Like Water on Stone Read online

Soon we will sit

  side by side.

  My secret’s safe with her.

  Ardziv

  By noon the next day

  I found Mustafa in the village.

  A drummer with a drum cap,

  a fine, tall house,

  and a hard, bitter wife.

  Fatima.

  On the rooftop, shelling pistachios with another,

  she opened her hollow red lips to speak.

  I saw past her tongue, her teeth, and her throat,

  to deep in her belly,

  where she hungered

  for finer clothes,

  more things,

  their land.

  “Mustafa made music

  again with Kaban

  and the Armenian.

  I tell him do not go there.

  It breaks my father’s heart.

  I tell him,

  but his ears stay closed as unripe nuts.

  The gavours have all the best land.

  They hire Turkish boys to watch their sheep

  so their pretty son can study with priests.

  They charge me more

  to grind wheat.

  I know it.

  Other gavours pay less,

  I’m sure.

  And the carpets,

  how can they have such carpets

  on a miller’s wages

  unless they are taking from us?”

  A bitter taste came up from my crop.

  Not fear. Eagles never fear.

  Mustafa, a man of steady, sweet beat,

  lived with this Fatima,

  who gnawed on the world like a third lamb

  masticating its mother’s udder

  to make a fresh hole for the milk

  when siblings have hold of the teats.

  I hunt these ones first.

  Shahen

  Stuck in a front-row pew

  thick with incense.

  Father Manoog slips into his sermon trance.

  Bleating sheep sounds blend with his chants.

  The voices of my friends, at the river,

  free from Sunday service,

  penetrate the thick stone walls.

  I’m stuck here with pictures,

  the same old pictures

  painted life-sized

  on the wall.

  Noah’s Ark

  catching hold

  of Mount Ararat.

  First the raven,

  then the dove

  that flew above

  receding waters

  and found the

  olive branch.

  And Joseph

  forgiving his brothers

  for selling him into slavery.

  Pah! I would punch

  Misak and Kevorg

  smack in the nose

  if they did such a thing to me.

  One focused beam of light

  from the tiny dome-top window

  pours into this dark stone church.

  If I were a rock

  I’d hurl myself through that window.

  But I wouldn’t stop

  plunk

  at the river to play.

  I would fly

  over my friends

  through the sky

  to New York.

  Mariam

  Sosi

  Look, a bird!

  Shhhh.

  Quiet in church.

  Through the window.

  Shhhh.

  Up. Look!

  Shhhh.

  Please?

  Oh!

  An eagle.

  Ardziv.

  Like the one

  who gave us

  Shahen’s quill.

  Yes.

  Vahan turns

  his head,

  not to me,

  not in church,

  but up,

  to the eagle.

  See?

  Shhhh.

  Yes.

  With her little

  fingertip

  Mariam draws

  letters on my leg,

  sending shivers

  up my spine,

  just like

  one look

  from Vahan.

  Ardziv

  From the church I rose skyward

  over pink dry mountaintops,

  looking for plump rabbit, squirrel,

  or snake sunning himself

  against the coming cold,

  lying in wait

  for a lizard or a rat.

  A slender whip snake,

  dusky red,

  made its way

  to a young warbler

  picking bugs

  from a crack in the stone.

  Before the snake struck

  I swooped

  and grabbed its

  head and neck

  between my talons.

  It turned spirals

  as I flew

  and I squeezed

  till it stopped

  and I pushed

  the coiled snake

  into my crop.

  My belly full,

  the winds calm,

  I found the house of Kaban.

  Side by side

  at the rooftop loom,

  Palewan and Anahid

  worked the wool.

  The kilim’s pattern,

  Kurdish, of course,

  of interlocking diamonds.

  Rust, rose, and red,

  blue, brown, and beige.

  I never noticed before

  how inside of

  each diamond

  is a cross.

  Sosi

  Anahid comes from the market

  filled with stories of the season’s first figs,

  clock chimes, and news of the new Balkan war.

  The Ottoman Turks will lose more land.

  Mama listens, her wooden spoon

  swirling the milk inside the black pot.

  Mama reminds us,

  as though we have never made yogurt before,

  “To make madzoon,

  you must move the milk

  when it’s over the heat

  so it doesn’t curdle.

  Bring it almost to a boil.

  No further.”

  Around in circles Mama stirs the milk,

  till a vapor almost starts to rise.

