Like the town of A’zaz in which it sat, the camp was small—only a few hundred people. Nothing like the one in Aleppo with tens of thousands of residents. People here were not healthy by any normal standards. Nonetheless, they didn’t seem to be as thoroughly destroyed as the Bayburt refugees had been when they got this far south. Perhaps they hadn’t traveled as far. Or maybe their minders weren’t as ruthless. Whatever the reason, this group was relatively well off. They even shared their food.
While Rosmerta was grateful for the generosity, she didn’t want to take time to get to know anyone. This was a nice enough camp, but a camp nonetheless. What was the point to making friends with people who wouldn’t be alive in a couple weeks? Besides, she and Boghos weren’t staying anyway. A couple days to recover and they would escape again and… and what? Whatever it was—wherever it ended—she knew they weren’t staying here to die.
Rosmerta was partially correct. She was given one day to recover. The second morning, a group of camel riding gendarmes rounded up the camp and they were back on the trail. The sharp ankle pain from a couple days ago was replaced by a dull ache that Rosmerta found tolerable. Her greatest concern was where they were going. She knew she couldn’t keep this up for long, and she certainly couldn’t manage another trip into the mountains. Soon after leaving A’zaz, it all became clear. They were going back to Aleppo.
The trip took just one day. One exceedingly long day. Eight hours of stifling hot air sucking the breath out of her lungs. Eight hours of shuffling on super-heated dirt on bare feet and a sore ankle. In spite of it all, Rosmerta was in better shape than some of the other travelers, allowing her to stay in the middle of the pack and avoid any unwelcome attention from the gendarmes.
Boghos, on the other hand, was his usual belligerent self. He wandered away. Rosmerta didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. When he rejoined her shortly before they arrived in Aleppo, he seemed contrite. Rosmerta knew that something had happened, but she didn’t think it was wise to ask about it. They entered the giant, lice-infested, typhus-ridden Aleppo camp in complete silence.
They were directed to a section where all the tents were green. Rosmerta had never fully understood the color-coding system. She knew that the black tents were where those with typhus and other incurable diseases stayed. As bad as this place was, everyone had a tent to sleep in and food was available. And the condition of the camp was mostly due to the condition of the people in it. The condition of the people was due to the treatment they received before they arrived.
Aleppo was unfortunate to be on the receiving end of the Turks’ orchestrated nightmare. Not that the Syrians were particularly nice to the Armenians, or that they didn’t commit their own offenses, but they weren’t responsible for the whole mess, either. Even the Turks were not all complicit. Without the help of Muhammad Kasaba, the Elmassians wouldn’t have gotten the head start they did, and Boghos would have been beheaded by Ahmet. And without Dr. Tarik, Megerdich wouldn’t have survived 1895, and then Rosmerta wouldn’t be here. And without Rasim Sengor, or even Umar for that matter, Rosmerta could have died.
Of course, she had also run into the Special Organization that attacked defenseless civilians without provocation and the Muslim men who believed they had a right to claim any non-Muslim woman they wanted and force themselves on her for a night or for a lifetime as they saw fit. What made some people risk their own lives to save a complete stranger while others would kill that same stranger just for fun? Why would one person hide a defenseless civilian while others would look for any chance to take advantage of her? None of it made sense. None of it mattered right now either. What mattered now was that Rosmerta was trapped in a disease-infested tent city in the middle of the desert and she had to get out. But how?
That first night, Boghos told her how. While they were lying awake waiting for sleep, Rosmerta pushed Boghos for answers. “Why are you so despondent?”
“I’m not. Leave me alone.”
“Come on Boghos. We’ve been through too much together. Something is wrong. What is it?”
“I told you, nothing is wrong. I’m okay. Just leave me alone.”
“You’re not okay. Something happened between A’zaz and here. What was it?”
He sighed. “The money,” he said. “I made a deal with the trailing gendarme. He took my gold coins and said he would let me slip away when we entered Aleppo. The bastard reneged. He took my money, then wouldn’t let me leave the caravan.”
“What about me? Was I part of this deal, or were you planning on leaving me to rot in here?”
Boghos didn’t answer. A look of shock crossed his face, followed quickly by shame. He was caught out and he knew it. He hadn’t even thought about Rosmerta. He was so used to being on his own that it hadn’t even occurred to him that he should negotiate her release too.
Rosmerta rolled over, showing her back to the traitor. She had money too. And she knew the guards at the gates were open to bribery. She might fail, too, but it was worth a try.