Between the Two Rivers: A Story of the Armenian Genocide Read online

  “Y’abnayya?” The maid’s voice summoned her to the mistress’s chambers.

  Finally!

  Mannig scurried over with great anticipation to learn about her job. I can do any chores. I am a hard worker. Romella called me jarbeeg. She must promise the mistress to work from dawn to dusk.

  Light from the hurricane lamp flickered on the mistress, now slouched in bedding where earlier she lounged amid an array of minders. Mannig held her breath and stood by the brass curtain rings on the wall. A brown lace-covered quilt lay over the mistress from neck to ankle, and pink satin sheets draped to the floor. A jarring element in the soft atmosphere, the woman’s feet were thrust out at Mannig. Seeing the woman’s starfish-like sprawl, Mannig held her breath. Is she dead? Amahn! My luck ends here. She tiptoed toward the head. When heavy breathing raised the pretty quilt up, Mannig relaxed.

  “Did Y’abnayya eat enough?” the mistress snorted without uncovering her face.

  “She ate more than any two broods put together,” the maid said, and shooed Mannig aside while she drew the mid-room curtain and fastened its loose edge to the opposite wall. “The ibriq of water and the bed pan are in the usual corner.”

  Mannig glanced at the spot. Aha! My job is to empty the bed pan. How easy—after all, dung collecting was her expertise.

  “You can leave us alone, now,” the mistress grunted, waving her hand at the maid. When the door squeaked shut, she groaned, “Get in.”

  That doesn’t make sense. Mannig stood still.

  The mistress opened her eyes. “Where are you, Y’abnayya?”

  “Here,” Mannig responded even though she disliked having lost her true name. She leaned her head within the mistress’s view.

  “Y’allah, y’allah. Get in,” the woman insisted, flapping the sheet and exposing plump nude legs. “What is the matter with you?” She sat upright, her bare breasts dangling over the satiny pink. “Do I have to drag you in myself? Crawl under my quilt!”

  Mannig retreated two steps back, smack against the lantern.

  “Get in! Why do you think I wanted you? You must do something for being fed and sheltered. Don’t you like my food?”

  Mannig nodded.

  “There will be a lot more for as long as you remain in the Qasr—that depends on how you pleasure me.” The mistress reclined on her pillow and wiggled her feet. “Get in, under the quilt!”

  Mannig sneaked a look at the closed door, wondering if she should scat like a cat.

  “Get under the quilt next to my feet,” the mistress ordered. “Scratch the bottoms of my feet. I want you to scratch my soles. Y’allah. Get going.”

  Scratch the bottoms of feet? Mannig’s eyes widened, for the strangeness rather than ease of the chore. She remembered being stranded in the desert without shoes. What relief after Romella poked a needle to pull the thorns out of the soles of my feet! The mistress needed similar respite, except she said ‘scratch.’ I’m so lucky to get food for merely scratching feet.

  “I cannot sleep at nights unless someone scratches my soles,” the mistress moaned—resignation and pain resonating in her voice, but also with a hint of anticipation. “Lie down on the mattress by my feet and keep warm under the quilt. Then scratch the bottoms of my feet. Scratch, scratch, scratch! Until I fall asleep. Begin!”

  Mannig crawled up on the mattress and timidly touched the woman’s foot with her fingers.

  The mistress suddenly sat up and grabbed Mannig’s hand. “I will show you how I want it done, Y’abnayya. Use your fingernails, gently but firmly. I want your fingernails to creep up and down—each hand on a foot; five fingers on each sole. See? There is nothing to it. Now, you do it. That’s it, girl. Don’t worry about hurting or tickling. Yes! You are good. Press more. Poke in deeper. Don’t skip any part—along the toes, the edge of the heels … Oh, you are a good one … Ah, that’s exactly right.”

  She dropped her head on the pillow with a moan of great relief.

  When Mannig saw the mistress closing her eyes in ecstasy, she pulled her hands away.

  “What are you doing?” the mistress yelled. “Scratch, scratch. Until I am asleep. Do you hear?”

  “Yes,” Mannig said.

