As the Poppies Bloomed Read online

  The Turkish soldiers thunder through our villages at their whim and we cannot arm ourselves against them and their ruination, Avo thought with disgust. Yet, against the Kurds whose clans live in the mountains and valleys of Sassoun, the government allows us to arm ourselves for only these brief hours, against the kidnapping of our brides.

  He felt the weight of his new responsibility lay on his shoulders.

  It had not been his idea to wed Lucine. Shortly after he had entered his eighteenth year, his parents had stood before him and announced that they would be sending someone to Vartan Vartanian’s home to ask for her hand in marriage to Avo. They had quietly observed him for any reaction. Avo, stunned and not prepared to answer, remembered focusing on his father’s thick, upturned moustache. It must be trimmed again, soon, he had thought foolishly.

  Still they had waited. It was ultimately not Avo’s decision whom he married, they all knew that, but if they were to have a reluctant bridegroom, it was better to know of it now.

  Avo had eventually nodded. He knew they had chosen well for him.

  “The time has come!” a man behind Avo called out.

  “We have come to pluck the lovely flower from your garden,” another spoke.

  “Our groom here is impatient,” the men laughed.

  From inside the house, Raffi’s voice responded loudly, “And why should we let you enter?”

  There was more banging. The village houses, made of mud bricks and stone, had few windows, and even those were small and high. It worked to their advantage during attacks, but for now, Avo’s family did not have the convenience of peering through the windows.

  “We have a gift for the mother of the bride, of course!”

  “We are giving you the first daughter of the house, the light and joy of her parents’ hearth,” they called from inside.

  The musicians played a short dance tune. Whistling and clapping could be heard from the courtyard.

  Inside, Lucine’s palms were wet. Outside, Avo was wondering if this part of the wedding tradition had ever ended badly.

  Coins were offered, then jewelry made of coins and still the door did not open. The music continued.

  Lucine searched the guests’ faces. No one looked concerned at all. Was it only herself? How long would this go on?

  And suddenly the music stopped and there was silence. The god-father’s voice in the courtyard was now heard clearly inside the house.

  “We would like to honor the mother of the bride for raising such a daughter. On behalf of the Avedissian clan, we thank the honorable Vartanian family for raising this girl to be a good Christian and a good Armenian. We have not forgotten that our khnami Yeraz came to our village from as far away as Karabagh to wed our honorable headman, Vartan. And from the very first day of that union, we have known her to be a model wife and mother and a blessing to our village. And so we offer her a humble reminder of her childhood.”

  Lucine had not taken her eyes off her parents during this announcement. Would they at last open the door?

  Yeraz’s face softened and Vartan nodded toward his sons. Both walked solemnly forward and opened the door.

  Amid music and clapping, two of Avo’s cousins walked in holding a rug. It was nearly three feet wide by five feet long, with such a joyous blend of deep reds, oranges, and yellows that everyone gasped in appreciation. Smiling faces turned toward Yeraz as her eyes expertly took in the details of the rug. She would have known that this rug had come from her parents’ village even if it had been mixed in with a dozen others.

  She could almost smell the turmeric and berries as she gazed at the colliding shades of yellow. How many stained hands had sorted the walnut shells to obtain that inky black, she wondered, remembering her own mother’s hands, cracked and dyed and busied. Deep hennas created the orange, indigo created the blue, and, of course, the crushed cochineal supplied the red on which she had locked her eyes. The field of the rug contained two large medallions outlined in black. Emerging from the sides of the medallions were leaves and tendrils of flowers in a soothing blue.

  Yeraz wanted to reach out and stroke the soft pile, but knew better than to show excessive pleasure in the gift. Bolting the door in want of a gift was only the first jest of many to begin the celebrations. It need never be a gift of extraordinary value such as this one, because so many of the villagers were without the means to procure such things. It would be shameful for Yeraz to linger now, but she was nonetheless very moved by Avo’s family’s thoughtfulness.

