“Yes,” says Orhan, thinking of his father and aunt.
“At least that’s what most of us believed. There were others who knew otherwise. People like my father. He lost two older brothers to the Red Sultan’s army, so he knew what men could do to one another. And yet he was hopeful, some would say naive. He wanted to believe that things had changed. ‘This isn’t the Sultan’s empire anymore,’ he would say. They bewitched him with their constitution and their parliament.” Licking her lips, she continues, “And so we were exiled. Herded like animals.”
A long silence follows. Orhan feels its presence expanding between the two of them.
“That is terrible,” he says finally, because it is. There are decaying buildings all over the Turkish countryside that testify to the presence of Armenians before the war. His favorite was the Sourp Nishan Monastery just outside of Sivas, where he played target practice as a boy, before it was converted to an army base. When the soil beneath your feet has seen a half-dozen civilizations and been consecrated by the priests of five different religions, you learn that everything must be repurposed. Pagan temples converted to churches converted to mosques and back again. Why not a twelfth-century monastery into a military barrack? This was not sacrilege, only practicality.
Orhan never thought much about those abandoned buildings until, during his stay in Germany, Armenians from the diaspora began protesting in front of Turkish consulates. In places like Los Angeles and Beirut, they insisted on using the word genocide. Turkey wasn’t perfect. He, of all people, understood this, but innocent people die in wartime.
“Agh,” she moans. Her breastbone rises up before sinking down again, making her look like a deflated balloon. “I was only fifteen, a child myself. I had nothing left. We were hungry. Weak.” The words are only a whisper now. Her voice cracks beneath the silence in the air. “Bedros, Aram, and I. Hiding in a grove of apricot trees.” Seda pauses between each sentence, letting her voice rest. Then she begins again, each time with a little more strength. “I fell asleep. When I woke, Bedros was gone. I climbed up the hill, carrying Aram in my arms. I climbed out of the valley and up the next hill. And there he was, pegged beneath a farmer who was beating him senseless. I gasped. I couldn’t help it. The farmer heard.
“I ran a long time, with the farmer’s thumping feet behind me. My arms burned from carrying Aram. Panic and fear surged through me. And then, like a siren calling, I heard the gurgling river. I ran until my ankles were submerged in the cold water and I could no longer hear the farmer running after me. The minute I touched that water, everything slowed down.
“The river’s sound drowned out everything else—my fear and my hope in equal parts. I looked down at Aram, listless, half alive. His sunken eyes could no longer produce tears. They glassed over as he stared past me. His cracked mouth finally went silent. I held his parched body in front of me and I suddenly understood that I could not save him. I remember lowering onto my knees into that shallow riverbank. The water’s surface was like a membrane. On the other side was silence. Peace. No bayonets, no blood or starvation. Just peace.
“I remember thinking Aram would be my little Moses, floating toward safety. And so I slid him into the murky water. He slipped into death in that peaceful way he used to slip into sleep in Mairig’s arms.
“My first feeling was one of relief. There was such lightness in my arms, in my whole being. I remember taking a breath in that lightness. It was a glorious breath. The last free breath I ever took. Because when I looked down at the empty space between my forearms where he once was, I suddenly realized what I’d done. I jumped in the water but I couldn’t swim.”
The tears pour down her face. They fall out of her eyelids but seem to be falling inward too, so that her whole face wells up and her nose starts leaking.
“I don’t remember anything after that.” She fixes her wild eyes on him.
Orhan crosses the few inches of distance between them and takes the old woman’s papery hand in the cave of his palms. He wants to tell her it’s okay, that we must all find a way to first forgive ourselves, then one another; but he can’t bring himself to speak for a long time.
“There’s nothing you could have done for him,” he says finally.
“I don’t know how long I ran or where I managed to hide,” she tells him, “but when Fatma found me, I was unconscious, still holding Aram’s swaddling cloth.”
“Fatma?” asks Orhan.