The Winter Thief

44

Dawn laid a light shroud of mist over the fields. Feride gasped at the scene before her. Elif’s cry had faded, and now she stood between the gnarled wine stocks, her hands slick with blood and her shirt spattered with it. At her feet lay the bodies of three men, their heads and limbs carved open, weapons scattered about them on the rocky ground. Feride looked behind her, but the men chasing her were gone, perhaps as terrified as she was by Elif’s scream.

Trembling, Feride approached the bodies. They were strangers.

“Where’s the doctor?” she asked Elif, shaking her arm.

When Elif didn’t respond, Feride stumbled through the vines and searched along the rows. She tripped over what she thought was a root, but realized it was an arm. She fell to her knees beside the massive body of Nissim. His throat had been cut.

“Doctor Moreno?” she whispered, her voice hoarse with fear. “Vali?”

She heard a faint sound, thin as a breath of wind, and called out again. The sound was repeated. She made out, “Here.” She crawled through the dirt until she came to Doctor Moreno’s prone form. Beside him sat Vali, propped against a rock, holding in his fist a tourniquet tightly bound around the doctor’s leg. But Feride could see that Vali was weak and could barely speak. She couldn’t tell where he was wounded, although his eye was swelling. If Vali let go of the tourniquet, she thought, Doctor Moreno might die. She didn’t know what to do. She had to get help, but she didn’t want to leave them alone.

“Elif,” she screamed, and when she didn’t respond, ran to where she had left her. She was gone. Then Feride heard a gasping sound. She found Elif on her knees vomiting. When Elif raised her face, it was barely recognizable, all planes and angles and dark hollows.

“You have to help me, Elif,” Feride sobbed. “I don’t know what to do. Please help me.”

Elif stared at her red hands and began to scrape them across the ground. “My hands are dirty,” she said in a hollow voice.

Dirty hands, Feride thought, remembering with a sharp pain her two daughters. Dirty hands were something she could deal with. She picked up a knife and, hitching up her skirts, cut away the lower half of her chemise. She handed a piece of the white linen to Elif, then cut the rest into strips.

Elif stared at the cloth, then began to wipe the blood off her hands.

“Over here.” Feride led her to the two men. Vali had fallen unconscious, and blood streamed from Doctor Moreno’s leg where the tourniquet had loosened.

Feride quickly tightened the tourniquet, which she recognized as part of Vali’s turban, and, after cutting away the cloth of Dr. Moreno’s trouser leg, bound several linen strips tightly across the wound.

“Is this right?” she asked Elif. When her friend didn’t respond, she shook her, then slapped her across the face.

Elif pushed Feride so hard that she fell. Feride grabbed Elif’s leg and pulled her down, and soon the two women were tussling in the dirt between the vines. Finally Elif yelled, “Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.” Sobbing, the women held each other.

Feride scrambled up and returned to the men. “Is he alive?” she asked Elif, who was squatting over Vali, examining him. Doctor Moreno lay slumped beside him, his wound seeping slowly into the makeshift bandage.

Elif cradled Vali’s head. “He’s breathing,” she said. Her hand came away bloody. “Let me have one of those strips.” They bound Vali’s head as best they could, then Elif examined Doctor Moreno. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“What should we do?” Feride cried.

“The bandages should keep him from bleeding anymore,” Elif said. “But we have to get help. And we must get away from here.”

“There were two more men.” Feride looked nervously up the hill. A couple of wild dogs had appeared over the crest, sniffing the air. “Maybe the farmer can help us.” She remembered with longing last night’s companionable room and shared tea.

“One of us should stay here.” Elif’s voice sounded far away.

Feride gave her friend a worried look, wondering whether it was better for her to stay amid the carnage or to step into the unknown up the hill.

“They’re more likely to help if you ask them,” Elif pointed out.

Feride squeezed Elif’s hand and got to her feet. She collected a pile of stones for Elif to throw at the dogs, then started to walk, carrying more stones in a fold of her skirt.

At the top of the hill, she retrieved her charshaf and put it on so she would look somewhat respectable, wiping her blood-smeared hands on its ample folds. The dogs had disappeared, so she emptied her skirt of the stones, keeping one in her fist, more a talisman against harm than a weapon. She hurried through the vineyard, then along the path to the farmer’s cottage, now clearly visible in the morning light. She knocked. There were voices behind the door, but no one answered.

She knocked again and called out, “Selam. It’s your guests from last night.”

“Go away,” the man yelled. “You’re evil djinns. We know you now and won’t open our doors again.”

Feride pounded on the door using the stone. “We need help. Two of our friends are wounded. They’ve had an accident. Please help us. I will pay you.” But there was no response. The stone slipped from her hand.

As she stepped back, the hem of her charshaf swept over the cat. It was lying in front of the farmer’s door, a blood-encrusted gap at its throat. The sight of the lifeless body threatened to tip Feride into hysteria. No wonder the farmer refused to open the door.

She peered into the dark interior of the stable adjoining the house and rejoiced when she saw a donkey. There was no cart, but she found a stack of large wool grain bags and some rope. She loaded a dozen bags onto the animal and led it through the vineyard to where Elif waited beside Doctor Moreno and Vali.

The two women layered the long, heavy grain sacks to make a padded stretcher, then tied Vali and Doctor Moreno on and hitched it to the donkey. In this way, they made their way laboriously downhill, the sacks catching on the grape stocks and threatening to overturn, until they reached the road leading to the port area. Despite the thick wool pads on which the men lay, the road was full of bumps and loose stones that Feride was sure caused the wounded men pain.

They attracted curious and sometimes disapproving stares from the few passersby out this early. They must make a strange sight, Feride thought, a blond foreign man and a Muslim woman in a soiled cloak and veil, pulling two wounded men behind a donkey. If anyone was hunting for them, they wouldn’t have to look far. By breakfast, the whole town would be talking about them.

One of the locals must have alerted the imam of a nearby mosque, who huffed his way up the hill toward them. Two small boys ran behind him, their thin legs churning up dust.

“Selam aleykum.”

“Aleykum selam,” Feride responded.

“You are in need of assistance,” the imam said, exposing brown teeth. “May I help?”

“We were fallen upon by bandits, and these two men were injured defending us. One is a doctor, the other, my driver. Another of our party lies dead in the vineyard above, having valiantly resisted these criminals. Two of the bandits escaped. Several others lie vanquished in the dirt. We need immediate medical care for these men, the best that can be had, and I would like to send a message to our people in the city.”

Feride’s upper-class intonation and vocabulary hadn’t escaped the imam, who sent the boys scurrying off with messages.

“Honored hanoum, I’ve sent a boy to fetch the doctor from the Valide hospital and a cart. If you will come to the mosque, my wife will be pleased to make you comfortable and your travel companion can rest and change into a clean robe.” He looked curiously at the blond foreigner.

Feride declined his invitation, saying they preferred to remain with their wounded companions. Elif had again become unresponsive.

While the imam sent off for stools and refreshments to be brought to them, Feride hovered over the two wounded men, neither of whom had regained consciousness. She swallowed a sob that had begun to rise in her throat. She wished Kamil were here. Her brother would know what to do. She tried not to think of Huseyin. The sight of so much death today had made her husband’s likely death seem real for the first time. Perhaps she was chasing a ghost and risking the lives and sanity of her dearest friends for nothing. Had she really wished Huseyin to be dead rather than to leave her for another woman? The thought filled her with shame and an inchoate fear that by thinking it, she had brought it about.