The Seamstress of Ourfa Read online

  It was on one of his first visits to her farm, chaperoned by his mother. The early days of courtship. He’d been racking his brain for words to impress her with as she slid by with coffee when a sudden cacophony outside had startled them. Horses, dogs, even the pet lamb bleating. They’d thrown open the gates and a neighbour had run into their compound, dragging them all up onto the roof to see. Thick yellow smoke billowed in ugly clouds above Ourfa, the city Iskender and his mother had ambled out of just hours ago. Their home.

  Iskender stood so close to Khatoun he could smell the warmth from her neck and could have (if only he were bold enough!) reached out to still the gold acorn that trembled from her ear. They spent that night pacing the roof, watching the poisonous sky. As soon as it was light, his mother (his chaperone!) insisted on setting off home again, despite the pleas from Khatoun’s parents to stay. Nothing could dissuade her. Seyda had a sick husband at home and – according to Hacme the Fortune Teller – a peaceful death in bed with streaks of grey in her hair. This was not her time. This was their petulant Sultan, Abdul Hamid punishing the giavour minority for daring to protest mistreatment. All summer he’d been playing this game, despite the outrage of the European powers. Blindfold, stick a finger on the map, order the infidels dead. Eat another lokum.

  Seyda hovered impatiently in the courtyard as the lovers stood trying to say goodbye. “Come on, I need to see what’s happened to our home!” she barked, “Menug parov and let’s go.”

  Khatoun pushed a small piece of cloth into Iskender’s hand and he pressed down with his thumb, trapping her fingers for a second. Her eyes flew up to his, startled birds, and then she pulled away and fled indoors. Seyda was already off down the road and Iskender had to run to catch up with her. He trudged by her side, fingering the fabric in his pocket and discovered it was wrapped around something hard. He pulled it out and there, in his hand, was a single earring – a perfect gold acorn. It made his heart race and his armpits flood with sweat. His guts almost gave way and for a moment he forgot his name and couldn’t fathom why he was following the retreating figure of his mother away from love and towards certain death.

  They crept into the Armenian Quarter the long way round; following the stream to the south, turning north at the Dergah gardens and ducking through the back door of Bakladjian’s Bakery, from where they were able to leap their way home across the roofs. It was deathly quiet, as if a swarm of locusts had come and gone. When they finally reached home, Ferida’s bony fingers spirited them in through the skylight as if she’d been expecting them.

  The city was in turmoil, she told them, it was a miracle they had arrived in one piece. Six thousand Armenians were dead, three thousand sent soaring to heaven in the flames of the great Apostolic church that had been set on fire the previous night. Oh, Holy Virgin!

  A rapid, violent round of slaughter followed. The Armenian Quarter was curfewed, its shops looted. Outlying villages were burned and whole herds of sheep taken. Farmers started locking their tools away at night, sleeping with their scythes and pitchforks ready, their families curled up with the mules. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The Sultan’s attention had moved elsewhere. Both Iskender’s and Khatoun’s families were intact but nearly all of their livestock was gone.

  Travel outside the city centre became impossible. Iskender had discovered his angel but was now unable to see her. He became sick with terror, his bowel movements rare. The walls of the city seemed to offer some kind of security – at least their doors could be bolted and the shutters clamped down. Khatoun, though, lived in an unprotected home in the middle of nowhere. Her father and brothers worked in the jewellery district inside the city and were stuck by the curfew. Locked up in their workshop with the gold, leaving the women in Garmuj protected only by farm hands. And how loyal were they? It was only after Mertha received that visit from one of their neighbours – an oily man with two wives and a dozen children – that they got a bigger dog to stay in the house with them.

  “Mertha Hanum,” the neighbour had whined, “as a loyal citizen obeying our Sultan, I took some of your sheep which I now have safe at my farm. As a neighbour, please bless me so I may enjoy the flock with a clear conscience.”

  Mertha had handed him a loaf of freshly baked bread. “As a neighbour, please take this to your family and wish them well,” she’d replied, “but as a lowly giavour I do not possess the power of forgiveness. Perhaps you should ask the sheep.” And with a smile she’d stepped him away from the kitchen and closed the door in his face.

