Three Daughters: A Novel (8 page)

“It’s no longer possible to escape service. The Committee for Union and Progress desires that every able man shall serve in the military.”

“For what purpose? We’re not at war.”

“War?” He smiled indulgently at her naïveté and puffed out his chest. “It’s not for war. You peasants think only the obvious. It’s for the double purpose of strengthening the defense of the empire and also to aid in the exchange of the populations. We will transplant some Anatolians here and some Arabs will go to Anatolia.”

Miriam looked at the soldier with contempt. She had heard that some families in Jerusalem had been transported (under great protest) to far-flung parts of the empire. It was an outrage. “You’re going to exchange my family?” Her voice quivered with anger.

“Your family?” he sneered. “They exchange only the best families. It’s your husband they want and it will do no good to hide him,” said the soldier.

“Hide him?” Miriam scowled. “If you are so clever, you would know that he’s already in Jerusalem and not come and disturb my children with threatening noises.”

The soldiers whispered together. “You say he’s in Jerusalem?” one of them asked her.

“Yes. Not in hiding. In the open. He runs a shop at the Grand Hotel.”

“If this is a lie, we will return in the morning and he will not benefit from lies.”

“The lies are with your government,” she answered wearily. “They promised reform but breed only greater hardship and discord.”

They had never heard a woman be so outspoken and Miriam was surprised by her own bravado, but she was too tired and outraged to be concerned. It was an outrage to serve a government not of one’s choosing.

“I will have to close the shop,” Nadeem said as they lay together, ready for sleep. She reached over and placed a hand on his forehead, as if to erase the worry lines with her touch. “Don’t say that. Not yet.” There was resignation in his voice that she felt like a thud in her heart. The shop was his claim to independence. He had conceived and created something that had not been in existence and now his source of pride would be taken away.

The following morning, after breakfast, she broached an offer she felt compelled to make. “Perhaps I can maintain the shop until you return. I used to help my father with his business. Of course, it was simple enough, not in any way like your business.” She offered the solution feeling certain he would refuse. No woman they knew had ever worked except in the house or in the fields. A few poor women hired out their young girls as servants to wealthy families, but they were protected just like the daughters of the household. Nadeem peered into his wife’s face and said nothing. The following day he asked her to come to the shop with him and she did so, leaving the boys with Zareefa.

He showed her his stock and ledgers. When a purchase was made, he wrote down the item, the price paid, and the name and address of the customer. He showed her his books of money spent and money earned. All the figures were in a neat hand. Miriam stared at the columns of numbers and tried to make sense of them, but they blurred and danced before her eyes. Nadeem ran his fingers down the page, talking as he went, but Miriam couldn’t concentrate. She was anxious over taxes and soldiers and the threat of change in her life. “It’s beyond me,” she said sorrowfully. “I’d like to do it for you but I can’t.”

“Perhaps I can get someone to do the paperwork.” There was anxiety in his voice. “You would have to do only the selling and ordering.”

“I could try it, I suppose.” The idea of it frightened her. She had been bundled in her small world for eleven years, treading the circular path to her chores, minding children, and digging in the garden. Her mind didn’t work as it had before.

As they stood speaking, a woman entered. She was wearing a tight-bodiced woolen dress with a white dimity bib that was lightly ruffled at the top and stopped just above the breasts, coquettishly revealing a delicious expanse of pinkish skin.

“Excuse me.”

The woman turned her full gaze on Miriam and with disarming innocence locked on to her eyes. “I’m in need of linens,” she said, as if her need might be thought bizarre. “We’ve just moved here and the trunks with the bed linens were lost. My husband and I are staying temporarily in this hotel. Perhaps you could make up a list for me—sheets, comforters, some summer quilts and blanket covers, some pillowslips and linen towels. We’ll be needing all of it. Do you have them with hand-embroidered hems? I’m partial to yellow for a trim. The initials will be LSJ. Linda Searle Johnson. Mrs. Jonathan Johnson.” Here she giggled involuntarily. “I’m newly married. We’re from Great Britain but we’ll be living here for at least a year. Jonathan’s the assistant to the consul.”

The bell-like, utterly feminine voice coming from that rosy face was mesmerizing. Her blonde hair was swept up into a high pompadour, creating an extravagant frame for her face. Miriam retreated to a corner of the room while Nadeem brought out some samples. She took an inventory of her own hair and clothes, which now appeared wretched. She tried to stand straight and throw her shoulders back, but they seemed weighed down by her scarf and her ungainly dress. Mostly she was weighed down by her conviction that no dress or set of clothes would ever allow her to glide across a room on that wave of grace and delicacy that carried Mrs. Jonathan Johnson.

When they were alone again, Miriam asked Nadeem, “You wait on such women every day?”

“Yes, of course. Not as young, perhaps. More matronly. The housekeepers show up these days, not the lady herself.”

All the way home in the carriage a vague unhappiness gnawed at Miriam. She had fulfilled her destiny as her mother had done, as her sister-in-law was doing, as did every woman she knew. She had three healthy boys and an industrious husband. Why had that porcelain doll in the shop thrown her heart into such chaos? It wasn’t envy. It was the uninvited discovery that she could have lived a different life.

