Like Water on Stone Page 5
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.
<
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.