Anyush (26 page)
Authors: Martine Madden
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
July 18th, 1916
The past weeks have been hellish. It started when Manon called to the house visibly upset, to say that Paul had been arrested. Spying and assisting fugitives was the charge, along with others the Jendarma were unwilling to discuss. I went from the Vali’s mansion to the City Prefect and every other influential official I could think of. I called in every debt, every favour until the Jendarma agreed to release Paul into my custody. It was conditional on him remaining in the village under my supervision and not returning to the hospital in Trebizond. An informer had told police that Paul paid the captain of a coaling ship a large sum to smuggle Professor Levonian to Batum in Georgia. Since then the Municipal Hospital has been closed and the remaining staff suspended with the result that the only medical facility for miles is ours.
I collected Paul at the Trebizond jail and we rode to the village in silence. Exhaustion and anger put paid to any conversation we might have had. We were almost at the village when Hetty came running on the road towards us.
‘Charles!’ she said. ‘They’ve taken them! They’re gone!’
‘Who are gone?’I asked, dismounting.
‘The schoolchildren. They’ve taken them all. Even the little ones.’
‘Who took them?’Paul asked.
That morning in school the mudir had barged into Hetty’s classroom accompanied by Trebizond gendarmes. He said they were taking the children, and when she asked where, he wouldn’t answer. She stood in front of the door and refused to move until he told her. They were being brought to another town, the mudir said, where their mothers were waiting for them. The children began to cry, pushing up against Hetty’s skirts and clinging to her, but the gendarmes took them away.
I gripped my wife’s cold hands and asked which road they had taken.
‘They wouldn’t tell me. I said I would see them safely into their mothers’ care but I was not allowed. They were … most insistent.’
‘Did they hurt you? If they so much–’
‘No, no, Charles, I’m fine but I followed at a distance. They took the road south. To Gümüşhane.’
Paul made to remount his horse but I grabbed the bridle.
‘Stay where you are,’ I said. ‘You’re in enough trouble already. Where are our own children, Hetty?’
She said that Gohar hadn’t come that morning as arranged, so she had sent the children to the stable loft to look out for her.
‘Bring them into the house,’ I told her. ‘Keep them there until I return.’
Moments after I left, the first woman arrived. Her baby was three months old, perhaps four, and she told Paul that she wanted to give her child into the care of the khanum. Hetty was dumbfounded, but, moved by the girl’s distress, she took the child. The next woman came shortly after with a newborn, and the floodgates opened after that. By the time I returned, the house was full of crying babies while soldiers stood in the garden waiting to seize the mothers at the first opportunity. Paul was talking to a young recruit not much older than Thomas. I saw the boy shrug indifferently and follow the line of weeping women to the village.
Inside the house, Milly was dragging a pair of drawers across the flagged kitchen floor and Robert followed with a bundle of linen in his arms. Hetty was standing in the middle of them nursing a baby and issuing orders. ‘Put them over there, Milly, beside the others. Thomas, help Robert fold the sheets into those drawers and when you’re done bring in milk from the cold room.’
I wiped my bleeding lip, trying to hide it from her.
‘Dear God what happened to you, Charles?’
She handed the baby she was carrying to Eleanor and went to fetch some iodine. Paul came in from the garden looking agitated. ‘We have to do something,’ he said. ‘They’re marching all the Armenians out of the village.’
I stared into the bowl in Hetty’s hand, blood from my lip discolouring the water. I couldn’t argue with him.
On every road from the village I had witnessed people being herded like cattle: women and children, old people who should have been in their beds, the sick and the frail marching without provisions or water. Many had been walking in bare feet with no protection from the sun.
Ozhan’s men had been prodding and lashing out at them, and when one had started to beat one of the Zornakian twins with the butt of his rifle I had tried to intervene. Grabbing the muzzle I’d shouted at him to stop but two more had descended on me and a hail of blows had rained down on my head. Someone had called them off and I’d looked up to see Nazim Ozhan standing over me.
‘Go back to your hospital Dr Stewart,’ he’d said.
‘You have no right to take these people. No right. It’s inhumane.’
‘On the contrary, I have every right. This is my country and I will not be dictated to by interfering foreigners. Government business is none of your concern. Take my advice Dr Stewart, stick to what you know best. Dr Trowbridge has already caused enough trouble for giaours like you.’
