“In a little while. Or you can return for me when you find some water. That would be better.”
Bedros looks to Lucine. They both know she isn’t making any sense.
Mairig reaches into her bosom where a few gold coins are hidden. “Here. Take it. The rest is with the baby.”
“We should stay together,” Lucine insists.
Mairig shakes her head. Then she does something she’s done before. She closes her mind to the world and to her children who remain in it.
“What will you eat?” Lucine whimpers.
“This,” says Mairig, looking down at her hands. In the moonlight, Bedros sees the New Testament open in her palms. Mairig’s delicate fingers lift a page and rip it loose, releasing a sound like a slap in God’s face. She crumples the page into a tiny ball and, lifting it up to her lips, presses it into her mouth.
“What are you staring at?” she snaps. “If God will not eat his words, then I will do it for him. Now go. And take Aram with you.”
CHAPTER 21
God’s Will, In?allah
LUCINE LEAVES MAIRIG on the open road, under the eye of a merciless god. She leaves her own heart there too. It lies beating in the cradle of Mairig’s cupped palms. She tells herself that the heart is a burdensome organ and leaving it behind is the best thing to do. The rest of her body moves forward, following the hunched backs of other deportees but her thoughts are like a whirlwind, circular and fierce. She’s glad The Missionary Herald is gone. She was stupid to take it in the first place. What good did she think it would do her on the march? For that matter, what good will Kemal’s drawing do, still tucked inside her dress? Where would Aram and Bedros be now if she had listened to him?
She carries herself, head heavy, reluctant lids lowered.
When she does look around, Lucine sees everything differently now. Everywhere she looks, in every face and every pebble, is an opportunity for death or survival. Bedros and Aram are no exception. She sees hope’s ghost circling around their shrunken faces. Every now and then, Bedros tries to pry his hand from hers, but she only squeezes harder. Aram is fastened to her back now, wrapped and propped up by their only blanket. Two long sticks protrude from the blanket, parallel to the ground. She plans to use them to hold up the blanket, transforming it into a shield against the biting desert wind. Two largish leaves are pressed flat against her belly. She can use them to clean the baby when they finally rest. Eyes shrunken, lips dry, she isn’t sure if he will survive.
Bedros does not ask for water. He does not ask her when they will go back for Mairig. He does not ask her anything and for this she is most grateful. His silence is so merciful that if she had a heart left, there would be tenderness in it.
One of the old women from Tokat walks beside them. Lucine keeps her eyes fastened to the earth and does her best to discourage conversation. “Daughter, water,” the woman says, extending an open palm.
Lucine shakes her head and looks away. I am no one’s daughter now.
A man she does not recognize, one of the few male deportees left, turns around.
“There is no water yet, Auntie,” he says. “But we are soon approaching the Tokma Su River. There will be water there.”
“Eh, In?allah,” she responds with a sigh. “May God will it.”
God’s will. In?allah. The phrase rings in Lucine’s ears like a familiar and angry bell. This mysterious and vengeful god and his unpredictable will have been evoked every day of her life. In moments of grief and exaltation, in casual comments exchanged without much thought, and in solemn whispers uttered every evening in the Lord’s Prayer. Lucine hears it whispered to her as an infant. May she be a lucky child, In?allah. And it continues from there, every day, until this dirty miserable day when she is walking hungry and desperate with no parents and two younger siblings, the sun at her back and dust at her feet. Suddenly she is swollen with anger. If God’s will materialized as a pitcher of water, she would throw it back up to the sky. Wasn’t it his will that placed her here? His will that killed Hairig? His will that took Anush, broke Mairig’s spirit, and caused her to give up? No, Lucine will no longer pay any attention to him or his will. She discards his will, exhaling it out of her body in the form of her breath. She drops it to the earth and steps over it, feeling lighter and more in control.