Read Dream Land for Free Online

her hands for the teapot and bowls, her thin wrists sticking out from her jumper. Mama hadn’t worn perfume since they came to Crimea. Now she smelt of woodsmoke and paraffin and damp.
    “Not in here. Lutfi, bring the tray,” Papa said. He had a bright, mischievous expression on his face. He guided Mama carefully out of the house and round to the back. “There.”
    While Mama had been collecting the container with Mehmed, Papa had been busy. Helped by Lutfi and Refat, he had built an open-sided wooden shelter which Grandpa had draped with camouflage netting. The floor of the shelter was about as high off the ground as a bed would be, and Safi and Lutfi had arranged their blankets and quilts on it. In the middle Papa had put a low table, and Safi had filled a jar with snowdrops from the edge of the woods to decorate it. It was a proper
chaykhana
, like at home in Uzbekistan. Now they could sit on quilts and cushions drinking green tea out of shallow bowls, as though everything was all right.
    Papa looked at Mama expectantly. Mama gazed at the
chaykhana
. It looked a little lost and lonely in the empty valley.
    “What pretty flowers,” she said at last. She leant against Papa. “Lutfi, you forgot the sugar.”
    Papa’s fierce, lively face was a little disappointed. He drank his tea with hasty gulps. “Now I know we’re home,” he said. “Our very own tea, brewed on our very own land, and drunk in our very own
chaykhana
.” He kissed Mama on the cheek.
    “It isn’t our very own land,” Mama said tiredly.
    “It was ours, and we’re making it ours again.” Papa’s voice was sharp. “Elmira, where’s your faith?”
    “We met the police on the way back. They stopped us…” Mama looked at Safi. “Safi, go and see if you can find the sugar bowl in the box.”
    Safi went back to the house reluctantly. She knew she’d been sent out of the way. Mama didn’t really want the sugar bowl; she wanted to talk about how things were going wrong. For the first week or so Mama had tried to persuade Safi that it was fun living in the valley, like camping. But camping was only really fun because at the end of it you knew you could go back to your cosy warm house and have a bath and put on clean clothes. Here, there was nowhere to go back to. Mama never said anything outright, but as Safi helped her cook on the awful stove and watched her trying to keep everyone warm and clean, she couldn’t help noticing that her mother did not share the cheerful confidence of the men. Papa and the others were so busy building, they didn’t seem to notice how cold and lonely and difficult this valley was; what a horrible place to live. And it still didn’t belong to them. Papa and Mehmed were sure that by building on it they could claim the land as theirs, and it was true that so far no one had even come to look at what they were doing. No one ever seemed to come to this valley. The nearest village was half an hour’s walk along the road that skirted Mangup-Kalye, and Bakhchisaray was twenty kilometres the other way. The few cars that drove past sometimes slowed, their drivers leaning out to stare, but they never stopped. Why should they? There was nothing here: no village, no people. It was as if the Tatars had been abandoned to the huge brooding silence that was lying in wait right now outside the little
chaykhana
where they sat around the teapot. It was waiting for when the voices and laughter stopped, and then it would pounce.
    Safi stirred the contents of an open box. There was no sugar bowl, but nestled among the woolly socks and striped Uzbek scarves she found the shiny brass coffee grinder and coffee pot. She stroked them gently with her finger. They looked so cosy tucked among the bright silk, she longed to climb in and snuggle up beside them. Lenara might still be small enough to do so, but Safi was far too big. With a deep sigh she closed the lid. It felt like home was inside that box, and she couldn’t fit in.
    The voices