Dream Land Read Online Free Page B

bedroom the fringe on her lampshade danced as Lenara jumped up at it; at about five o’clock its shadow touched the door lintel like a reaching hand. And there was her friend Jemile climbing over the back fence and tapping on the window, coming to play.
    Grandpa hadn’t left behind his best friend. He hadn’t left behind his little sister. It was all right for him to talk about blood and bones and building.
    Safi left her family clustered about the little shack and wandered away up the valley. It was a soft grey afternoon, but the steep leafless woods blocked out much of the light. When she went on along the road, she could see up the slopes to where ridges of rock appeared – one, two, three, four – right at the top of Mangup-Kalye like the spines of a great dragon. She didn’t think she wanted to live in their shade. It was so utterly different from what Grandpa had told her. She didn’t see how it could all have disappeared so completely, the red and white houses and the tobacco field, the fountain and the grapevines. There was not a single thing here she could recognize. Nothing in Crimea was like Grandpa had said.
    A stone slipped under her foot, and the grating noise was so loud she stopped in fright. Without noticing, she must have turned a corner. Her family and the house and pond were out of sight. The dirt road led on in front of her, and the high silent slopes of wood and rock towered on either side, shutting her in. In the furthest outcrop of rock there was a window of light, like an eye looking down the valley, watching her.
    Safi was so scared she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. The eye pinned her. There was an eye in the rock.
    “Safi!” Her mother’s voice, a little anxious, wonderfully normal, floated up the valley. “Safinar! Where are you?”
    “Hey, Safi!” Lutfi’s voice was nearer, and a moment later he came round the bend in the track. “What are you doing, all on your own? Looking for Grandpa’s house? I think we’ve found it, but there’s nothing to see. Just a few old fruit trees.” Lutfi sounded fed up. “I hope we don’t really come and live here; it’s dismal. Mehmed says there are still caves at the top of the mountain, and ruins and stuff. Sounds like there’s more left up there than down here. What’s the betting we end up living in a cave…”
    Just before they turned the bend in the track, Safi dared to look back. The eye in the outcrop of rock had disappeared.
    That night in the camp at Bakhchisaray, Mama and Papa argued. Safi lay in the tent she shared with Lutfi and Grandpa and listened to their heated undertones while Grandpa snored gently.
    “But the land isn’t ours,” Mama said. “It’s illegal; we’ll be squatters with no rights and the authorities can come and turn us off it whenever they like.”
    “It was our fathers’ land before the Soviets evicted them illegally. We’ve got the right of history.”
    “Since when have governments taken any notice of history?” Mama asked. “Yes, there’s no Soviet Union any more, but Crimea’s part of Ukraine now, and there’s no Ukrainian law that says we can have the land.”
    “Then we’ll make them write a law.”
    Mama changed tack. “How will we live in Adym-Chokrak? It’s the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing left. I want to work, Asim. I want Safi and Lutfi to go to school. Lutfi’ll be thinking about college soon, and jobs. I don’t want to risk everything on this dream of your father’s.”
    “You shouldn’t talk like that,” Papa said sharply.
    “I mean no disrespect. I wanted to come home to Crimea too, you know that. But here in Bakhchisaray at least we’ll have friends and neighbours, our people, our culture. We’ll have support; we can make a life. Out there, under that terrible mountain, that Mangup-Kalye…”
    “I’ve been talking to Mehmed. He thinks that ‘terrible mountain’ is our opportunity. The ruins on Mangup are famous; there’s a whole ancient city