Read Like Water on Stone Online
Authors: Dana Walrath
Like Water on Stone (2 page)
Ardziv
Three young ones,
one black pot,
a single quill,
and a tuft of red wool
are enough to start
a new life
in a new land.
I know this is true
because I saw it.
We track our quills
when they fall.
Always.
With eagle eyes
we can see
from the sky
who picks one up
from the ground,
or rescues it
from the crook
of a bent branch,
the quill’s mottled color
blending in
with the peeling bark.
It was the girl
who picked up my quill.
She and her mother
worked side by side,
plucking frothy white
beetle bodies
from leaf and stalk.
They crushed them
between fingertips
and used this insect blood
to turn their carpet fibers
the richest red.
Clever.
When my feather dropped,
the girl, the older one, Sosi,
almost full grown,
her body budding,
stirred from her work.
The little one, Mariam,
napped on a carpet beside her.
Sosi, named for plane trees
that stand tall on this land.
Her short, quick inhale as she saw it
tugged the air around me.
She wiped her red-tipped fingers
on her apron before reaching up.
“Look, Mama, a new
mizrap
for Papa.”
mizrap
for Papa.”
A nine-beat song
pulsed through my wings.
A musician?
What luck!
If my quill could pull laments
from the strings of an
oud
,
oud
,
I thought, then
my heart might heal.
“That quill is for your brother,”
the mother said.
“It’s time that Shahen
learned to play.”
A young musician?
More luck.
Far beyond this beetled field,
where river cut through mountain,
a curly-headed, big-eyed boy
shivered when she spoke.
Shahen.
Sons hear as eagles see.
Fast green water flowed
along the distant bank.
An arc of giant stones
rose from the riverbed,
bending the current’s
forward force.
Water seeped back
behind these stones,
forming a still pool
for Shahen,
his face reflected in the water,
so delicate,
like Sosi’s.
His thumb and fingers
curled round
a flat, smooth stone.
He bent his hand
tight toward his arm.
One fierce flick of his wrist
sent the stone to water.
It skipped nine times
like the beat of a song.
Ripples spread
through the top of the pool,
then sank
into its surface.
Then, to no one,
to the air,
perhaps to me,
Shahen said,
“No one plays
oud
in America.”
oud
in America.”
My musician, what luck!
Shahen
Come on, lucky stone.
Give me seven.
Not nine, not eight.
One for each of them,
none for me.
Papa,
Mama,
Kevorg,
Misak,
Anahid, Sosi, Mariam,
Me.
Eight? It can’t be eight.
Not the eight arches
of the Palu bridge.
I can’t be stuck here
with a fool for a father.
In a land ruled by Muslims,
priests just
baaaah
like sheep.
baaaah
like sheep.
My fate isn’t here, sitting in church,
learning of what was, not of what could be.
My fate isn’t here, grinding wheat into flour.
That’s enough for my brothers,
big dolts with no dreams.
Come on, stone. You’re the lucky one.
Papa,
Mama,
Kevorg,
Misak,
Anahid, Sosi, Mariam,
Me.
Pah! Stupid eight.
Stupid, like Papa,
who keeps his head in song.
If he stopped playing the
oud
,
oud
,
if he looked instead of listened,
if he stopped thinking we are all the same,
that Christians, like us, could ever be free
deep inside an empire
ruled by Muslim Ottoman Turks,
then he would know.
From the Balkans
to the Caucasus
and down both sides
of Arabia, they rule.
But other empires
close them in:
Austrian, Russian,
Persian, and British
meet them at each edge.
They have no place for us,
not in their hearts.
Papa should know this.
He was alive in 1895,
when Sultan Hamid
first gave the orders to kill us,
not me.
He knows we pay
double taxes
and cannot vote.
He knows Turks call us
gavour
, infidel.
, infidel.
Now it will be even worse.
Armenian families will shun us
because Anahid’s groom is a Kurd.
What sort of Armenian father
blesses a love match
with a Muslim
for his first-born girl?
So what if she didn’t
have to convert?
It’s Kurdish
beys
beys
who take the tithe.
If he opened his eyes,
if he stopped thinking
of the world as a song,
with disparate parts
always blending,
he would know
that my
keri
, my uncle, is right.
keri
, my uncle, is right.
All the way
from New York,
Mama’s brother
knows the truth.
We should marry
our own.
If I go to New York
to live with my
keri
,
keri
,
my face will be bristled at last,
no longer the little one,
the little brother,
twin to a girl,
with a fool for a father.
