Nobody's Child Read Online Free

Onnig, Mariam’s eyes were directly in front of the window. Through the latticework, she was startled to see a woman’s eyes staring out at her. Mariam stared boldly back, as if challenging the woman to do something, but the eyes disappeared. Mariam reached up and Marta carefully placed Onnig into her arms. Marta jumped clumsily down and landed with a thud in the garden. The garden gate was fastened with a large hook, so Mariam undid it, then she and her brother and sister walked out onto the street.
    It was eerily silent.
    As they walked down the middle of the street, more than one set of eyes stared out at them, but nobody stopped them.
    Marta’s doll was still in the street, exactly where she dropped it. She picked it up.
    The children walked towards the burning Armenian quarters, Onnig compliant and trembling on Mariam’ship. The wooden gate on the courtyard of Anoush Adomian’s house had been kicked in. There were no chickens and no goat in the garden.
    Mariam looked over to Marta with a question in her eyes, and Marta nodded imperceptibly. Mariam let Onnig down off her hip, and he grasped Marta’s hand. The two younger children waited in the courtyard while Mariam stepped into the central corridor of the house. “Anoush?” she called. No answer. “Kevork?” No answer.
    She stepped into the main room. There were two ovens. One was the
tonir
— an oven dug into the middle of the earthen floor that was for warmth and family gathering, not for cooking. On top of the tonir was a flat, raised, table-like top covered with a large carpet. The Adomians’ sleeping cushions were still in a circle around the tonir, and there was a half-eaten piece of flatbread and a handful of figs on the table-like top in the centre.
    The other oven was the cooking hearth, or
ojak
, at the side of the room. Mariam saw that a knife had been dropped on the ground in front of it, and a big clay cooking pot full of stew had smashed to the ground. The juice of the stew had sunken into the dirt floor, leaving scraps of nut and vegetable scattered about. A carpet loom had taken up a large space in front of the fireplace, but now it was mangled, and the half-finished carpet had been sliced to shreds. Arsho’s cradle had been cut from the rope that suspended it from the ceiling and it had fallen precariously close to the fire. Mariam stepped over to it and looked inside. Empty.
    Bile rose in her throat as she imagined what must have happened to her friends. She walked back out the door.
    When Mariam stepped out of the house, Marta looked at her with a question in her eyes, but Mariam just shook her head.
    Next, they checked in Taline’s house, but no one was there, either.
    They walked further down the street to the common area in the Armenian district. The market stalls had been kicked in and burned, and the dama board was knocked over, game pieces scattered in the dirt.
    The worst was the church. The elaborately carved doors had been bolted from the outside so that no one could escape. And then it had been set on fire.
    Some people tried to save themselves by jumping out the windows, but the Turks had planned for that.
    Mariam gripped Onnig to her tightly as she looked at the faces of the corpses around the church. Some she recognized. There was the lemon vendor, and one of the old men who played dama.
    Mariam felt Onnig suddenly gasp. She looked at his eyes and followed his gaze. He was staring at his dead friend Taline, her head at an awkward angle with a boot mark on her face. Onnig covered his mouth with both hands and stifled his sobs. Mariam rubbed her brother’s back, trying to calm and comfort him, but where was there comfort? Certainly not here.
    Hugging her brother tight, Mariam walked away from the church and continued down the road and out through the village gates. She had to find out whether her parents were all right. She didn’t turn to see if Marta was following. She knew