As the Poppies Bloomed Read online

  Finally over the hill, Raffi let Meghr have his lead as quickly as was possible on the narrow, rocky ledges. There was no doubt that they would be followed, but Raffi was doing his best to make sure that they were caught in a village, with plenty of people around, so that the meeting might end in just a beating or a fine, instead of imprisonment or death.

  Nearly an hour later, Raffi entered the village of Khoronk. Poplars, willows, and maple trees shaded the narrow road and a good-sized stream ran the length of it. Upstream, Turkish women conversed and washed dishes.

  Raffi had felt rather than heard the gendarmes’ pursuit up the mountain trail, and he felt no surprise now to see them finally come thundering in on their horses, yelling and shouting as soon as they spotted Raffi.

  “You! Infidel!”

  On foot now, slowly leading Meghr by the reins, Raffi inhaled deeply and forced himself to turn slowly, feigning surprise at the commotion.

  There were three of them and they towered over Raffi in their saddles.

  “What is your business here, giaour?” one demanded, branding him as the non-Muslim “faithless” person he was.

  “I have no business here,” Raffi answered meekly. “I was looking for water for my animal.”

  “Where have you come from and what is your name?” one demanded.

  Raffi gave a false name and told them he had come from Diarbekir. One of the gendarmes demanded his identification papers.

  As a boy, Raffi had been sent to a monastery in Moush to study and could read well. But now, he wanted the Turks to believe that he was illiterate, a common villager, and not worth their time. He squinted at his papers and handed them to the gendarmes upside down.

  The papers were straightened, read, and thrown back at him.

  “There is much spying in these parts,” the same gendarme continued. “You are one of those troublemakers.”

  “No, Excellency, I am not. I went to visit relatives.” Raffi tried hard to sound respectful.

  “Give their names,” another demanded.

  “I would do so gladly, Excellencies,” he started, again promoting their status many-fold, “but I do not want to waste your valuable time. Because I must admit that by the time I reached there, I was told that I was too late. They had gone to America.” He drew out the pronunciation of the distant land in four rough syllables and laughed a little, shrugging, as if the relatives had emigrated to the moon.

  “Give us your papers. You fit the description of a man we are looking for, a messenger from Diarbekir.”

  Raffi handed them his falsified papers.

  “We saw you coming from the west, not the east,” the first gendarme accused. “You were lying from the start.”

  By now, men and women alike had stopped all activity to listen to the exchange. And this was just what Raffi had hoped for.

  “No, Excellency, you are mistaken, if you will forgive me for saying so. But I passed you as you prayed, and so you could not possibly be sure of which way I came. Unless,” Raffi drew out the last syllable thinly, “unless, it is in your religion to gaze to the right and to the left as you worship, then I could accept that you saw from which direction I came.” He shrugged again, as if leaving the decision completely in their hands. “For it is true, I know, that I passed as you were most devoutly praying,” he finished humbly.

  The Turks stared down, speechless. No devout Muslim would ever break concentration at prayers and observe passersby. They glanced at each other, lost for an answer. Raffi took this opportunity to bow his head to them to indicate a graceful end to the questioning and slip away.

  “Stop, giaour!” the first Turk commanded again.

  Raffi obeyed, biting the insides of his cheeks.

  “Where do you think you are going?”

  “To get water for my animal,” Raffi repeated dumbly, appearing to be slightly exasperated now.

  The crowd was silent no longer, Raffi realized. They were whispering to each other and backing away. Some were leaving altogether.

  “What is happening?” one gendarme asked the other.

  A woman who stood alone from the others spoke very quietly.

  “They say there is smallpox to the west. I heard so today.”

  Raffi turned to see a young Muslim woman, covered from head to foot in colorful silk scarves and a woolen skirt and jacket of the finest quality. She was quite tall and slender. Only her eyes were left uncovered, and they were dark and slanted.

  Raffi looked away quickly and made a slow show of wiping at a perspiring forehead and rubbing parched lips.

  The gendarmes peered at Raffi differently suddenly, then in unison mercilessly yanked their reins so widely that Raffi was suddenly looking into the rumps of three large steeds.

  “Leave here at once! Be on your way and do not let your horse drink anywhere. Go now!” they ordered and galloped off.

  Raffi turned Meghr around as ordered and headed back out of the village the same way he had entered. The crowd scattered quickly and some of the women screamed at him to hurry. He felt rocks at his back. He turned to search one last time for the young woman. She was hurrying along with the crowd, leading a small child, but their eyes met briefly, and Raffi thought she smiled.

  C H A P T E R 8

  The following night, Raffi’s tall, thin frame passed through his father’s courtyard. The front door swung open and he felt Vrej reach with both arms to help him remove his woolen coat. He slid his weary body onto a divan by the door.

  Across the room he watched Yeraz take one rushed step toward him and suddenly halt. She clasped her hands tightly together and squeezed her eyes shut. Raffi watched her lips moving silently in prayer, and then, he too closed his eyes and wordlessly leaned his head back against the wall.

  Anno considered Yeraz for a moment but decided she did not care to practice the same restraint. She hastened forward and pulled off Raffi’s boots and socks. A neighbor had informed them that Raffi had been seen returning, and so she was prepared with a copper tub of warm water and soap.