There I’ll grow tall.
The bristles will come.
I’ll live in a tower
that touches the sky.
Come on, pink stone,
perfect, smooth, and flat.
Cut me out.
Make it seven.
Stone spins and cuts the surface.
Papa, big spray;
Mama, less;
Kevorg, closer;
Misak, smaller;
Anahid, Sosi, Mariam.
Stone sinks into water.
I will do it with care.
As the proverb says:
Measure seven times.
Cut once.
That’s how I will do it.
I’m going to America.
Mariam
Feet up.
Feet down.
Heels hit house.
Feet up.
Feet down.
Shahen,
come home.
Time to play the bird game.
Time to play the bird game.
Feet up.
Feet down.
I sit.
I wait.
Feet up.
Feet down.
He’s here!
Shahen’s on the ground,
his arms spread wide.
“Time to play the bird game?”
“Yes,” he tells me.
He always says yes.
My wings pull back.
Meg, yergoo, yerek
,
,
one, two, three,
flap, flap, flap.
I fly.
My heart goes first,
down
down
down
from the roof
into Shahen’s arms.
He catches me.
He holds me high.
He spins me
round and round
like the mill wheel.
I fly above.
I am his little dove.
Shahen
Fly, little bird.
Fly over hills.
Fly straight through the straits to the sea.
She giggles. We spin.
Her curls catch the wind.
My fingertips press to her ribs,
to help me remember her laugh
and the smell of the mint by the stream
and Sosi, on tiptoes,
stringing the loom with strong cotton cords,
tying tight knots at its base,
Mama rolling rice into grape leaves,
packing them snug
into the black pot to simmer,
my father and brothers dusted with flour,
their faces white like clowns
when the mill work is done.
From New York,
I will be able to see across oceans,
past pashas in Topkapi Palace
and drum-capped Ottoman soldiers,
their Muslim guns pointed toward our land,
through a maze of Turks and Kurds,
with Anahid among them,
to my family here in Palu.
I land Mariam
back on the roof’s edge.
Her tiny feet kick.
She leans out again,
leading with her breastbone.
Meg, yergoo, yerek
.
.
Ardziv
Built low to the ground,
this roof was safe,
even for those without wings.
The mill house roofs ran up the slope
like stepping-stones,
each roof set for its own tasks:
carpet making, laundry,
cooking, feasting, music.
Stone steps set tight
into outside walls
led up to all the rooftops.
That night, on the roof,
the father used my quill
to pull sweet sounds
from the strings of his
oud
,
oud
,
its bulging belly nestled between his arms,
so like a young human mother
making room for a coming child.
Eggs in nests are far more simple.
His soaring sound pulled me from the sky,
like gravity must for those who can’t fly.
I lighted on a branch near their roof.
The father stopped playing.
Beside him, Shahen lay on his back,
staring past me and the treetops.
The father reached down.
He touched Shahen’s forehead
with my quill and said,
“This fine new
mizrap
, this gift from an eagle,
mizrap
, this gift from an eagle,
the noblest of birds, is a sign, Shahen.
It’s time for me to teach you.”
With the pluck of a young one aching to leave the nest
the imp rolled to his side and replied,
“No one plays
oud
in America, Papa.”
oud
in America, Papa.”
“A good Armenian carries the music of home
close to his heart, wherever he is, son.”
“You mean I’m going?”
I tipped my head under mantle of wing
lest they hear me whistle.
We eagles sing no soothing songs.
Our throats can only whistle.
Instead, we hunt them down,
take them from others.
I craved soothing song that summer.
I had lost my mate and hatchlings
and war was in the air.
Hate makes jagged spikes of light,
and blame can crack the sky.
As pierced with wounds
from sharp white teeth,
the Ottoman air had ruptured.
Massacres would come again
as the drum-capped rulers
spread their hate.
I confess. I had my own hate
for the drum caps that summer.
I kept it
like an egg in a nest,
warming it,
feeding it once it hatched,
so it grew ever stronger,
the drum caps’ hate
like food for mine.
Before the time of humans,
we eagles had no need for hate.
We do not feign to own the land.
We keep it safe around our nests
from hawk and falcon
so that our young can fledge.
And to hunt is to fight,
is to kill, I know.
But its purpose is pure.
How else could we feed our young?
That long-gone night,
I stopped my distant flights
across this land of seas.
Instead, each day,
I flew over their mill,
built into a small stream
that fed the eastern branch
of the mighty Euphrates River,
hoping for snatches of music.
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