Dream Land (18 page)

Safi sat quietly by one of the bonfires. After a day so immersed in collective memories and emotions that she’d hardly been able to remember her own name, she felt she was gradually coming back to herself, to her small head brimming with the thoughts and ideas of twelve-year-old Safinar Ismailova. The busy darkness, full of sparks from the fires, the hum of voices and the good smells of food, brought back that delighted alarm she remembered from when she’d first arrived in Crimea. The camp had changed since then. Now there were many houses in varying stages of completion, surrounded by buckets and planks and stacks of those familiar yellow building blocks.

But Safi thought that she had changed more than the camp had. She recognized the feeling of half-scared delight, but it seemed to have happened to someone quite different. Back on that first night in March, when Papa had taken her hand and walked with her down the row of shelters, she’d thought
she
was arriving in the world of Grandpa’s tales. She had expected roses and sunshine, mosques and
medresse
s
, bandits and soldiers: a whole brightly coloured storybook Crimea. It was less than three months ago, but it felt like three years. The Safi she was then felt like a very little girl to the Safi she was now.

“What’s going on inside that head of yours?” Refat asked, handing her a big bowl of
lagman
, thick with meat, vegetables and noodles. “You looked miles away.”

“I was,” Safi said. Of course, she was back in exactly the same place she’d started from those few months ago, but it might as well have been, almost, a different planet.

“And you, Ismail
Aga
?” Refat’s voice was respectful as he gave Grandpa his soup. “This day must bring back many memories.”

The flickering firelight accentuated all the lines on Grandpa’s face, and suddenly to Safi he looked like an old, old man. Inside his head were all the stories that had made her feel homey once, that had thrilled and delighted and scared and comforted her. It looked far too fragile to hold so much.

As if he had heard her thoughts, Grandpa said, “They burn, these memories. The screams of the dying, the casual cruelty, the hatred – sometimes I would like to open up my head and take them all out. Must they stay engraved on my heart for ever?”

After a moment, Refat said, “My mother always says there is nowhere else for the Tatars to live. She’ll shout and complain, ‘What is Allah thinking, making me remember things like this? Haven’t I suffered enough? I lost my parents and sisters; I’ve buried six husbands – don’t I deserve some peace?’ But she’s always known we would only find peace when we found our homeland again.”

“
Six
husbands?” Safi asked, distracted. “I thought you said she celebrated her fiftieth wedding anniversary?”

“You try telling my mother you have to be married to the
same
husband for fifty years to have a golden wedding,” Refat replied, so resignedly that everyone laughed.

“Perhaps she’s right, though. I mean…” Safi paused, trying to sort out her thoughts. “The main thing is that she was married for fifty years, and not who to. It’s like us. The main thing is who we are, not where we are. We’ve been Crimean Tatars all these fifty years in Uzbekistan or wherever.” She stopped, startled. She hadn’t really intended to say this aloud, and she wasn’t sure if it was exactly what she meant anyway.

To judge by the silence, no one else was too sure either.

“That’s wrong,” Lutfi said at last, with a kind of violent stubbornness. “The Russians have got Russia to live in. The Ukrainians have got Ukraine. We can’t be Crimean Tatars if we aren’t in Crimea. It’s even in our name.”

“Everyone has to have a place where they belong.” Mama reached out to touch Lutfi’s shoulder. “You know you belong here with us, don’t you, Lutfi?” She sounded almost pleading, and Safi looked at her in surprise.

“We people without a homeland can only live in our memories,” Grandpa said. “The Crimean Tatars remember, and it keeps us alive. If you were to look inside my head, you would find, oh, rifts wrought of grief; scars seared by the things I have seen and the things I have heard.”

“And the Russians?” Ibrahim mused. “My grandparents told me that when they were deported, they asked their Russian neighbours, ‘Why are they sending us away?’ And the answer was: ‘Only Comrade Stalin knows why.’ Stalin’s orders, and
he
could be harsh enough to his own people too. But what about the soldiers and officers carrying out those orders? All my studying can’t help me understand what was in those Russians’ heads.”

