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  But where were they going today, galloping so fast?

  The sound sent the boys dodging back into their houses or diving into small gaps between the buildings. They were taking no chances. The Kurds might come through the gate in the village wall.

  But the horsemen did not look left or right. They galloped past Ayna and were gone. Benyamin came home to tell Mama and Papa that he was all right.

  Papa said, “You were right to hide. Some of the Kurds are helping the Turkish soldiers. They’ve probably been told they’ll be given some land. It’s not a good sign when Kurds come past without wanting food or money from the village. I think something is about to happen.”

  Papa was right. The next day someone hammered at the door while the family was eating their evening meal.

  Papa went to the door but he didn’t open it.

  “Who are you?” he said in a loud voice.

  A voice answered, “Your cousin Youel.”

  Papa opened the door. He looked for a long moment at the dusty man who stood on the doorstep.

  “It is you, Youel,” he said, and he embraced the man and pulled him inside.

  Benyamin stepped forward to greet Youel. Mama and Samira waited quietly for him to greet them.

  When the greetings were over Papa said, “You have come a long way. Drink some tea and tell us why you are here. Then you can eat.”

  Youel drank his tea in one long gulp. Then he said, “You must leave Ayna at once. The Turkish army is moving in this direction, burning the mountain villages as they come. The Assyrian people are running to save their lives. So are the Armenians. There’s no safe place for us in our land. I’m going to join with other Assyrian and Armenian men to try to stop the soldiers or slow them down, but you have a family. You must all go now.”

  Samira was surprised when Mama spoke. Usually when visitors came she sat quietly and listened, but now she said, “Where can we go? If we can’t stay where we have always lived, where can we go?”

  “You must head toward Hamadan. The British army is there. Those soldiers will protect you.”

  Mama shook her head as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  Papa frowned. “I have heard that a mule caravan takes twenty-five days or more to travel from Urmieh to Hamadan. And the road through the mountains is very rough, they say.”

  “You have to go,” said Youel. “That army will come and steal what they can and burn the rest. They don’t care who they kill, either.”

  After that Papa and Youel went to talk on the roof. Samira and Benyamin looked at each other. They knew that the men didn’t want them to hear what they were saying.

  Mama tidied away the spoons and tea glasses, but she kept glancing at the ceiling as if she wanted to hear the men talking.

  Samira was thinking of one word Youel had said. Hamadan.

  Where was Hamadan? She decided to ask Benyamin. He went to school and she knew that on the wall of the schoolroom there was a big map of Persia. Hamadan must be on that map.

  “Benyamin,” she said. “This Hamadan where our cousin says we should go, is it a city?”

  “Yes, it’s a big city. If we go south over the mountains and down into the plain, we’ll come to Hamadan. But it will take a long time. When I went to the sheep market in Urmieh with Papa we went just a tiny distance on the map, less than the width of my little finger, but it took us all day.”

  Samira nodded. She remembered how tired Benyamin had been when he came back from that journey to the city.

  Benyamin sighed a deep sigh. “On the map Hamadan is three or four hands away from Ayna.” He shook his head and said no more.

  Youel was gone before daylight. Papa went with him a little way down the road before he said goodbye.

  He returned to wake the family. “Youel was right. People running from the danger are already coming past the village.”

  Samira and Benyamin went up to the roof to look. There they were, people coming from the western mountains, all going the same direction, toward the south. Some rode horses laden with bundles, others had big oxcarts that carried the whole family and their household goods, but most walked beside small carts pulled by donkeys.

  Papa went out to the road with a jug of water and some bread. Samira came down from the roof and stood beside him. They offered the refreshment to a family walking beside a cart pulled by a mule. It was overflowing with bags of grain, rolled-up rugs and baskets of vegetables. An old, old woman rode on top, staring straight ahead.

  Papa spoke to the man of the family. “How long have you been traveling?” he asked.

  “For three days now. Our village is in the mountains, and the soldiers came and burned the church. They searched our houses for our young men, but they had gone to hide in caves. The soldiers were angry so they smashed whatever they could and threw dirt in the well. Then they went away to find another village. We left the next day.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “The British army is fighting the Turkish army. We’ll walk until we come to the British army. They will protect us.”

  “That will be a long walk,” said Papa.

  “Yes. But here we have no one to defend us. We have to go.”

  Papa filled the water jug the man carried. He took Samira’s hand in his and held it while they watched the man give his wife and his three children and the old grandmother water to drink before they traveled on.

  In the house Mama was sitting very still with Maryam in her arms. She pulled Samira down beside her and held both of her daughters close. Benyamin came in and stood beside Papa.

