Testimony: Themia Halo (1910- )
Themia Halo in 1989
Each day Mathea was heavier on my back, and my clammy, long-sleeved dress, thick with dust and perspiration, stuck to me like wet glue. With each passing day, Mother seemed more debilitated, perhaps from the extra strain of nursing the twins without proper food or water. At the edge of a small town, there was a water fountain with water flowing continuously, spilling its cool treasure into a stone bowl, then overflowing onto the ground, turning the stones around it black. I had never seen Mother so in need of anything before. She had always been the graceful, patient jewel the Turks rightly named ¨Kozel. But Mother left the file to stumble to the fountain. The exiles stopped and watched expectantly, ready to race for the fountain also if she succeeded in her quest. But just before she reached it, a Turkish soldier trotted up on his horse spitting out commands. He raised his whip and gave her a lash like one would an ox or a donkey. She fell to her knees as my feet rooted to the earth and my heart slit open. Father threw down his bundles and ran to her.
“Water, Please,” Mother said to the soldier.
Father tried to raise Mother to her feet.
“Please.”
The soldier raised his whip again, spitting out more abuse. He would have hit her again but Father threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her away.
The disappointment on the marchers’ dirt-streaked faces was barely noticeable. It was more like numbness that showed in their eyes, the numbness that comes from deprivation and prolonged defeat. Mother stumbled back to her place as the others turned like robots to continue their march.
Was it on that day that little Maria died? I don’t remember. I only remember her little body tied to Christodoula’s back like a papoose, her little head bobbing back and forth, and the realization that something was wrong crept up my hot body with a cold, clammy, panic.
“Mama!” I said as calmly as I could, hoping my calmness would make everything all right. “Maria looks funny.”
Mother looked up and burst into tears. Maria’s face had turned ashen. Her eyes stared out at nothing like little doll eyes that were broken in an open position, and her head rolled back and forth with each step.
“What’s wrong?” Christodoula demanded in a panic. “What is it?”
We stopped in the road like a pile of stones in a river; the weary exiles ruptured out around us and continued their march. Mother took Maria from Christodoula’s back and cradled her in her arms as her tears washed Maria’s lifeless face.
“Move!” a soldier shouted as he trotted up to where we stood.
"My baby,” Mother said. She held out Maria for the soldier to see, as if her shock and grief could also be his. “My baby.”
“Throw it away if it’s dead!” he shouted. “Move!”
“Let me bury her,” Mother pleaded, sobbing.
“Throw it away!” He shouted again, raising his whip. “Throw it away!”
Mother clutched Maria’s body to her breast as we stood staring up at him. Her face was gripped with a torment I had never seen before. Father reached for Maria, to put her down I suppose, but Mother clutched her even more tightly. Then she walked over to the high stone wall that separated the road from the town and lifted Maria up to lay her on the wall’s top as if on an altar before the Almighty.
That night Mother cried herself to sleep. And each time I closed my own eyes, I saw her holding Maria up to the heavens like an offering. The image of her lifeless body lying on the wall, like some gift in a pagan ritual, followed me even into my dreams and all through the next days. Each time I thought of my little sister left lying there alone in the burning sun, with the buzzards flying about waiting for us to pass, the sobs would come without my ability to control them.
Source: Thea Halo, Not Even My Name, New York: Picador USA, 2001, pp. 138-139.