  Avo’s father was kissing both of Vartan’s cheeks now, and Yeraz called to Raffi to roll and store the rug. It was time to make their way to the church.

  OLD MARIAM SLOWLY followed along with the wedding party. She had a place of honor, toward the front.

  There used to be so many more of us, she thought as she walked. Thousands and thousands more.

  The roads were always dusty and dry in late summer, but soon, the rains would flow into the cracks and the dust would clear away once more. Snows would cover the mountains and hills of Sassoun and beyond, ensuring a spring landscape of several shades of green and rivers and streams bursting with water.

  Would she witness another spring, she wondered? Would any of the blessed people she walked with now, young and old? This morning she had thought not.

  Her daughters-in-law had been surprised to see her prepare to leave the house with her old square handkerchief, which she used only for gathering herbs and grasses.

  “There is still much to be gathered,” she had announced matter- of-factly and left. She enjoyed her position of matriarch. She had earned it.

  Her kerchief nearly full, she had been bending low to pluck the last few hollyhocks when she had looked up in time to see Vartan’s youngest daughter scramble over the walls of the old, dry well. Again she felt her heartbeat quicken, just remembering.

  Thinking Anno was being chased by a raiding band, Mariam had wildly searched the hill. Who was trying to harm the child? She listened for the sound of horses. Should she scream for help? They were too far away for the villagers to hear. She had remained crouched and hidden, but had almost, twice, decided to stumble toward the well and pull the child out before she slipped. And then she had seen him. The merchant’s boy.

  It had been clear at once to Mariam what they were attempting. Had she not been so frightened by it all, she might have chuckled at the sight of them. But there really was nothing Vartan and Yeraz would have thought amusing had they known of Anno’s whereabouts that morning. Mariam shuddered at the thought. Daughters must be, above all else, chaste. And Vartan would see to it, with his last breath, that his daughters were.

  She stopped abruptly in the middle of the road and turned. Where was the child now? She saw only Raffi, several groups behind, not laughing and singing with anyone. His body straight and his arms loosely at his sides, he scanned the hills around them with his black eyes, searching out movement.

  Mariam understood at once where his attention was, as did all the villagers. The Turkish government had separate laws for the Christian citizens than for the Muslim. They had learned to be ready to defend themselves.

  Mariam watched as another young man, Aram, closed in behind Raffi. But Raffi did not to turn to acknowledge his friend. Mariam thought it odd how Aram’s mouth curved forcibly and the friends stood paces apart. Then Raffi suddenly uttered something and pulled Aram to him in the crook of one powerful arm. Aram’s head fell against his friend’s.

  Mariam’s curiosity was piqued, and she forgot Anno for the moment. Raffi was studying his friend in sympathy, searching his face. Then, when he noticed more than a guest or two walk past them and turn, he realized the attention they had attracted. His head lifted suddenly and his eyes locked with those of Old Mariam.

  Mariam, unflinching, looked frankly back at him.

  Raffi pulled at Aram, and the men began walking again. Mariam dropped her gaze and slowly turned her body toward the church once more. Behind her, she did not see Aram kick at
a tiny pebble, nor did she hear him hiss, “If she is unhappy, I will take his eyes out.”

  Nor did she hear Raffi’s even reply: “Let her be safe. Let her be sheltered. Let her be respected. It is enough. You and I have work to do.”

  Old Mariam wondered what they had been murmuring. Unease was always with her regarding Raffi’s doings. To her, he was still a babe in Yeraz’s arms. She remembered well the day he had been born.

  C H A P T E R 4

  Sassoun 1894

  Yeraz could hardly breathe. Arms were pushing, almost lifting her from behind. She tried to take great gulps of air but instead felt the dust coat her mouth and make its way deeper down her throat.

  She was flanked by women and children scrambling up the mountainside. But Yeraz could not scramble. She was eight months pregnant, heavy and slow, and the Turks and Kurds had come.

  Vartan had had news that thousands of Greeks had already been massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire.

