Home Is Beyond the Mountains by Celia Lottridge Page A

jacket.”
    Samira believed her. She was
wearing the dress that had been made for the heat of Baghdad. Her other
dress was warmer, but the cloth was getting thin at the elbows. It had been
somebody else’s dress for a long time before it was given to her in
Kermanshah. As for her warm jacket, she had mended it so often it was hard
to put a patch on it anymore.
    â€œWarm clothes will be
wonderful,” she said. “Will we have new shoes, too?”
    â€œYes, the men down at the
other end are shoemakers,” said Britha. “Some boys will work with them and
every one of you will have the shoes and clothes you need if we just get to
work.”
    Hanna laughed. “We’ll all
work,” she said. “Susan Shedd won’t rest until every last child is properly
dressed.”
    Samira was surprised. “Do
you know Miss Shedd? She hasn’t been here very long.”
    â€œI knew her when she was a
girl, living with her family in Urmieh,” said Hanna. “She was just as
determined then as she is now. She asked for a horse so she could explore
outside the city walls. Of course she was never allowed to go unless her
father or some other man could go with her but she never gave up
asking.”
    â€œShe told us she went to
America when she was fifteen,” said Samira.
    â€œYes, people who came from
America to work in the mission always sent their children back there to go
to school when they were old enough to live so far away from their families.
Susan Shedd hated to leave Urmieh, but she had no choice. Of course, being
in America meant that she missed the war, so maybe she was lucky. I never
thought I’d see her again but I should have known she would come back and do
something useful. And now that she’s here she’ll expect us to be working,
not talking. Let’s get started.”
    They got to work. Samira
remembered watching the women in Baghdad make the green dresses on sewing
machines, but she had not used the machines herself.
    â€œLook,” said Hanna. “You
turn the wheel with your right hand so that the needle goes up and down. You
guide the cloth under the needle with your left hand.”
    Samira found that sewing on
a machine wasn’t hard as long as she kept her eye on the line of stitches.
It had to be straight. If the seam was crooked she had to rip it out and
stitch it again.
    Anna was not sewing. She was
learning how to take care of babies. It seemed that there were some Assyrian
orphans in Hamadan, most of them very young. They would be coming from the
nursery in Hamadan to live at the orphanage soon.
    â€œBut these babies weren’t
even born until after the war was over,” Samira said. “How did they come to
be orphans?”
    â€œMiss Shedd says it’s been
very hard here,” Anna replied. “Some people were weak and sick when they
came and they didn’t survive. Like Elias’s mother. Miss Shedd says we have
to do our best to give these babies a good life.”
    Samira felt a little jealous
of Anna. Taking care of orphan babies was surely more important than sewing
clothes. Then one afternoon Miss Shedd came to the sewing room.
    â€œWithout warm clothes and
sturdy shoes children will be cold. Some might get sick,” she said. “So I’m
counting on you to do your work well.” She smiled. “I would even say that
what you are making is essential to the children’s survival, at least to
their healthy survival.”
    Essential to our survival.
Samira liked those words. She repeated them and wiggled her toes inside her
new flannel-lined shoes as she watched the sewing-machine needle go up and
down. She was making a pair of blue trousers for a little boy. When she came
to the end of the seam she held them up. They were thick and warm and the
seams were straight.
    â€œThese trousers would fit
Elias,” she thought. “Maybe they would even help him survive.” She