  Despite the big dog sleeping by the door Iskender hated the thought of Khatoun out there. Her and her sisters who still called their geese by pet names. As soon as he deemed it safe to walk the city again, he began trekking out to the eucalyptus groves overlooking the plains of Garmuj. He’d set off at dawn, before anyone could stop him, and sit the whole day watching a finger of smoke curl to the skies – letting him know that life within that precious courtyard continued as normal.

  He notched the days off impatiently, digging into the trunk of a tree with a sharp stone, mulling over news of the latest atrocities elsewhere. Knives, hoes, axes; all things used to facilitate daily life were now turned into cruel instruments of death against their owners. Van, Khizan, Constantinople. Armenians in every city, every village under attack until a group of Dashnaks occupied the Ottoman Bank, held the employees hostage and pushed the plight of the Armenians home to the Great Powers. Finally, European diplomacy prevailed and the Sultan, after a last few petulant rounds, let the giavour minority rest.

  With the curfew finally lifted, Iskender’s courtship of Khatoun resumed and as soon as she’d changed into long skirts, he married his child bride and brought her home in a flood of relief. She slept tucked up in the sweat of his arms and he instructed his sister Ferida never to leave her side – a difficult task as she managed to slip away constantly. She was always to be found up on the roof looking out towards the fields. Towards Garmuj.

  And then, once again, Fate dealt her hand. It had long been Iskender’s dream to present his father with a grandchild, but Abram, having waited patiently for Iskender to get married, closed his eyes at his desk one morning, sighed into his newspaper and was gone. Those long, languid evenings around the tonir listening to the mournful twang of his saz were now filled with bookkeeping as the family business fell into Iskender’s hands. His days were spent in cotton fields, overseeing the wheat harvest or fixing a mill. He often found himself travelling as far as Aleppo, leaving his most valuable commodity at home.

  “‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’the Tiger![1]’…It’s Macbeth – Shakespeare. He writes plays and…never mind…”

  His head ached with constant thoughts of mortality and his daydreams were no longer of seraphim but of angels of death. How dare love bring so much fear? He completely lost the art of laughter and once, when a merchant’s bawdy joke made him smile, he felt his lips crack open and bleed with surprise.

  Meanwhile, Khatoun kept busy. On her eighteenth birthday, her mother had turned up with a bundle in arms.

  “My sewing machine.You’d better have it,” she’d said, handing it over. “It’s time you learnt a craft. Time you started creating things.”

  And so poor Ferida, who preferred life over the stove, was forced to cut and bend cloth for two years simply so she could walk Khatoun to Digin Aghavni’s dressmaking classes, complaining vociferously about it the whole time.

  “All this getting a ‘craft’ is nonsense,” she’d whine to Iskender. “If your wife stopped running around and took fewer baths maybe she’d start a family and we could all stay at home.”

  By now Iskender’s thoughts had become so bleak he was not sure he wanted a family. Women died in childbirth all the time and he no longer trusted Fate. If they had a girl she’d be too pretty and someone – the wrong someone – would want her. And if they had a boy, he would be rounded up one day and never seen of again. And where would they put a baby anyway? Their
house was tightly packed as it was. Mother, daughter, brother, wife. It was enough. And how would he support a larger family?

  And who already suspected the truth?

  That everything – the cotton, the wheat, the import-export, everything his father had handed down with pride – was spiralling out of Iskender’s control? That despite hours spent over the accounts, their money was slipping through his fingers. He had no idea how his father, God rest his soul, had done it. The taxes alone were crippling; the property tax, the cotton tax, the construction tax on every brick they fixed on an old building. The window tax, the sanitation tax, the money taken for education that never found its way to Armenian schools. The police raids every few months that left them light of donkeys. And the thuggish gendarmes who accompanied the tax collectors who, despite their oiled hair and bespectacled faces, were the worst thieves of all. The family had farmed the same lands for more generations than were in the Bible and they still had to pay rent and hand over a tenth of their crops straight to the government.