  “Will they come here, Vartan, to Salor?” she had asked, clutching his arm.

  “I do not know,” he had answered dully. “It is as if we are citizens of nowhere at all.”

  From a distance, Yeraz heard short, sporadic sobs and only that. She looked around her, amazed at how silent the children were in their climb.

  The rocks beneath her feet slid against the ungiving soil and she nearly dropped onto her hands. A distant neighbor caught her by the waist and waited mutely until she could steady herself.

  She dragged one foot after another, then rested. Ahead, several babies were shifted from one back to the next as the mothers tired. It did not matter which back, whose child.

  Their destination was clear. Away. High and away. Yeraz struggled again to walk.

  “With each step I am moving further away from Vartan,” she panted to herself. He had rushed out the door to fight the Turks and their throngs of mercenary Kurds with his bare hands and a heart filled with rage at the lifetime of living with the same rights as a stabled beast.

  Up ahead, a woman cried out sharply. The child on her back was slipping, her delicate arms giving way.

  “Do not worry, Yeraz,” Vartan had whispered nights ago. “The fedayees will be with us.”

  Her hopes had risen. “How many, Vartan?” In all of Turkey, concentrated mostly in its eastern, rural portion, there were no more than 200 young fedayees, freedom fighters, whose entire lives were dedicated to the defense of the Armenian villagers.

  “A few.” In fact, only four had arrived in their little village of Salor. Watching her shoulders slump, he had continued. “They will help us organize. We will form some self-defense.”

  Yeraz and the women had been climbing for hours. It was nearly noon now. They had thinned themselves out to almost single file as the mountainside steepened further. The summer grass was dry and blade-like in places and their backs were bent against the heat. Yeraz’s head covering had dropped long ago. Their men would hold back the attack for hours. If they were to be followed, it would not be for some time.

  Old Mariam was near. Yeraz could hear her words of encouragement.

  “This is the way. Keep your eyes on the shades of grass,” she directed.

  They had stopped scrambling frantically a while ago. Now, they had all slowed and began to seek water. They could not continue without it. The women scanned the slopes around them for areas where the grass grew green. Their mountains were full of streams. They should find one soon.

  Yeraz had grown used to the stabs of pain in her lower belly. She simply ground her teeth in silence until they stopped. She did not care about the pain. Just let there not be blood, she prayed.

  Mouths hung open in thirst and the women spat on the parched ground, trying to clear their throats of dust. Some dropped to the ground retching.

  Yeraz thought only of Vartan. She remembered his face as she had seen it just this morning at early dawn. He had thrown open the door of their sleeping room and taken two quick strides to her mattress. She had not even known that he had been out already because her sleep had been so heavy and deep these last weeks. He had knelt and wrapped his arms fully around her waist and pulled her to a sitting position. Astonished, she tried to speak, but his eyes told her everything. He was pulling her boots on and lacing them, all the while shouting directions to all the women of the household. They must leave, now, up the mountain and not return until he came after them.

  “Go now! Do not look back. Take nothing. There is no time,” he instructed. And for a fleeting moment, he did something he would have only done in utter darkness and privacy, he laid his head on Yeraz’s breast and kissed her stomach. And suddenly on his feet again, he was gone.

  The person in front of her stopped. Yeraz stopped as well and leaned against a ledge. For a long while now, they had walked beneath the shade of vultures’ wings. The large black birds had glided above them and patiently blinked at the newly arrived clusters of desperation. Yeraz focused on one now.

  “You will not get me,” she said silently. “Nor will you get Vartan’s child.” She protected her stomach with both arms. Hopelessness was something her people had always lived with. But they had not died because of it. Turks. Vultures. It seemed all the same.