  Anno began washing his feet, gently at first, and when her brother still did not open his eyes to acknowledge her, she playfully tickled the bottom. Raffi pulled his foot back instinctively and flicked the top of her head sharply with his thumb and forefinger, never moving his head from its resting position.

  “Ay!” she protested.

  “Then behave,” Raffi responded and opened his eyes briefly to smile at her.

  As he did so, he paused. Even in his tired state he was caught unawares at how much her face had altered. He had expected to see the same round, shining face he had always known, and instead he saw delicate cheekbones where none had been visible before and large, brown, shadowed eyes looking back at him. Anno saw the surprise in his face and looked down.

  “Have you been ill, Anno?” he asked.

  Anno shook her head and hastily scrubbed at the top of his feet, careful not to show her face to him again.

  Raffi noticed her agitation and the water she had tipped onto the floor.

  “But you do not look well.” His voice slow and hoarse with fatigue, he persisted. “When was I last here? Three weeks ago? Not even a month. You were not like this.”

  Anno was afraid. She lifted and dried her brother’s feet and suddenly wanted only to hasten away with her tub of filmy water, away from the attention he had brought upon her and the questions he should not be asking.

  “I shall bring your slippers,” she mumbled, and with shaking hands she collected her bowl and moved away.

  Raffi nearly spoke out loud after her, but closed his mouth again. He took in the room full of people who stood clustered close and had never taken their eyes off him.

  “All went well,” he said simply.

  Raffi watched his father’s shoulders relax and heard a low grunt of relief.

  Raffi had not even told Vartan where he had gone or what his task had been. The fedayees were instructed to never tell. It was to protect both the fedayees themselves a
nd the villagers in case they were captured. One could not tell what one did not know.

  Yeraz hurriedly laid the low table with bread, yogurt, olives, and tomatoes and Vartan brought forward a cup of oghee.

  Anno was forgotten.

  C H A P T E R 9

  That evening, in Khoronk, the young Turkish woman stood before the town’s chief official, her husband. Her vision was blurred from the powerful, knuckled slap he had given her, but she was still standing.

  “I have brought a prostitute into my home! A prostitute who speaks to any man who passes! Did any other person on the street speak to those policemen but you? Man or woman?”

  Derya looked up and tried to focus on his face. Just that morning she had wondered if it were possible to loathe this man more. His red velvet fez had tipped to one side and only partly covered his shiny baldness. His round face was red and spittle dripped from the sides of his mouth. His belly heaved up and down with his heavy, angry breaths and his velvet vest had fallen completely away from his bulging belly. Behind him, as far away as possible, stood his first wife, quaking against a wall.

  It was hard to tell if he expected a response to his question. Thinking that ignoring him might be worse, Derya offered a quiet “No.”

  “Whore!” he screamed at her again and his fists pounded her to the floor this time. “You still speak then! You still have things to say! Well, let us see what you have to say when I am finished with you!”

  He yanked her to her feet and gave one, two, three concentrated blows across her face and then he swung her around and gave her three more on her backside. She toppled forward onto the carpets. After that she did not know any longer if he used his fists or his feet, she only felt her body jerked and rolled on the carpets of his large sitting room and was distantly aware of glass and lamps falling all around her. She thought she could still hear Mehmet screaming curses at her, but by then everything was muffled by an angry humming in her ears. He ground her face down into the carpet and her wounds burned and bled into the rough wool. The last blows came between her shoulder blades and she gasped for air before losing consciousness.

  After a long while, she thought, she awoke to the sound of breathing, raspy and short. Eventually, after deep concentration, she realized it was her own breath she heard and accepted that he had not killed her this time either. She was still belly down on the carpet where he had left her, and her head was slumped to one side. The pain came gradually from far away, and then it was so forceful that she started to weep but did not know if she was making a sound or not. She tried to open her eyes, but only one lid lifted. Was she alone? She could not move, but she tried to focus her vision with her one eye. She thought she saw something. A figure. A figure was creeping slowly closer and she knew it was her child, her son. And as he cowered nearer, she saw that his slanted eyes were now rounded with terror.

  C H A P T E R 10

  Anno was no longer finding it difficult to rise in the early morning. Although the air had become very chilly now that autumn was ending, she was much too uneasy to sleep well anymore, and she welcomed any activity at all to take her thoughts away from Daron.

  No one had come to her father’s house to discuss their betrothal. Two months had passed since the day of Lucine’s wedding and the scrapes on her arms were healed. Her long sleeves covered whatever slight scars remained.

  She folded the family’s bedding carefully and stacked it by a wall in the sleeping room, first her parents’, then Vrej’s, and lastly her own. Raffi’s quilted woolen mattress and blanket were at the bottom of the pile; they had been left there for days now because he was not at home. She did not ask where he was or when he would return, because she would be silenced with cold stares from the elders if she did. She had tried once before and had practically sunk into the floor with the intensity of the warnings she had seen there.

  Her mother had not removed Lucine’s bedding, but had instead moved it aside where extra pillows and blankets were kept for cold nights or visitors.

