The man spits, kicks at the ground. “So I see.” His Turkish has an Arabic accent. “You Turks send to Syria your lice, your vermin, and your dying, yes?” He looks over the remains of my group, reduced now to maybe sixty-five, then turns back to me. “Most of the gendarmes leave them to find their way here on their own.”
He spits again and points to an unfinished two-story structure a block away. “That building is being used as a hospital for refugees,” he says. “Take them there.” He scratches his head. “Widows will need a permit to stay. Children will be cared for. Others must leave.” He shakes his head, eyes the group once more, and departs. His weaponry clinks as he walks.
The hospital is a partially constructed stone building with open holes for windows, but it offers shelter and a measure of cleanliness. For the deportees it provides some sense of finality to the endless journey. A number will find friends or relatives from previous caravans, people who can care for them, help find food, educate them to the rules and customs of a strange and foreign city. The facility is crowded but habitable, the conditions infinitely better than the pit at Katma. The hospital is run by a team of Syrian doctors and nurses who insist on hygiene and provide adequate clothing, food, and water. Medicine is available for the diarrhea that plagues many. Even I receive treatment and a dressing for my injured scalp. Araxie is placed on one of the cots reserved for the sickest patients, her filthy clothing removed, water and medicine forced down her throat. Her eyes are closed. She stirs and coughs and gives signs of appearing more comfortable, but she does not wake.
I stay with her for some time, sitting with the old woman Ani, who has cared for her, watching her chest rise, listening to the thin draft of her breathing. Flies buzz, nurses in stiff white caps come and go. The sun creeps in through a hole in the stones, tossing shadows against blank walls, but neither Ani nor I say anything. The shadows lengthen as the day goes on, plunging the room to dusk, then darkness. The cries of the muezzin come and I prostrate myself, orient myself toward Mecca. The sounds and smells of the hospital creep up through the walls. A small bit of bread and some yogurt are delivered. Finally, a nurse summons me.
“The Syrian official in charge wishes to speak to you,” she says in broken Turkish. I follow her downstairs.
A slender young man with a small mustache awaits me. He is about my height, probably only a few years older, dressed in an official-looking smock, his feet in strange-looking sandals. He introduces himself formally in passable Turkish, states his name as Hussein. He does not smile.
“This facility is for refugees only,” Hussein says, his fingers tracing the edges of a small clipboard. “You are a gendarme, yes?”
I nod.
“You must leave.”
“I . . . I have been injured.” My voice sounds foreign in its mangled state.
“You must report to the military garrison, or I will inform them of your presence.” He lowers the clipboard. “I do not expect they will be pleased to hear from me, injury or not.”
I study the man, the way his hands move, the thrusting forward of his smallish chest. To explain my status will be futile. I have seen men like this before.
I shift my feet. “What of the deportees?”
“What of them?” His face compresses, the beginnings of a sneer. “You have killed most of them already—are you wishing to finish the job now? You have delivered them, those that have made it. Now leave.”
“Will they be allowed to stay?”
“Some will, some will not. The rules change. At present, any woman who can prove she is a widow may stay. Everyone else must go.”
“What about the children?”
The man shrugs. “To the extent the orphanages can take them, the young may remain.”
“And the others?”
The man’s face contorts again. “Many will go to Ras al-Ayn, where there is a refugee camp. But why do you care? Could it be there is a
sevmek
among them?”
He uses the Turkish verb for “love,” but I know what he means.
“No. I am merely concerned. I have traveled with this group for many days.”
I turn to go, to retrieve my rifle and few belongings.
“Effendi.”
I turn again.
“Do not return.”
9
I awake to a gray dawn,
to the last vestiges of the closest stars. Moisture dampens my face, courtesy of a wet breeze that fails to quell the suffocating odor of urine, feces, and aged, dampened straw. The stable, if you can call it one, is open to the sky, its roof long since burned or blown away. Its other occupants, a horse and two oxen, shift and doze. Flies buzz. Wooden slats creak softly in the breeze. I brush at my legs, at the vermin crawling upon me. I stand and brush again.
