Anyush (28 page)

Jahan

J
ahan watched Armin ride to the head of the line with the lieutenant, his camera boxes swaddled in blankets and tied to his saddle. The German was accompanying them, as arranged, and he too was heading in the direction of Gümüşhane. He had been taking photographs earlier before the chaos erupted. Some onlookers had thrown stones at the people gathered in the square and tensions ran high. Jahan’s soldiers moved along the line, breaking up fights and keeping the two sides apart. Screaming and crying and rearing horses added to the confusion. Children wandered everywhere. Some ran dangerously close to cartwheels and horses’ legs, desperately trying to find their mothers. Old people wept. Young women struggled to carry bundles on their heads and hold onto the children at their sides. As the last of the refugees left the village their faces changed. Grim determination took hold as though they would kill or be killed. A heavily pregnant woman sat wearily on the edge of a cart only for another to shove her roughly off. A skinny old man pushed hunks of bread down his throat watched by a starving child. Jahan looked on with a growing sense of unease. He had been so hopeful of finding Anyush when he discovered her mother and grandmother in Ozhan’s convoy. Bribing one of the guards, he had them released to
his convoy, but they had no news of her. Now he had to leave. It wasn’t possible to delay any longer. A sudden squall sprang up and blew the cap from his head into the dust. He turned to retrieve it and saw a figure walking towards him. A slender woman with braided hair holding a baby in her arms.

Anyush

T
he old woman wept as she embraced her granddaughter. Gohar and Khandut had been searching for Anyush among the people in the square, and when they hadn’t found her they assumed the worst. It was Khandut now who was missing. She had gone to look for Sosi and Parzik, hoping for news of Anyush, and had never returned. Past the back of a wagon Anyush saw the line stretch ahead of her like a snake with its head buried in the hills. A lone figure on horseback broke away from it. As he drew closer Anyush could see it was Jahan, and she stepped back into the line beside her grandmother.

He tried to talk to her, to engage her in conversation. He spoke as if nothing had changed, as if he was not a soldier nor she his prisoner. Did he really believe their situation could be redeemed with a few meaningless words? His need for forgiveness was contemptible to her and she turned away. She had nothing to say to him any more.

Gohar was tired and thirsty but insisted on carrying Lale, pressing her like a relic to her breast. Further up the line, bread and goatskins of water were being handed out on the captain’s orders. Gohar insisted Anyush join the queue, but she refused. She would rather starve. Some time later Jahan rode past and dropped bread and a canteen of water at her feet.

‘Take it,’ Gohar said. ‘For the child’s sake.’

Anyush picked it up and broke the bread in half, giving some to her grandmother and taking a little herself. The rest she put in her skirt pocket. Only for Lale, she told herself, feeling that the bread would choke her with every bite.

They had walked a while when Anyush noticed her grandmother’s bare foot poking out beneath her skirt.

‘Here,’ she handed her one of her own shoes. ‘Put this on.’

‘I don’t need it. My feet are as hard as leather.’

‘You carry my daughter,
Tatik
, you wear two shoes.’

Gohar’s old face broke into a smile.

‘Your mother eh, Lale? Just like her father.’

She kissed her great-granddaughter’s head, as Anyush bent to tie the shoe onto her foot.

‘You there!’ A soldier, the Ferret, was watching then.

‘You,’ he pointed his whip at Anyush. ‘What were you doing?’

‘Nothing. I gave her my shoe.’

‘What’s in your shoe, old woman? She put money in your shoe?’

‘No,
efendim
. A little comfort for the road, that’s all.’

‘Take it off.’

Gohar levered her foot out of the shoe and the soldier peered inside. Picking it up with his whip, he raised it to eye level then flung it into the scrub behind him.

‘What else have you hidden under there?’

The tip of his whip was pointing at Anyush’s skirt.

‘No money or silver allowed,’ he said, his eyes creeping over her.

‘I have nothing.’

‘Give me the ring.’

Anyush pulled her wedding band from her finger.

‘Hand over the rest of it. Now or I’ll have to look for myself.’

‘I swear,
efendim
, I’m carrying nothing.’

‘Lift your skirt.’

Gohar closed her eyes.

‘Lift it!’

Anyush hitched her skirts to her knees.

‘Higher.’

‘
Efendim
, she was only–’

‘Shut your mouth, old woman. Lift it. To your waist.’

Others were listening, their faces turned away so as not to draw attention to themselves. Anyush did as he asked. The Ferret moved closer and placed the tip of his whip against her drawers.

‘Take them off.’

‘
Efendim
… please …’

‘Pull them down.’

‘Hanim!’

Jahan and a foreign-looking man trotted down the line towards them, and Anyush dropped her skirts.

‘What were you doing?’

‘These women are carrying weapons,
bayim
. I saw her trying to hide something under her clothes.’

‘Get back to the line.’

