The caravan from Sivas follows a narrow bend in the road that widens suddenly, revealing the bridge at Tokma Su and the vast plain beyond. A slow-moving line of oxcarts as far as the eye can see proceeds before them. Lucine thinks longingly of their own dumb animal, whose burden she now carries herself. The people with oxcarts are members of an earlier flock, deportees from some other province of Turkey who share the same fate. As they approach the bridge, Lucine begins to see the bodies of those who came before them, who succumbed to hunger or thirst and now lie dying or dead on the side of the road.
To her immediate right, a pair of vultures pulls at the intestines of a woman’s body. The larger one is perched on the woman’s chest, his black tail feathers batting at what was once her chin. Lucine places a hand over Bedros’s eyes.
Neither one of them mentions Mairig, but the image of her is there before them, perched under a tree, an open invitation to friend and foe alike. Perhaps Hairig’s ghost will hide her. It is a comforting thought and one Lucine holds on to. His words drift back to her now: Sometimes we have to be like a riverbank, twisting and turning along with the earth, withstanding swells and currents. Enduring.
The plain on either side of the bridge is dotted with villagers, their white ?alvar pants blowing in the wind. Some launch insults and stones. The more ambitious pick at the bodies of those not yet dead. Two village women, their heads covered in piety, think nothing of stripping a fallen deportee of her clothing. The younger of the two does the stripping, while the older one checks for hidden seams and pockets filled with loot.
Lucine removes Aram from his place on her back and presses him to her chest, her arms forming a makeshift fence around him.
Miss Graffam runs up and down the bridge, trying to make sure no one is badly hurt. She looks and behaves so differently than she did in Lucine’s classroom; gone are her pressed skirts and even more pressed manners. The calm authority of her once-serene face is replaced by wild eyes. The only thing familiar about her now is the big hat on her head. It impresses a handful of Kurdish villagers enough to sell her some water, which she offers to her former students. Lucine accepts without a word. Putting the wet ladle to her lips brings forth a kind of anticipation akin to joy, but her swollen tongue lets in only a mouthful of water at a time. It’s as if her throat forgot how to swallow. Lucine does her best to drink what she can, taking care not to make eye contact. The days when she strove to catch her teacher’s eye are gone. Now she wishes only to be invisible.
She dips the corner of Aram’s swaddling cloth in the water and puts it in his mouth. Aram’s chapped lips suck urgently at the wet cloth for a few moments but his face, full of anticipation, goes red when there is no milk to be had. He turns left, then right, his head thrashing, lips searching for sustenance. Within seconds, he moves from a state of anxiety to anger. He cries with his mouth wide open, exposing the flashing red ball hanging at the back of his throat. There are no tears, no snot. Not a drop of liquid from his body. Lucine doesn’t bother rocking him or singing a lullaby, as Anush would have done. She simply moves forward, one foot in front of the other, eyes scanning the road ahead. Her body stays true to this linear trajectory while her mind turns around and around in her skull, like a whirling dervish.
Arsineh, the butcher’s wife, doubles over in pain. Her water broke this morning, but no one seems to care. She is squatting down now and wailing between breaths. Butcher Berberian is stooping at her side, minus his sack of dried meat, which disappeared in the night along with almost everything else. The years of severing animal limbs have not prepared him for this, a woman’s job. The deportees stop marching. Standing, Berberian looks around in vain for Iola or Mairig or any woman willing to help. Lucine averts her eyes from him.
The gendarme closest to them approaches. He nudges the butcher with the butt of his rifle to keep moving. Without a word, Berberian refuses. He stands with his body facing the gendarme and his eyes still on the crouching Arsineh. The gendarme whistles to his companion who is walking on the other side of the caravan.
“Hey, girl or boy?” he asks.
“Who the fuck cares?” his friend answers.
“I’ll give you three paras if you guess right.”
His companion smiles broadly. “A wager then,” he says. “Boy.”
The two gendarmes stand above Arsineh, who is breathing harder than ever. She grunts long and hard. She grasps her knees and then gets on all fours, like an animal. Berberian runs to the back of the caravan, toward Miss Graffam, to get some help.
The gendarme leans against his rifle and waits for the results.
“What is the hold up back there?” the commander on horseback yells from the front of the line.
The gendarme does not respond.
“Hurry up, you bitch,” his companion says to Arsineh.
She lets out a long wail, raking the dry earth with the fingernails of her left hand. Then silence as she keeps pushing. Five minutes go by, then ten. Intervals of grunting and silence, all while the entire world waits. In the distance, the commander’s horse neighs as he makes a sharp turn toward the commotion.