Like Water on Stone Read online

No one worked on rooftops.

  Each day my search

  for beast or bird

  took me far

  from the music

  of home.

  Winter days,

  as I rose higher,

  I saw soldiers

  by the thousands

  climbing snow-clad slopes

  and forging cold mud valleys,

  swarming the rocks

  like an angry herd.

  Identical kabalak helmets

  made their heads

  look swollen,

  like beasts

  instead of

  humans.

  From farther east,

  train cars filled with soldiers,

  clad in coats like bears,

  landed at a fort

  and began to fight the others.

  One day, as I looked back toward home,

  I caught a glimpse of Shahen

  descending toward the river.

  I flapped and soared,

  helped by the wind

  to arrive at the river’s edge,

  where a group of boys, almost men,

  the same ones he swam with in summer,

  including the one with the toothy grin,

  called him traitor as he passed.

  “Go to Russia!

  That’s where you belong,

  greedy Christian traitor!”

  Shahen did not shrink or hide.

  He stood as tall as he could

  with his small size,

  his voice still high like Sosi’s.

  “I will leave you all

  in the dust

  when I go

  to America.”

  Sosi

  Long, cold months,

  I work at the loom inside,

  with Vahan’s note tucked under the loom

  so its words flow through me as I weave.

  “Like the nightingale, I warbled round my rose

  with wings displayed.”

  Five hands more

  will make this carpet done,

  this carpet for my dowry,

  with colors from my heart,

  though our fathers haven’t spoken

  not with the war, not with Vahan

  almost old enough to serve.

  Misak, too, who was foolish enough

  to cheer when the law was changed

  so Armenians could serve

  in the Ottoman army.

  Inside the pattern of diamonds and leaves,

  I’ve knotted birds into full fearless flight.

  Others perch on branches, feet clasping tight.

  One lies still, in her neat rush nest,

  three blue eggs below her warm body.

  She’s plump, this bird, like Anahid,

  with a calm and glowing full-moon face.

  I made her here, smiling with me,

  not scared of those who’d turn on her

  because she’s one of us.

  For now she must be nothing but

  the good pregnant wife

  of a Kurdish soldier.

  I start a new bird who dreams as he sleeps.

  He lies on his side, eyes closed, his red chest tucked

  between a blanket of wings, his beak tilted up.

  My knots make him seem more dead than dreaming.

  Perhaps birds dream only when they fly.

  Mama forbids me to take out the rows.

  It wastes good wool, she says,

  and mistakes make the next carpet better.

  But I take out each knot

  with a small knife

  hiding the fistful of

  rich red wool

  deep in my pocket.

  “Take the knife and slay me straight away,”

  says the poet Sayat Nova.

  Mama will never know.

  Shahen

  On frosty nights, paperlike sheets of ice

  form where stones

  block the stream’s flow.

  I pry them up, the icy shapes,

  so like states on maps,

  and shatter them on the rock.

  Morning music for my walk

  to Father Manoog.

  Our stream flows strong

  from winter snow and rain.

  Its rushing sound fills my ears

  and blocks the steps of soldiers,

  four of them, who appear on the banks

  pointing their guns, saying,

  “You, boy. Take me to the gavour miller.”

  I obey, knowing Papa and my brothers

  are already at work.

  Soldiers storm inside, shouting,

  “Surrender your arms!”

  Misak stops the millstones.

  Kevorg steps back against the wall.

  Papa takes one step toward them,

  his arms out at chest height, palms up,

  as though he is in church.

  “What arms?” Papa asks them.

  “We millers have no need for arms.”

  Gentle Papa opens every door and chest,

  hiding nothing but his limp.

  Soldiers dump out bins of clean white flour

  and whole wheat berries onto the earthen floor.

  They rake it with their guns.

  “We millers have no need for arms,”

  Papa says as they poke him

  toward the door of our attached house.

  They tear Mama’s blankets.

  They take our copper bowls.

  They dump her food from pots and jars

  and tell us, “We will be back tomorrow.

  If you do not give us your weapons then,

  limp and all, we will arrest you.”

  After they leave, Papa sends me to Mustafa

  for a weapon to surrender in the morning.

  We millers have a need for weapons.

  Sosi

  Armenians of the age to serve

  now build the Baghdad Railway.

  One straight Turkish German line

  from Constantinople

  to the oil fields of Basra.

  From paintbrush

  to sledgehammer,

  this cannot be for Vahan.

