Dream Land (17 page)

It’s easy but terrible to cry when you’re seventeen; easier when you’re nearly seventy. That was what Grandpa thought, the rheumy tears of old age filling his eyes as he handled the jewellery made by his uncle. Years ago, when I was seventeen, I brought this cloth to him, the
bogcha
in which to wrap my betrothal gifts. Here is the
marama
, the embroidered scarf I bought for my bride. And a spiral of silver for Safinar, that’s what I begged from Uncle. I never dreamt of
this…

“I think they are yours,” Arkady Yakubovich said. “My wife wore the earrings a few times. You can give them to your granddaughter. This is my way of saying sorry; I hope you won’t now evict an old man from his house.”

“Of course not.” But Grandpa could not bring himself to say thank you.

T
his was the day for true stories. It was 18 May, and the sun rose bright and blithe as if it had no heart. A day for picnics, for paddling in the sea, for lying in the grass beneath the knee-high daisies. There were small silken scarlet poppies on Mangup-Kalye now, and peonies smelling of warm sweet cakes. The caves were round suntraps; the valleys were lush with green and silver bird-full forest falling mile after mile to that line of light that was the sea.

It was a Crimean day that stood on tiptoe and shouted,
Look how wonderful I am!
It was the day for remembering how the Tatars had to leave all this behind.

As the chartered bus swung into the station on the outskirts of Simferopol, the morning sun shone right into Safi’s face, dazzling her into seeing black shapes. She put her hands over her eyes. When she looked again, there were hundreds more shapes. The bus station was full of Crimean Tatars, standing quiet and purposeful, ignoring the police cars parked all around them. Pale blue banners marked with the Crimean Tatar
tamga
shifted gently over their heads, and a very low, wailing hum rose into the morning.

Bus after bus pulled into the station, bringing Tatars from Bakhchisaray and other villages and squatters’ camps east of Simferopol. Safi saw a face she knew: Ayshe, her friend from school. She waved, and Ayshe came to join her. It didn’t seem quite right to smile and laugh on this day, but they were delighted to see each other.

“I’ve missed you at school,” Ayshe said. “Rustem’s always asking about you.”

“He is not.” Safi flushed with pleased embarrassment.

“He is. We heard about the police at Mangup.”

“There are lots of locals too, from Krasniy Mak and the other villages. They won’t let the tourists come near us; they tell them we’re bandits and thieves. They tear up our notices and they bashed Lutfi the other day when he tried to stop them.” She didn’t tell Ayshe how Lutfi had raged when Papa and Mehmed had pulled him out of the scuffle without letting him fight. Lutfi had called Papa a coward, and Papa had hit him.

“Why don’t the police do something?”

“They just sit in the hedge and watch. If they interfere at all, it’s to tell tourists that any business with the Tatars is illegal. And they won’t let Mehmed drive in if he’s got building stuff in the car.”

“Maybe they’ll get bored with it and go away,” Ayshe suggested optimistically.

The sun was high when at last the Tatars formed into a column and moved off. Along the road into Simferopol locals stopped to stare, and curtains twitched in the windows as though anxious inhabitants were watching from the safety of their homes. At other houses, doors opened and more Tatars came out to join the march.

Ayshe waved at a group of people emerging from a gate. “That’s my aunt’s family.”

Most of the family joined the column, leaving behind an old man who watched the Tatars filling the road with an indifferent gaze.

“Isn’t their grandfather coming?” Safi was surprised. Everyone was there who could be, but today was really the old people’s day. Her own grandfather was walking along steadily behind her, and everyone around greeted him with respect. “There are lots of cars if he can’t walk.”

“Oh, he’s not their grandfather. He came with the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“They bought the house with him in it. His daughter didn’t want to look after him any more, so she sold the house on the condition that her father could still live there. Not that she actually cares about him one bit. She’s gone back to Russia and never even telephones or writes. My cousins have to look after the old man. But you know how hard it is for Tatars to buy houses; they took the first chance there was.”

Safi stared at the old man. “Is that true?” The way Ayshe recounted it so carelessly reminded her of the way Lena had said about the Tatars:
I thought you’d be really dark, or have funny eyes, like Uzbeks or Arabs or something;
and
People say you must be mafia
.

Ayshe shrugged. “What can you expect? I heard that another Russian family left their daughter behind when they sold their house. She was only about six, and really ill, and then she died and her parents just came back for the funeral and scoffed all the food.”

“That’s a terrible story. I don’t believe it.”

“Fine.” Ayshe sniffed and took a deliberate step away.

Safi looked round at her own parents. Mama had a steadying hand on Grandpa’s arm and they were talking together, but Papa saw her and his hard, fierce face softened a little, as if he’d seen something in her expression that worried him. She wondered if he too was thinking about Lenara, whom they’d left behind without even a house in Samarkand, and about how Mama hurried to the post office to phone whenever she could. The sooner they finished their new house at Mangup-Kalye, the sooner Lenara could come and join them.

Safi smiled at Papa, glad he was there with Mama and Grandpa and Lutfi. This was the day for terrible stories, for remembering all the things the Tatars had left behind, and what they had lost on the way.