‘Why are the babies here?’ I asked Hetty, looking at them lying in baskets and drawers and on sheets on the floor.
‘The infants can be left behind if someone is willing to take them,’ she said dabbing at my lip. ‘But we need wet nurses. And help with feeding the older ones.’
There was still no sign of Gohar and nobody had any news of Anyush. I stood up and reached for my hat.
‘Where are you going?’ Paul asked.
‘To get help.’
‘You’re wasting your time. The Vali will do nothing.’
I told him that Abdul-Khan’s brother was a patient of mine and I intended going over the Vali’s head and approaching the colonel directly. Paul insisted on coming with me.
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘I’m not sitting around while Ozhan and his butchers wipe out the entire village.’
‘You’re under house arrest. Unless you want to go back to prison, you will stay here.’
‘And do nothing? Like you’ve been doing for God knows how long?’
We faced each other in that small room, hurt and anger unspoken. It dawned on me then that I knew nothing of this country. I should never have come to this godforsaken place. But if there was any hope of redeeming myself, it was with Abdul-Khan. If I rode hard and luck was with me then I might persuade him to see reason.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I did nothing. I was wrong about everything.’
Paul shook his head.
‘But I’m going to see Abdul-Khan. I’m going to ask him for a letter of protection for the villagers and as many of those in Trebizond as I can get.’
‘It’s too late for letters, Charles. Don’t you understand?’
‘I’m going anyway and I want you to stay here. As a friend I’m asking you. If you leave the village, they’ll arrest you, and Hetty and the children will be left alone. Please, Paul, stay in the house with them. You’re the only person I trust. I’m asking you … begging you … stay here and keep them safe.’
I
n the open door of Khandut’s cottage, Anyush stood with the baby slung in a shawl at her breast. A single chair was knocked over in the middle of the room, but Gohar’s bed under the ladder was neatly made and everything else in its usual place. To her right, the door of Khandut’s room was open, and Anyush walked inside. The bed was at an angle to the wall, as though it had been pushed off centre. The covers were crumpled and stained. On the floor a small pile of clothing was half-hidden under a pillow. She picked up Khandut’s underclothes. One of her stockings was just visible in the darkness under the bed and something black and solid a little further in. She bent to see what it was. A shoe. Just one. Gohar’s shoe.
‘M
ummy.’
‘Not now Milly. Go and have a look through the window for Paul. Any sign of Manon? Thomas, is that child still crying? Did you try spooning in the milk?’
‘I did, but he won’t take it.’
‘If he’s hungry enough, he will. Try again. Eleanor, one of those babies needs changing. Did you finish cutting up those sheets? We’re going to need a lot more diapers judging by the smell in here.’
‘Mummy!’
‘I said not now, Milly. Go find Charlotte.’
‘It’s a funny colour.’
‘What is, Eleanor?’
‘The stuff in the baby’s diaper. And it smells bad.’
‘Darling, all baby’s diapers smell bad. Thomas, put that child down and go help Leyla with the rice. Bring it into the cool room as soon as it’s sieved.’
‘It’s red.’
‘Red? In the diaper? Which baby?’
Eleanor brought Hetty to see one of the children lying listlessly on a pile of folded sheets. They were assaulted by a putrid smell. The baby, a girl of about six months, had a waxy yellow complexion and her brow was cold and clammy to the touch. Every now and then she arched her back and emitted a high-pitched, pitiful scream. Hetty pulled down the cloth around her legs to reveal a mess of bloody diarrhoea.
‘Poor child!’
Between spasms the baby’s thin body lay limp, her eyes closed to everything going on around her.
‘Has this baby taken any milk?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Go fetch some warm water and a clean cloth. Robert … has any of that water cooled yet?’
‘Just about.’
‘Put some in a bottle for me.’ Hetty wiped her forehead with her sleeve. ‘And Milly, keep that door open or we’ll all pass out from the heat.’
‘Mummy!’
‘What
is
it, Milly dear?’
‘There’s a man outside.’
A few feet from the back door Captain Jahan Orfalea waited, cap in hand.
‘I
’m looking for Anyush Charcoudian, Bayan Stewart.’
