The Sandcastle Girls (14 page)

M
Y NAME IS NOT
“
YOU PEOPLE,
”
BUT AN ALIEN FROM ANOTHER
world trying to make sense of some of the conversations I have had with virtual strangers over the years might suppose that it is. (I am not angry about that—only amused.) When I was growing up and when I was a young woman, I might meet someone for the first time, and he or she would understand instantly that I was Armenian because my last name is Petrosian: it ends in “ian.” Then, almost invariably, this person would say, “You people are so nice. I knew an Armenian family once in Ridgewood, New Jersey.” Or, “You people are so industrious. You always work hard and make money. I knew an Armenian family once in Rockford, Illinois. They were very wealthy.” Or—and this might be my absolute favorite—“You people are so artistic. There is a wonderful carpet store in Concord, Massachusetts, and I think all the rugs are made by Armenians.” (For this rug stereotype we can thank, in part, Herodotus. “The inhabitants of the Caucasus dyed the wool with a number of plants,” he taught us, “and they used it to make woven fabrics covered with drawings which never lose their brilliant color.” Of course, it is also possible that Herodotus was merely the first of many observers who would equate Armenians with rugs. The Armenian word for woven fabrics?
Kapert
.)

Nevertheless, no one introduced to someone named “Alvarez”
would ever dare begin a sentence, “You people.” Same when meeting a “Svensson.” Or a “Yamada.”

But we Armenians represent well. We are exotic without being threatening, foreign without being dangerous. We are domestic; we make rugs.

The fact that I am blond is a further source of interest to people when they try to make sense of who I am, and women may glance at the roots where I part my hair. “You people are usually dark, aren’t you?” They think Cher. The guys in System of a Down. My daughter, who is in middle school now, finds it a source of frustration that the only famous Armenians are likely to be found on reality TV shows or in
People
magazine. I try to remind her that the Kardashians are paid very well to simply show up at parties, and there are worse ways to make a living.

Likewise, I try also to remind myself that there are far worse ethnic stereotypes than being nice, industrious, and capable of weaving an attractive rug.

Nevertheless, I have to share with you one last moment with Berk—and, for better or worse, it is the last you will hear of him because we broke up the final time four months before we went our separate ways to colleges in New England and South Florida: he went to the University of Miami and I went to Amherst. Since then I have searched him out on various social networks (along with my college romances), but I only stalked; I never clicked “friend” or tried to make contact.

It was April of our senior spring in high school and we both knew by then that we were going to be spending the vast majority of the coming year twelve states apart. Perhaps because—careful readers will recall—I had been introduced to “love’s illusions” at a very young age, I had no expectation that our relationship was even going to make it to Thanksgiving. Berk did. Our relationship was volatile even by the standards of a high school dalliance at least in part because Berk was a romantic. So it was one of those afternoons when we would join our small clique at the Friendly’s ice cream parlor after school and then retreat to his house or mine to
listen to Blondie or Talking Heads and have headboard-thumping sex. By the time our parents or siblings would return, we would be clothed and sitting by the dock—outside in the fresh, wholesome air of a man-made lake in a Miami development. They might have assumed by our ruddy complexions that we had been up to no good, but there was never going to be any proof (especially since by the time our families joined us, we really were likely to be immersed in physics or AP English, and looking to all the world like ambitious, slightly nerdy high school seniors).

As we sat on the dock at my house that April afternoon, he brought up the great elephant with us at the edge of the chemically treated, fungicide-rich water: our future. I was evasive because as much as I cared for him, I didn’t suppose we had a future. He would meet other girls and I would meet other boys. Good Lord, think of how young we were. But he was persistent that day. Cajoling. Even whiny. Perhaps, on some level, he wanted a fight. But he acted as if he simply couldn’t believe that I was not one hundred percent sure that we would still be together a decade from that day. Finally, after we had gone back and forth for perhaps half an hour, he said, “It’s because I’m Turkish, isn’t it? You people are never going to let that go!”