  By the time Khatoun had fallen pregnant Iskender knew that, no matter how hard he pored over the books each night, the figures would never add up. Somewhere, somehow, there was a leak. Someone loyal to his father perhaps, but not to him. He searched the blank faces of his foremen and employees but the same fractured smile came back from all of them.

  “Sorry, Efendi, yes, Efendi – I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  Every night Iskender drank more and slept soundly enough, but as dawn broke over the slow rise and fall of his wife’s chest he could feel the apprehension creep back. And then, as he sat on the edge of his bed one night wondering where he’d gone wrong, his wife had nudged his hip with her foot, smiling at him as she placed his disbelieving hands over her stomach. And, as he bent in towards the life growing there, his panic had subsided for just one second before the familiar rush of bile, the acrid stench of fear hit. And she’d laughed at him in that way of hers and he knew. Knew that he held existence in his hands and had to protect it. It was time to go.

  He’d started with the family. As they sat around the fireplace one evening, a few months into the pregnancy, he stood, cleared his throat and spat into a handkerchief.

  “What do you need, son?” Seyda asked, kicking Ferida’s leg under the blanket.

  “Nothing. Just sit.” He rarely spoke out and Ferida hung on her haunches for a moment ready to go fetch, before settling back down. The women looked up at him as Iskender sketched out his plan. The fields would be bartered, the business closed down, the house packed up and sold. It was the end of an era. Sultan Hamid was not to be trusted; it was time they all realised that. Uprisings were brewing in all of the provinces (the taxes, the army conscriptions, the ability to travel freely and just about everything else) which meant reprisals were just down the road. In the next round of slaughter they may not be so lucky. Each woman should shut down her life, say goodbye to her friends, and gather whatever would fit in a wagon. They were going to Aleppo in the south where he had business contacts and life was safer. Aleppo still had a decent economy and plenty of business opportunities. It was a cosmopolitan city, which was a good thing. Too many foreigners around for the Armenians to be publicly harassed. In a few months he hoped to have everything settled. That was all.

  The women were silent. Grundug, startled by the sudden quiet, began to whine and scratch at the door and Iskender let Ferida’s dog into the salon for the first time without complaint. Which is when they knew he was serious.

  The months swept by. Each day Iskender taking trips to the outlying fields. He stopped the red-cheeked boys as they ploughed grooves in the earth with their oxen, explaining that next years’ crop would belong to someone else. He visited the threshers, the winnowers, the wholesale merchants, the workmen who sharpened his scythes. He went to see his spinners, telling them to dry their tears and compensating them with dresses. Letting those that didn’t own their wheels keep them. He watched yards of blue cloth spill like endless skies from their vats of dye for the last time. Stood patiently as the weavers wound cloth onto bolts for shipping, trailing his fingers along the smooth spine, telling them all, “Come spring, this will no longer be mine.”

  His foremen were shocked. Had they done something wrong, they wanted to know. “Sorry, Efendi. Sorry.” He haggled and fought and gave up struggling for good prices, just wanting to be rid of everything and then stood staring at fields that were no longer his, etching them into his memory. Knowing what his father would have said. Avoiding his mother’s eyes. The bank swelled with his money and he went over the figures in detail, carefully extracting an amount for travel, their new home and their next business – whatever that may be. And finally, he sent telegrams to Aleppo, telling his friends they were on their way.

  Seyda was distraught. Ourfa was the only home she’d ever known. She’d been born two streets away, had circled this neighbourhood on her wedding day and again with her husband’s remains. Her four children had been conceived within these walls. She could trace all their lives in the neatly folded blankets and tablecloths buried in cedar. It was impossible to decide what to get rid of. Which carpets to keep and which should be thrown. The newest? The most expensive? Or those that told a story with every patch and hole? She began to see things in the spaces left behind. The faded square on the wall where her husband’s photograph had hung. The emptiness that slapped her each time a piece of furniture exposed the bare floors. She took to the rooftop for air, spending hours overlooking the city.