When they were still several miles from home, she turned to Nadeem, with eyes full of purpose. “I will run the shop in your absence as well as I can.” She looked at the ledgers and inventory sheets in his lap. “Tonight, show these to me again and I will try to concentrate. Perhaps my father can help, too. We will need the income when you’re gone. I will do it. I must do it.”

Nadeem put his arm around her shoulders. “How will you make the trip each morning and night?”

“Perhaps it won’t be necessary. My father and I had many friends in Jerusalem in the old days.” She was thinking of Father Alphonse at the Ethiopian monastery, who had offered to take her brothers into his school. Perhaps he would give her lodging in return for some token work.

The next morning, lying in bed, she realized her back was buttressed by Nadeem’s side. She would no longer have the firm sure line of his body to sustain her during the night. She turned to inspect his profile. “Nadeem,” she said quietly, her eyes full, “are you frightened to go?”

“Not frightened, but apprehensive and suspicious of this government. The Committee is thicker than ever with Germany. Enver Bey, the minister of war, is dazzled by the German military machine and now the Germans are being given free rein. They have whatever railroad concessions they want. This intimacy makes me uncomfortable. If it were simply conscription, it would almost be an adventure. There’s an old man who sweeps the street in front of the hotel. He served with the colors and he tells us stories of his time there with great affection. He was a happy man, he says. They made him fit and gave him discipline and taught him customs of hygiene and social grace he wouldn’t have learned in his own poor village. Perhaps it will be the same for me.”

Even though she knew Zareefa would treat them with affection, Miriam was desolate at the thought of being separated from the children, especially the youngest. “Esa, Esa, how can I leave you?” She was bathing him, and as she scrubbed his still-plump arms, she blinked away tears.

“Esa, Esa,” he mimicked, smiling, and then swooped down into the tub as far as its size would allow.

Nadeem was told to report to the central depot in Jerusalem for processing. The Turks were so desperate for men that those who appeared in decent health were inducted without a physical examination. The chief recruiting officer instructed his minions not to waste time on the hefty ones who could probably “knock down a bull.” Nadeem appeared slim, so he received a rude poking and appraisal ending in a pronouncement that, while slight, he seemed to be in excellent health. The army was short of NCOs and since Nadeem could read and write he applied to become one and was accepted for a special school at Damascus. Only too late did he find out that the barracks were squalid and the cadets were herded for work units that lasted from early morning until late at night. He dug trenches until his arms felt like two wretched masses of tortured flesh. Not once did they ask him to read or write.

Back home, conscription was even more strictly enforced. Army service became compulsory for all Christians as well as Muslims. The old oppressions returned in new forms and in increased feelings of suspicion. Nadeem left in the winter of 1911. George and Salim were taken a few weeks later when the age was lowered. Daud went, too, but they soon got word that he had deserted—and Miriam wasn’t surprised. Daud wasn’t made to take orders and live by routine. If he hadn’t deserted, he would have killed his superiors or himself.

The young men were transported to their posts on the new Hejaz railroad that had opened to run from Medina to Damascus and at once put an end to the great army that used to perform the pilgrimage on foot. The annual pageant of the camel caravan was dead. When Nadeem asked a fellow recruit if he knew who had engineered and surveyed the railroad, the man looked at him wearily. “Have you been asleep, man? It’s the Germans. German engineers, German surveyors. But”—he brightened and waved a finger in the air—“the locomotives came from America.”

Khalil was moody and set up his bed out of doors in protest when he found out the details of his mother’s new arrangement.

“I’ll see you on Saturday evenings,” Miriam told him, holding out her hand to him, “and I’ll bring a treat from Jerusalem.”

“What sort of treat?”

“It’ll be a surprise. When I see something that will please you, I’ll buy it.”

“What would please me is to go with you.”

“But you can’t. I’ve no place to put you and you must stay in school. You must do it all on your own. Zareefa is too busy to listen to your lessons.”

“I won’t do it. I’ll forget everything and it will be your fault.”

“Now you’ve hurt me deeply and your father would be saddened by those words. He’s making the biggest sacrifice. All you are being asked to do is to be faithful to your studies and help your aunt Zareefa.”

Khalil apparently had a core of conscience and those last words reached it. He capitulated and took his mother’s hand. “When will you bring the surprise?”

“On Saturday. And if you’re asleep when I return, you’ll find it on your pillow.”

“What about Hanna? Will you bring one for Hanna?”

“Something. But not as big as yours.” She hoped that Hanna was not around to hear this betrayal, for she had no heart left for arguments. Khalil had yet to find out that Esa would depart with his mother. Miriam hoped by the time the week was gone he would have adjusted to this news. The thought of leaving baby Esa had broken her heart and she had refused to think of it. One day, as she was walking from the vegetable market, eager to cross to the shady relief of the beautiful Damascus Gate, she saw a woman crying loudly and bearing a small boy in her arms. They went inside the building that she knew to be run by a colony of Americans. When the woman emerged, her child was no longer in her arms. “Why have you left your baby there?” asked Miriam.

“I can no longer support him,” said the woman, with agony in her eyes. “My husband must go into the army. If I keep the baby with me, he will die of hunger and neglect. Here, they will take care of him and I can visit from time to time.”

Miriam bounded up the steps of the American Colony building, determined to do whatever she could to convince them to take Esa into their shelter. If Esa were here, she could visit him every day. She could hold his sweet body against her and make certain he ate properly and wasn’t frightened or sick.