our uncle,

  our keri,

  our precious treat.

  Through the window

  in Aleppo

  it’s as if I can see

  from pale pink rocks

  above the green Euphrates

  beyond that, to the desert.

  And beyond that, beyond that,

  all the way to the sea.

  NEW YORK HARBOR

  Ardziv

  Shahen, Sosi, Mariam,

  on ship’s deck,

  rising sun and stretch of sea

  behind them.

  The statue’s lighted arm

  stretches up into the sky,

  her feet still in shadows,

  the points of crown like talons

  against the blueing black.

  Behind her

  buildings scrape the sky

  like mountaintops,

  their lights like stars on earth.

  Shahen tells them,

  “You can climb up her arm

  and inside the torch

  to see houses

  side by side

  spread across the land

  like vines in an orchard.”

  Three young ones,

  one black pot,

  a single quill,

  and a tuft of red wool

  are enough

  to start a new life

  in a new land.

  I know it is true

  because I saw it.

  Author’s Note

  This story began, as many stories do, with a conversation. A sentence from that long-ago conversation has haunted me since I was a little girl. I asked my mother about her mother’s childhood in western Armenia. She replied, “After her parents were killed, she hid during the day and ran at night with Uncle Benny and Aunt Alice from their home in Palu to the orphanage in Aleppo.”

  My grandmother Oghidar Troshagirian died long before I was born. My grandfather Yeghishe Mashoian, also a genocide survivor, died when I was six. Uncle Benny and Aunt Alice were colorful characters in my childhood, but I knew little about their lives. In my family, we didn’t speak about the genocide. My mother married an American, so my brother, my sister, and I grew up speaking English. By the time I thought to ask the serious questions, that generation was gone.

&nb
sp; I know little of how my grandmother and her siblings survived. I know that from Aleppo, with the help of a keri, a maternal uncle, they made it to New York. Somehow, a pot came with them—my American relatives argue over who has it. I know that they were millers from Palu. One older brother escaped to the east. An older sister was married to a Kurd. Her grandson now owns a Turkish restaurant in The Hague, in the Netherlands, and a hotel in Antalya, Turkey.

  Long before I ever imagined that I might write this story, I filled in the gaps of my family history by reading everything I could about the Armenian genocide: accounts by eyewitnesses, such as Henry Morgenthau, the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916; oral histories; memoirs; academic tomes; and works of historical fiction. Still, I wanted more.

  In the summer of 1984, my husband and I traveled to Palu. An unmarked Armenian church perched on the top of the hill above the town, its roof missing and its walls defaced. In town, vendors peddled ayran, the cool yogurt drink Armenians call tahn. We asked if there were any mills nearby and were sent across a modern bridge, built next to one of crumbling stone with eight arches. We followed the river’s bank to a fast-flowing stream, then headed up the stream into the woods until we reached a mill with a series of attached buildings running up the slope.

  On the rooftop of the largest building, the head-scarfed lady of the house served us sweet tea in clear glass cups. A half-dozen children with big brown eyes watched and listened. Mounds of apricots dried in the sun. She said that the mill had been in her family for sixty years; before that, it had belonged to Armenians. With anti-Armenian stories running in Turkish newspapers that summer, and all visible traces of Armenian inhabitants systematically denied or destroyed, I had kept my identity hidden as we traveled. But I told her the truth. We held each other’s gaze as the water hit the mill wheel and the stones of the stream. The official Turkish policy of genocide denial evaporated for one brief moment on that rooftop.

  The form of this story chose me rather than the other way around. Everyday language cannot express the scale and horror of genocide. Severed heads, rape, rivers red with blood, stinking heaps of dead bodies; the living emaciated, naked, sunburned, marching through the sand—we all turn away. I could only put it onto paper in fragments that slowly accumulated into a story. The eagle, Ardziv, and his magic came into the story to make it safe for me, for the reader, and for the young ones as they traveled. Three-quarters of the total Armenian population, about 1.5 million people, died in this genocide. Only luck, miracles, and perseverance saved the few who managed to survive. More than just a magical being, Ardziv embodies the strength of spirit that lives inside us.

  If magical realism makes up this story’s warp, then historical facts are woven into its weft, starting with the rooftop where I sipped tea. Various beetles have been used as carpet dye in the Middle East for centuries. The oud was traditionally played with an eagle’s quill. The terrible facts of the genocide are also real. During the first half of June 1915, all the Armenian men of Palu, along with ten thousand men from nearby Erzerum, were slain by chetes on or near Palu’s eight-arched bridge. Aleppo was a central staging ground for deportees from all over the empire who were then marched into the desert of Deir-el-Zor to die. Armenians from regions near to the then partially complete Baghdad Railway line were packed into cattle cars and brought to Aleppo.