By then I had heard the term “you people” plenty often. Consequently, I could not resist answering back, “My people? What people do you mean? Northerners?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Well, I had nothing to do with it. Nothing. We could be a—” and here he paused, trying to find the right term. Finally he continued, “a symbol. We could be all about … reconciliation.”

“I promise you,” I told him, taken aback that he would presume I questioned our future because he was Turkish, “if we’re not married in ten years, it won’t be because of … that.”

That
. Even now I find it revealing that I did not use the word
genocide
.

“You people just never forget. Your father—”

“What about my father?”

“I know it’s why your family doesn’t like mine.”

It was a reality that our families only socialized in very big groups, such as at those lake parties. Not once had only the two families ever dined together or the four parents had even a drink together. Did I suspect it was because my father was Armenian and his parents were Turkish? Yes, I did. But I couldn’t have cared less about that lineage personally, and clearly Berk didn’t care at all. Berk loved me, and I think I loved him as much as I was capable of loving a boy at that time in my life. (Remember: I am only part Armenian. My mother was from a line of spectacularly uptight Bryn Mawr Brahmins.) It is highly unlikely that we would have wound up wed even if he hadn’t begun a sentence “you people,” but I took offense. In hindsight, I bristled unfairly—and, yes, I hurt a very, very nice young man.

E
LIZABETH SITS FORWARD
on the tapestried ottoman in the compound living room and reaches behind her head, untying the ribbon that is holding her hair back. She feels it fall like drapes against her ears, as she pulls the ribbon tight between her hands. “Your new friend is going to need this,” she says to Hatoun. The girl’s dark eyes grow apprehensive. It dawns on Elizabeth that the child may presume she is about to have another new person foisted upon her. And so she decides that no good can come from drawing out the surprise a moment longer. She reaches under the ottoman’s tasseled skirt and pulls from beneath it the doll. Its face is made of china, and its eyes are so blue that they struck Elizabeth as Scandinavian when she first saw it. She scrubbed the stains off the cheeks so the skin, once again, was whiter than flour. The doll’s hair is the color of cornsilk. Its feet and black shoes are china, too, as are its hands. Its arms and legs and abdomen, however, are as soft as a feather pillow, giving the doll a boneless, jellyfish-like lack of density. It is wearing a plaid smock that is torn and still smells a little of sweat and rank water, despite the wisps of perfume that Elizabeth has sprayed upon it with her atomizer. But it is a doll, about a foot
and a half from its tiny feet to its yellow hair. Hatoun does not need to know that Elizabeth got it from a German nurse who, in turn, got it from a child who had died in the hospital with this doll in her arms. How that child got a doll, which Elizabeth is sure should be named Annika, in the first place is beyond her.

Hatoun stares at it for a moment, but keeps her hands at her sides.

“It’s for you,” Elizabeth says. “It’s what I meant by your new … friend.”

Still the girl stands almost completely motionless.

“Please,” Elizabeth adds. “I want you to have it.”

Slowly Hatoun glances over her shoulder at Nevart, who has been watching silently behind the child. Nevart smiles at her and nods. “It’s a gift,” she reassures the girl. Reluctantly, as if she is afraid the doll is a desert hamster with sharp teeth and a desperate appetite, she accepts the present, holding it away from her chest.

“You will have to tell me what you name her,” Elizabeth says, her voice awkward in her head. She had expected the child to embrace the doll gratefully.

“Doesn’t she have a name already?” Hatoun asks.

The question catches her off guard, in part because the girl almost never speaks. “Well, I suppose you’re correct. She very well might.”

Hatoun stares at her, waiting. Apparently, she expects more.

“If I were to guess,” Elizabeth says, “I would think her name was something like Annika.”

Carefully Hatoun tries the name out, whispering it to herself. “Where did she come from?” she asks after a moment.

Elizabeth knows she cannot possibly tell the whole truth. “A friend gave her to me,” she says simply.

“A friend from the orphanage or a friend from the hospital?”

Here Elizabeth lies. “Neither,” she says.

Nevart leans over and whispers something into Hatoun’s ear.

“Thank you,” Hatoun says.

“You’re welcome.”

