SIX At Uncle Fadil's
THE 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 with the KLA, no one even breathed his name.
Nexima gave her bed in Granny's room to Mama and Baba, and she brought her children into the small parlor. The four of them were to sleep with the five young Lleshis. The couch pulled out, so Nexima and her children slept there. Cushions were put on the floor for the Lleshi children. The small space was carpeted with bodies. Baba took one look and laughed. "I've seen orange slices with more room than this," he said. Everyone laughed with him. It felt so good to laugh, and, actually, they were less crowded than they had been in the tent. They were a lot warmer, too, and there were no rocks poking into their backs.
The next morning the household was stirring by the time the first rooster crowed. Uncle Fadil and Baba were like the generals of a little army. Everyone except Nexima's three had duties to carry out. The cow and the goats had to be milked and given hay, the chickens fed. Meli found herself in charge of the water brigade. Uncle Fadil didn't have running water in the farmhouse, but why should that bother her? A backyard pump and a proper outhouse seemed luxurious after a mountain stream and a shack straddling it a short way down the hill.
Meli was so excited about her job as sergeant of the water detail that she had her little brothers and Vlora help her fill every pot she could lay her hands on. Auntie Burbuqe threw up her apron in mock amazement. "Ah," she said, "you children are such marvelous water carriers that you have left us nothing to cook in! Oh, well, fill up the tub—we'll have to bathe the babies before the day is done, I'm sure."
Uncle Fadil and Baba had brought in most of the crops while the family was waiting on the mountain, but there were still potatoes to be dug and wood to be chopped and split, and every day there were the chickens to be fed and the goats and cow to be milked.
Between his chores with the men, Mehmet held school for Isuf and Adil. Vlora was always jumping up and down, demanding to be included, so Mehmet soon gave up and let her join them. "But you have to be in charge of her," he said to Meli. It was the closest he came to suggesting that Meli, too, would be a teacher in his school. The house was too small for indoor classes, so the children put on their coats and once again held lessons outdoors. November in the plains felt much warmer than October in the hills.
Despite the crowding, Meli felt that she had never been happier. Even Mehmet seemed more content than he had since ... well, since before the day of the pelican. Baba and Uncle Fadil took care to treat him as one of the men. The farm had the traditional men's chamber—a building behind the farmhouse that only men could enter—and when the brothers retreated to it, they often invited Mehmet to join them. Meli couldn't help but notice that when news from the outside world reached the farm, Mehmet was told first, even before Auntie Burbuqe or Mama.
So it was from Mehmet that Meli learned—even before they heard it on the radio—that the American ambassador was bringing in some cease-fire observers. "Observers!" Mehmet snorted at that. "They don't have any guns," he said. "What can they do? All they do is talk. They can yell and threaten all they like, but Milosevic just thumbs his nose at them. We need action."
"But the threats worked," Meli argued. "Haven't most of the soldiers gone back to Serbia now?"
"Only a fool would trust that snake Milosevic. Just wait. We'll be back at war in no time."
***
Meanwhile, on the farm, peace reigned. The milking was done, the cheese made, the bread baked, the water pumped and brought in, the livestock as well as the large extended family fed. Auntie Burbuqe made the best pepper and eggplant sauce Meli had ever tasted, but she was careful not to say this aloud. She wouldn't want to hurt Mama's feelings. They ate goat cheese with bread and pepper sauce, and thick potato soup. As a special treat, the women would make a savory cheese pie, which they filled with leeks or potatoes or spinach and even sometimes a bit of meat. The hunger of the lean days in the hills seemed long in the past.
The twins, with the nourishment of their mother's milk and constant attention from the rest of the family, were growing fatter and funnier by the day. While the others worked, they would often sit crammed together on Granny's lap, laughing while she tickled them and spoke to them in a language all their own. Meli was always eager for her turn with the twins. She couldn't remember enjoying her own little brothers and sister nearly so much. "Don't carry them all the time," Nexima half scolded her. "They'll never start walking."
Meli tried not to think of the continuing unrest in the country, but by January it could not be ignored. She secretly wondered how much of it was the KLA's fault. KLA soldiers had attacked four policemen near Racak, and the Serbian security forces retaliated by killing forty-five Albanians, then twenty-four more. NATO, that mysterious European military alliance led by the Americans, demanded that both sides meet in a peace conference in February. Milosevic refused to attend. He sent, as Mehmet put it, "his flunkies" to represent Serbia, and by March, despite NATO's threats, Serbian troops were massing on the border of Kosovo.
"Didn't I tell you?" Mehmet said as they heard the news on Uncle Fadil's radio. "It'll be all-out war soon." He was smiling as he said this—with the kind of smile that made Meli's stomach knot. How could her brother smile at the thought of more killing and misery? But still, how else could Milosevic be stopped?
***
"They re going to do it!" Mehmet had come running from the house to where she was feeding the chickens.
"What? Who?"
"NATO is going to begin bombing the Serbs! Bill Clinton says so!" He was jubilant. "It was on television in America. They re really going to help us!"
How could Mehmet be so happy, Meli wondered. Bombs don't know, when they fall, if you are a Serbian soldier or a Kosovar child. Bombs don't ask if you are guilty or innocent. They just fall, and if you are below, they kill you.
The bombing began, so far away at first that it was only a dull thud in their ears. Then at night they heard the planes roaring overhead, and if they went outside they could both hear and see the distant explosions. Mehmet was beside himself with joy. Even Meli, for all her fears, couldn't suppress a thrill when she saw the sky light up.
But with the hoped-for NATO bombs came disaster. A westward parade began to pass by on the road below the farm: laden-down cars, overloaded wagons pulled by tractors, weary people on foot, all heading toward the Cursed Mountains—heading for Albania. Some stopped and asked for water or food. Some reported that they had been driven from their farms by masked men, others that a nearby village had been burned and they d left rather than wait to be driven away—or killed. There had been killings, they said. Many killings. A woman to whom Mama was giving water told her, "The man said, 'You wanted NATO? Ask NATO to help you now! Then they killed my husband before my eyes and took me..." She saw Meli standing beside her mother and didn't finish the sentence.
***
A few nights later, their time on the farm came to an abrupt end. Meli was sleeping close to the front door when she heard what seemed to be a gentle, rhythmic rapping.
She sat up and listened. Yes, someone was at the door. Should she open it? Tap tap tap—a pause—then tap tap tap tap. She was close by, but something held her back. She waited. There it was again: tap tap tap—pause—tap tap tap tap.
She must get Baba. He would know what to do. She slid out from under her blanket and made her way carefully across the sleeping bodies on the parlor floor toward Granny's room, but before she could get there, she met Uncle Fadil stumbling out of his own bedroom.
"I think," Meli whispered, "I think there's someone at the door."
He put his finger to his lips. "I'll handle it. Go back to sleep."
Meli followed him back across the hillocks of bodies, both taking care not to let their feet touch any of them. She stood for a moment in her place by the door, listening. Tap tap tap— pause—tap tap tap tap.