WITHIN HOURS, LUCINE’S world and everything in it turns to dust. Sound is the first thing that deserts them. The clamor of Sivas, its people and animals, the clang of its copper pots and tin coffee trays, grows faint with each step they take, until all that is left is the creaking of wagon wheels and the shuffling of feet. The paved roads slip away, stone by stone. Storied structures give way to small wooden abodes, until they too are sparse. And the deportees, their lips locked against the grimy air, have lost their tongues. In the six hours since they began marching, the family has exchanged few words. Only the baby, nestled deep in Mairig’s bosom, peppers the silence with random noises.
Anush, whose cream-colored bonnet hides a head of optimistic ribbons, is tucked deep in the back of the covered wagon with Mairig and Aram. She sings a ditty about a little partridge, cooing at Aram’s broad, smiling face.
“Gagavik, gagavik,” she croons.
Lucine walks in front of the wagon, where she can be sure to see everything. She holds the missionary book with Kemal’s drawing tucked inside. It reminds her that somewhere under this same hot sun is an ordered world of books, and schools and libraries, a world where a boy can draw pictures for a girl. The smell of lemons and perspiration from the coachman, Firat, drifts backward and into the wagon’s cavity, but no one complains. He is a Muslim man, a talisman of sorts. There is safety in that body, in that smell. The Kurd has placed Bedros at his side, and now and then, when the road is smooth, he lifts the boy’s spirits by giving him the reins. He listens to Bedros boast about his skill with the slingshot and smiles, revealing teeth like yellow chicks in the nest of his scraggly beard.
The caravan of villagers—some two thousand souls—stretches out for several kilometers before her, reminding Lucine of a serpent twisting and turning its body up and down the dusty road. When an oxcart stalls or a family slows down for an elderly loved one, the slender bodied snake looks as if it has just swallowed a mouse. Lucine knows that she too is a part of this snake, but she tries to imagine herself as an insect on its back, able to fly away on a whim. The terrain is mostly flat until noon, when, just as the sun is at its cruelest, they are forced to start an uphill trek. Lucine hears the groans of those without oxcarts. Acquaintances, friends, and strangers march ahead like a band of gypsies. She tries to console herself with the idea that soon they will be marching downhill. She fixes her eyes upon the next hill and resolves not to ask for food until they reach the top, where she hopes the gendarmes will let them rest.
A spattering of men, too old to imprison and too young to conscript, accompany their families. Lucine makes a game of counting them, stopping at seven. The father of Gevork the apothecary walks behind his wife and daughter-in-law who take turns carrying the newborn. Lucine wonders how far the baby’s g?bek ba?? has traveled down the river. She wonders what the old man’s done with that silly white robe that belonged to his son. Everything that seemed so important days ago is now as worthless as a pebble.
A few meters to the left, the pregnant Arsineh walks slowly beside her husband, Vartan Berberian, the butcher known to trade a prime choice of meat for a quick glance at a girl’s feet. (It was the delicate fold where ankle met heel that he couldn’t resist, not that the Melkonian girls ever complied.) He pants under the weight of two large sacks carried on each shoulder. By the pungent smell of things, the sacks contain links of sujouk and basterma, the preserved meats and sausages that will sustain him and Arsineh on the journey ahead.
The governor has allowed a few men to accompany their families as a gesture intended for the benefit of Miss Graffam and the foreign missionaries who, everyone knows, correspond with the West. Miss Graffam stunned Muammer Bey when she announced she would be “braving the journey with these good Christians.” Every so often, Lucine turns her head toward the tail end of the caravan, where Miss Graffam follows them in her smart hat and sturdy gait. Her presence is a kind of declaration, that their lives matter, that Hairig’s life mattered.