‘But, Captain–’

‘Do as I say.’

‘We were told–’

‘One more word and I’ll charge you with insubordination. Now find Düzgünoğlu and look for somewhere to set up camp.’

That first night on the march the sky was clear, and stars and a crescent
moon lit the faces of the people lying or sitting on either side of the road. Exhaustion had quietened the children’s cries and a hush settled over the camp. Here and there the red tips of soldiers’ cigarettes flared near the supply wagons.

At the base of a stony mound Gohar and Anyush sat close to where the horses were tethered. They were exhausted, and, although Anyush had alternated her shoe from one foot to the other, her feet were cut and blistered. Gohar was lying back in the sedge while Lale suckled at her mother’s empty breast.

‘You alright,
Tatik
?’

‘Better since the water.’

She passed Anyush the goatskin and the half loaf of black bread.

‘I was at the house,’ Anyush said. ‘In the bedroom.’

The horses’ hooves knocked off the hard ground and their bridles jangled as they nodded and whinnied into the warm night

‘You need to find your mother,’ Gohar said. ‘It was bad for her.’

Early the following morning Anyush pushed past the line for water at the supply wagon. The old and the very young were still lying or sitting by the road, while the more able were gathering what belongings they had. Mothers rubbed mud on their children’s faces as protection from the sun and on their daughters’ faces as protection of another kind. The foreign soldier Anyush had seen with Jahan was perched on a low hill looking down on the caravan below.

Further along, she spotted Sosi huddled with her mother and Havat by the side of one of the wagons. She ran over. Sosi raised her head, catching the sun full on her face. Her left eye was closed and her nose swollen into a bruised, misshapen mess.

‘Sosi,’ Anyush whispered, unable to take her eyes from her, ‘Did you … have you seen Khandut?’

Her friend shook her head and turned her face towards her mother’s shoulder. Beside them Havat rocked to and fro, clutching her knees in dumb silence. Bayan Talanian’s eyes were closed, tears running silently down her cheeks. Nearby, a young woman Anyush knew from Bayan Stewart’s sewing group sat in the road like a stone thrown by a wheel. A pitifully thin child lay across her lap. The woman seemed unaware of her surroundings or the people moving in ever-widening circles around her.

‘Don’t go near.’ Jahan caught her by the arm. ‘The child has cholera.’

Anyush shook herself free.

‘Go back to your grandmother,’ he said. ‘We’re moving on.’

The second day was much like the first and all those that followed, though longer, hotter and more difficult. Food ran out. Children took to thievery and adults followed suit. Fights were common as the mood in the camp swung from aggression to exhaustion. No quarter was given to the pregnant, the sick, the young or the old. There were many miles to be covered in a day and everyone had to walk them.

In the last stages of pregnancy, Parzik went into labour one hot afternoon. She walked and laboured, and walked again, and her cries could be heard the length of the caravan. Parzik’s mother and the twins had been taken in Ozhan’s convoy, so there was only her sister, Seranoush, and Anyush to soothe her in her distress. Jahan took the decision to set up camp early, and Gohar delivered a male child as the sun set behind Kızıldağ. Parzik wept that Vardan would never know he had a son. Because of her weakness following the birth, the captain allowed her to
ride in a wagon on the following day’s march where she lay in a pool of her own blood calling for her mother. Following behind like a sleepwalker, Seranoush carried her new nephew for a number of days, but exhausted and too weak to hold him, Parzik’s sister finally abandoned the baby by the side of the road.

‘Did you find her?’

‘No.’

Anyush took Lale from Gohar’s arms and sat down to feed.

‘Did you look at the front? Behind where the soldiers are?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have to find her. You have to keep searching.’

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why?’

‘Why do we have to keep looking?’

‘Oh … Anyush!’

‘Don’t pretend,
Tatik
. She made your life as miserable as she made mine. She hated me, her own daughter. If she had her way, I would be married to Kazbek. Why should I worry about her?’

‘She didn’t hate you, Anyush.’

‘You have another name for it? I will never treat my daughter that way. Never! If I hadn’t had you,
Tatik
–’

‘If you hadn’t had me, you might have known her better. How much she cares about you.’ The old woman gripped Anyush’s arm. ‘I’m a stupid old woman, Anyush. Stupid and selfish. When your father died somehow I blamed Khandut because it was easy to blame a woman I never liked. She didn’t want to marry your father but I was one of those who insisted on it. The marriage was to settle a land dispute between our two families
and it suited both sides. Everyone except Khandut. She was always different. A little strange because of what happened to her as a child. She was attacked in Kazbek’s wood at nine years of age and it left its mark. As time went on she became more peculiar. She never liked the company of men and found herself forced to marry one. It was an unbearable situation for her. But your father did love her. That was the tragedy of it. He saw a different side to her, a gentler side. He believed she would change. That she would come to have feelings for him.’