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Authors: Chris Bohjalian
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a cowl. He has far more impressive locks emanating from inside his ears and his nostrils than anywhere else on his head. Elizabeth guesses he must be sixty. His name is Sayied Akcam, and the more time that Elizabeth spends with him in the hospital, the more she has come to appreciate him. She has been volunteering here a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon, visiting with the women in the square in between. Akcam has always been at the hospital when she has, sliding with equal ease among those who will live and those who will die. He is a Muslim, but almost everyone he is treating is a Christian, because almost everyone here is an Armenian woman or child who collapsed upon arrival in Aleppo.
She does exactly what he orders: she empties bedpans and cleans wounds and spoons soup into the mouths of whoever is incapable of sitting up and holding both a bowl and a utensil. Her training in Boston, brief and rushed as it was, has proven more helpful here than in the square: She is able to change dressings. She is able to sterilize sutures and ligatures. She bottles water, boiling it and filtering it three times.
Akcam speaks about as much English as she speaks Turkish, and so on occasion they resort to asking the German nurse who speaks both languages to serve as an interpreter. But the doctor is improving her Turkish and her Armenian enormously, and often in ways that surprise her. The first sentence he has taught her perfectly in Turkish is from the Qur’an: “Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things.” He is convinced that a righteous God is going to make the Turks pay for what they are doing. “Allah dwells in all men, even the infidel,” he says. “The soldiers and gendarmes know not whom they are killing out here in the desert. There will be consequences.”
Elizabeth is less sure. In the meantime she does all that she can to assist him.
T HE A MERICAN COMPOUND seems empty when Armen arrives, its pulse uncharacteristically slow. Yet the massive gate is open, so, a little perplexed, in he strolls. He stands listening for a moment before the main house’s front door—ajar and, in his mind, beckoning. But he hears nothing except the birds in the trees over his shoulder. And so he uses a single finger to push the door all the way open, and then he waits motionless in the entry foyer. He feels his heart beating a little faster and has to remind himself that there is no reason to be wary. Why would the Turks have murdered the American consul or his assistant or his guests from Massachusetts? Still he worries that something has happened because anxiety is now as much a part of his muscle memory as climbing stairs or using a knife and a fork. And so he walks silently into the kitchen, where he sees that the cook has cleaned up after breakfast but has not yet begun to prepare lunch. She is, he reassures himself, at the market acquiring provisions. Then he peers down the long corridor where Ryan Martin and his secretary have their offices and, again, sees not a trace of either.
It is then that he hears the footsteps above him. He freezes, one hand on the dark wood paneling, his fingers near the heavy drapes, which have been drawn to keep in the marginally cooler air from the night. In a moment there is the brief, almost rhythmic drumming of someone rapidly descending the stairs, oblivious and unalarmed.
And then he sees her, and seconds pass before he speaks because he doesn’t want to frighten her, and because the sun through the open doorway catches the red in her hair and the pale beauty of the skin on her cheek and he is simply unable to open his mouth. When she turns to the coat rack in the corner and stands on her toes to reach for a straw hat, he says her name and she falls against the wall with a start.
“You scared me,” she says, her face a little flushed. She is holding the hat before her with both hands, as if it were a bouquet of flowers.
“I scared myself,”
She does exactly what he orders: she empties bedpans and cleans wounds and spoons soup into the mouths of whoever is incapable of sitting up and holding both a bowl and a utensil. Her training in Boston, brief and rushed as it was, has proven more helpful here than in the square: She is able to change dressings. She is able to sterilize sutures and ligatures. She bottles water, boiling it and filtering it three times.
Akcam speaks about as much English as she speaks Turkish, and so on occasion they resort to asking the German nurse who speaks both languages to serve as an interpreter. But the doctor is improving her Turkish and her Armenian enormously, and often in ways that surprise her. The first sentence he has taught her perfectly in Turkish is from the Qur’an: “Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted with all things.” He is convinced that a righteous God is going to make the Turks pay for what they are doing. “Allah dwells in all men, even the infidel,” he says. “The soldiers and gendarmes know not whom they are killing out here in the desert. There will be consequences.”
Elizabeth is less sure. In the meantime she does all that she can to assist him.
T HE A MERICAN COMPOUND seems empty when Armen arrives, its pulse uncharacteristically slow. Yet the massive gate is open, so, a little perplexed, in he strolls. He stands listening for a moment before the main house’s front door—ajar and, in his mind, beckoning. But he hears nothing except the birds in the trees over his shoulder. And so he uses a single finger to push the door all the way open, and then he waits motionless in the entry foyer. He feels his heart beating a little faster and has to remind himself that there is no reason to be wary. Why would the Turks have murdered the American consul or his assistant or his guests from Massachusetts? Still he worries that something has happened because anxiety is now as much a part of his muscle memory as climbing stairs or using a knife and a fork. And so he walks silently into the kitchen, where he sees that the cook has cleaned up after breakfast but has not yet begun to prepare lunch. She is, he reassures himself, at the market acquiring provisions. Then he peers down the long corridor where Ryan Martin and his secretary have their offices and, again, sees not a trace of either.
It is then that he hears the footsteps above him. He freezes, one hand on the dark wood paneling, his fingers near the heavy drapes, which have been drawn to keep in the marginally cooler air from the night. In a moment there is the brief, almost rhythmic drumming of someone rapidly descending the stairs, oblivious and unalarmed.
And then he sees her, and seconds pass before he speaks because he doesn’t want to frighten her, and because the sun through the open doorway catches the red in her hair and the pale beauty of the skin on her cheek and he is simply unable to open his mouth. When she turns to the coat rack in the corner and stands on her toes to reach for a straw hat, he says her name and she falls against the wall with a start.
“You scared me,” she says, her face a little flushed. She is holding the hat before her with both hands, as if it were a bouquet of flowers.
“I scared myself,”
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