“Aysha,” I said, “turn up the music.”
She turned the volume all the way up and I took one last drag before I rolled down the window. Cool night tangled around us like waves of seaweed. The road lifted us up a small hill, down, up another. And when we’d climbed a high point, when I could lick salt on my lips, Aysha gave out a stunned cry and slammed the horn as hard as she could slam it. Where I’d heard a woman in mourning, she had seen the sea for the first time.
ELEVEN
THE ROAD was two deep ruts now with dry grass waving between them. The oaks had given way to shorter trees, which in turn had morphed into tall bushes. Branches scratched the bus and lashed the windshield and so I had rolled up the window. And just when I was thinking that we were running a fool’s errand, that we had come to a place with nothing but thicket, a pair of brake lights flashed ahead in the darkness. In no time we overtook a row of cars parked in the bushes and then people hiking in a thin file.
“Road gets mad from here on, bro,” a young guy told me when I rolled down the window. “But you’re on a bus, you know. It’s like, what do you even care?” Then he glued himself to the door, stood on his tiptoes, and, sniffing the air, tried to peek in. “Bro,” he said, “you got room for one more?”
“Why was his hair green?” Aysha asked once we were back in motion.
“And why are they all blowing whistles?” Elif added, because really it was whistles that sounded behind us. “Bro,” she said, and burst out laughing.
Next we overtook a group of pensioners with backpacks and then more kids with colorful hair who hopped up the road like rabbits and brandished green, red, and blue glow sticks. Aysha punched the horn and giggled and again the night answered with a barrage of whistles. I caught myself thinking of the Strandjans who spoke like songbirds in their ancient language, of Captain Kosta, and then of Grandpa; of how hurt he’d looked to see me lie and go to bed so early.
The road had turned lunar. We crawled out of one crater and into another, up a hill in first gear. Lost in thought, I let the engine slip and stall a few times. Then the road was so narrow I was certain we’d keel over. The back tires sunk in a rut and spun a dead spin, but somehow we managed.
“Vah, vah, vah,” Baba Mina shrieked suddenly behind me. “Here, Saint Kosta. I’m coming.”
At once her shriek chased away all merriment in the air. At once, Aysha stiffened in my lap and her feet kicked a few times. “Vah, vah, vah,” she repeated, “we’re coming, Saint Kosta,” and her teeth chattered like a stork’s bill.
It was a bonfire they’d spotted on the beach in the distance—tall flames, which the wind twisted and stretched upward. This was the beach with the stone tree, the strip of land between sea and river where the nestinari should be dancing. The sky had clouded over and the sea was nothing but blackness, but there were boats in the river and that’s how I saw it. One, two, three … I counted seven boats in total, illuminated by torches and lanterns and loaded with tourists.
We drove past a few parked buses and their passengers already walking. And when there was no more road to keep on, I turned off the engine and pressed the doors open. The air, until recently so heavy with salt and seaweed, now stank of grilled meat. Drums were beating from all directions, not together, but each on its own, a chaotic commotion that the sea wind tossed like sand in handfuls.
“Don’t be afraid, Grandma,” I told Baba Mina once the crowd took us. “Hold my hand and don’t let go.” She seized me as if she were drowning, as if I were a branch to the rescue. The excess of noise and color had overwhelmed me, but her it had frightened beyond words. For an instant, a thought uncoiled—it was a mistake to bring Baba Mina, a mistake to come here. But before I could really think it, the thought had flown by and into the sea of people.
“Elif,” I called. “Stay closer!” And her hand burned mine when she caught me.
“I’m this close to panic,” she cried, then she called for her mother to keep hold of Aysha. “Was that my father I just saw or is it the weed talking?”
