Home Is Beyond the Mountains by Celia Lottridge Read Free Book Online Page B

were
taken down. The teacher stopped coming to the school tent. Garbage piled up
as group after group of men, women and families were sent away.
    â€œThey have to walk all the
way to Mosul,” said Benyamin. “There they have to sign a paper saying that
they are leaving the camp because they want to. Then they’ll camp somewhere
along the Tigris River until they can cross over and walk to Persia and,
maybe, back to their villages.”
    There was nothing for the
orphans to do but wait. The girls still swept the tent every day, but the
laundry was closed so the children’s clothes got dirtier and dirtier.
Benyamin’s shirt was torn and there was no thread to mend it. Bean soup and
bread arrived every day but the bread was not fresh. The bakers had
gone.
    When at last news came that
the orphans should prepare to leave for Baghdad, Samira was relieved. The
Baqubah refugee camp was not a place to be anymore.
    She made a bundle of her
extra blouse and skirt and the books she had stitched together. Elias’s
clothes made a smaller bundle. Anna unraveled some thread from a worn-out
blanket and sewed a special pocket into her skirt for the paper about Elias.
Then she bundled her things. They were ready to go.
    Everyone stood in the hot
sun while the soldiers took the big tents down. Six tents where one hundred
and fifty children had lived. The older boys were put to work loading the
cooking pots and other equipment into big canvas bags.
    When everything was packed,
the soldiers led them through the orphans’ gate, past the dusty squares
where hundreds of tents had stood, and out of the camp.
    Outside the gates were two
big wagons and oxen to pull them. The soldiers and the older boys loaded the
tents and the canvas bags into the wagons. Samira could see that the wagons
were getting filled up.
    â€œThere’s no room for us,”
she said to Anna.
    â€œYou’ll have to walk,” said
one of the soldiers. “We’ve been ordered to take all this equipment, and it
certainly can’t walk.”
    Benyamin came over. “If the
small children have to walk it will be a very slow trip and hard for them,
too.”
    The soldier looked at the
crowd of children.
    â€œThey only gave us these two
wagons,” he said.
    â€œI have an idea,” said
Samira. “The boys can make a place on top of the tents where the little ones
can ride. The rest of us can walk.”
    â€œGo ahead,” said the
soldier, and he watched while Benyamin and Ashur and other big boys climbed
to the top of the wagons. They jumped and punched to make nests in the
canvas. Then they lifted the small children up into the nests and said, “Now
you must sit still or you’ll fall out and have to walk.”
    Samira could see the
children peering down. Elias waved to her.
    â€œWe’ll be right behind you,”
she called.
    It was hard for the children
who were walking to keep up with the wagons. The road was hot under their
bare feet, and the sun beat down. Sometimes the wagons stopped and they
rested for a few minutes. The soldiers gave them water and dried fruit, but
they were soon back on the road.
    The journey took two days.
At night they slept beside the road on bedrolls. The soldiers kept watch,
and Samira wondered what they were watching for.
    In the middle of the night
she woke up, looking for someone. Mama. Where was Mama?
    Samira stared at the
darkness. No. This was a different walk. Three years had passed. Mama was
gone.
    She put her hand on the lump
that was Elias under his blanket and waited until the soldier came by, dark
against the stars. Then she could sleep again.
    The second day they started
out before the sun had risen.
    â€œIt’s going to be a hot
day,” one of the soldiers explained. “We want to get to Baghdad before the
sun is high.”
    Before noon they came to an
army encampment near the river on the edge of the city.
    â€œThis is as far as we