  On the hill in the distance was Nimrod’s Throne, its two slender columns silhouetted against the sky. Abraham’s pool with its precious carp shimmered below. Each of her children had sat at the edge there trying to name the fish when they were little, watching the larger ones shadow the small. Far in the horizon, beyond the flat roofs, the fertile plains that her husband had farmed stretched as far as she could see. When her husband was alive they’d had wealth beyond their dreams. Now Abram was dead and she was preparing to slip away with a few belongings in a wagon. She tried to think of one precious thing apart from her Bible to take with her and all she could come up with was his image. His belongings were gone, his businesses sold and now she was deserting his bones. Watching the city fold into the night, she knew she would end up taking practically nothing in hand but much in mind. And thankfully that would fade with age.

  Ferida became practical. She organised saucepans and pots into piles, discarding the oldest except for her battered pilaff pan. She inspected the bedding, spent nights stitching up moth holes and restuffing quilts, ruining her eyes in the dark. Her wardrobe shrank to a handful of dresses. All the fancy things she’d once saved for another life were given to the Protestant orphanage. She’d all but given up on marriage and knew what her life would be. She had few friends and her flirtations were all in her mind and so easily transported. In fact, the idea of having another go at life cheered her immensely. She toyed with the idea of reverting to her original name, Vartere, the name she’d used before her Turkish friends changed it; but as she tried whispering it to herself in front of the mirror she felt silly. Perhaps it was the side parting in her hair. She brushed it straight back. Still no good. Possibly it would fit once in Aleppo. Maybe, just maybe, life somewhere else would be different. The image in front of her smiled.

  Khatoun spent the last months of her pregnancy stitching. She sewed as if that were all she had ever done in her life. The piles of scraps she’d collected over the years were transformed into quilts in intricate designs. The closets and chests were thrown open, their clothes dragged out to air in the sun. Nothing went untouched. Hems were dropped, sleeves lengthened, coats turned into jackets, dresses into bags. She had to be dragged from the machine at night in order to eat. Eventually, shortly before they were due to depart, and with a newborn at her breast she declared herself done. Every member of her family had something. Those that were staying behind had keepsakes and comforters and those that were going forward had new wardrobes for the
ir new life.

  In their last few days she spent as much time as possible with her parents, worrying Iskender. Maybe, he fretted, she wouldn’t want to go. Maybe she’d put her foot down and stay. Modern wives did things their own way these days. Her sisters, Bahie and Lativa, dangled Baby Alice in their arms, kissing her over and over and fattening her with love and slipped treats whenever Khatoun’s back was turned. On the last day, her father took her aside and hung a heavy gold chain round her neck.

  “Time to go. Time to follow your man. And always time to remember your family.” He tapped the intricate watch dangling from the chain, cigarette in hand, “Always time.”

  Mertha gave up the Bible inscribed with the names of her family from as far back as Mosul. She’d added ‘Alice’ to the bottom and placed her finger in the empty space beneath, stroking it with a sly grin before closing the fat book and handing it over. And so it was done.

  Iskender stretches out on the floor, lets out some gas and pulls Baby Alice in closer. There are just hours of darkness between them and dawn, which will see them loaded up and on the road to Aleppo. The stairs creak and Khatoun gets up from her perch and descends. She removes her slippers and steps past her sleeping family. All of them gathered to say goodbye except for her brothers. Mother, father, sisters. All dreaming. She lies down behind Iskender and threads her arm through his, her breath warm against his neck.

  Iskender smiles. There had been a time when all things spoke to him – the sky, the wind, the rain, the sun, the moon. The walls were once wood accustomed to the crawl of insects, the song of birds. They told of fat veiny hands hoisting them into place, of cool, wet plaster dressing them. They echoed with vile gossip and hid fearful shadows but now…now they were just walls. Walls that held up a house that would be empty in hours. The shadows are silent, the night stirred only by the expectation of what is to come. Iskender is surrounded by family and there is no leaving home. Home lies within.