Dream Land (9 page)

For a moment, Papa looked as though he was going to stride after her. Then he checked himself and subsided onto a stool instead with a short, angry laugh.

“Women!” he said. “Girls!” he added, reaching over to tug one of Safi’s plaits with fierce affection. “Who’d have them! Are you really so desperate for a new skirt, Safi?”

“It was
you…
” Safi began indignantly, but Papa, with one of his abrupt changes of mood, was laughing at her.

“I remember a story about a skirt,” he said, “and it’s one you can tell to your history teacher, because it’s about how Grandpa’s cousin Khatije joined the partisans. Eh, Father?”

Grandpa put down his teacup. “I was thinking of another story,” he said, in his slow voice. “About how you came to join the Tatar national movement, Asim.”

“I don’t know that one.” Safi found it hard to imagine that Papa had ever
not
been in the Tatar national movement. “What happened?”

Papa looked at Grandpa. There was a flush of colour across his cheekbones. “Now then.”

“Your father,” Grandpa said to Safi, “was much more interested in girls than politics. And one fine day he ended up in the middle of a protest march in Uzbekistan by accident, because he followed a girl there. Quite the hero, Asim. He saved the girl from a police beating, and she shouted at him all the way home for it. Elmira was ready to die then; whatever it would take for the Tatars to return to Crimea.”

“And that was Mama?” Safi was fascinated by this glimpse of her parents when they were young.

But Papa got up from the stool and said, “That’s enough now.” Still looking a little flushed, he gently eased the ill-fitting door open and went through to the other room, pulling it closed just as gently behind him.

Grandpa held out a hand to Safi. “I think we should go for a walk.”

They left the house to Mama and Papa, because even with the new door there was not much privacy. Safi hoped they weren’t still arguing.

“So was the way Khatije joined the partisans like the way Papa joined the nationalist movement?”

“A little. I suppose they are both love stories. But my cousin Khatije was in love with a boy called Abdul, and if Khatije is our pride, then Abdul is our shame.”

They had wandered past the pond to the campfire Ibrahim had lit to keep himself warm. The men took it in turns to sit by their protest signs, because if they didn’t the police or locals kicked them down.

Ibrahim glanced up as Grandpa and Safi held out their chilled fingers to the flames. “Come to keep me company?”

“
Khartbaba’s
telling a story.”

“Oh, good.” Ibrahim carefully laid his pen and notebook aside. Stories were among the few things that could tear him away from his studies.

“My cousin Khatije was a bit older than me. She was a big, brave, laughing girl until she met Abdul.” Grandpa smiled to himself. You could see that he had been very fond of his cousin. “Abdul’s family had sent him from Akmesjit—”

“That’s Simferopol now,” Ibrahim put in, for Safi’s benefit.

“—to live in our village when the war broke out. He had dewy black eyes and mincing city ways that would make you puke, but I suppose no one had ever kissed Khatije’s fingers before and told her she smiled like the sun coming out. The trouble was, in the next breath Abdul told her she was just a stupid dirty village girl. Khatije should have punched him. Instead she went around with a face longer than a summer’s day in Ramadan.”

“Pig,” Safi said.

“So we had enough reason not to like Abdul, but we put up with him until the Germans occupied Crimea. They were very charming, those German soldiers, with their clean pink hands and their downy hair. Abdul liked them at once. He was one of the first to volunteer for the Tatar self-defence brigades the Germans set up, because it meant he could march around in a nice new uniform shouting orders and lording it over the rest of us.”

“He wasn’t the only one to volunteer,” Ibrahim said. “You know how the Soviet authorities treated the Crimean Tatars even before the war, Safi. For ten years they arrested the brightest, the richest, the cleverest, the best. The occupying Germans promised freedom, wealth, our own country again. A chance to get our own back. A lot of Tatars believed them.”

Safi was confused. She knew that the reason the Crimean Tatars had been exiled was because the Soviets said they had sided with the Germans in the war. All her life she’d been told that was a lie. But now it sounded as if it was true after all.

