Dream Land (13 page)

“I’ll tell you how they changed the place names,” Grandpa said. “Stalin ordered it just a few months after the Tatars were deported. He wanted to remove every last trace of us from Crimea. The order went to the Soviet newspaper
Red Crimea
, and it arrived at night-time, when the only person there was the secretary. An order from Stalin himself couldn’t be delayed, of course; the maps had to be redrawn. The secretary had two books lying on his desk: a gardening manual and a report on the Soviet liberation of Crimea. He was in a panic, and he just crossed out all the old place names and wrote over them words out of those books. Apricot, Almond, Red Poppy. Red Guard and Partisan.”

“And Happy?” Refat demanded. “How did he choose that name for a village where women and children and old men— where
my mother
was dragged from her home and sent away to live or die as best she could?”

“Perhaps it was the last one, and he was glad to be finished,” Grandpa said. “Perhaps that secretary had a sense of humour…”

“Russian humour!” Refat snarled.

Safi looked at the driver’s cabin, where Andrei was swinging the great steering wheel of the bus. Andrei had been kind to them and Zarema. She found herself hoping he couldn’t hear what they were saying about his people.

Refat was feeling in his pocket. He took out two keys, and showed one of them to Grandpa. “Look. This is the key to my mother’s house.”

Safi stared at it wonderingly. It was made of brass, as shiny as if it was used every day. But this key hadn’t opened a door for nearly fifty years.

“I’m like Eskender Shustov with his papers,” Refat said. “My mother carried this with her every single day of her exile, until she gave it to me to bring home. All of us Tatars, we all have keys. And those keys have names: Kermenchik, Akmesjit, Ozenbash, Haja-Sala. All the Tatar towns and villages that you’ll never find now on the map.”

“In my pocket I carry the key to a house,” Grandpa said slowly. It sounded like the beginning of a story, but although Safi looked at him expectantly, he did not continue. Grandpa’s hand was in his pocket, cupped gently around the familiar shape there, tracing the rounded end like a heart, the sharp flanges that sooner or later wore holes in the lining of every pocket he’d ever had. I’ve carried this key since I was seventeen years old, Grandpa thought. And it is completely useless. The lock it was made to open no longer exists.

“Now what shall I do with it?” Refat said angrily. “They might as well go in a museum, all of them. Locked up in a glass case, labelled
THE KEYS TO OUR PAST
.”

“And this one?”

The second key in Refat’s hand was a modern one with a plastic grip. As Safi reached out, Refat closed his fist over it suddenly.

“It’s the key to my house.” He looked at Grandpa and Safi defiantly. “In Uzbekistan. I might need it again. You can’t live with pigs. At least in Uzbekistan I had a fine house, a vegetable garden. My neighbours were Uzbeks, good Muslims.”

“But Refat, you’re not really going back, are you?” Even as she asked, Safi wondered where her key to their Samarkand house was. She could picture it vividly; it had been tied to a piece of coloured string so she could hang it around her neck. But the door had hardly ever been locked, because friends and neighbours were always passing in and out, calling to Mama or waving newspaper articles and protest leaflets at Papa. Remembering all that warm liveliness made Safi want to cry. If Refat went back, their valley in Crimea would be quieter and lonelier than ever. She swallowed hard and said, “But what will your mother say?”

And this time it was the right question. “You’re right, Safi. She’ll say, ‘It’s not enough that my good-for-nothing son is still a bachelor and won’t give his old mother any grandchildren; no, he even disregards my other great wish to come back to Crimea. What did I do for Allah to punish me so in my old age?’” Refat smiled ruefully. “No, Safi, I’m staying here. I’m too scared to go back and face that. I might as well give up both these keys to the museum.”

“Good.” Yet as well as reassured, Safi felt a tiny bit disappointed. Refat’s words were like another nail in the lid shutting down on her memories of Samarkand, a key locking them away in the past rather than keeping them alive as a place to return to. Confused, she hid her face in Grandpa’s sleeve. “Are we nearly back at Adym-Chokrak? I feel a bit sick.”