  This will take longer than I had expected. She crouched on the mattress and pulled the end of the quilt over her. She scratched nonstop while the mistress grunted “Ah” and “Oh.” After ten minutes, a drowsy voice whispered, “You are good … I certainly picked a good maidservant this time … You are the best … Ah … Don’t you dare stop.”

  Thirty minutes later, the woman seemed as still as a mountain.

  Mannig stopped. Before she could relax her cramped fingers, the woman snarled, “No, no. I am still awake.”

  Curled up at the foot of the soft mattress, beneath the warm, soft quilt, with a full stomach and scratching the woman’s soles without falling asleep before the mistress did, became torture in eternity—purgatory and hell wrapped into one.

  Sometime later, past the deep midnight, Morpheus captured both of them simultaneously.

  

  For her stomach’s sake, Mannig tolerated the entrapment for several nights. Throughout the day she agonized over her wakefulness at the woman’s feet. She cringed at the accumulated crud in her fingernails and suffered a crook in her neck. She couldn’t block out the feel of the sweat oozing from the khatoon’s thighs. Peece-kezi! The woman unabashedly blasted kaki hodair, putrefying inside the quilt with intestinal gases. Mannig poked her head out only to be whacked by belching halitosis. The audibility of bodily noises was a double-edged luck—they alerted Mannig to escape the fetid assault by poking her head out and, at the same time, perpetuated the woman’s wakefulness deeper and longer into the nights.

  Throughout the day, Mannig wondered about her predicament. What’s wrong with royal meals of fresh milk and honey? She hop-scotched, jump-roped, and giggled with the children in the daylight, but at night, she prayed for a plan to extricate herself from the mistress.

  At dusk, the mothers called in their children, leaving Mannig alone in the courtyard. She accepted her separation from the household siblings as the norm, a routine befitting an orphan of her status. One evening, the sight of familial hugging and caressing tormented her. A twinge in her heart defined her desolation. I’m irrelevant in the Qasr. Not so in the khan. She longed to huddle with other orphans. I miss Dikran! Khan, sweet khan—my home.

  The sky in its distant endlessness appeared closer to her than any person within this palatial abode. She fell on her knees and prayed loudly in Armenian so God would hear above the storm engulfing her from within. “Haji-doo, my Haji-doo! You said God listens to children. Tell Him … tell God … that I am praying to Him. He is on my mind. He is in my heart. And His name is between my lips. Dear God, release me from this job.”

  “Y’abnayya? Y’abnayya?” the maid called from the lower courtyard.

  Work beckoned. She dawdled on the stairs to delay the loathsome chore. So what if her patron were deprived of her ritualistic nightly pleasure for a few more moments? I don’t care. But what was the alternative?

  When she opened the dividing curtains, the mistress, sprawled on her mattress, waited in her domain. Mannig crouched by her feet and proceeded with the “gentle but firm” scratching with “five fingers on each sole” routine. She performed her job dutifully, consistently, repeatedly, over and over again, and again, and again until lulled by her own ministrations.

  She fell asleep.

  Not for long.

  Kick, kick, kick! Mannig was rudely awakened by the mistress’s thrust of feet. Kick, kick, kick—blows on her head, nose, and temples—relentless. The insolence angered Mannig, who was disgusted by the woman’s cruelty. The question, “What is wrong with this?” transformed into, “Nothing is right.” A strange household I am in, she thought. They call me Y’abnayya here and Hey Girl, there. They stripped me of the one and only heritage I claim—my Adapazar name—and they cast me at the bottoms of their feet.

/>   Her free spirit stirred. The need to be someone rather than to have things finally answered the question. Everything was wrong at the Qasr.

  The mistress who had promised to take an orphan under her wing had instead thrust her under her feet.

  Mannig hurled the quilt off.

  Her feet took wings; she flew away.

  8—Beyond Staying Alive

  Mannig dashed from the malodorous, gawky feet of the rich toward the stale smells of the khan.

  Soft breezes that sighed along the curved roads combined with the moldy scent of the grungy burlap dress rolled under her arm. The khan silhouetted against the early rays of dawn. Her heart stirred. My palace. The fantasy of a life she had abandoned two months earlier drew near.