“I don’t understand about the self-defence whatsits,” she said plaintively.

“Brigades. They were like a small local army of Tatars, given weapons and uniforms by the Germans to help fight the Soviet partisans. Sometimes they truly defended us, because the partisans were not always decent, honourable heroes either. But mostly Abdul’s brigade had fun. Abdul could requisition whatever he wanted from whoever he liked – or rather, didn’t like. He could clear whole villages just by a whisper of collaboration with the partisans.”

“What do you mean, clear?”

“I mean destroy,” Grandpa said. “It was enough to say that one person in a village was helping the partisans, and the brigades could burn every single house and shoot every last person living there. Think how much power that was to go to someone’s head! Soon Abdul started believing he was some kind of local god, while the rest of us were plotting how to get rid of him.

“One morning my aunt sent Khatije to a nearby village, to an old Russian woman who could tell fortunes. She wanted to know what had happened to her son, who was at the Front. And Khatije thought she’d get her own fortune told, and see if Abdul was in it.

“That day changed Khatije’s fortune all right. On that particular day the self-defence brigade had decided to clear the village, with its wealthy population of Russians and Greeks, and so they put about a whisper of collaboration… Only this time, someone really
was
helping the partisans. Khatije had just turned onto the main street, when suddenly there were bullets whistling about her ears, and roofs going up in flames, and partisans running silent as cats up the alleys.”

“What did she do?” Ibrahim was so caught up in the story he hadn’t noticed his coat smouldering from a stray spark.

Grandpa patted it out with his hand. “She dived for cover in the nearest house. Inside, crouched by the table, she found a terrified runt of a partisan who’d run out of bullets and didn’t even have the wit to escape through the window when, with a bang, the door flew open and Abdul came in calling, ‘Khatije! What are you doing in a collaborator’s village?’

“My cousin plumped herself down on a stool by the table and smoothed her skirt tidily over her knees. ‘I came to have my fortune told.’

“Abdul fairly dazzled in his new uniform. He prowled around the room, searching. ‘There was a partisan in here.’

“Khatije looked as innocent as she could. ‘I don’t know where he went.’

“Abdul was still suspicious. ‘I could have you shot, Khatije, for being here.’

“‘Yes, Abdul. But you wouldn’t, would you? Not before I tell you my fortune.’

“Well, of course Abdul was interested; he was so conceited. He sat down opposite her, resting his revolver in his lap and putting his hands in his bulging pockets, and said, ‘Am I in it?’

“‘Have you got something there for me, Abdul?’ Khatije asked slyly.

“Abdul laughed and drew out from his pocket a blood-flecked handful of gold and silver. There were rings, and pocket watches, and a pair of earrings that Khatije recognized, because they were the ones that the Russian fortune-teller always wore in her ears.

“‘I took them from a Russian,’ Abdul said. ‘And now they belong to the Tatars. That’s how it should be. Would you like some earrings, my Khatije? If you pay me, of course.’

“Khatije slapped his hand off her knee. ‘Don’t you want to hear my fortune first?’ she asked, leaning forward and staring into his dewy black eyes. ‘It’s a sad fortune, because the handsome young man who I love … dies.’

“‘D-dies?’

“‘That’s right. He was a great hero of the Tatar people, but he was too good to live.’

“Abdul laughed and laughed. ‘Are you trying to scare me, Khatije? I’ve got no intention of dying.’

“‘But you’re no hero of the Tatar people.’

“Abdul became aware of a strange emptiness in his lap. He looked down and discovered that his gun had gone.

“‘You’re just a thief,’ said my cousin Khatije. ‘You sold your people for a pretty uniform and some scraps of gold. You aren’t anywhere in my fortune.’

“Well, Abdul’s dainty city manners went out of the window with the names he started calling her, until Khatije brought the gun down on his head and laid him out cold. Then she lifted up her skirt and said coolly to the little partisan who’d been hiding under it all this time, ‘What are you waiting for? You can come out now, and wipe that cheeky grin off your face.’