  Then she moves the black pot

  from the fire, her back to us.

  As she scrapes the remains

  of the last madzoon batch

  into the pot’s pure white milk,

  Anahid slips me

  a folded piece of paper.

  I open it to see

  Sayat Nova’s poem,

  in Vahan’s fluid hand,

  his letters lovely loops and lines:

  “I beheld my love this morning.”

  I tuck the paper in my pocket

  so Mama doesn’t see.

  I let his words echo

  as Mama continues.

  “Seeds live inside

  what came before.

  This is a very good culture.

  I’ve never let it die,

  not since my mother

  gave it to me

  when I first married.

  You must heat the milk first

  so only madzoon seeds will grow

  in the fresh, clean milk.”

  Mariam

  Grapes ripe

  and blessed,

  we pick.

  I eat.

  Pop, sweet.

  Spit out pits.

  Hampers,

  cutters,

  baskets lined

  with sheets.

  Pop, sweet.

  Spit out pits.

  No milling for three days

  as my brothers

  load our donkeys

  and others help us pick

  and sing and pick.

  My brothers walk

  the donkeys home

  and come back

/>   for more bunches,

  sweet and round,

  white and red,

  till the sun goes down

  and we lie on our carpets

  next to the vines

  as the stars appear.

  Papa plays us to sleep

  by the vines. I dream.

  We pick.

  I eat.

  Pop, sweet.

  Spit out pits.

  Ardziv

  As olives turned

  from green to black

  and warbler’s second brood

  hatched and fledged, I watched.

  Shahen showed Mariam

  new words for her stick.

  Each day she scratched

  long lines of letters

  into the earth,

  leading like paths

  in rings around the mill.

  She wrote his name.

  Shahen.

  Wave and smile to the side.

  Smile, smile, half smile.

  Stick, small snake.

  Swan down, half smile, stick.

  Smile, swan down, smile.

  Shahen.

  In distant lands

  lines of soldiers

  moved locust-like

  across the earth,

  their bodies clad

  in identical

  greens and browns,

  rifles up like antennae.

  Sosi

  A letter came today from our keri.

  Mama breathes in memories of her brother.

  She tucks the sealed envelope into her dress,

  where it waits for Papa and my brothers

  to join us on the rooftop for lunch.

  Millstones grind to stopping.

  Papa, Misak, and Kevorg

  brush wheat dust from their clothes.

  They splash their hands and faces clean.

  I tie tight knots of deep red wool

  into the pattern growing on my loom.

  Shahen tosses Mariam into the sky.

  His rhythm, his chant, taking all the air.

  A-me-ri-ca,

  A-me-ri-ca,

  A-me-ri-ca.

  When Papa, Misak, and Kevorg sit,

  Shahen puts Mariam into my lap.

  Mama kisses the letter, hands it back to Papa.

  Our twelve eyes rest on him as he reads Keri’s words.

  “War has come.

  You must go.

  You are Christians alone

  in the Ottoman center.

  At least send Shahen.”

  Mama draws a short sharp breath.

  Papa’s brow makes one thick line.

  Shahen wears a jackal’s grin.

  “In America, sons grow tall

  like plane trees.

  Armen, still in school,

  already towers over me.

  He speaks English like a prince.

  Shahen will do the same here.”

  Mama’s face turns to ash.

  Shahen’s teeth show through his smile.

  “See, Papa. It’s good I should go.”

  Water hits the wooden wheel

  like the steady beat of a drum.

  “There is no reason for war

  that reasonable men can’t solve.”

  Papa’s words like a melody

  blend with the mill stream

  till Mama stops the song.

  “But can we trust them to be reasonable?”

  Papa says,

  “I decide who comes and goes.

  Your brother is too far to know.”

  Papa’s voice is like rough rock.

  Shahen swallows back his grin,

  but I see his eyes are dancing.

  The water on the mill wheel

  makes a constant beat.

  Calm comes to Papa’s face.

  “There is no them,

  only single souls.

  Mustafa.

  Kaban.

  They would never harm us.

  This is our home.”

  Shahen’s eyes go to the sky,

  his lips pressed tight,

  his twisted smile rising.

  Inside my ears, I buzz and burn.

  Every day with Father Manoog

  and still Shahen does not know

  that the stones of home

  are the warmest.

