Dream Land (12 page)

“Did he hit any?”

“Of course. They came after him in one of their jeeps but Mother stole the commandant’s bicycle and rode through the woods to warn him. Then that lousy Hamzi Shustov, the son of the village headman, told on my mother, because he was sweet on her but she didn’t want anything to do with him, the cross-eyed slimy son of a – ahem…”

Safi giggled. Refat was the gentlest, sweetest-natured person she knew; he never had a bad word for anybody. “Refat, you don’t even know him. How do you know he was slimy and cross-eyed?”

“How do you think?” Refat patted his pocket, bulging with his mother’s letters. “She never did get a chance to pay him back for telling on her, and she’ll never forget it until she does.”

“Here you are!” Andrei called out, as the bus came to a crashing stop. “Schastlivoe. I’ll be back this way in a couple of hours.”

Schastlivoe, which meant “happy” in Russian, was what Kermenchik was called now. Safi jumped out, eager to see what a real Crimean Tatar village looked like. She was puzzled why Mehmed and Ibrahim had tried to persuade Refat not to come here; she thought he was lucky that his mother’s village was still standing, unlike Adym-Chokrak.

Grandpa took Safi’s hand and tucked it under his arm. Refat pulled out the fat packet of letters and began to read as they set off down the muddy, crooked lane. The new leaves on the trees shone bright as sudden flames in a flash of sun, and the banks were thick with violets. There was no one around but a few ambling dogs and a solitary, skinny black hen.

“‘Next to Anife Batalova’s, that miserable old witch – she still owes me a dozen eggs – make sure the fountain is still there, although it was never the same since that trollop Catherine the Great ordered another well to be dug further up the valley…’”

Safi giggled again. Refat’s mother had no respect for anyone. In her letters she talked about Stalin, the Russian empress Catherine and even Allah in exactly the same way as she talked about her former neighbours.

The fountain was made of stone, with a graceful arch carved in the front and some lines of Arabic script. The trough was choked up with weeds and rubbish, but when Safi filled her hands from the pipe and drank, the water was deliciously, coldly sweet.

“‘What does your mother say about the water?”

“‘This one fountain had enough water for the whole village, even for that stuck-up schoolmaster’s wife who collected twenty pails a day to wash herself and her husband, although why she bothered, Allah only knows: no amount of scrubbing would make the old skinflint smell better than a billy goat’s backside—’ Oh! I beg your pardon.”

“Billy goat’s backside yourself!” said a woman who had emerged from behind the fountain. She wore an old flowered housecoat, and she smelt distinctly goaty herself. “More Tatars, are you, come back to see your former homes?”

“Our homes,” Grandpa corrected her.

“Well, I know what you’re looking for,” the woman said slyly. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s right, don’t let on.” The woman tapped her nose significantly. “Good luck with it.” She disappeared again behind the fountain, but as they walked on Safi saw she was following them, although she pretended to be picking up firewood or kicking stones out of the road.

“Did your mother ever say anything about her?” Safi asked. The woman wasn’t old enough to have lived here fifty years ago, but she seemed exactly like one of the old witches or misery guts or halfwits that, according to Refat’s mother, had filled this village.

“Oh no, there were no Russians living here then…”

Anyone who didn’t know him might think Refat was scary-looking, he was so big and black-haired, with round black eyes like a real Mongol Tatar, his ancestors from long, long ago. But Safi did know him, and she knew he was feeling sad. Like herself with Adym-Chokrak, Refat had grown up with stories about Kermenchik. The place was still lovely, folded snugly into the steep green valley, but it was falling down: a half-wild, crumbling tangle of a village. The long one- and two-storey Tatar houses, washed white or blue, looked as if no one had done any repairs on them for years. Dingy curtains hung in the windows; the muddy yards were full of abandoned furniture and tools and dogs and weeds. In one house a boy opened the door to watch them as they passed, and closed it again with a bang. The schoolhouse was full of goats; they stuck their heads out of the glassless windows, waggling their ears inquisitively. A man carrying a bucket stopped and stared, before scuttling away without even saying hello.