The horse is not Gece. I sold my companion the day before, a parting both necessary and sad. Negotiations began with one merchant, then another, until I had been through six traders and upped the price considerably, though still to an amount only a fraction of his worth. A fine Arabian with all the stamina and intelligence of his breed, he’d been well cared for despite the rigors of our journey. He watched as I accepted the coins from the dour Arab who purchased him, his head cocked, his eyes unblinking. I turned my head as he was led away.
I wandered the streets of Aleppo afterward, past the suq and the spacious courtyard khans, past beggars and peddlers and mosques and graveyards, past stables and markets, soldiers and refugees, on to the ruins of the giant fortress rising up from the city’s center. The citadel, stacked layer upon layer over ancient buildings and cultures, was supposedly large enough to house a garrison of ten thousand, supposedly stormed only once, in 1400, by Tamerlane. I walked around it, observing the men and soldiers who marched down ramps worn with centuries of use, staring at its moats and walls, my mind on survival, on a plan (begun with the sale of Gece), of what to do next. My plan of how to stay near her.
Difficulties abound. Despite the sale of my horse, I have little money, no place to stay. I should have reported to the military garrison as I had always intended—I would move from the gendarmerie to the military, receive further instructions. Instead I am a deserter. I have no papers, at least none I want to show anyone, something any respectable employer will almost certainly ask to see. Given the Ottoman army’s need for soldiers, a number of Syrians are being conscripted, such that even if I have proper papers or employment I am still subject to being pulled away. I dare not go near the hospital, not after the officious Hussein’s warning, though I find myself unconsciously circling back in its direction, hoping for a glimpse of a familiar face: a nurse, a doctor, or someone who might tell me she is better, someone who will know she has been permitted to stay.
I reached the city’s outskirts as the sun ebbed away, past the camel and sheep pens, the crumbling edge of the ancient western wall. I inquired about lodging in the seedier-looking khans, my face lowered, my Arabic as short and non-Turkish as possible, determined to sleep outside rather than waste the meager proceeds from Gece’s untimely sale. In the end I agreed to stable work in exchange for a bed of hay, a negotiation that required more discussion than I wanted, more interaction with the short, suspicious owner. He checked on me several times, once in the middle of the night, ostensibly to ensure the well-being of his animals, more likely with the intent to rob me if he could. I slept little, given the vermin, the intrusions, and the dreams that blazed about me, the fiery visions of desert and pursuit, illness and squalor, all magnificent, all disturbing. All leading back to a single place. Her.
I squint now at the new dawn, at the flat roofs and domes, the minarets and dark cypresses. The limestone that makes up so much of the city hangs damp and gray in the morning, chiseled into patterns for churches, carved into verses for mosques. Aleppo means “milk” in Arabic, testament to the fabled stopover by Abraham on his way to Canaan, the milking of his cow on the citadel hill—Abraham, father of Isaac, father of Ishmael, grandfather to us all. The muezzin’s call, as if on cue, mixes its minor tones with the animals’ snorts and shuffles. I fall to my knees, dip my head to the straw. My lips move in rhythm.
The property owner marches in after the prayers, shouting at me in an Arabic so dense I can barely understand it, evidently unhappy I did not awaken earlier and re-clean the stall in the dark. I stare at him, at the tendons at work in his short, thick neck, the mustache that bobs up and down with his wrath. I wait until his breath is spent before stepping toward him, an action that precipitates his scurrying retreat. His mouth opens, quavers an instant, then lets loose another barrage, this time directed behind him. A thin-headed boy emerges, casts a glance my way, and departs. I know it is time to leave.
