Read Like Water on Stone Online

Authors: Dana Walrath

Like Water on Stone (5 page)

Shahen
Papa always played,
but I did not hear
the
oud
before,
not like this.
Long, deep notes
pull me up to the sky.
The plucks of the quill
dance on my spine.
But best of all,
if I learn to play,
Papa will have to
let me go,
because then,
someone
will play
oud
in America.
Sosi
After their dance,
I had to tell her.
I whispered it.
I poured Vahan
right into
Anahid’s ear,
his glances at the market,
a seat nearby at church,
while Papa and his friends
played into the night.
Soon we will sit
side by side.
My secret’s safe with her.
Ardziv
By noon the next day
I found Mustafa in the village.
A drummer with a drum cap,
a fine, tall house,
and a hard, bitter wife.
Fatima.
On the rooftop, shelling pistachios with another,
she opened her hollow red lips to speak.
I saw past her tongue, her teeth, and her throat,
to deep in her belly,
where she hungered
for finer clothes,
more things,
their land.
“Mustafa made music
again with Kaban
and the Armenian.
I tell him do not go there.
It breaks my father’s heart.
I tell him,
but his ears stay closed as unripe nuts.
The
gavour
s have all the best land.
They hire Turkish boys to watch their sheep
so their pretty son can study with priests.
They charge me more
to grind wheat.
I know it.
Other
gavour
s pay less,
I’m sure.
And the carpets,
how can they have such carpets
on a miller’s wages
unless they are taking from us?”
A bitter taste came up from my crop.
Not fear. Eagles never fear.
Mustafa, a man of steady, sweet beat,
lived with this Fatima,
who gnawed on the world like a third lamb
masticating its mother’s udder
to make a fresh hole for the milk
when siblings have hold of the teats.
I hunt these ones first.
Shahen
Stuck in a front-row pew
thick with incense.
Father Manoog slips into his sermon trance.
Bleating sheep sounds blend with his chants.
The voices of my friends, at the river,
free from Sunday service,
penetrate the thick stone walls.
I’m stuck here with pictures,
the same old pictures
painted life-sized
on the wall.
Noah’s Ark
catching hold
of Mount Ararat.
First the raven,
then the dove
that flew above
receding waters
and found the
olive branch.
And Joseph
forgiving his brothers
for selling him into slavery.
Pah! I would punch
Misak and Kevorg
smack in the nose
if they did such a thing to me.
One focused beam of light
from the tiny dome-top window
pours into this dark stone church.
If I were a rock
I’d hurl myself through that window.
But I wouldn’t stop
plunk
at the river to play.
I would fly
over my friends
through the sky
to New York.
Mariam
Sosi
Look, a bird!
Shhhh.
Quiet in church.
Through the window.
Shhhh.
Up. Look!
Shhhh.
Please?
Oh!
An eagle.
Ardziv
.
Like the one
who gave us
Shahen’s quill.
Yes.
Vahan turns
his head,
not to me,
not in church,
but up,
to the eagle.
See?
Shhhh.
Yes.
With her little
fingertip
Mariam draws
letters on my leg,
sending shivers
up my spine,
just like
one look
from Vahan.
Ardziv
From the church I rose skyward
over pink dry mountaintops,
looking for plump rabbit, squirrel,
or snake sunning himself
against the coming cold,
lying in wait
for a lizard or a rat.
A slender whip snake,
dusky red,
made its way
to a young warbler
picking bugs
from a crack in the stone.
Before the snake struck
I swooped
and grabbed its
head and neck
between my talons.
It turned spirals
as I flew
and I squeezed
till it stopped
and I pushed
the coiled snake
into my crop.
My belly full,
the winds calm,
I found the house of Kaban.
Side by side
at the rooftop loom,
Palewan and Anahid
worked the wool.
The
kilim
’s pattern,
Kurdish, of course,
of interlocking diamonds.
Rust, rose, and red,
blue, brown, and beige.
I never noticed before
how inside of
each diamond
is a cross.
Sosi
Anahid comes from the market
filled with stories of the season’s first figs,
clock chimes, and news of the new Balkan war.
The Ottoman Turks will lose more land.
Mama listens, her wooden spoon
swirling the milk inside the black pot.
Mama reminds us,
as though we have never made yogurt before,
“To make
madzoon
,
you must move the milk
when it’s over the heat
so it doesn’t curdle.
Bring it almost to a boil.
No further.”
Around in circles Mama stirs the milk,
till a vapor almost starts to rise.
Then she moves the black pot
from the fire, her back to us.
As she scrapes the remains