“But that partisan just kept on smiling…”

“So
that’s
how Khatije joined the partisans,” Safi said. The flames of the bonfire crackled merrily, as though they were laughing. A few metres up the road, the police sat in their car and a second bonfire glowed, lit by a group of local men from Krasniy Mak. Safi wondered what they would make of this story, if they could have heard it. It was more complicated, but much better than anything she’d read in the textbook at school. “Khatije was a hero, wasn’t she?”

“She helped blow up bridges. She ambushed a whole German battalion outside Sevastopol. When she was caught, she never told the fascists anything, and they hanged her.” Grandpa tossed another stick on the fire, and the bright sparks flew upwards. “It’s all in the official records, if you know how to look. You have to know, because she’s not called Khatije in the records; she’s called scout Katya. You’d never know she was a Tatar. All the Crimean Tatar names have been changed to Russian ones.”

“We’ll rewrite the records,” Ibrahim said, flourishing his pen as though he were ready to start right now.

Grandpa was looking at the second bonfire too, and the bored local men sitting around it. “In books about the partisans, there are lists of Russians, lists of Ukrainians, of Armenians, Greeks, Karaims … and where the Crimean Tatars should be, there’s a blank. A hole. A silence. What fills that hole is Abdul, Abdul, more and more Abduls, what the Russians would remember, so they can sleep easy in their beds.”

T
he trouble started when Safi got off the bus in Krasniy Mak and Lutfi wasn’t there. For the last few days she’d sat carefully still, wondering if Mama was watching the bus drive straight past their valley, and she’d thanked the driver politely when they arrived at the village. But today some of the other children didn’t seem satisfied with that.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“You mean back to piss-poor Uzbekistan, where you belong?”

“I’m going to Adym-Chokrak. Please let me pass,” Safi said calmly. Even if Lutfi hadn’t been coming to meet her, she wouldn’t have been too alarmed, because there weren’t that many children, and several adults were walking close by.

“Oh,
Adim-Chakrak
,” they mimicked, pronouncing it wrongly. “There’s no place called that.”

“Unless it’s Tatar for squat.”

“Tatar for pigsty.”

“Tatar for hole in the ground that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Don’t be so silly.” Safi was determined not to be scared by a few children. She had police and unfriendly locals sitting practically on her doorstep half the time, after all. Several of the nearby adults had noticed what was going on, but they were just watching as if this was some kind of entertainment. Safi hitched her bag up on her shoulder and walked on. And then suddenly she stumbled and went flying, her bag falling off, her palms thudding painfully onto the chalky roadside. She actually thought she’d just fallen over a stone – how
stupid
– when a foot kicked her bag away and she realized someone had tripped her up.

“What did you do that for?” she said, pushing herself up on her knees and thinking that
now
would be a very good time for Lutfi to appear. “Give me my bag back.”

“Yuck! We don’t want it.” The feet were kicking it around.

“It stinks.”

“She stinks.”

“It’s got her dinner in it, oh, puke…”

“Boiled sheep’s eyeballs…”

There were pounding footsteps, a thump, and Lutfi had arrived.

“Leave her alone, you little creeps.”

That was only the beginning; Lutfi knew a lot of rude words. There were more thumps, and then he was off, chasing the children away up the road.

Safi inspected her palms miserably. There were sharp white stones embedded in them and they were starting to bleed. She began to gather together the things that had fallen out of her bag.

“There’s this as well.”

A girl was standing along the road, holding Safi’s pencil case. Safi recognized her from the bus, but not from the crowd who’d surrounded her.

“It didn’t get broken,” she added encouragingly.

Safi wondered whether to take no notice or run away, but her hands hurt and she needed her pencil case. While she was deciding, the girl trotted up and held it out. “Here. You should ignore those morons. I like your hair. Is that a Tatar style?”