The diminutive Siranoush Ana and her daughter leaned their rifles against a piece of masonry, firing their weapons over and over, as the younger daughter reloaded for them. When the eldest daugher was cut down, the old woman turned her gun on the attacker. He took hold of the barrel to wrench the gun out of her hands, but found her hold firmer than he expected. In that instant, she pulled the trigger and his blood spattered over her. Her other daughter ripped the scarf from her head and laid it over her fallen sister’s face, then wiped her mother’s gun clean and reloaded it.
Omar was rolling some of the enemy’s bodies over the side of the wall to clear a space for fighting. Kamil saw him jerk back and fall. He raced up the stairs. An axe protruded from Omar’s upper thigh.
The police chief grinned at him and joked, “Those dogs can’t aim.”
Kamil used his knife to cut Omar’s trousers away, then tore a long piece of linen from his own shirt, which he tightened around the top of Omar’s leg.
“Ready?” he asked.
“What are you waiting for?”
When Kamil pulled the ax out of Omar’s leg, the wound started to bleed heavily. Omar tried to get up, but his face turned white and he passed out, crashing to the ground. Kamil shouted down into the courtyard but couldn’t get Victor’s attention.
He pushed his shoulder under Omar’s chest and grabbed his leg. The police chief was short but stout. Kamil staggered to his feet, with Omar balanced precariously over his shoulder. He made his way down the stairs, trying not to slip on the blood, some of which flowed from Omar’s leg.
Amid the desperate hand-to-hand fighting in the courtyard, Vera moved among the women, helping them load their weapons, comforting the wounded, and trying to pull them to the side so they weren’t trampled. Guns had given way to knives and bludgeons. One woman ran at a tribesman with a stick from the latrine. She managed to shove it into his eye before he shot her down. Vera stopped to help a girl of no more than thirteen in a torn shalvar, whose face was swollen from bruises. Her gun had jammed, and she was pulling blindly at the trigger. Vera took it from her hands and laid it aside. She recognized the rage and pleading in the girl’s eyes and handed over her own gun, showing her how to make sure it didn’t jam again.
Vera turned to see Apollo and Kamil open the gate leading into the courtyard. She ran over, shouting a warning, wondering whether they had gone mad. Why were they letting the enemy in?
As Levon and his son, Taniel, galloped through the gate at the head of a small army of villagers, Vera bent over, dizzy with relief. The riders who were wounded clutched at their mounts so they wouldn’t fall. Those who were able jumped from their horses into the fight, wielding axes and swords, unable to use their firearms at such close range. Before long, the remaining Kurdish tribesmen fled through the gate. When the firing stopped, Vera dared to hope they had driven off the Kurds.
Levon’s men searched among those lying on the ground for members of their families. Levon embraced his wife and daughter, and Taniel reverently kissed his mother’s hand. The gate closed onto cries and imprecations to God from the lips of men who had found their loved ones.
As soon as the monastery door was unlocked, Vera ran inside to see Gabriel. His eyelids fluttered. She leaned over and pressed her lips to his. His breath smelled of hyacinths. “Gabriel,” she whispered. His lips moved, and she pressed her ear to his mouth. “I love you.” Had she heard him say that? Or had it been her voice? His breath rattled. She could no longer see his chest move. “No. Don’t go.” She wrapped her arms around him and, pressing her face to his, rocked back and forth.
After a while, she realized that Apollo was kneeling beside her. He pushed her away gently and checked the pulse at Gabriel’s neck. He laid his hand over the dead man’s eyes and murmured a prayer. Vera had no prayer in her heart, just a scream that she could not release.
86
Kamil tried to organize a united defense in case the tribesmen returned, but to his frustration the villagers answered only to Levon. Kamil wasn’t surprised they were suspicious of him. After all, he was an envoy from the same sultan who had sent the Kurdish troops.
The women and the wounded were inside the monastery, while the men had organized a watch and were taking turns sleeping. Of Kamil’s thirty men, sixteen were dead, three others severely wounded. Victor had sutured Omar’s wound and told him to remain still so it wouldn’t reopen, but the police chief fashioned a cane from a branch and used it to climb the stairs to the top of the wall. Levon’s men spread out across the battlements. Kamil had been impressed by their ferocity during battle.
Kamil invited Levon to sit with him by a small fire in the courtyard and, to gain the man’s trust, tried to explain why he was there, that he had been sent to discover whether the commune was the center of an armed rebellion or an experiment in communal living.
“Does it matter?” Levon responded, breaking a stick of firewood in his hands and feeding it bit by bit to the flames. “White dogs, black dogs, they’re all the same. These people”-he spit out the word-“have brought disaster to our valley. If you represent the sultan as you claim, why don’t you stop these bastards?” His voice was hostile.
“They ignored the regimental standard. Did you expect me to walk out there with a letter of invitation?”
“Talk to their commander.”
“It was impossible to tell who was in command. Have you learned anything about their leader?” Kamil asked.
“He’s a coward, stays at the back. But he wears a uniform.”
“Describe it.” Kamil was prepared for the answer.
“Black greatcoat, black uniform, imperial army issue. A kalpak with some kind of gold insignia on the front.” Levon’s eyes fastened onto Kamil’s. “Maybe we should just kill him and blame it on you. Or kill you and blame it on him. Black dog, white dog.” He chuckled, then got up and went back to his men.
That night the Kurds returned. One of the first casualties was Taniel, shot in the head as he looked out from behind the wall to take aim. Levon rushed over. He carried his son’s body down the stairs and laid it on the ground beside the fountain. Kamil watched, sick with pity, as Levon scooped up a handful of water and let it flow across the young man’s shattered forehead, unrolled his turban, and draped it across his son’s face. He then returned to his post.
Kamil aimed his field glasses out into the night but saw only the occasional flash of a face as a torch was lit. As the night wore on, the Kurds shot many defenders on the wall but, hampered by darkness, proved unable to reenter the monastery. Omar had propped himself in a corner, his weight on his good leg, and shot one tribesman after another. Noting Omar’s skill, Levon sent a young farmer over with a second rifle that he reloaded while Omar fired.
By the time this battle was over and the Kurds retreated in the early hours of the morning, Kamil had lost three more soldiers. Levon’s daughter also lay dead. Stroking her hair, Vera told Kamil that she had been among the best shots. Their mother threw herself wailing across the bodies of her children, but Levon seemed preternaturally calm, speaking to his men and seeing to those who were wounded. Yet he shouted at Victor to hurry up-the first time Kamil had seen Levon lose control.
Kamil took the loss of his soldiers hard, but found an odd comfort in Omar’s steady stream of curses as they prepared the bodies of the fresh-faced young men for burial at the back of the courtyard. Kamil added their identity documents to the twelve that were already neatly folded in a leather envelope he kept in an inside pocket of his coat against his heart.