“Anife Batalova, the schoolmaster, Hamzi Shustov… They’ve all gone.” Refat looked as if he was trying to wake from a bad dream. “They’re all strangers here now.”

“Is this what Adym-Chokrak looked like?” Safi said softly to Grandpa. She could see that the houses had once been pretty, with their wooden balconies and red pantiled roofs. They were approaching an especially nice one, with wooden pillars, painted sky blue, holding up the porch.

“Imagine it when people cared about it, and yes, this is what Adym-Chokrak looked like.”

“This is Mother’s house,” Refat said.

They all stared at the rotting, peeling pillars, the sagging roof patched with rusty iron where the tiles had slipped. A child’s plastic chair stood on the doorstep, and the balcony windows were full of red and pink geraniums flowering riotously behind the glass.

“Mother hates geraniums.” Refat took a deep breath, strode up to the door and knocked on it loudly.

Silence.

“That woman’s still following us,” Safi whispered to Grandpa.

“Look, there’s someone in the house,” he whispered back.

Behind the dirty glass and the geraniums a pale face was looking out. As Refat knocked again another face appeared, and then ducked out of sight. No one answered.

Refat rattled the door handle. It was locked. Safi suddenly wondered how she’d feel if someone as huge and scary-looking as Refat came knocking on her door, if she knew she was living in a house that had been taken away from someone else. Perhaps she wouldn’t answer either, not right away.

“Open up!” Refat bellowed. He turned aside and sat on the plastic chair. It was very small, so that when he sat his knees were near his ears. Carefully he put down next to him the pile of letters, with all their detailed descriptions of this beloved house where his mother had grown up. And then he began to cry.

Safi felt tears prickle her own eyes as the sobs rattled painfully through Refat’s big body. She turned to Grandpa, aghast. “Maybe Mehmed and Ibrahim were right to tell him not to come back after all.”

The door opened a crack and a little girl slipped out, closing it carefully behind her. She looked about six, just Lenara’s age. Staring disapprovingly at Refat, she pushed a tiny handkerchief into his hand and placed next to him a very small teacup.

“Have you come for the treasure?” she said.

Refat couldn’t reply. He mopped his face blindly with the handkerchief.

“What treasure?” Safi asked.

“The treasure you buried when you left here. You know, gold and old swords and … and … brooches an’ stuff.” The little girl stumped down the steps. She had a grubby face and a big gap where her front teeth should be, just like Lenara. “That’s why you’ve come back to the house, isn’t it?”

There was a rustling behind them. The woman from the fountain was pushing nearer through the bushes. When she saw Safi looking she stopped and began to pick her nose absently.

“If you tell us where it is and give us half, you can have the house back,” the little girl announced. “That’s what Pap says.”

Safi looked up at Grandpa. There was a hard, fierce smile on his face that reminded her of Papa.

“Gold,” he said to the little girl.

“Swords,” she agreed.

“Brooches.”

“An’ stuff. That’s right. Fifty-fifty.”

“Behind the back wall,” Grandpa said. “Four paces straight on. What’s next, Safi?”

“Oh…” Safi wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not. “Then five paces to the right, past the walnut tree.”

“To the left.”

“Wasn’t it to the right?”

“To the left, and it was six paces.”

The little girl frowned in concentration, mouthing the words after them.

“If you had invited him into his own house, perhaps Refat
Aga
would have told you exactly where it is,” Grandpa said, and it wasn’t any kind of joke any more. He put a hand on Refat’s shoulder and helped him up. “We’ll come back, and maybe we’ll reach an agreement about his treasure. Or maybe we’ll claim this house back for the people it rightly belongs to. You tell that to your father.”

“Four paces straight an’ six paces right. Four paces straight an’ six paces right.”

“Left,” said Safi.

The little girl stuck out her tongue and ran back into the house. They heard her shouting, “Papa! Pap!”