I gather my belongings, shaking them deliberately, the verbal assault still launched from behind a protective wall’s bunker. Doors open, people peer from behind paper windows, the livestock mutter and stomp. I have only a few bits of clothing, a handful of coins, and a short, wicked blade I purchased from Karim (having hidden my aged German rifle the day before), but I take my time nonetheless, making an elaborate show of ridding myself of the fleas I picked up in the barn. Then I steal away, dipping swiftly into the labyrinthine passages that honeycomb the city, the twisted channels beneath arched stone vaults that will not see daylight for hours. The angry voice behind me grows distorted, then muffled, deflected by the passageways that resemble tunnels or caves. I pass few people as I hasten through the darkness, varying my direction, veering into side passages, venturing past half-opened doors that reveal elegant courtyards and fountains, stopping before white mosques and darkened churches, all the while chastising myself for my rashness, for this drawing of unwanted attention. Why am I here? I am risking my life. I buy a fez from a vendor just opening up for the morning, straddle it across my injured head. I spend a few precious coins for some kibbe. After munching my breakfast I wash in a fountain, bathing my flea-bitten legs and darkened arms, dipping my hands and face. I continue on after this, still conscious of the possibility of pursuit, past dense houses and tiny streets, on to the covered bazaar.
The smells of coffee and tobacco mix with food and incense. Peddlers greet one another, unroll rugs, unpack goods. A few early shoppers mill about. Foodstuffs materialize: olives and pistachios, breads and biscuits, walnuts, raisins, dried chickpeas. Dogs poke in and out of refuse, shooed by one merchant to the domain of another. Bright, colored blankets appear, flapping like flags, hung on invisible lines. Smoke from a cook fire rises and quivers. A large woman with enormous hoop earrings arrives to much fanfare, spreading her wares (evidently jewelry) on the ground in grave fashion. An argument develops between two men in dirty tunics, resolves itself, starts again. People continue to funnel in—a shepherd leading a herd of goats, an elaborate horse-drawn carriage, a small grouping of gray-uniformed police. I move away from the latter, past displays of cotton clothing, colorful divans and hassocks, red and green beeswax candles. The suq has become crowded, as if the whole of Aleppo has now discovered its existence, the sounds of bargaining merging with sharp-tongued women in
çarşaflar
, merchants pleading and cursing, small boys selling or playing. The noise increases to a din, the aromas to overpowering, the crush of population to a thick, brownish tide. I inch back, drop a
gurû
in a crippled woman’s cup, and observe her toothless smile before leaving, edging through the haze that has settled over the bazaar, a dust seemingly wrung from the gray stone itself.
My wanderings take me down Bab al-Faraj Boulevard to the palace gardens, down wide streets lined with palm trees and handsome white buildings. Wealthy Syrian women walk about, some with jewels in their hair, others in high-button shoes. Businessmen wear odd-looking suits with ties. Fruit and vegetable vendors camp in front of older, more established shops, where tables are set for tea, with white tablecloths fluttering, bound flowers gathered in vases. An air of past glory predominates, oozing from the crumbling buildings, from the pocked wheels of peddlers’ carts, from the packs of stray dogs that dig at immense piles of refuse even on the Bab al-Faraj. The odor of elimination abounds, as if the city has been overrun, overcome by a force too great to be accommodated. I stop before a Muslim cemetery, gazing at the rows of graves, the scrawls of Arabic inscriptions. All the world, particularly the Ottoman world, seems swallowed in a sea of disruption. A war is being fought, over what, I am not certain, by combatants I cannot identify, in places I do not know. Lives are affected—mine, my cousins’, the deportees’, hers. Things will change. At some point this city may become a battlefield, or a fortress, or a mortuary. People will leave and fight, suffer and die. And then what? I squint at the nearest grave and its inscription, trace the familiar words.
Allahu ekber
. God is great. Among other things, a battle cry.
“Ahmet.”
I whirl at the unexpected sound of my name, my bag lifted high in alarm. A round, older woman stands before me, her hair under a veil. I stare, my pulse accelerating. Several seconds elapse before recognition comes, relief.
“Ani.” It is the Armenian woman who took care of Araxie.
She nods, her body half turned, as if prepared to take flight. “I thought it was you.”
“How is she?” I hear the quake in my voice.
“She is better. She sits up now, and can speak.”
Allahu ekber
. I am unsure whether I say it. “May I see her?”
Ani’s thick eyebrows converge. “You are in danger,” she says in her languid Armenian. “The man, Hussein, he asks about you, asks if anyone . . . has seen you.”
“Is he there much?”
“Yes. He comes to see her often.” She glances over her shoulder, as if expecting him to arrive here, too.