Dream Land by Lily Hyde Read Free Book Online

parents and grandfather with Mehmed, in tense silence.
    “What’s happening?” Safi slipped her hand into her mother’s, and Mama jumped; she hadn’t heard her approach.
    “Safi! Go back to the house at once.”
    One of the policemen turned and spat on the ground. “You’d even bring your filthy brats into this. You should be ashamed.”
    Papa made a sharp movement, but Mehmed put a hand on his arm.
    “Our children fight our fight,” Grandpa said. “For our homeland, our country.”
    “Poor kid looks half starved,” said another policeman. “Hasn’t even got any shoes. Bet you’d rather go home, wouldn’t you, little girl, instead of living here like gypsies.”
    “Like beggars. Why did you have to come back? What was wrong with Uzbekistan or wherever you’ve come from?”
    It was on the tip of Safi’s tongue to say there was nothing wrong with Uzbekistan; it was much nicer than this miserable Crimea. But her parents were listening. Instead she said timidly, “But we always lived here.”
    She looked to Grandpa for support, and he said, “Crimea’s our home.”
    “We Russians always lived here too. And it was you who betrayed us to the German fascists!”
    “Traitors.”
    “Safi,
go back to the house
.”
    Mama fairly pushed Safi back the way she had come. Past the pond she met Lutfi running down. He’d nailed a post onto the back of the board to make a notice: REBUILD OUR ANCIENT TATAR VILLAGE!
    “Are they going to arrest us?” Safi asked anxiously.
    “They can’t,” Lutfi said. “They’d have to arrest ten thousand of us, all over Crimea. There’s no law any more that says the Tatars can’t come back. They’re just going to have to put up with us.” He ran on, pushed the post into the soft chalky ground by the roadside and stood by it defiantly.
    The police didn’t arrest anyone, but they didn’t go away. They sat in their car, and Refat and Mehmed sat down by Lutfi’s sign, and they stared at each other. Lutfi stayed with them for a bit, until he got bored because nothing was happening and went to make more signs with Ibrahim instead. Ibrahim’s notices were in Arabic.
    “What do they say?” Lutfi asked.
    “Get lost, Russian occupiers, I hope.”
    “I don’t think that line’s in the Koran either…”
    When two days later the police turned up again and sat there glowering, Mehmed drove Mama, Papa and Grandpa to Bakhchisaray to try to talk to the local administration. Ibrahim sat down by the signs, with a book to read. Refat pottered around the outside of the house fixing and tidying, for all the world like a proud housewife. The walls of yellow blocks were so high now that Safi couldn’t reach the top of them standing on tiptoe, and there were several windows. All of the men, even Lutfi, were so proud you would think they were building a palace. But every time she looked at it, Safi just thought about the house they’d left behind in Samarkand, surrounded by its bright sunlit garden, and remembered her own room where she’d actually undressed before going to bed, not like here where they all put on extra clothes to keep warm at night. She longed for that lost cosiness and safety, for a roof over her head.
    Refat noticed her glum expression, and told Safi to go and explore.
    “Where to?” she asked dismally.
    “The caves. They’re famous, older than even the Tatars. Churches and mosques and kenessas, wine cellars and all sorts – a whole city.”
    “What are kenessas?”
    “Karaim places of worship.”
    “Who lived there?”
    Refat gestured vaguely. “Someone. Everyone… Ages ago.”
    Since they had arrived, Safi had been no further up the valley than to the spring. None of them had. They’d been too busy building. Safi had hardly noticed the snowdrops withering away, and starry yellow flowers with pointed petals taking their place in the grass around the tents and
chaykhana
. Now she looked along the track doubtfully. Round the corner, she knew, she’d be in