of the last
madzoon
batch
into the pot’s pure white milk,
Anahid slips me
a folded piece of paper.
I open it to see
Sayat Nova’s poem,
in Vahan’s fluid hand,
his letters lovely loops and lines:
“I beheld my love this morning.”
I tuck the paper in my pocket
so Mama doesn’t see.
I let his words echo
as Mama continues.
“Seeds live inside
what came before.
This is a very good culture.
I’ve never let it die,
not since my mother
gave it to me
when I first married.
You must heat the milk first
so only
madzoon
seeds will grow
in the fresh, clean milk.”
Mariam
Grapes ripe
and blessed,
we pick.
I eat.
Pop, sweet.
Spit out pits.
Hampers,
cutters,
baskets lined
with sheets.
Pop, sweet.
Spit out pits.
No milling for three days
as my brothers
load our donkeys
and others help us pick
and sing and pick.
My brothers walk
the donkeys home
and come back
for more bunches,
sweet and round,
white and red,
till the sun goes down
and we lie on our carpets
next to the vines
as the stars appear.
Papa plays us to sleep
by the vines. I dream.
We pick.
I eat.
Pop, sweet.
Spit out pits.
Ardziv
As olives turned
from green to black
and warbler’s second brood
hatched and fledged, I watched.
Shahen showed Mariam
new words for her stick.
Each day she scratched
long lines of letters
into the earth,
leading like paths
in rings around the mill.
She wrote his name.
Shahen.
Wave and smile to the side.
Smile, smile, half smile.
Stick, small snake.
Swan down, half smile, stick.
Smile, swan down, smile.
Shahen.
In distant lands
lines of soldiers
moved locust-like
across the earth,
their bodies clad
in identical
greens and browns,
rifles up like antennae.
Sosi
A letter came today from our
keri
.
Mama breathes in memories of her brother.
She tucks the sealed envelope into her dress,
where it waits for Papa and my brothers
to join us on the rooftop for lunch.
Millstones grind to stopping.
Papa, Misak, and Kevorg
brush wheat dust from their clothes.
They splash their hands and faces clean.
I tie tight knots of deep red wool
into the pattern growing on my loom.
Shahen tosses Mariam into the sky.
His rhythm, his chant, taking all the air.
A-me-ri-ca,
A-me-ri-ca,
A-me-ri-ca.
When Papa, Misak, and Kevorg sit,
Shahen puts Mariam into my lap.
Mama kisses the letter, hands it back to Papa.
Our twelve eyes rest on him as he reads Keri’s words.
“War has come.
You must go.
You are Christians alone
in the Ottoman center.
At least send Shahen.”
Mama draws a short sharp breath.
Papa’s brow makes one thick line.
Shahen wears a jackal’s grin.
“In America, sons grow tall
like plane trees.
Armen, still in school,
already towers over me.
He speaks English like a prince.
Shahen will do the same here.”
Mama’s face turns to ash.
Shahen’s teeth show through his smile.
“See, Papa. It’s good I should go.”
Water hits the wooden wheel
like the steady beat of a drum.
“There is no reason for war
that reasonable men can’t solve.”
Papa’s words like a melody
blend with the mill stream
till Mama stops the song.
“But can we trust them to be reasonable?”
Papa says,
“I decide who comes and goes.
Your brother is too far to know.”
Papa’s voice is like rough rock.
Shahen swallows back his grin,
but I see his eyes are dancing.
The water on the mill wheel
makes a constant beat.
Calm comes to Papa’s face.
“There is no
them
,
only single souls.
Mustafa.
Kaban.
They would never harm us.
This is our home.”
Shahen’s eyes go to the sky,
his lips pressed tight,
his twisted smile rising.
Inside my ears, I buzz and burn.
Every day with Father Manoog
and still Shahen does not know
that the stones of home
are the warmest.
Shahen
Mariam
One, two, three,
I fly
into a cloud
with a beautiful
house full of rain.
A rain house.
You watch
from above
till the flowers
in the fields
are thirsty.
Choor door
.
Give me water.
Then you open
your windows
and let the rain
fall to the ground.
Splash!
Again!
Meg, yergoo, yerek
,
I fly
into a cloud
that blows
across the sea
to a land
where brothers
speak like princes
and grow very tall.
Sosi
With Mama and Mariam
and the morning sun,
I go to put the vines to sleep.
It takes us five full days
to do the twenty rows
of our twenty-
baran
vineyard.
We collect the staves.
We bring the vines together,
lay them on the ground,
cover them with soil
with stones on top
to secure them.

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