  Samira could see dark thoughts cross her father’s face.

  “We are threatened just as those people are threatened,” he said at last. “We can’t stay here.”

  “I know,” said Mama. “We must leave. Maybe we should go to the city, to Urmieh, with my sister.”

  “Sahra wants to wait for Avram,” said Papa. “I pray she will be safe. But they say the city is already full of refugees. There is sickness and starvation. I think we’ll be safer on the road.”

  Mama nodded. She let go of Samira and set Maryam on her feet.

  “All right, children,” she said. “Find your extra clothes, and I’ll need help getting some things from the umbar.”

  Papa said, “I’ll bring the cart. We’ll load up today and start out tomorrow.”

  The day passed in a swirl of deciding what to take, packing up, trying not to forget anything, worrying about what would happen to things left behind.

  When Samira finally lay down to sleep she could feel the house around her. She had never slept anywhere but in this room or on the roof above it.

  Tomorrow she would be somewhere far away.

  THEN IT WAS MORNING, and before she had time to be properly awake, Samira was walking beside Mama, away from Ayna.

  She looked back through the gate in the village wall. There was the house she had lived in all her life. Already it looked lonely and abandoned. Aunt Sahra and Ester and Negris stood waving. They had little bundles of clothes beside them, ready for their journey to the city.

  “How can we go without them?” Samira thought. But she said nothing. Mama was already crying.

  Samira looked around. They
had joined a great procession of frightened people — men, women and children with their carts and their animals. Families from Ayna were mixed in with people who had already walked for days. Some were silent. Others talked and called to their friends.

  “I can’t understand what those people ahead of us are saying,” she said to Mama.

  Mama wiped her eyes with the ends of her scarf and listened. “They’re speaking Armenian,” she said. “We Assyrians are not the only people who must run away.”

  By nightfall they had traveled farther than Samira had ever gone before. Maryam was asleep on top of the bundles in the wagon, and Samira felt as if she would fall asleep walking if they didn’t stop.

  “We’ll camp here for the night,” Papa said. They had come to an open field dotted with little groups of people. Some had built small fires and spread out rugs or quilts to lie on. Others were preparing to lie on the bare ground.

  Mama lifted Maryam down from the cart, and Samira spread out the one rug they had brought from the house. It was worn but it looked welcoming. The most beautiful rugs were at home in Ayna, hidden in the umbar where they might be safe.

  Papa built a little fire and poured water into the kettle from the jug he carried. They had tea with sugar in it and bread with cheese and some pieces of dried pepper from the umbar. Samira remembered all the eggplant and squash they had left drying on the roof.

  “I hope the birds eat it all before thieves get it,” she thought just before she fell asleep.

  For a while the days had a pattern. They woke very early and ate dried fruit before they started out. Maryam rode in the wagon and Papa and Benyamin walked beside the donkey. Samira and Mama followed.

  The land was dry and hot in the summer sun. Dust hung thick in the air, stirred up by all the feet and hooves that were walking, walking. Whenever they came to a river they scooped up water to carry for themselves and the donkey.

  Papa kept track of the days, and when Sunday came the family took time to stand in a circle and say a prayer together.

  When another Sunday came Papa said, “We still have food to eat and a little grain for the donkey, so we can be thankful.”

  Looking up the rocky slope that lay ahead of them, Samira only wished that she could sleep under a roof and eat something besides dry bread and a few dates. She did not feel very thankful. Still, she said the prayer.

  A few days later a wheel of the cart broke and there was no way to fix it.

  “We have to go on with what we can carry,” said Papa. “We’ll let the donkey go. We have nothing to feed him and perhaps he’ll find food for himself.”

  Samira had no love for the donkey. He was stubborn and would nip her with his teeth if he got a chance, but she wept to see him wandering away into the hills.

  Papa and Benyamin took everything out of the cart and spread it on the ground.

  “Benyamin and I will carry the food and the tools,” said Papa.

  “I’ll wrap some clothes in the quilt and strap it to my back,” said Samira. “The quilt might keep us from freezing at night.”

  Mama said nothing. She would carry Maryam, who could only walk a little distance now.

  As they went on, Samira saw more and more piles of household goods that had been left by people whose carts had broken or whose animals had died. Iron pots and pottery bowls, rugs and quilts and stacks of clothes. Even sacks of grain. None of that mattered as much as getting away to safety.

  Now there was no pattern to their days. They struggled up steep mountainsides and down again. Samira’s feet were sore and blistered. When they had to rest they ate some dried fruit or stale bread. They drank water whenever they crossed a stream and they slept when it was too dark to see the stones in the road.