  “Anno! Where are you, girl?” Aunt Marie called out sharply. It was baking day and she had appeared at dawn to help Yeraz, just as Yeraz would do in turn for Aunt Marie’s household.

  Anno peeked around the door to the front room. Her aunt’s reddened and flour-dusted face looked back at her as she mechanically patted the last of the dough into plump, rounded discs. Anno looked away, surprised to discover how little guilt she felt at the reproach she saw there.

  Yeraz had taken the freshest of the lavash from the top of the pile and placed it on the table for the men along with cheese and cups of tea.

  Anno listened to their conversation as she braided her hair.

  “Maratuk was crystal clear this morning,” Uncle Hagop announced loudly. He was Vartan’s father’s brother and the oldest living member of their family.

  On the days that Mount Maratuk was unobscured and vivid, Uncle Hagop let it be known proudly, almost as if he were personally responsible for it being just that way. Vartan and Vrej nodded but never looked up from their breakfast. All knew that this was the old man’s way of relating the weather.

  If it looked like rain, he would say quietly, “Maratuk is lost behind the clouds. I either glimpsed a peak just now or I did not. I am not sure.” In the obscure winter months, he would shake his head sadly and murmur once, “Maratuk is not there.” He would seem slightly bewildered on those days when the clouds covered the beloved mountain peaks for days on end. He would come inside from the cold and once again shake his head at the household. It was as if he had not lived in this village, in these highlands, for over seven decades at all and did not understand the pattern of the seasons. To start the day without taking in the wide stretch of the mountain’s base and its long row of dipping and rising peaks always left him lost. Why should he not see it?

  In the summer, when there was almost always a slight haze from behind which Maratuk stood, he might make several announcements during the day. “Maratuk was clear as a bell just an hour ago. Now it is gone. Let us see what will happen.”

  Fog, thick and fast-moving, was also common year-round and teased Uncle Hagop mercilessly. At the evening meal he might blaze accusingly, “Maratuk was shining this morning, each peak. Then, at noon, it all disappeared.” He would pause to make sure that all present understood the full extent of this misfortune, that a day should begin with such promise of good weather for them all and then be unexpectedly cut short. Already worrying about the next morning, he would remove his fez and say, “We shall see about tomorrow.”

  “It will be a fine day for finishing up this field work, then,” Vartan announced now, rising from his cushion, and Vrej fluidly did the same and began wrapping himself in coat and hat.

  Including Uncle Hagop himself, the Vartanian men dispersed to begin the long day’s work.

  The entire village was joined together to thresh the wheat. Endless wagons full of straw were sorted from the grain and moved up and down the roads to be stored in the stables. The wheat was then either ground to flour or stored for various dishes to be enjoyed throughout the year.

  Today, Anno would join the other women and children of different households to winnow the grain. The wheat would be laid thinly on large, clean cloths and hit with sticks to separate it from the husks. Then, with shovels, they would toss the grain and chaff into the air so that the chaff would fly off and the grain would fall neatly to the cloth.

  Anno’s hair was now neatly braided down her back and she had on a long, faded woolen jumper that covered her to mid-calf. She looked down to make sure that the baggy trousers underneath fell evenly at her ankles before joining the women to sit on the cushions the men had just vacated.

  Aunt Marie wrapped thick slices of salted goat cheese into the warm lavash.

  “Let the winnowing of the wheat be over soon,” Yeraz sighed. “We are falling behind on storing the vegetables.”

  The rooftops were never bare this time of year. Tomatoes, sliced in half, were laid out there to
dry. Figs, apples, apricots, plums, and pears were dried whole and halved. Cabbages and vegetables were pickled. Walnuts and hazelnuts were gathered now and stored in their shells. Mulberries were stored in one corner, waiting for Uncle Hagop to begin his distilling.

  “Do you know,” Aunt Marie started, “it is two years now that I have noticed the eggplants in the merchant’s garden.”

  Anno choked but was able to keep the tea from spurting out of her mouth at this unexpected mention of Daron’s family. Her cheeks burned and she kept her head lowered as she composed herself. Yeraz stopped her earthenware cup in midair and looked fully at her daughter.

  Aunt Marie followed Yeraz’s distracted stare to settle on her niece, and wishing to quickly regain Yeraz’s full attention, she whipped out a cloth and dangled it directly under Anno’s nose. Anno mumbled something and snatched it gratefully.

  “They are not too fat. Rather long instead of fat and nearly perfect.” Marie continued. “Last year I looked upon them and thought it luck, but no, it seems they are the same again this year. What do you think it is, Sister Yeraz?”

  “I would like to see them too,” Yeraz murmured, expertly pulling off only as much lavash as she intended to eat from the large round.

  “I would like to see them as well, Mama,” Anno’s voice was even and contained. She knew this was a perfect and rare opportunity to actually go to Daron’s home. From an early age she had loved to work in the vegetable garden and had shown a true understanding of what the vegetables needed to thrive. She had even tried growing flowers from bulbs here and there in their small courtyard to border the vegetables. So she hoped now that her request should not raise any suspicions. She chewed her bread slowly and waited.

  “It must be a new seed then,” Aunt Marie continued.