Home Is Beyond the Mountains (20 page)

“They put her above the
river and covered her,” she told him. “I don't know the exact place. I know
I stood on this bank of this river and watched.”

“Mama would be glad that we
are here together now,” said Benyamin.

“I think she would be
surprised that we're going home. Back then it seemed like the end of
everything.”

“I know. I felt that way
when I was alone in the mountains. Papa was gone and I didn't know whether I
would ever see you and Mama again. Or even whether I could find my way. But
this time I know that we can make the journey. It's not the end.”

AFTER SAIN KALA
there were
some golden days when the sun shone and the road leading them along the
mountains was not steep, uphill or downhill. They had been on the road for
three weeks now. Samira began to feel that she could spend the rest of her
life moving along with the Rooftop Family, talking and singing and looking
forward to camping for the night.

One day she walked beside
Malik. He no longer ran along the road guiding stray children, but she saw
that he still watched constantly to be sure everyone was keeping up.

“You don't seem to be
working so hard these days,” she said.

“I don't have to. The young
ones remember to stay on the road now, and they're used to walking all day
so they don't stop unless we all stop. But sometimes they get tired and I
have to help them keep up with everyone else.”

Samira didn't want the
conversation to end so she said, “Did you help people on the road when you
left your village?”

“I was alone at the
beginning. Later I caught up with other people but I didn't know
them.”

“Why were you alone? Didn't
other people leave at the same time?”

Malik was quiet for so long
that Samira thought he wouldn't answer.

Then he said, “It was my
grandmother. The other people in the village were leaving and I tried to get
her to come, too. She said that she would rather die at home than in some
strange place. I said that if she stayed I would stay, too. But she packed
up some food and a knife and an extra shirt. She handed me the bundle and
said, ‘Go, Malik. Life will be better for you somewhere else.' Then she went
into the house and locked the door. Everyone else in the village had gone so
I traveled alone. I don't know what happened to my grandmother.”

He walked silently for a
minute, then suddenly pointed ahead and said, “Elias and David are trying to
trip each other up. I'd better stop them.”

He dashed off. Samira wasn't
surprised. She had never heard Malik say so much. She watched him run up to
the little boys and lift Elias and then David into the air, making them
laugh. Then he said a few words to them and they all walked on down the road
together.

Later she told Anna about
Malik's story.

“He's always had to do
things on his own. No wonder he used to try to get away from this crowd.”
She pointed at the long line of children ahead of them.

“What will happen to him
next?” said Anna. “By now he probably has no one to go home to. But then,
what will happen to any of us?”

That night clouds blew in
and the next day started badly, with a heavy mist that took all the warmth
out of the air and left the children's clothes soggy and heavy. Gradually
the mist turned to cold rain.

The road got steeper and the
rain fell harder. Samira began to feel that she could hardly move her feet.

“How can I be so tired
before lunch,” she thought crossly. Then she looked down and saw that her
shoes were thickly coated with mud. She was lifting a mud brick with every
step.

Miss Shedd came by on Sumbul
and looked down at the Rooftop Family.

“I'm sorry this is so hard,”
she said. “Even Sumbul is having trouble.” She pointed to his hoofs lifting
a big ball of mud with every step. “We'll get through today and then it
won't be long before we start going down into the valley that leads to
Tabriz. Just keep your chins up and keep going.”

Samira found it impossible
not to look down at her feet squishing into the mud, but she did keep going.
The younger children didn't seem to mind the mud so much but they were
getting cold, and it was impossible to go faster to warm up a little.

Miss Shedd came by again.

“Stop for a few minutes and
eat your lunch. That will —”

She stopped and listened
intently. Then they all heard the sound of hoofs coming along the trail
toward them. They had passed a few strings of mules as they traveled, but
these were horses, galloping fast.

Everyone stopped walking.
Samira could feel her body wanting to run or crouch down to hide, but the
sound was louder now and there were voices, too. There was no time to do
anything but jump to the side to get out of the way.

Suddenly a horse and rider
appeared. The horse was black. Samira was sure of that. But the rider seemed
to be clothed in white mist. In his hand he held the pole of a green banner.

He did not look down at the
children or at Miss Shedd sitting on Sumbul. He looked over his shoulder and
called to someone behind him. Then he was gone, and another horse followed
and another, each bearing a misty rider carrying a banner of green
silk.

There were ten or twelve of
them. Samira lost count.

When they were all gone,
Samira felt her heart pounding in her chest. Looking down, she saw that her
hands were trembling, and she reached out and found Elias and pulled him
close. She wondered whether the sound of horses' hoofs would always bring to
her mind the picture of soldiers galloping along a line of people, firing
their guns.

Miss Shedd was looking down
the road after the riders. They had disappeared around a curve.

“Were they ghosts?” Elias
asked. “They were all white but their horses were real. I could smell
them.”

“They weren't ghosts,” said
Miss Shedd. “They're pilgrims going to a Muslim shrine. That's why they were
carrying green banners. They weren't interested in us at all. But we do have
something to worry about. They were white, all right. White with snow! We're
heading into a snowstorm and we had better get going. We need to get to
shelter for the night.”

As they got underway the
rain started again, but before long it wasn't rain anymore. It was snow. It
clung to the children's clothes just as it had clung to the cloaks of the
pilgrims. Pretty soon they all looked like ghosts.

