"But it's miles—"
"He got a ride partway." She buttoned her dress and put on her big sweater and then her overcoat. "We ve got to leave here, Meli," she said quietly. "Before we lose your brother."
FIVE A School in the Hills
WITH BABA GONE, THERE WAS MUCH MORE WORK FOR the rest of the family. Everyone missed him. When Adil or Vlora asked about him, Mama would say something like, "Well, a good son has to visit his old mother, you know."
Meli realized that she was the only other person who knew the real reason Baba was gone: to fetch Uncle Fadil and his car to take them all back. She didn't know, of course, where "back" was anymore—back home, where the police might arrest Mehmet again? Or back to the family farm, which was probably already crowded with Uncle Fadil's own daughter and grandchildren?
But anywhere, she told herself, would be warmer than these hills. At least they were not farther up. The mountain heights above them were covered with snow now, and below the alpine meadows and evergreens the leaves of the great beech trees had turned to gold. Mama made everyone sleep so close together that Meli spent every night with someone's foot in her mouth or fist in her eye, and the younger children still cried out from the cold. At first Mehmet objected. It offended his "dignity as a man" to curl up against his siblings like a puppy in a litter, but as it got colder, he stopped complaining.
As she lay awake every night, shivering, praying for sleep to come, she imagined she could hear the rattle of Uncle Fadil's Lada. But then the sound would turn out to be one of the old cars used by the KLA, or the arrival of another family seeking refuge—or just her imagination. It was never Baba coming back.
Summer seemed a distant dream. The chestnuts were ripe now, and she had eaten so many she felt as though she might turn into one. But when they were gone, it would be winter in the foothills as well as up on the mountains. Meli kept thinking longingly of home, of the old house that had been school, and of her friends, especially Zana. There was an old saying: "You never really know someone till you've eaten a sack of salt together." Zana and she were too young to have eaten that much salt, that many meals together, but they had shared so much—their worries about school, about growing up—as, she supposed, girls anywhere might. Over and above these ordinary thoughts, they had agonized about their land and its people. What was to become of them if the Serbs kept pressing them down? It had been a comfort to talk to each other about their fears without any adult seeking to quiet them. More than the shared fears, though, there was the shared laughter. Even when the world about them was grim, they could always find something to giggle about.
But whenever she thought of Zana, she couldn't help but remember that horrible day when the two of them had misbehaved, causing Mehmet to disappear. If I had just not drawn that stupid picture of Mr. Uka looking like a pelican, Mehmet wouldn't have been arrested, and we would all be warm and safe in our own beds right now.
The hills were filling up with families who had fled cities and towns below. Surely their being here was not all her fault. Indeed, each family seemed to have its own reasons for hiding in the camp, none of which had anything to do with her. She tried to comfort herself, blaming everything on Milosevic and the Serbs, who wanted to get rid of everyone in Kosovo who wasn't Serbian, even though the Albanian Kosovars far outnumbered the Serbian ones. She had been born into a Kosovo that had, if not true independence, at least a degree of self-government as part of Yugoslavia. Baba, peace-loving Baba, had served his term in the Yugoslav army. Then Slobodan Milosevic came to power, and he took away whatever independence the Kosovars had enjoyed under Tito. Milosevic is scared of us. There are too many Albanians poor and out of work in Kosovo. He sent his army and police down from Serbia to keep us under control. Yes, it's not my fault; it's his fault that we are here in the hills, cold and running out of food. There were terrifying reports now of whole villages being slaughtered by the Serbian security forces, and rumors that the United Nations would soon be involved.
"Why don't the Americans help us?" she asked Mehmet. Despite Mama's disapproval, every day Mehmet would sneak over to the military camp and get the news. The KLA had a shortwave radio. If Meli wanted to know what was going on, she had to ask her brother. "I thought you said that the Americans were going to help us."
He made a rude noise with his mouth. "The Americans won't do anything. They re too busy trying to get rid of their president to pay attention to us. "
***
Then one cold morning Mama made everything a little better. She had taken from her dwindling stores the last can of goulash. Meli's mouth watered as she watched Mama's strong fingers rip open the tab and plop the contents into the pot on the stove. When it was warm, Mama handed a spoon and the whole potful to Mehmet. He gobbled it down like a starved puppy. He might have shared was Meli's first thought, and then she realized that Mama was up to something.
The flour for making bread was almost gone, so for the rest of them Mama was making a sort of gruel from pounded chestnuts on the gypsy stove. As she stirred this strange concoction, she said, "Mehmet, I think you should start a school for the younger children. All they do is shiver."
Mehmet shrugged. "I don't have paper or pencils, much less books."
"You can clear a place where it's flat near the fire and write in the dirt," Mama said. "At least you can help them with their letters and numbers."
It 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—"Milosevic 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 ne
eded 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?