  Shahen

  Mariam

  One, two, three,

  I fly

  into a cloud

  with a beautiful

  house full of rain.

  A rain house.

  You watch

  from above

  till the flowers

  in the fields

  are thirsty.

  Choor door.

  Give me water.

  Then you open

  your windows

  and let the rain

  fall to the ground.

  Splash!

  Again!

  Meg, yergoo, yerek,

  I fly

  into a cloud

  that blows

  across the sea

  to a land

  where brothers

  speak like princes

  and grow very tall.

  Sosi

  With Mama and Mariam

  and the morning sun,

  I go to put the vines to sleep.

  It takes us five full days

  to do the twenty rows

  of our twenty-baran vineyard.

  We collect the staves.

  We bring the vines together,

  lay them on the ground,

  cover them with soil

  with stones on top

  to secure them.

  Shahen

  Papa tells me that the secret of the sound

  is in the right hand

  and the pick,

  the mizrap.

  Papa tells me that mystery and power

  come in through the quill,

  that eagles were with us

  long before Christ.

  Papa tells me to hold it light and loose

  between my fingertips, hand and wrist fluid,

  like bubbling water, to let the supple quill pull

  music from each pair of strings.

  Again, Papa tells me a good Armenian carries

  the music of home close to his heart, wherever he is.

  If he lets me go,

  I will.

  Papa tells me to let the oud belly touch my own,

  to tuck its side into my right elbow, its neck resting

  in my left hand, two melon bellies touching,

  yes.

  Papa tells me to make my left hand fierce.

  Fingers like hammers

  press into metal

  for song.

  Papa tells me it only hurts at first.

  Calluses will form with time.

  Then my fingers will dance on the strings,

  the way my brothers danced across the rooftop

  before the Ottomans entered the war,

  fighting with Germany,

  against Russia, England,

  and France.

  Papa does not tell me that the Turks blame us,

  the Christians, as their Empire rots and shrinks.

  All this I learned

  for myself.

  Sosi

  Mama and I worked the dough

  with sweet fresh flour from the mill.

  Anahid brought news today

  not of war,

  not of Vahan,

  though the news was for me,

  only me.

  She whispered it,

  poured it right into my ear

  while Mama worked the tonir,

  dropping sheets of dough

  onto the clay surface

  of the underground oven

  she had built.

  I kept my face as still as glass.

  Her secret’s safe with me.

  She’s not sure,

  not completely.
r />   Thunder clouds don’t always give rain,

  you know.

  But I know.

  Her rosy lips and cheeks know, too.

  They are proof that next spring,

  after the pink buds of apricots

  burst into bloom,

  after the small, hard fruits first form,

  and then blush sweet and ripe,

  their scent spreading

  through the whole valley,

  I will be an auntie.

  Shahen

  Fall persimmons ripened,

  but I stayed small.

  Cold came down from mountaintops.

  Still I have not grown.

  Young Turks will fight the Russian troops

  and still my face is smooth.

  Armenian men will join the Turks;

  so say the new laws.

  Troops prepare for eastern fronts

  at Erzerum so near.

  But Papa only plays the oud.

  I say to him after a song,

  “Turkish guns will turn on us.

  You must let me go.

  “Misak and Kevorg too.

  Soon they’ll be the age to serve.”

  The oud between us,

  my callused fingers tough,

  my voice too high,

  my face too like a girl’s.

  Papa will not listen.

  Sosi

  I meet Anahid at the market.

  No belly bulge of baby

  shows below her coat.

  But I know.

  “Let’s shop for a clock,”

  she says, eyes bright,

  her lips and cheeks

  pomegranate-red.

  She tells baron Arkalian

  the clock will be a present

  for her husband’s mother, Palewan.

  He stiffens ever so slightly

  at this mention of a Kurd,

  but a master craftsman

  shows his wares to all.

  He shows Anahid

  the fine details

  of painted faces,

  the inner workings

  of the gears,

  and the glistening polish

  of the wooden frame.

  From across the shop,

  Vahan looks to me.

  Baron Arkalian brings us

  to Vahan’s bench

  to show us the finest brushes,

  made from three cat whiskers

  aligned just so they can make

  a tapering line.

  Vahan is so close

  that my skin shimmers

  as though the brush

  makes lines on me.

  Ardziv

  Cold came. Leaves fell.

  Snakes stayed in caves

  for their winter sleep.