  A cry went out. Yeraz looked ahead. Kurds, perhaps? No. She sensed excitement. Vartan’s mother, who had never for a moment left her side, did so now. She pushed ahead and disappeared. Yeraz did not move. She had been told not to. Mariam appeared at her side now and smoothed the hair off her forehead. Marie, Vartan’s younger sister, sat at Yeraz’s feet. Dust, finely and deeply layered, coated the girl’s shoes and skirt, and her cheeks burned frighteningly. How Vartan adored that child. Yeraz reached out to stroke her head, but her hand dropped in mid-air. The child was too far.

  The line began moving. Wild goats had been seen ahead. Water was near.

  “Walk, Hars, walk.” Her mother-in-law reappeared and pulled her along excitedly, a bit hard. Yeraz followed, her legs slightly parted now as the blood that had started to flow ran thick and warm past her knees to her ankles.

  She allowed herself to be pulled several feet more before she protested. She lifted her skirts to hear Vartan’s mother exclaim.

  “It is all right. It is all right,” the older woman kept repeating after her initial shock. Yeraz felt herself led away from the single file of women she had stood with. “There is a bit of shade over there. Lie down in the shade. Here.”

  The pain in her groin had not eased when she finally lay down. It increased in waves. Through eyes blurred with pain, she watched Mariam work over her.

  Water, cool, blessed water, was brought to her lips and wiped across her forehead and neck. Her head tossed with the pain. Her fists clutched brittle blades of grass.

  Visions of a story came to her, of a young woman, like herself, giving birth in a church. A church that the Turks had packed with villagers and then set fire to. They had carried the young woman in with arms and legs splayed and sealed the door after her. Yeraz screamed.

  “Hush your screams,” Vartan’s mother told her fervently, close to her ear. “You must not scream.”

  Yeraz writhed in silence until dusk fell. She pushed one last time and a baby emerged into her mother-in-law’s blood-filled palms.

  “It is a boy,” she heard Mariam say.

  “A boy.” She took this in slowly. The baby was not dead, then. She heard its weak cry.

  A boy, she thought more clearly. Their firstborn, and he would be named after his paternal grandfather. Yeraz actually began to feel some joy lying there on the ground, with rocks censuring her every move and a vulture blinking at her from the branches. She smiled and the bird’s image blurred as tears gathered in her eyes.

  “And we will have more.” It was as if she spoke to Vartan. “We will have many more children to replace those who will surely die today. And the next will also be a boy, and he will be named Vrej, revenge.”

  C H A P T E R 5

  Sassoun 1913

  M
ihran cursed his wife loudly, happily damning her and her entire clan, those within earshot and without. In his rantings he always gave preference to his mother-in-law. He loathed her and it flew off his tongue easily.

  “Let the donkeys have their way with you! You and your mother! Let them drop feces into your mouths. Aha! And your sisters. They are not better than you.”

  Mihran would usually have stopped here, but not today. It was a rare opportunity he had today.

  “Do you think I do not know how they whisper when my back is turned? And their husbands too! Line them side by side and not a full pair of genitals will you find. Aakkhh.” He shook his head in disgust and lifted both heavily muscled arms. “If it were not for these, you would have all starved by now! Remember that.”

  When he had wed the eldest daughter of the house, his father-in-law had looked at Mihran’s thin shoulders and shaken his head. But Mihran had trudged with him to the forge daily and had learned to be a better ironsmith than the old man had ever been.

  “Only God knows what I have endured at your hands. Let Him strike you blind. All of you! You deserve it. In a houseful of prostitutes and pimps is where I have lived. Nothing more than that!”

  Mihran always like to throw a thing or two to ensure everyone’s full attention to the end. He looked around the sparse room. The stool? No. There were only two, and it hurt his backside to sit long on the floor cushions. The lamp? It would be too difficult to replace. There were some books, but he could never purposely damage a book. His wife’s knitting? He realized this indecision was ruining his chances of cowing the females further, so he made long, decisive strides toward the water jug. It was across the room and very near to where his mother-in-law sat scowling at him. He picked it up and smashed it inches away from her feet. Water splashed everywhere as it shattered on the floor.

  Good, Mihran thought to himself. Her skirts were left soaked in places now as well.