Grandpa’s thoughts were far away. Deep in his pocket, he turned over his own sharp, heart-shaped key with his fingers. He thought, No. I don’t want to give it up, not yet.

Papa was waiting for them at the side of the road. Andrei opened the bus doors and said pleasantly, “Here they are; I brought them back safe and sound,” but Papa completely disregarded him. He took Safi’s arm and pulled her off the bus, past Mehmed sitting by the bonfire and up round the pond.

“Let me know if you want a lift anywhere else,” Andrei called, but no one took any notice of him except the locals from Krasniy Mak, who shouted, “Another bloody collaborator. You should be ashamed of yourself.” After a moment, the bus doors closed and Andrei drove away.

“Papa.” Safi would have liked to have said thank you for the ride. “Papa, he only took us to Kermenchik.”

“Oh yes. Another kind-hearted Russian bus driver.” Papa stopped and swung Safi round to face him. “Your mother told me you knew the difference between truth and lies. But you’ve been lying to me.”

“But… What?” Safi’s lips began to tremble. She couldn’t remember the last time her father had looked at her with such anger. As if she’d betrayed him. “What do you mean, Papa?”

“That school bus driver. You told me you were getting off at Krasniy Mak because one of the children there was helping you with your homework. But that’s not true, is it? The driver refuses to stop for you here, and Lutfi has been meeting you in Krasniy Mak because otherwise the children bully you. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

The vile, bitter taste of the ersatz coffee they’d drunk in Kermenchik suddenly filled Safi’s mouth. She looked aside, and there was Lutfi walking quickly away from them, around the other side of the pond. He must have told, after all. She’d guarded his secrets for him, and now her brother had told on her.

“You all kept it from me,” Papa said. “My own family, and you lied to me so that you could get out of working on this house I’m trying to build for you. This house that you don’t believe in, none of you. Do you even care how far we’ve got? Do you even realize there’s no money left and I don’t know how we’re going to finish it? You were too busy elsewhere. My own family, and all you want is to forget who you are—”

“Papa, it wasn’t like that.”

As well as rage, there was a kind of dreadful hurt in Papa’s face. He suddenly flung Safi’s arm away so violently that she stumbled and almost fell.

“It wasn’t—”

Papa took no notice. He started back down towards the road, where Grandpa and Refat were still standing, bewildered.

“Asim,” Grandpa said sharply. “Where are you going?”

“To have it out with that school bus driver, where do you think?” Papa pushed past rudely.

Mehmed stood up by the bonfire. “Come back, Asim. Don’t be a fool; you know you’ll only make things worse.” He and Refat hurried after Papa.

Safi watched in shocked dismay as the three men walked towards Krasniy Mak, gesticulating and arguing, their voices echoing even after they had turned the corner out of sight.

T
he eye or the graves. The graves or the eye. Safi stood at the junction where the path met the main track. She couldn’t decide which was worse. While she was agonizing, her feet seemed to turn of their own accord to take her back past the spring to the building site, the
chaykhana
and her family.

“No!” she said out loud. She turned, put her head down and plunged up the path to the right before she had time to hesitate further.

The leaves on the trees were bigger now, forming a canopy of the brightest, softest transparent green for the birds to bask in. When she picked off a leaf, it was cool and silky-downy between her fingers. All sorts of new plants had appeared around the moss-padded rocks: budded spires pushing up between spotty leaves; fat, fleshy red stems. While the Crimean Tatars were struggling to build down below, up here things were busy growing, effortless and unchallenged. They didn’t have to make a life for themselves out of sweat and tears and bricks and plaster. Life just happened to them here on this mountain, on Mangup-Kalye, and no one minded, no one told them they had no right to it. It would be nice to be a plant. You just put down roots and got on with growing and flowering and having seeds and then dying again until next year.

“Safinar…”

Was someone calling her? It sounded a little like Grandpa’s voice, a long way away. She stopped for a moment to listen. But Grandpa never came up here. It was just a trick to make her stop. No one was following her; no one knew where she was.