  Or my brothers, either,

  though Shahen’s far too small to serve.

  The Ottomans sent Asan

  to fight at the Russian front.

  But other Kurds,

  the thieves released from jails,

  join roving bands called chetes.

  Ardziv

  Before the days

  became longer than nights,

  everywhere I flew

  there was war.

  Sharklike ships

  burned through

  the Black Sea.

  The Mediterranean

  and the Red,

  the same.

  Fires blazed in the Suez.

  Ships left the ocean

  to enter the wide, sandy mouth

  of the Euphrates,

  laying anchor by smokestacks

  of Persian oil fields.

  The earth itself

  seemed to fear.

  Bulbs kept hidden

  under the earth.

  Sheep were late

  with lambs.

  Ground squirrels

  stayed in dens.

  But then the days got longer.

  Brave apricots pushed out their blooms.

  Rooftop life began again.

  The mill wheel still made music.

  Sosi

  Last fall we stoned the vineyard,

  our twenty-baran vineyard,

  twenty lines of vines

  safe from winter cold,

  covered with earth,

  sprinkled with stones,

  as if to mark a grave.

  I pull aside the stones

  and dig into the soft earth

  to find the rough brown vines.

  Slight swells,

  red buds

  dot their skin.<
br />
  I bring them

  into the April light

  that warms my face

  but cannot reach

  our leaders,

  who sit in prison cells.

  They search our home

  for guns again.

  This time they smash

  the porcelain pots

  from Abder village

  that Palewan

  gave to Mama.

  Shahen

  Sunday services shrink, not in length.

  Each week, we are fewer.

  The censer still swings back and forth.

  Holy Fathers and deacons

  still chant every word

  in this church built on the ground

  where the angels came

  with the alphabet

  so we could write to God.

  But when Father Manoog

  gets to reading scriptures,

  the “blessed peacemakers” are gone.

  Instead he reads of war,

  “nation rising against nation,

  and kingdom against kingdom,”

  and I think of Papa,

  who says there is no them,

  no other nations,

  no other kingdoms,

  and I know he is wrong.

  Seventy men

  from Havav village

  now sit in Palu prison

  with leaders from the town.

  Some families leave or hide,

  goodbye whispers

  part of church.

  I pray to Papa,

  not to God,

  to let us go, too.

  He’s the one

  who dreams of peace,

  that friendships

  will protect us.

  It’s his eyes, not mine,

  that must open

  before the soldiers

  come again.

  A tangle of men outside the church

  waits for Father Manoog in the bright light.

  Baron Arkalian steps forward,

  Beirut bound, his family at his heels.

  Vahan, his eldest,

  looks toward the women

  waiting under walnut trees,

  their barely budding branches

  spread like black veins

  against the blue sky.

  Only one of them

  stares back

  at the men:

  Sosi,

  her body

  newly curved.

  I try to catch her eye

  to make her stop.

  But she sees only Vahan.

  His father asks for

  more than farewell blessings.

  He wants us all to leave.

  He knows the time.

  Sosi takes a step toward them.

  But Mama’s hands

  catch both her shoulders,

  turning Sosi, like a wheel,

  back toward home.

  Before Father Manoog can speak,

  Papa says,

  “Bedros, you are mistaken.

  This sacred earth has been ours

  for generations. Turks here,

  they know this.

  They know us.

  This will protect us.”

  But Father Manoog makes

  the sign of the cross

  over baron Bedros,

  his wife, and his children.

  Vahan’s head is now bowed low.

  “Go in peace,” he tells them.

  “May peace be with you on your journey.”

  Father Manoog makes the sign of the cross

  over the crowd

  closing in around him.

  Papa stands back,

  his neck hard,

  like rocks and a chain.

  But his voice booms

  back into the crowd,

  “If we leave these mountains,

  they will never be ours again.

  We must trust our friends.

  The voice of the people is louder

  than the boom of a cannon.”

  Sosi

  Mama’s hands dig into my shoulders

  as she pushes me toward home.

  “Shame on you, Sosi,”

  she says with each step.

  He’ll come back,

  I know it.

  He’ll come back

  to find me.

  When the trouble passes,

  he’ll come back home.

  Let them think he left me

  like a sack of wheat.

  But I know the truth.

  He’ll come back

  to find me.

  I will never leave.

  “Shame on you, Sosi.

  Shame on you,” she says

  as we step through the door to our home.

  She pushes me right to loom.