Benyamin came to find Samira.

“I didn't think things could
get any worse,” he said, “but we've caught up with the cook wagon and it's
stuck in the mud. Miss Shedd says we have to bring the pots of stew with us
and keep going. We'll come back and push the wagon out in the
morning.”

When they finally got to the
camping place, they found only one building with a roof. All the others were
nothing but sagging walls. The outriders had built a small fire in a corner
where it could burn in spite of the snow. The cook put the big stew pots in
the ashes to warm, and the big boys and girls started setting up the tents.

Snow got into folds in the
canvas and down the backs of the children's necks, but at last the tents
were up and there was hot water for tea. Samira thought she had never tasted
anything so good. When the stew was finally dished out it was barely warm,
but just having it in her belly was comforting.

When the stew was gone and
the cups were washed, everyone was ready to sleep. Only the sleeping mats
and quilts had been unpacked, so the children took off their jackets and
shoes and crawled under the quilts with their other clothes on.

The girls moved as close
together as they could to share their warmth. Samira thought she would never
stop being cold, but when she woke in the morning she found herself
sandwiched between Shula and Monna and so cozy that she hated to get up.

Before she could quite get
up the courage to pull herself out from under the covers, Miss Shedd came to
the opening of the tent.

“You needn't jump out of
bed. It's not snowing anymore but it's going to take a few hours to get the
cook wagon out of the ditch, so we'll not be going on today. There will be
tea and breakfast in an hour or so. The snow will melt. It's not winter
yet.”

The children tried to go
back to sleep, but they were so used to getting up before dawn that they
just couldn't do it. They kept sitting up and then lying down again until
Anna said, “We're like a pot trying to bubble. Best to get it over with.
Everyone up!”

Once they were all out of
bed Samira looked around at the girls of the Rooftop Family and thought, “We
are a pretty sorry-looking bunch. Our clothes are wrinkled and we're muddy
and our hair is sticking up every which way. What will they think of us in
Tabriz?”

She and Anna got everyone
brushed off, and then Anna went off for a pot of warm water so that all
faces could be washed.

Everything seemed to take a
very long time that day. The sky was gray and a mist rising from the snowy
mountainside made it impossible to see down the road in either direction.
After breakfast Benyamin and Ashur and some of the other boys went off to
get the cook wagon out of the mud. They took four mules with them.

Benyamin said to Malik, “We
need you to come and talk to the mules so they'll pull their best for
us.”

“They will,” said Malik, and
he actually grinned before he disappeared into the whiteness with the other
boys.

“At least they have
something to do,” said Anna. “What can we do? I'm out of stories and no one
wants to play any of the games.”

“I know,” said Samira.
“Let's braid all the girls' hair. No one has done it for days.”

“And those people in Tabriz
might think a little better of us if we're properly braided,” said
Anna.

They settled themselves
where they could see the road, and one by one girls from all the families
came and sat in front of Samira or Anna. They carefully loosened the tangled
braids and combed out the snarls. When each girl was finished she was content
to sit and watch another head of hair being neatly braided.

It was afternoon before the
boys triumphantly arrived with the cook wagon. The cook was sitting in his
usual place, holding the reins and smiling broadly.

“It was quite a job to get
us out of the mud,” he told everyone around the fire. “It took every boy
pushing and Malik making every mule pull. Then we had to take one of the
wheels off and pound it back into shape. It was so bent it wouldn't turn.
But we lost nothing. We're getting low on food, though. Lentils and onions
for tonight and for tomorrow, beans. Then we had better get to
Tabriz.”

It really wasn't quite so
desperate. The outriders brought bread and enough eggs that each child could
have half a hard-boiled egg for lunch the next day. Still, Samira knew she
was ready for something different. Pickled cucumbers, maybe. Or rice pilaf
with chicken. Or really, really hot soup.

She rubbed her cold hands
and thought about hot soup.

“It won't be long,” she
promised herself.

The next day the sun shone,
but frost glittered on the grass and there was a thin skin of ice on the
bucket of water Samira had filled the night before. When Miss Shedd made her
rounds she said that the cold was a good thing.

“The mud won't be so
sticky,” she said. “We should make better time. Unless something else goes
wrong we'll camp just one more night before we get to Tabriz.”

With that promise everyone
walked briskly. The road went downhill, sometimes gently and sometimes quite
steeply.

The feeling of reaching the
end of the journey made everyone a little giddy, and they laughed and sang
as they walked. Malik found two sticks and beat them together to the rhythm
of the songs.

“Remember, we have to keep
walking all day,” he reminded Elias and David, who were racing to see who
could reach the next bend first.

When the travelers reached
the caravanserai, they saw that it was a good one with enough roofs for
everyone to sleep under shelter. Their high spirits even affected the
chavadars, who unloaded the bedding and laid it out before the children got
to the mule enclosure. The boys found dry willow branches along a stream and
made a larger fire than usual, and the cook, in spite of his prediction of
plain bean soup, produced a delicious lamb stew.

“Some angel delivered meat
to me,” he said, and Miss Shedd smiled.

When the stew was gone she
passed around a big tin filled with sugared almonds.

“I've been saving them for
our last night. It's been a long journey and we all deserve a
treat.”

Samira ate her share slowly.
They made her think of the almonds stored in the umbar in Ayna. And the tree
where the almonds grew.