Then, the doll still held before her as if she expects it to lash out and attack her, Hatoun walks slowly outside and into the courtyard. Through the window Elizabeth and Nevart watch her pause. Finally Hatoun allows herself to hold the doll with but one hand, as she squints up into the sun with her fingers across her forehead like a visor. At first Elizabeth assumes the girl is looking up into the sky. But then she wonders if, perhaps, she is searching for the orange tabby that seems to live at the edge of the walls. She tells herself that Hatoun is going to introduce the cat to the doll and pretend to have a tea party. But she doesn’t believe that for a second.

R
YAN
M
ARTIN STOPS
Helmut, the German soldier with the scar on his cheek, and shakes his hand at the edge of the square where, a few days ago, hundreds of Armenian women had been encamped. They’re gone now, somewhere in the desert. He is absolutely unaware of the air of distraction emanating from the soldier, the way his eyes are darting about the square, the sky, and the street—as if he is looking for someone. Ryan Martin rarely wastes time on pleasantries, although not because he is an unpleasant person. It’s simply that he views his entire life right now as a race against time. People are being massacred and tortured and starved, and he sometimes feels as if they’ll all be dead by the time his own government is willing to give a damn and intervene. The idea has crossed his mind that by the end of the year, the two million Armenians who once lived in Turkey will be extinct as a race.

“Elizabeth told me they destroyed your camera,” he says to Helmut. “That’s horrifying. Absolutely barbaric. I am very, very sorry.”

“It was indeed a violent end,” he says mordantly.

“But the photographic plates. Surely you have plates in your room. Will you give them to me? Perhaps I can get them to England or America. I can have the pictures published—disseminated. Have you thought more about my request?”

Helmut is a big man, easily five inches taller than Ryan and
forty pounds heavier. His back stretches out his uniform tunic like a sail. Now he lays one of his heavy hands on Ryan’s shoulder and for the first time meets the American consul’s eyes. “I have new orders. Eric does, too. We’re leaving in two and a half hours. It seems that our commanding officer heard about our photography project and we are being … disciplined.”

Immediately Ryan presumes their punishment will be the trenches on the Western Front. There is no worse hell for a soldier. Even the introduction of poison gas at Ypres that spring had done little to alter the map or allow the soldiers on one side or the other to rise up from their trenches like human beings. Still, he asks, “Where are you going?”

“I don’t think it matters if I tell you,” he says aloud, thinking about how he should respond. He withdraws his hand from Ryan’s shoulder and pats his jacket pocket. Then he removes a silver lighter and black cigarette case, and delicately slips a cigarette between his lips.

“No, it doesn’t matter,” Ryan agrees, though he honestly isn’t sure. But he does want to know.

“The Dardanelles. The Turks have asked us to see if we can help streamline the supply chain to the edge of the peninsula where they’re fighting. We’ll be joining a group of German engineers there.”

Ryan is relieved for him. It doesn’t sound as if the punishment will involve actual combat. Still, Gallipoli, like the Western Front, doesn’t discriminate when it comes to unleashing violence and degradation: the Turks may have the high ground in some cases, but he has heard that they are still living like animals in trenches and waiting for either the next very personal bayonet charge or decidedly impersonal shelling from the British dreadnoughts just off the coast. No one is going to charge these two German engineers with bayonets or bombard them here in Aleppo. Moreover, as primitive as life might be for them in this desert city, Aleppo is rather like Berlin compared to the Dardanelles.

“Where is Eric?” Ryan asks.

“The lieutenant has a good-bye to take care of,” Helmut says, and Ryan—even as distracted as he is—has the sense that the fellow is probably saying farewell to one of the heavily tattooed prostitutes in the dancehall on the other side of the citadel.

“Will he mind if you give me the plates?”

“I think a better question is whether I will mind.”

Ryan had not expected this response. “Why would you?”

Helmut offers the American consul a cigarette, and when Ryan declines he finally lights the one in his mouth. “People would know I had taken the photographs. Already I am being punished. The captain who informed us we have been transferred did not use the term
court-martial
, but he suggested a second offense would be treasonous. Turkey is a critical ally.”