  “I should not have let you keep that poem.

  It gave you an empty promise.

  Fathers decide all in this life.

  This you must know.

  Now give it to me.

  We will turn it to ash.”

  Mama pushes

  the top of the loom

  into the wall.

  Its base rises enough

  for my fingertips to grasp

  the folded paper.

  I don’t have to read it again.

  I know the words by heart.

  I know each curve

  of Vahan’s hand.

  Mama takes it and touches

  paper to ember.

  Smoke rises toward the black pot

  suspended above the fire,

  dolma made with last year’s grape leaves

  simmering inside it.

  I squeeze the red wool

  deep in my pocket.

  Mariam

  When all of us

  have gone to bed,

  Papa and Mama

  fight and fight.

  I put

  one ear

  on Sosi’s

  shoulder,

  my fist

  inside

  the other.

  Sosi says,

  “Os, os, os,

  it’s all right.

  All right.

  All right.”

  Sosi

  Mama says that fathers decide all.

  But each night she makes her case with Papa.

  If soldiers come again,

  Papa’s friends can do nothing.

  She says Papa mistakes

  maqams of music

  for bonds among men.

  She says Mustafa Bey Injeli

  cannot even control his wife.

  Mama says, imagine, him a butcher,

  the one with the sharpest knives in town,

  and he cannot stop his wife?

  It’s true.

  Already old Fatima wears kerchiefs

  edged in lace, like Anahid’s,

  with the pattern of a new bride

  now almost a mother.

  Fatima stole them

  from boarded-shut homes.

  She struts proud like a girl rooster.

  Her husband feels shame.

  Papa says carpets

  fray at the edges,

  not at the center,

  where the weave is tight.

  It’s true

  about carpets.

  It takes a knife

  to cut the center.

  I squeeze

  the red wool

  deep

  inside

  my pocket.

  Then I stroke

  Mariam’s

  soft black curls

  till she finds

  the depth of sleep.

  The sound of water

  hitting stone

  echoes through

  the night.

  Sleep, come to me.

  Vahan, come to me.

  I’ll meet you

  in my dreams.

  Anoush koonuh,

  sweet sleep,

  please come.
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br />   Ardziv

  Each day the young ones

  walk to the vines by the river,

  the vines that face to the east

  to catch the rising sun.

  Shahen carries the staves.

  Sosi carries string

  and a pruning knife.

  Mariam picks May flowers.

  Shahen leaves the staves

  and crosses the bridge

  for his lessons.

  Sosi prunes the vines

  so one strong shoot remains,

  which she ties to the stave

  so the grapes will hang down.

  Mariam picks May flowers.

  Shahen

  Papa says we are safe.

  We have lived with Kurds and Turks

  for generations.

  Papa says we are safe.

  Some families packed everything and went east

  for refuge in higher mountains.

  Papa says mountains hold dangers of their own.

  Some families head to Constantinople

  to catch boats to America or France.

  Papa says they are fools. The Balkan front

  will just trap them in Constantinople.

  Some head south to live with the Arabs.

  Papa says there are too many risks.

  The Ottomans rule most Arab lands too.

  Pogroms will not come to Palu.

  Papa says we are brave.

  Other Armenians act like prisoners,

  losing honor inside their own homes.

  Papa tells me other boys dress as girls.

  I picture them, the Kacherian boys,

  in dresses over trousers,

  scarves wrapped round their heads.

  I wonder

  were their ears pierced too?

  I ask him, “When can I go to America?”

  Like water flowing through stones in the stream,

  his answer shifts to find a new path.

  “After the trouble passes,”

  Papa tells me.

  Palu will be safe.

  Sosi

  Soldiers come with guns

  straight to the mill room door.

  They shout until the grinding stops

  and Papa, Misak, and Kevorg come out.

  Soldiers point and poke with their guns.

  They take my brothers,

  Kevorg and Misak,

  their hands tied together,

  Shahen safe at school.

  They pull Mama from my brothers,

  Kevorg and Misak,

  their hands tied together.

  Mariam stays away

  with her stick, watching,

  as they take our brothers,

  hands tied.

  Papa tries to stop them.

  But they tie their hands,

  Misak and Kevorg.

  They point and poke with their guns.

  They say it’s for their safety,

  for all the young men,

  all the ones with bristles.

  They would have taken Vahan

  for his safety, too.

  But he’s gone,

  thanks be to God.

  I know he’ll come back.