  Samira stopped noticing anything but the path in front of her, but sometimes, among all the bundles and dead animals that lay along the path, she could not help seeing a narrow pile of earth where someone had been buried, or even a body wrapped in pieces of cloth and left behind.

  She asked Papa why these people had died and he said, “Some were not strong enough for this journey. Now they say a fever has broken out.” His eyes went to Maryam who hardly ever walked now and had grown so thin that Mama had no trouble carrying her all day. Samira felt a new knot of fear in her chest.

  One day they came to a river too deep to wade across. There was a bridge strung on ropes between the high banks. It was narrow and made of small sticks that looked as if they might break under a traveler’s weight. It swayed above the rushing water, and even before she stepped on the bridge Samira felt herself sway, too.

  “Look at that big rock on the other side of the river,” said Benyamin sharply. “Don’t look at the water.” He took hold of the strap that held her pack to her back. “I’ll catch you if you fall. Don’t look down.”

  “If I fall, you’ll fall, too,” thought Samira, but she didn’t say it out loud. She could feel her brother behind her as she clung to the ropes at the sides of the bridge and stepped from one stick to the next.

  When they both stood on the hard earth at the other side of the river, she knew that they had crossed safely because they were together

  Mama and Papa caught up with them, and Samira forgot her relief. Papa was carrying Maryam. When he laid her gently on the ground she didn’t try to get up. Samira could see that her sister’s face was flushed and her eyes were bright with fever.

  Papa put his hand on her forehead.

  “She’s very hot,” he said, and his voice was deep with sadness. Mama knelt and took Maryam in her arms and looked helplessly around her.

  Back in their village there were wise people who knew of herbs that might help a little girl with a fever. Or a doctor might come from the city to see her. Here there was nothing.

  They stayed by the river all day and bathed Maryam with cool water. Benyamin made a little tent with the quilt to shelter her from the glaring sun. People coming by offered them water and a little food, but no one could give real help.

  When night came Samira fell asleep, exhausted by sorrow.

  She woke in the early dawn and turned to look at her small sister, but Maryam lay perfectly still, and Mama’s shawl covered her face.

  At home when someone died, there was weeping and wailing. The priest came and mourned with the family. There was a funeral in the church.

  Here none of this could happen, except the weeping. Even that was hard. It was so strange to be here on this wild mountainside by a dusty road when something so terrible had happened. Samira couldn’t feel what was the right thing to do.

  But Papa said, “We will bury her properly. We will dig a grave for Maryam.”

  In his pack he had a knife with a strong blade. Now he used it to chip a hole in the hard earth. Benyamin scooped the dirt away with his hands. They labored together until the grave was dug. Then they laid small Maryam, wrapped in her mother’s shawl, carefully in the ground.

  Mama had hardly said anything this whole time, but now she said a prayer.

  “Lord, we give our daughter and our sister, Maryam, into your hands. Take care of her and love her. Amen.”

  All the time they were burying Maryam, people were passing by on the road. Some bowed their heads but no one stopped. So many had died that everyone who passed was carrying sadness and
must still go on. Samira and her family stood around the grave for only a few minutes. Then they, too, had to walk on.

  After a few more days the straggling line of refugees came out into a wide valley. The walking was easier and for a short time the people felt relief, but then word began to spread that Turkish soldiers were coming.

  “They’re looking for men who were part of the Assyrian and Armenian forces that protected us as we set out,” one old man told Papa. “But the war has taken their senses and they see us all as the enemy.”

  There was no place to hide in that open land and so people just kept going. They could see that there was a narrow pass leading into the next mountains. If they could reach that place they might be able to find shelter.

  Then a horseman came galloping. He called out, “Soldiers are coming. They’re shooting at the men and the boys. You must hurry.”

  Samira’s mother looked at her son and her husband. “You can go faster without Samira and me. Go ahead. Hide in the mountains. We will find you when we reach the mountains.”

  There was no time to talk. Papa touched Mama and Samira on the shoulder.

  “We’ll wait for you at the next river,” he said. Then he and Benyamin began to run.

  The soldiers came. They came on horseback, galloping and firing their rifles into the air. When they saw a man or a tall boy, they shot at him. Some they hit and some they missed. They rode all the way along the long line of people and then disappeared into the mountains.

  Samira did not look around. If she did she would see men and boys, hurt and dying. She looked ahead to the mountains, just as she had looked at the rock when she was crossing the swaying bridge.

  Mama and Samira reached the mountain pass. They kept going, looking always for Papa and Benyamin, but they didn’t find them. There was nothing to do but walk, stopping to sleep when tiredness overtook them.