Free Nobody's Child by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch Page B

“but not in the way you mean. They believe Turkey is for Turks, and no one else. Even now, there are rumblings against the minorities.”
    Mariam sighed in frustration. “Armenians have lived in this area for more than two thousand years. Where are they supposed to go?”
    Abdul was silent for a moment. It was as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know how.
    â€œThere is a way,” he said. “I could take you in. I would adopt the boy and maybe the girl,” he said, gesturing first at Onnig, then at Marta. “And Anna, you are welcome to stay in our home. I could find a husband for you, Mariam, and a job for Kevork.”
    â€œYou mean we would become Turkish?” asked Mariam.
    â€œThere are worse fates,” replied Abdul Hassan dryly.
    â€œWe cannot change who we are,” said Mariam, “and I for one would rather die Armenian than live as a Turk.”
    A look of utter shock passed over Abdul Hassan’s face. He was silent for a moment, struggling for words. Then he said, “As you wish. But please remember that I tried to help.”

C HAPTER S IX
    B y dawn the next morning, the sturdy oxcart with huge wooden wheels was packed tightly with sacks of wheat and the meagre possessions of Anna and the children. Mariam was pleased that their provisions for the trip — dried meat, goat cheese, barley soaked in yogurt, dried apples, and raisins — had mostly been prepared by her little sister.
    The children bid Amina Hanim goodbye with teary smiles. “May Allah save you from the worst,” she said.
    There was only room for two people in the cart at a time, so they rotated, with Onnig invariably sitting on someone’s lap. Sevo walked behind, her rope tethered to the frame of the cart.
    As they walked through the mighty gates of Marash, Mariam’s heart thumped with joy. It felt so good to be on safe ground. Abdul Hassan insisted on taking them directly to their grandmother’s house.
    As the oxcart creaked down the cobblestone streets, Mariam drank in the sights. The covered bazaar was bursting with colour and noise as Armenians and Turks, Kurds and Arabs, Greeks and Jews all haggled over prices as if the massacres had never happened. Mariam inhaled deeply the old familiar smells of Marash: fresh coffee, fruit, different kinds of baking bread. Below these powerful aromas there was a faint smell of something rotting.
    She felt excited, but also a bit apprehensive. Would her grandmother and aunt still be alive? She was too impatient to sit in the oxcart, so she hopped down and walked beside Abdul Hassan. Without even needing directions, he had been guiding the ox towards the Armenian section.
    â€œIt’s down this way,” said Mariam, walking a few steps in front of Abdul. With the oxcart they couldn’t take the shortcut and had to stick to the wider roads.
    â€œWe’re almost there,” said Mariam with a grin, darting between other travellers.
    Then, before she knew it, Mariam was standing at the street wall in front of her own house. It seemed smaller than she had remembered it, and somehow shabbier.
    The last time she had been here, the wall in front of the courtyard had been well over her head. Now she could see over top of it when she stood on tiptoes. She grinned at the familiar sight of the apricot, fig, and almond trees. She spied her own goat, Lala, whose pale yellow coat with a dark brown patch on her neck was as familiar to Mariam as the back of her own hand. She also saw Yar, her grandmother’s goat, and several chickens.
    There was an old-fashioned bell on a chain above the garden door, and Mariam pulled the rope with all her might, giggling at the sound of the familiar clang. There was no answer. She pulled it again. No answer.
    â€œMariam, look in the window,” Kevork said.
    Mariam got back up on her tiptoes and looked over the wall. There was a small glass-covered window beside the front door of