"Read it!" The sergeant nudged the papers.
Hovhannes Stamboulian put on his glasses and with a trembling voice read the first lines aloud:
The child weeps in his sleep without knowing why, A hushed yet unending sob of longing Impossible to console
That's how I long for thee…
"This is poetry," the sergeant barged in, stressing the last word with an intonation that sounded like disappointment.
"Yes." Hovhannes Stamboulian nodded, though not sure if this was good or bad.
But the sparkle he saw in the sergeant's eyes did not seem that hostile. Perhaps he had liked it. Perhaps he would leave now, taking his soldiers with him.
"Hov-han-nes Stam-bou-li-an," the sergeant muttered, slurring the words. "You are an erudite man, a man of knowledge. You are well known and well respected. Why would a sophisticated man like you conspire with a bunch of ignoble insurgents?"
Hovhannes Stamboulian raised his dark eyes from the paper and blinked absentmindedly. He didn't know what to say in his defense since he had no idea what he was being accused of.
"The Armenian insurgents…. They read your poems and then rebel against the Ottoman Sultanate," the sergeant said, creasing his forehead in thought. "You goad them into mutiny."
All of a sudden Hovhannes Stamboulian grasped what he was being accused of and the gravity of the charge. "Officer," he said, fixedly staring at the sergeant who fixedly stared back at him, afraid that if he broke eye contact the only bridge of interchange between them would forever disintegrate. "You are an educated man yourself and you'll understand the difficulty of my situation. My poems are the echo of my imagination. I write and publish them, but I cannot possibly control who reads them and with what particular intention."
Looking pensive, the sergeant cracked his knuckles one by one. He then cleared his throat as if to accentuate the importance of what he was about to say. "I perfectly understand that dilemma. However, you can control your own words. You are the one who writes them. You are the poet…."
In a desperate effort to diminish what was quickly becoming real panic, Hovhannes Stamboulian scanned the room until he came eye to eye with his eldest son, standing by the door, peeking inside. When had he sneaked out of the kitchen? How long had he been watching them? The boy's cheeks were rosy with the intensity of his fury against the soldiers. But something in his expression contained far more than that. Yervant's young face looked oddly unflustered and somehow wise. Hovhannes Stamboulian smiled at his son, trying to convince him that things were OK, and then gestured for him to go back to his mother. But Yervant didn't move.
"I am afraid you need to come with us," the sergeant said.
"I can't," Hovhannes Stamboulian said inadvertently, but he realized how miserable was the excuse he was about to give. Tonight I need to finish my book…. It is the last chapter…. Instead he asked permission to speak to his wife.
Before they took him away, the very last thing ingrained in his memory was his wife's expression, her pupils dilated and her lips pallid. But Armanoush was neither crying nor did she look shocked. If anything she looked extremely tired, as if standing there in the doorway had drained her of all her strength. How he wished he could hold her hands now, embrace her tightly, and whisper to her to be strong, always strong, for the sake of their children and the one on the way. Armanoush was four months pregnant.
Only when nudged through the outside door onto the dark street with soldiers on both sides did Hovhannes Stamboulian remember having forgotten to give his wife her present. He thrust his hands into his pockets and was relieved not to feel the golden pomegranate on the tips of his fingers. He had left it at home, in a drawer in the desk. He softly smiled at the thought of how Armanoush would be pleased when she found it there.
As soon as the soldiers left, there were quick footsteps echoing on the doorstep. It was the Turkish neighbor next door. A sweettempered plump woman, always jolly, except that right now she was anything but. Seeing the terrified expression on her neighbor's face helped Armanoush to emerge from her trance and allow herself to be frightened. She pulled Yervant toward her and with quivering lips whispered, "Go my son, go to your uncle Levon's house…. Tell him to come here right away. Tell him what happened."
Uncle Levon's house was nearby, around the corner of the market square. He lived on his own in a modest, two-story house, the first floor of which was his workshop. Having been refused the hand of a beautiful Armenian woman he had loved in his youth and perhaps still did, he had chosen not to marry anyone and thereafter had spent his years working hard in his workshop, which was famous for the quality of its products. Uncle Levon was a cauldron maker and he crafted the best cauldrons in the entire empire.
Once outside on the street Yervant walked a few steps toward Uncle Levon's house, but then he stopped abruptly and turned in the opposite direction, the direction his father had been taken, and started to run. But even when he had covered the street from one end to the other, there was no sign of his father. Nothing. No one. It was as if the Turkish soldiers and his father had altogether vanished.
He reached Uncle Levon's house shortly after, yet there was no one upstairs. He knocked on the door of the workshop, hoping he might be there. It wasn't unusual for Uncle Levon to work late hours at his store. But the door was opened by his apprentice, Riza Selim-a quiet, diligent Turkish teenager with skin as white as porcelain and raven hair curling wildly above and around his head.
"Where is my uncle?" Yervant asked.
"Master Levon is gone," Riza Selim said with a strangled voice that he could hardly push out of his throat. "The soldiers came and took him away this afternoon."
As soon as he uttered these ominous words, Riza Selim let go of the tears he had been holding back. The boy was an orphan and Uncle Levon had been like a father to him for the last six years. "I don't know what to do," he said. "I am waiting…."
On the way back to his house Yervant ran the snaky, steep streets east and west, searching for something, anything, that could be an auspicious sign. He passed by empty coffeehouses, grubby plazas, ramshackle houses from which wafted the smells of turlu and the cries of babies. The only sign of life was a tan kitten painfully meowing next to a filthy gutter, licking its tiny belly where the flesh was cut open and the blood had caked around a deep, swollen wound.
Years later when he thought about his father, Yervant would remember that kitten all alone on the dark, empty street. Even in Sivas, in the small Catholic Armenian village of Pirkinik where they went next to seek shelter with Grandpa and Grandma, only to be expelled one night by soldiers breaking into the house; even when he found himself walking amid thousands of drained, famished, beaten Armenians guarded by soldiers on horseback; even when he trudged through a long, thick carpet of mud, vomit, blood, and excrement; even when he didn't know how to stop the cries of his little sister, Shushan, and then one day, amid an ensuing turmoil, let go of her hand for a split second and lost sight of her; even when he watched his mother's feet swell into two blue pillows of pain covered with purple veins and blood; even when she died, quiet and light as a dry willow leaf swirling in the gusting breeze; even when he saw swollen and stinking corpses along the road, stables filled with smoke and fire; even when upon having nothing left to eat, he and his brothers grazed on grass like sheep in the Syrian desert; even when they were saved by a group of American missionaries dedicated to collecting the Armenian orphans lost hither and thither along the road of exile; even when they were brought all the way back to the American College in Sivas that operated as a sanctuary, and from there sent to America; even when years later he was finally able to find his little sister, Shushan, in Istanbul and bring her to San Francisco; and even after many happy suppers surrounded by his children and grandchildren, that kitten remained ingrained in his mind.