The Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn't much of a school, with Mehmet writing words in the dirt while a dozen shrill voices screamed out the sounds and a dozen small bodies jumped up and down to keep warm. He pretended to hate it, but it was plain to Meli that he relished being in charge. He was almost as proud of being "Teacher" as he was of the caterpillar fuzz that had sprouted from his upper lip about the time of his fourteenth birthday in October. He even borrowed a ball from the military camp and found an almost level spot lower on the hillside where the boys could play soccer. Naturally, girls were not allowed to join in, but Mehmet permitted them to watch and to chase the ball when it rolled downhill away from their playing field.
    To Meli's surprise, children flocked to the makeshift school. They may have been shivering in the weak sunshine, but they still seemed to be listening to Mehmet. Even the smallest ones tried hard to write in the dirt the words he was teaching them.
    "I teach only Albanian words," he said proudly. "When the revolution is won, there will be no need for Serbian obscenities."
    Finally, one day Meli heard a rattling sound that really did turn into Uncle Fadil's Lada. A tired Baba and a weary Uncle Fadil climbed out. She ran and threw her arms around her father's neck. "Oh, Baba. I thought you were never coming back."
    He patted her head as though she were Vlora's age. "Don't fret, little one," he said. "First we had to bring in the harvest. A farmer can't leave his fields at such a time, you know. And"—he paused and looked around to make sure his younger children were not in earshot—"Milosević has called back most of his army. It's safer to travel."
    It didn't take long to pack, for they had far fewer goods than they had had when they arrived. Only Mehmet seemed reluctant to leave.
    "I'm needed here," he told his father. "I—I run the school. All the children count on me."
    "We need you too, my son," Baba said. "We can't risk losing you again."
    "Next year I'll be fifteen," Mehmet muttered to Meli, but he climbed up over the front seat of the car and into the back to sit down between his brothers. He was grimly quiet the first several miles as they wound their way down the hill away from the encampment. "He still treats me like a child," he said to Meli over Isuf's head.
    Meli couldn't say what she wanted to:
But you are a child.
It would only have made him angrier. So instead she said, "Baba knows best, Mehmet. You know he only wants what is best for each of us."
    Mehmet gave his horse snort. How she hated that insolent noise! He used to worship their father, and now ... But everything would be all right again, she told herself. Baba had come, and he and Uncle Fadil were in charge. They were taking the family away from the mountains. Baba knew the mountains were no place for a boy so obviously thirsting for Serbian blood.
    But what had happened to her big brother—the person she had alternately adored and resented all her life? What would become of him, poisoned as he was by such bitterness?

SIX:  
At Uncle Fadil's

    T HE DOOR WAS ALREADY OPEN WHEN THE LADA PULLED UP in front of Uncle Fadil's house. Auntie Burbuqe was standing there, her arms wide open to welcome them. But it was, as Baba had predicted, a crowded house. Meli had never seen such a pile of shoes at a door before. Granny was there, of course, sitting next to the stove, her head wrapped in her traditional scarf, her shawl pulled tightly around her narrow shoulders, and wearing her Turkish-style
dhimmi
trousers that came clear to the ankles. Nexima came out of one of the back bedrooms. She had indeed come home, bringing her three-year-old son, Elez, and her twin babies. Hamza, her husband, was nowhere to be seen, and no one spoke of him—which could only mean, Meli thought, that he was in the KLA. She had come to realize on the mountain that if a man had been killed, he was mourned aloud, and if he had disappeared, people worried about him, but if he was