Refat blew his nose into the tiny handkerchief. It looked as though it had come from a doll’s wardrobe, and the plastic teacup from a doll’s tea set. Safi picked up the bundle of letters and together with Grandpa guided Refat gently up the road again. The air smelt of violets and manure; the young leaves twinkled and then were extinguished as a silver cloud rushed overhead. When they were near the fountain again, they saw the woman hurrying back the way they had come. She had a spade over one shoulder.

“Can we really claim the house back?” Safi asked Refat hesitantly. “Is that what you want to write to your mother?”

It was the wrong question to ask. Refat’s eyes filled again with furious tears.

“What can I write? They changed the name of her village; they called it Happy! Some idiot geranium-grower is occupying her house and letting it fall down and wouldn’t even open the door to me. Squatters! They took this land and they ruined it; it’ll never be the same. Look at them!”

On the flowery bank near the fountain, two men were lying curled up back to back, snoozing blissfully as babies. They were dirty and unshaven, in old ragged clothes. They snored softly, breathing out a miasma of onion and alcohol.

Refat raised a foot to kick them awake.

“Don’t do that.”

A man was coming down the road towards them. He had the lean, dark look some Tatars had, and a slight squint. “
Salaam aleikhum
,” he added. “Leave them alone, friend. They’re just like children who never learnt the first lessons about life. Who else would come here after the war, on promises of something for nothing? They got our land and our houses, and still they want something for nothing; now it’s treasure or some such rubbish… Are you from Kermenchik?”

Refat nodded.

“So am I. My name’s Eskender Shustov.”

“
Shustov
?
” Refat suddenly stood up straighter. “Tell me, Eskender Shustov, where is your kinsman Hamzi Shustov?”

“My father Hamzi died in exile, may his soul rest in peace.” When Eskender Shustov frowned his squint became more noticeable.

Refat’s face lit up with joy. Deliberately he clenched his fist and spat on it, and then he punched Eskender Shustov right in the jaw.

“Now I’ve got something to write to Mother!” he shouted, enclosing the other, staggering man in a huge bear hug and kissing him on both cheeks. “Finally Hamzi Shustov has been paid back for telling on her!”

T
he bus was empty on the way back, which meant it lurched round the bends more sickeningly than ever. Safi wished she hadn’t drunk the strange concoction Eskender Shustov had offered them, home-made out of ground chickpeas, chicory and dandelion roots. The taste had been very familiar to Grandpa. “Like in Uzbekistan in the first years of exile,” he’d said. “We fooled ourselves into thinking it was coffee.”

Eskender Shustov was living in the half of the schoolhouse that wasn’t full of goats, along with several other Crimean Tatars whose families were from Kermenchik or nearby villages. It was a mouldy, dilapidated building, far worse than the unfinished house at Adym-Chokrak.

When he heard the whole story, Eskender’s loyalty to the Crimean Tatars won out over any grudge he might have felt for the bruise rising on his jaw. “There are Russians living in my father’s house too,” he told Refat. “And they’ll never give it back, even though I’ve got the deeds.” He pulled a bundle of yellowed papers out of his pocket and threw it on the table. “For fifty years my father and then I kept the papers to our house with us at all times, so we were ready to come home. When I came back, even the lock on my house door was the same. This table here was my father’s. I found it in a farmyard; the Russians were using it to chop feed for the pigs.”

Pigs! There was a hiss of indrawn breath, tongues clicking with outrage. Pork was forbidden for Muslims.

“They might as well have renamed this village Porkers,” Eskender said bitterly.

“Porkers,” Refat muttered now, staring out of the window at the wooded hillsides flashing by. “Schastlivoe. Why did they rename my village Happy?” He was clasping the seat in front of him so hard, his knuckles were white. Safi couldn’t believe that just a couple of hours ago she had thought him lucky that his village was still standing. She could see now that funny, gentle Refat was gripped by a hard baulked rage that reminded her of the anger she saw sometimes in Lutfi.