Safi wasn’t sure whether she was exploring or running away. She had discovered how Papa had found out about the school bus and the children. It wasn’t from Lutfi after all; it was, stupidly enough, from Lena. Ibrahim had been in Krasniy Mak buying nails, when Lena had walked past and recognized that he was Tatar, and she had cheerfully told him how she was looking after Safi so no one bullied her. She was no doubt hoping that word of it would get back to Lutfi, but it got to Papa instead.

Halfway to Krasniy Mak, Mehmed had persuaded Papa to turn back without picking a fight with the school bus driver, but now it seemed that her father’s thwarted anger was being turned on his family instead. It was impossible to tell him that Lena was nice, that the other kids didn’t bother her any more, and that there were Tatar children in her class. He was so furious he was hardly speaking to Mama. And Lutfi was not speaking to Safi at all.

There were enough problems already with Krasniy Mak. The police were by the pond every day, blocking the road so that there was a confrontation every time Mehmed wanted to use the car. More and more local men, often drunk, came to stand around jeering and shouting. Lutfi, spoiling for a fight, had been banned by Papa from going anywhere near them. Just before the news about the school had reached Papa, the police had brought an official letter from the village council. It informed them that the land they were on was part of a designated historical site, and that they were squatting illegally and “might be removed by force.”

Mama had tried so hard not to have an I-told-you-so look, it was almost funny. Ibrahim and Grandpa had drafted a reply saying that their case was being reviewed in Bakhchisaray, and that if anyone had rights to a historical site it was the Tatars, since a Crimean Tatar village had historically stood there. Since then, nothing more had happened.

“Who cares about it anyway?” Lena had said dismissively. “No one here’s interested in history or anything. They’re only writing letters because the tourist season’s starting soon, and they’re worried about losing business.”

Despite Lena’s irritating flirting with Lutfi, Safi missed her a lot. She missed Ayshe from her class too, and Rustem, who, she had a sneaking, delicious suspicion, rather liked her. It was so unspeakably unfair that as soon as she had made new friends she had lost them again. Without school, there was no one to talk to and nowhere to go. Papa would not let her walk to Krasniy Mak. Bakhchisaray was too far away. There was only Mangup-Kalye.

Something was rustling loudly among the plants sprouting from the litter of last year’s leaves. Safi stopped at once, her feet again turning despite herself to take her back down the path. With an effort, she stood still and peered into the gloom. A bright yellow-rimmed eye looked back. It was a blackbird, pausing to study her from one eye and then the other before returning to its rummaging. Then it flew up to the top of a gravestone, reeled off a faultless flourish of song, and darted into the trees.

She had happened on the cemetery before she realized it. There were no ivy tendrils laid over the path today, and she wondered who had removed them. The back of her neck prickled.

The narrow path wound between the mossy, higgledy-piggledy tombstones. They were just stones, after all, and they belonged to the Karaims, a people so old no one knew where they came from or remembered their names. But there were ghosts here, Safi knew, in the half-light, and they didn’t want her to go further.

Back in Samarkand she had gone everywhere. All day long she’d roamed with her friends, sometimes taking Lenara along to play in the market with its fat silk-clad women selling spices and pomegranates; in the park; along the alleys between the blue-tiled mausoleums of Shakhi-Zinda. She’d been at home everywhere. Here she was scared even to walk round a bend in the track. Crimea was nothing like she had been promised. Instead of opening out into the home of Grandpa’s stories, her world had shrunk to four damp half-built walls, a narrow green valley, the muddy track to the spring. And she hated it.

Safi forced herself to follow the path. Further on, she came to the dank ruins of what might, long ago, have been houses. They reminded her unpleasantly of their own little house down in the valley. Trees and bushes sprouted from gaping dark holes in the walls, and a cold, musty smell breathed out of them. She thought she heard more rustling inside and rushed past, her heart beating fast. If this was the city Refat had talked about, it was horrible.