“Not Russians,” Grandpa corrected. “Soviets. Let me tell you about one Soviet: First Deputy People’s Commissar for State Security Bogdan Kobulov.”

Grandpa’s voice took on a strange, mechanical precision, as though he were reading from an invisible textbook. Safi suddenly had the odd thought that this was not like Grandpa telling a story. It was almost as though the story was telling him.

“At eight o’clock on the evening of 19 July 1944, inside Bogdan Kobulov’s head you would find … satisfaction. He and his colleagues have carried out an unbelievably complicated job, involving twenty-three thousand soldiers, a hundred jeeps, two hundred and fifty trucks, sixty-seven trains and a hundred and eighty-three thousand Crimean Tatars. The result: an entire nation removed quietly and without fuss. What remains of it after the long journey east and south is now settled in work camps, a useful source of slave labour.

“Kobulov is brushing his hair in the mirror and thinking of his telegram to Beria, head of the NKVD, informing him of successful project completion. He is annoyed to be interrupted by a message, but when he reads it his satisfaction evaporates rapidly. The message informs him that a number of small Tatar villages have been overlooked in the removal process, because of their remote location on a sandy strip along the east Crimean coast known as the Arabat Spit.

“Kobulov’s reply is to the point. ‘Get rid of those Tatars within two hours, or heads will roll.’ He checks his watch. It is one hour to the victory banquet when they will drink to a long-cherished Russian dream finally come true: a Crimea cleansed of Crimean Tatars. His face in the mirror is suddenly pale. Comrade Beria is not renowned for his tolerance of mistakes. Kobulov knows that if his order is not carried out, the first head to roll is likely to be his own.

“Nine o’clock. The long table is loaded with champagne and cognac, caviar, some bowls of early Crimean peaches. Kobulov is in his dress uniform, the buttons and stars polished and shining. There is a brand new medal on his chest, for his achievements in Crimea. The assembled officers are lifting their glasses for the toast when an aide comes in and whispers in his ear. Kobulov’s pale face reddens, and the officer sitting beside him hears his curt reply: ‘Twenty-four hours then. And no more!’ For the rest of that celebratory evening, Kobulov seems strangely subdued.

“Twenty-four hours pass, and everyone notices what a foul mood People’s Commissar Kobulov is in. What is in his head as the hours drag by? It’s unlikely that he has much imagination. If he wonders at all exactly how his orders are being carried out, it is only in terms of time and efficiency. The Arabat Spit has but one poor road and water on both sides; what would be best would be to load all the Tatars onto barges and move them out to the deepest part of the Azov Sea, then sink them. The Azov Sea is warm and shallow, popular among holidaying mothers and toddlers before the war. Still, with machine-gunners to mop up any swimmers, that should be effective enough.

“Nine o’clock again, and the message has arrived. Kobulov is with a few colleagues, and when he gets up with a full glass they frankly think he must be drunk. ‘Comrades! To the achievement of our aims! For I can say without a shadow of doubt that
now
we have a Crimea without Crimean Tatars!’

“If you were to look inside Kobulov’s head at this moment you would find … relief. With luck, Comrade Beria will never find out about this little incident. No need to worry just yet about disappearing to Siberia or into an unmarked grave. Maybe he’ll get to keep that medal after all.”

Silence. There was nothing more in the unwritten textbook; no more story. There was just an old, weary man sitting by the fire with his family, and all of them were seeing how nearly fifty years ago and today and always out in the darkness the warm, shallow Azov Sea rolled and rolls over the loose tangled limbs, the staring eyes, the blood.

“Kobulov was shot,” Ibrahim said quietly. “In 1953, when Stalin died, a secret Soviet court stripped him of his medals after all. Beria too; all those NKVD leaders were executed. That’s in the records. But this story you tell us, about the Arabat Spit: I have never read of that in any records, and I don’t suppose I ever will.”