They walked until noon. The traffic had to stop for them, and some drivers got out of their cars and shouted insults, even threw stones. It didn’t matter. The pale blue flags fluttered proudly over the swelling crowd, and everyone, no matter how poorly they were living, had dressed in their best clothes. They chanted “Our land! Our rights! Our home!” They sang the old Tatar songs. And all the time the low, wailing hum rose into the dazzling Crimean sky, the hum of stories being retold. Everyone had tears on their cheeks, not just the old people. Safi had not been born at the time of the
Surgun
, the deportation into exile. Her mother and father had not been born. But that meant nothing. She wiped her eyes along with the others because these stories belonged to all of them. This was what it meant to be Crimean Tatar. You weren’t one person; you were part of a nation, sharing a history, an identity, a family. The many stories blended into one story, the voices into one voice.

The eighteenth of May 1944. The soldiers came before dawn, to every town and every village throughout the whole of Crimea where Tatars lived. The fighting was over; there were no partisans and Germans to fear now, only the Soviet liberators. They banged on the doors and ordered us sleepy Tatars outside, with fifteen minutes to get ready and no word of where we were going, only that the Soviet authorities decreed that we be sent away for ever for treason to our country. They packed us into lorries and jeeps, then loaded us onto the trains like cattle. They took us away, and on the journey they let us die. No water, no air, no food in those railway trucks, only suffering. At one stop my mother ran for water, and she was late coming back. She reached out to climb into the truck, but through the closing doors I saw a soldier strike her hands away with a bayonet, and I felt her fall under the moving wheels. They came for my baby. I told them he was sleeping, but they said he was dead. They tore him out of my arms, and before he could scream they had tossed him from the truck. They killed my brother. He was told to dig the hole right there by the railway line where they threw the dead and the dying all jumbled together, no name, no marker. My brother refused, and they split his head with a spade and pushed him in with all the others.

Safi wept and wept. They all did. But they kept their heads up, and the Crimean sun dried the tears on their faces. There was only one thought in all of their heads. We Tatars have lived through this. We have waited and struggled for almost fifty years. And we have come back. Nothing can stand against us, now we have returned to reclaim our homeland.

Simferopol’s central square could hardly contain all the Crimean Tatars who had marched from every corner of the peninsula. Safi looked around, and all the faces were the same, salty with grief but hard and fierce and proud and determined. She knew her own face looked like that too, because it was how she felt. No wonder the Russians and Ukrainians, staring in huddles behind the ranked police, were frightened that the Tatars had come to take Crimea away from them. She understood now how Lutfi had felt after that last meeting he’d been to. He was standing with a group of boys and young men she didn’t know, but when she caught his eye she knew her eyes were shining just like his. Safi lifted her head and sang along with the thousands.

“I’ve pledged to banish darkness from my land with light
.

How long can brothers be kept apart?

If I, who promised light, don’t catch fire and burn

May my tears become a great sea of blood from my heart.”

A pure, clear voice joined the singing beside her. Safi looked round and saw that it was Zarema. She was wearing a dress today, one of her old flowered ones. It hung loosely from her bony shoulders. Next to her stood Andrei, carrying her son, Ismet.

“I never knew you were so many,” Andrei said. “So many…”

It was strange seeing him standing there with the Tatars, when all the Russians were behind police lines, staring at them with fear and dislike. Was it thus they had stood and watched the trains in 1944 that took the Tatars away? Had they been like the drivers on the way here, shouting and throwing stones? The police at Mangup with their stupid disdain and hate, the school bus driver who had refused to stop for her and said their village did not exist? And suddenly Safi was angry with Andrei for being there, and with Zarema for bringing him.

The crowd pressed close and Andrei put his free arm round Zarema’s waist to hold her steady. Safi realized that Papa and Grandpa were looking at Andrei too, at his open, marvelling face and his arms round Zarema and her son, and at the wedding ring still on Zarema’s finger.

“When is your husband coming back, Zarema?” Papa asked in a cold voice.

Ismet leant his head on Andrei’s shoulder, gazing at them with big dark eyes.

Grandpa said sternly, “That’s a fine son you have. A real Crimean Tatar, blood and bone. He’ll grow up to love his people and his homeland, not the Russians.”

He could have said this in Tatar, which Zarema spoke well. But he didn’t; he said it in Russian. The fierce pride faded out of Zarema’s face. Andrei didn’t get angry; he looked a little puzzled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for what happened, but it isn’t my fault; I wasn’t even born then.”

Grandpa and Papa turned away from him. Before she turned her back too, Safi saw Andrei’s arm drop from Zarema’s waist.

Safi’s lips tasted of salt. At first it reminded her of Grandpa’s story about the Hungry Steppe.
I am the ghost who will never let you go. We Crimean Tatars never give up, not even if you kill us!
Then it made her think of Andrei driving the bus away and calling to them.
Crimean salt! That’s what you are – Crimean salt!

A
fter the meeting many people went back to the camp in Bakhchisaray, to reminisce and gossip and be sociable: things the Tatars did best. There were great bonfires, and queues of people around the enormous steaming cauldrons of
plov
and
lagman
like the ones that stood on the street corners in Samarkand.