The doctor’s wife folded her arms. Jahan had met Dr Stewart on a few occasions but never his wife. She wouldn’t easily trust a Turkish soldier asking for a pretty Armenian girl.
A couple of days previously Jahan had learned that a second company, under the command of Captain Ozhan, was to assist in the Trebizond evacuation. The soldiers had already carried out a similar clearance in Erzurum, with predictable results. Rape, torture and murder. That morning, as Jahan had walked through the village with Armin, a girl’s cry had drawn them to a spot behind the market. Some of the stalls had been set on fire and had fallen down, and the network of alleyways linking the main square had been empty except for a few hungry dogs. A turbaned old man sweeping the dusty tiles of his coffee house had eyed them suspiciously, oblivious to the screams coming from the alley behind his shop.
Three soldiers had been crouching at the end of the lane taking turns with a young woman. Jahan had grabbed the man kneeling over her and
had pulled him off. Fists had been raised and insults hurled, but the men had become subdued when they’d spotted the insignia on his sleeve.
‘Armenian women are there for the taking,’ the man had said. ‘By the authority of Captain Ozhan and the colonel himself.’
A second soldier, who had been holding the girl’s arms, had risen to his feet. Short and heavy-set, his fingers had played with the buckle on his belt. ‘Any woman we like. That’s what they said.’
The girl had whimpered.
‘If you touch her, I’ll have you arrested for refusing to obey an officer.’
But the soldier had not been deterred. He’d smiled, his lardy cheeks compressing his eyes to little slits. ‘Which officer would that be, sir? You or Colonel Abdul-Khan?’
Unhurriedly he’d opened his fly buttons and dropped his trousers. Laughing, his friends had looked over to gauge the captain’s reaction.
‘Excellent. This I will photograph.
Sehr gut
.’ Armin had taken his camera from its box and had proceeded to assemble it onto its stand. He’d placed it so that he’d had a sidelong view of the half-naked soldier and the girl cowering beneath him. The soldiers had stared at the German.
‘
Fahren Sie
… continue please …
gut, gut
. The German army is interested in this,
ja
.’
Everyone had watched as he’d steadied the camera on the stand. Like a predatory spider it had sat on the spindly wooden legs, facing the soldier’s capacious bare bottom.
‘As you were,
bitte
.’ Nodding reassuringly at them, Armin had disappeared under the black cloth. Only his disembodied hand could be seen, and it had urged them to continue. The men had looked at each other, less sure of themselves now. The figure below the cloth might have been complimenting them or insulting them. They’d decided the latter. Pulling up his trousers, the fat soldier had followed the others out of the laneway, spitting on the ground by Armin’s feet.
Jahan had helped the girl up and realised she was familiar. Her name was Sosi, one of Anyush’s friends. The two men had brought her to the convoy of people assembled in the square where she’d found her sister and mother. At the back of the line the lieutenant had been walking restlessly up and down, waiting for word to pull out.
‘Which route is Ozhan’s company taking?’ the captain had asked.
‘Half are moving south to Gümüşhane. There’s a second group headed north-east. They’re drag-netting as far as the Russian border.’
The hair had stood up on Jahan’s scalp. ‘By what road?’
‘Coast road. To Batum.’ Running from the square, the captain had circled round the village towards the other side of town.
On the doorstep of the doctor’s house, Bayan Stewart assured the young captain that Anyush hadn’t worked there for some time.
‘Would you know where I might find her?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I am a friend, Bayan Stewart.’
‘Then try her family home. She’s probably with her mother and grandmother.’
‘I called to her mother’s house. It was empty.’
The light in the doctor’s wife’s grey eyes changed as she looked at him. ‘You know she’s married? To Husik Tashjian.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Jahan had been to Kazbek’s house, stumbled on it from Anyush’s mother’s cottage nearby, where he had seen Husik’s body. It was the trapper, the boy who liked to spy on them. Poor bastard! There was a time Jahan had envied him. Near the body a trapdoor lay open. Jahan looked
inside, but the cellar was empty except for a pile of mouldering potatoes. He kicked the door shut and a cloud of dust rose, heavy with the smell of blood and rotting meat.
‘If she contacts you, Bayan Stewart, you should know that she’s not safe here.’ He glanced in the direction of the square where Ahmet and the others were waiting. ‘I cannot guarantee she will be safe with me, but I am her best hope.’