“Because they all died, those Crimean Tatars of the Arabat,” Grandpa said. “There is no record and no one to remember them except us, who never saw what happened but who recall it as another wound, another scar that makes us what we are. Yes, inside my head my memories burn and burn, but I cannot be rid of them. Sometimes we have to burn for our people.”

T
hat morning the police disappeared. Their cars were gone, and when Lutfi went down to check, the hedge where they had sat was empty. The crowd of locals had gone too, leaving a mess of bottles and cigarette packets and torn-up notices. It was eerily quiet without them. Safi had almost forgotten the silence of Mangup-Kalye; now it came flooding back, undisturbed by the grumble of talk and insults, the hammer and tap of building. It didn’t feel threatening any more. It felt peaceful and strange and a little bit sad.

“Perhaps they really did get bored and went away,” Safi said hopefully.

No one else had time to speculate; they were too tired and worried. Since the
Surgun
meeting several weeks ago the men had hardly slept, taking it in turns to keep watch all night as the locals grew more and more threatening. It was probably because of tiredness and not his usual scholarly abstraction that Ibrahim had slipped and fallen from the ladder as he fitted the gutter along the roof. The Tatar doctor who came out from Bakhchisaray said he had broken a rib. She had worked as a doctor in a city clinic in Uzbekistan, but here no one would give her a job.

Ibrahim lay in the
chaykhana
, his face pinched and thinner than ever. He needed to go to hospital, but without a residence permit and money, no hospital would accept him. The Tatars in Bakhchisaray had done their best. As well as the doctor, they had sent medicine and bandages. They would have sent money if they could. But no one had any to send.

The tooting of a horn broke the unaccustomed quiet. Safi thought she recognized it. She didn’t dare run to investigate, in case the police hadn’t really gone, but she watched from up the valley as the big blue and white bus came round the corner and slowed to a halt.

There was no Zarema; she had kept away from them since the anniversary of the
Surgun
. Andrei got out and a few moments later he was looking hesitantly into the
chaykhana
.

“Zarema sent me. I’ve come to take your friend to hospital.”

“They won’t let him in,” Mehmed snapped.

“I’ve got a friend who works in one of the Simferopol hospitals,” Andrei explained. “They’ll take him for free, apart from medications. I’m sorry, my bus is no ambulance, but if you help me carry him down there we can go right away.”

“We can’t pay,” Papa said harshly. He was glaring at Andrei with what looked like fury.

Andrei flapped a hand, as though trying to wave the words away. “Doesn’t matter. Later. Zarema asked me.”

“She’s got no business doing that. She’d be better looking to her own problems; we can take care of ours.”

“I think she wanted to help.” Andrei’s voice was mild, but his face coloured.

Safi couldn’t understand why no one was doing anything. Poor Ibrahim was lying looking like he wanted to die, and Papa and Andrei were wasting time glaring at each other.

Mama clearly felt the same. She took Ibrahim’s hand. “Can you stand, or should we get a board for a stretcher? Help me, Mehmed.”

By the time Mehmed and Refat had supported Ibrahim down to the bus he was white and gasping, and even Andrei looked concerned.

“We’ll repay you as soon as we can,” Papa said as the bus engine started up. “Keep track of the petrol cost, anything else, and we’ll pay you back every penny.”

Andrei leant out of the window. “You can repay me right now, by being a little kinder to Zarema,” he said quietly. “She’s told me what really happened with her husband. As I understand it, he left her. She’s free to make whatever decisions she wants.”

The bus drove away before Papa could answer.

Mama and Papa started arguing before they got to the house.

“We’ll pay him back,” Papa muttered feverishly. “Forty-five kilometres to Simferopol, that’s about ten litres of petrol. And there’s the damn hospital. We’ll have to pay this friend of his.”

“You heard him. He’s doing it for free.”

“I don’t want Russian charity! I don’t want his patronizing help or his traitorous kindness. Zarema’s a fool. It didn’t take her long to forget who she is; and now without Remzi she’ll let Ismet grow up not knowing his roots, in a Russian household—”