  She entered the dilapidated building with great expectations. Dank air chilled her, then motionlessness baffled her, but it was the silence that reawakened her sensibilities. Everyone is still sleeping. The sight of a curled-up body in her own prized niche disheartened her. How about Dikran’s place? She moaned at the sight of the vacant mat until she spied his favorite blanket tucked under it. He’s already foraging for food. Caressing his bedding, she sprawled on it. He’ll be so glad to see me. Her inner peacefulness and the surrounding quiet lulled her into a deep sleep.

  “What are you doing here?” Dikran awakened her a few hours later, his face and voice unsmiling. He questioned her sanity for giving up the security of the qasr for subsistence in a hovel. He stroked her shiny, clean hair then touched the hem of her floral dress. “You could own pretty clothes for the rest of your life and never worry about tomorrow. Instead you’re gambling with staying alive.”

  Sweet voice! More so, she relished his arms, warming her all over. “I wanted to be here, like this, always. Nothing there seemed worth it.”

  “I missed you, too. But sentiments have displaced your good judgment.”

  “The mistress hurt me, inside and out,” Mannig whimpered. “I wanted to be like you—to stand tall, proud, and unafraid. I would rather take my chances finding food in the alleys than stuff myself at her table. She stripped me of my name! I could not stay and still call myself an Armenian.”

  “Aha! Luxury made you a philosopher,” Dikran said. “Or should I say, a patriot?”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “No. I am admiring you—but only for a moment,” he said, pinching her arm. “The mistress put real flesh on your bones. It won’t be long before hunger twists in your stomach, haggardness paints over your pink cheeks, and filth coats your skin. Let’s see if you can garner wisdom then.”

  “I’ll eat with the professional mourners again,” Mannig protested. “Can even bring some for you.”

  “Not necessary,” Dikran stood with a sudden air of confidence. “I eat with the men at the church.”

  “What men? Armenian church?”

  “I stumbled upon them last week.” He described approaching several men, speaking Armenian and clothed in western suits, huddled in the courtyard. “They hired me to locate Armenians hidden in Mosul’s nicks and crannies. At the end of the day, I inform them of my discoveries and they invite me to eat with them. I go to church every day.” He paused to make the sign of the cross. “Their mission is to save the orphans.”

  Orphans? “Did you tell them about me?”

  “No, because you were lucky to live at that qasr,” Dikran said. “I don’t fully understand everything they talk about. I’ve heard them speak about arabization in deference to the Muslim families who harbor us. They say communities throughout the world have finally recognized the extent of the Armenian massacre. So they’re showing concern for the great tragedy. Some say saving the orphans will save humanity at large; others hope to re-establish the monarchy on our ancestral territories. The intelligentsia wishes to repatriate us in a homeland, somewhere, sometime in this year of 1920.”

  Mannig only understood home. “Can I go to Adapazar?”

  “Don’t build up your hopes,” Dikran’s voice lost its sparkle.

  “Where will I go? My Mama died … they all died.”

  “These philanthropists have grandiose plans,” Dikran said. “But, so far, all they’ve done is raise hope like a mountain above the haze.”

  “What will happen to me?”

  “I don’t know,” Dikran continued, accentuating arched brows above wide-open jet black eyes. “Whatever these important people do, I hope it will improve our lives. I’ve heard them say they ought to register the orphans and enroll them into a vorpanotz.”

  Vorpanotz? A new word for Mannig. But Vorp meant orphan, so she surmised it meant a school for children.

  From the time she was plucked from her normal life and deported across the Anatolian Plateau, she dreamed of returning to her kindergarten class in Adapazar. She visualized sitting at a desk, raising her index finger to answer questions her kindergarten teacher, Miss Romella, posed to the pupils.

  Mannig couldn’t wait for Dikran’s gentlemen to start the school. I will learn everything. Answer all questions. Even get a diploma like Miss Romella. She remembered how her teacher, unable to carry her trousseau along the deportation route, discarded satin-embroidered linens in the desert, salvaging only a yellowing rolled parchment tied with a pink ribbon—her diploma. Mannig became obsessed with that scenario and the importance of education.

