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“Thank you,” she said, “but I think we will all stick together.”
    â€œAt least let me give you something,” said the Turk. “Your parents had not been paid yet for all their work. I will give you that.”
    Mariam nodded. Her parents had earned that money. With blood.
    The man rose to his feet, then stretched out his hand to help up Anna, then Mariam and Marta. “Your family’s supplies are here too,” he said.
    He went into his house and came back with a small purse of gold. “Here,” he said, thrusting it into Mariam’s hands. She tucked it into her belt beside her mother’s sickle.
    They followed Abdul Hassan down to the place that had been their encampment. Mariam held back asob as she looked at their humble pot for pilaf and their sleeping carpets. Her whole world had shifted, yet nothing had changed.
    â€œThose are yours,” said the Turk, gesturing towards the meagre supplies. “And take what you need from the barn.”
    Mariam knew that if she tried to say anything out loud, she would burst into tears, so instead she simply nodded at Abdul Hassan. This constant mention of the barn upset her greatly. The last thing she wanted to do was to go into the migrants’ barn and root around the dead men’s belongings for something good. Leave that for some other scavenger.
    She slung her father’s rucksack onto her back and helped Marta shrug into their uncle’s. Kevork and Anna gathered up what they could, and then the little group thanked the Turk for his kindness and headed back down to the village.
    Walking through the village gates was an eerie experience. Instead of the faint scent of lemon and the happy shrieks of children, there was a sharp smell of ashes and cold silence.
    Survivors had collected their dead off the streets, and Mariam could only imagine the many burial rituals that were happening in silence in the houses that surrounded her. She was overcome by sadness. They walked all the way to Kevork’s house without encountering a single soul.
    When she stepped through the gate of the courtyard, the first thing she noticed was freshly turned soil under the mulberry tree. She didn’t ask: she knew this was Arsho’s grave.
    Inside, the house was much like she had seen it last. Mice had come and cleaned up the remnants of the stew from the floor and the figs from the now-cold ojak. She was grateful to see that Kevork had put away the cradle. Onnig was unsettled enough already, and the sight of the broken cradle would have grieved him beyond despair, she was sure.
    Mariam set down the rucksack, then went to the ojak and stirred the ashes, looking for cinders. There were none. She opened up her father’s rucksack and drew out a package of prized matches. Taking some kindling from a stack at the side of the ojak, she lit a small fire. The ojak was the heart of any Armenian home. And she had to put heart back into this one.

C HAPTER T HREE
    F or Kevork, that first evening was the hardest.
    The day of the massacres, he had been in shock, but now the shock was subsiding and the sadness was sinking in.
    While Mariam lit the ojak, Kevork mournfully dismantled his mother’s broken loom. The wood was no better than firewood, it had been crushed so badly. He lovingly unhooked the half-made carpet and folded it carefully so that it wouldn’t fray where it had been slashed by the soldier’s bayonet. He found his mother’s favourite veil — a solid swath of sky blue — and used that to wrap up the carpet. It was his last remnant of his mother.
    When it was time for them to sleep that night, Kevork took down the three sleeping pillows: one for Anna, one for Marta, one for Mariam. Then he rooted around in the rafters and found a small pillow that his mother had woven and put away for safekeeping. It was supposed to have been for Arsho when she was oldenough to sleep out of her cradle. He gave that one to