  Her thoughts churned with a torrent of plans for entering the vorpanotz. I must get registered. Right away. While my hair is clean and shiny, and dress, pretty.

  “Will you take me to the church?” she asked.

  “I will also speak to them about you.”

  In her delight, she teased him, “You mean you want to get rid of me?”

  With a sad look, he said, “Never. My dream is to own a qasr of my own one day and share it with you.” He then finger-combed her chestnut hair, brushed it behind her ears, and, tracing her widow’s peak, added, “Your mistress must have been really good to you. Your beauty, um, spirit has become visible. Even your lower lip is not split or festering.” Pointing to the wooden gabgobs on her feet, he added, “You will not nick your bare toes on rocks anymore, either.”

  Touched by his knowledge of her ailments, a pang of guilt filled her heart. Should she forsake him for the sake of schooling?

  During that restless night, his concerned voice echoed in her head—soon to be vanquished by visions of a classroom.

  

  When Dikran stopped by a mud-brick fence the next morning, Mannig remembered foraging the neighborhood not far from Adrine’s place and reprimanded herself for failing to notice that it enclosed a church.

  Seeing a mob of milling children in the courtyard, Dikran gave a surprised look and then stepped forward with Mannig in tow. He shoved to the left and scooted to the right, jostling his muscular and tall physique above the figures of the emaciated orphans. The sun grew high, and rancid moisture mingled with the fusty smells of poverty.

  Two effendis sat at a small table in front of the carved, tall mahogany entrance to the sanctuary, each jotting names in a ledger.

  An orange-and-black-spotted butterfly fluttered and perched on the shoulder of the hatless one. He slanted a tender look at its quivering wings, stroking its tiny head. His honey-colored eyes below a wide forehead attracted Mannig. He looked like a favorite person in her life. But who?

  “The butterfly is good luck,” she heard him whisper, barely moving his lips, lest he startle it. Nevertheless, it spread its wings and flew out of sight into the sun. “She’ll bring good luck to someone else,” he said, his thoughts seemingly in flight, too. He dipped his pen into the ink well and narrowed his gaze at the ledger. “Who’s next?”

  “Good morning, Barone,” Dikran said.

  Surprised, he asked, “Shouldn’t you be searching for lost orphans in Mosul?”

  The second effendi scanned the horde of children and slanted his chin to the right. “You think we need more?”

  “Every one of them, lest they perish.”

&nbs
p; “Here’s an orphan from my khan,” Dikran said, positioning Mannig in front of him.

  The effendis scrutinized her from head to toe. Each puckered a curious lip. The man with the receding chin spoke first. “Your khan must be a palace and she the princess.”

  “Healthy, groomed, and well-fed!” asserted the Barone, in a voice matching the gentleness of his honey-colored eyes.

  Dikran stuttered, “She has no family. Nobody. Nothing.”

  “Look at them flocked in the courtyard,” chided the first effendi, and thumbing rapidly through the ledger, he slammed its black leather jacket closed. “Our mission is to save the abandoned, the strayed—before evil grips them. Can’t you see how well off this girl is under your care? She is clothed, fed, and certainly safe from being converted to Islam. You make us Armenians very proud. We need more fellows like you.” The effendi then motioned to Dikran to move aside and, shaking his head, added, “She does not qualify under our mission guidelines.”

  He then pointed to the next girl. “What’s your name, child?” He prepared to enter it in the ledger.

  They want her—not me!

  Mannig’s heart sank into a suffocating pit. She wanted to rebel, yell, and hit; to beg, tug, and plead her case, but she froze, except for glaring at the next girl’s raggedy garb, tangled hair, and stink-veiled face.

  Dikran pulled Mannig aside. “Things work out for the best,” he said, shooing her off to the khan. “I will bring food for you when I finish my work.”

  Mannig wept all the way back to the khan. Her eyes still shone with tears when Dikran returned at dusk. “The Barone noticed your disappointment and gave these raisins to comfort your soul.” He stuffed a handful into a pocket bread and broke it in half. Before he bit into his share, he said, “I am sad for you, just as much.”