Voices mixed and swept us up in a deluge—Russian, German, English. Antonio, someone was yelling to one side. Bystro, someone else was crying. A hand brushed my shoulder and I jumped, startled, but it wasn’t the imam, just some French kid looking for something. My heart was racing, my chest constricted like it was wrapped around with duct tape. And from the heat of the bodies my mind misted. I thought I was seeing a caravan of riders, flowing down a dune in the distance, each holding a bright flame; riders like the ones I’d seen painted on the walls of Elif’s house. Then lightning flashed in my eyes and when I blinked away the blindness I found myself not ten feet from a giant camel. On the camel, flooded with more light, a woman in a bathing suit was posing for pictures.
“Elif!” I cried. “Grandma!”
Somehow I’d lost them. I scurried from one face to another, bumping into strangers. A few times I plopped nose-down in the sand—large grains, more grayish and dirty-looking than actually black. My shoes and socks filled up quickly and with each step the sand scratched and burned me. By now the caravan of riders had gotten closer and really it was men on horses, Russian soldiers—no, tourists … Whistles sounded and drums were beating. I ran this way and that until at last the beach widened and the crowd spread out and it was then that I saw it. Awash with light from the bonfire, thin in its trunk, wide in its crown, as tall as a horse and its rider: the stone tree. And Elif and the others, by the fire, watching in silence.
“All it’s missing are the stork nests,” she told me once I joined them.
And the skulls in the branches, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Baba Mina had caught me by the waist and held me tightly.
“It’s all right, Grandma,” I said softly, but I’m not sure she heard me. She stared into the fire, and I knew she could see something in it I couldn’t. She saw herself as she had been—young and pretty. At her feet, back then, not just glowing embers but the entire world. Back then she could trample the embers and they wouldn’t burn her. She could trample the world and the world yielded. Go ahead, my girl, the world told her, trample me, kick me. You’re young and pretty, your whole life is before you. Why should I stop you?
The fire burned and Baba Mina held me and much the same way, Aysha hugged her mother, and much the same way the two watched the flames grow shorter. What did the flames show them, I wondered. What did they show me?
Elif, right beside us. Every strand of her short hair radiant, orange. Her face aglow. Her eyes blazing. Not watching the fire, but watching me and seeing, now for the first time, that I too was courageous and daring, a real rebel.
By now, my lips were chapped and swollen; my stomach was hurting with hunger. I had seen a vendor at some point, selling grilled meats, and I imagined how sweet a kebabche would taste right at this moment. Slowly the fire died down before us and embers blinked open like red eyes. Then out of the darkness three young men stepped forward. They were dressed in traditional costumes—white shirts, black trousers, red sashes—and after they’d lit a line of torches in the sand they began to spread the embers in a circle with long rakes. Each time the rakes smashed a piece of charred wood to smaller pieces, sparks flew up and the wind whirled them in thick swarms.
Their shirts white like goose feathers, I remembered Grandpa saying, though it was of other men he’d spoken. The kalushari, men for heroic business.
The sea boomed on one side while the river flowed silent on the other and more people gathered below the stone tree to watch the spreading of the embers. Cameras were flashing and whistles were blowing, horses and camels bellowed, and from the dark I heard the splashing of water and drunk boys and girls crying that the sea was freezing.
Then for an instant the world grew quiet: Elif had leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and when I looked at her, she was crying. I touched her cheek gently, warm as it was from the fire, and brushed away her tears. When my knuckles passed her lips she kissed them. She
kissed my fingers. And I knew in that moment that if we were to get caught now, if we fell into real trouble, it wouldn’t matter. To stand the way we were standing, together on a black shore, made all future trouble worth bearing.
It was after this that a bagpipe cut the night from throat to navel. A drum pounded to silence all others. From behind the stone tree came out the piper, the drummer, and the night turned day with all the cameras flashing.
Baba Mina tensed up beside me. “Vah, vah,” she whispered, but the whisper choked her. The piper stood on one side of the glowing circle, the drummer stopped on the other, and I wondered if this was what Murad the Godlike One had seen from his boat, six centuries back, like us waiting for women to come out dancing. Was this a tree or the girl with the white hair, or was it simply a boulder that winds and tides had disfigured?
The music flowed louder; the drum beat faster and my heart tried to keep up with its beating. In the light of the torches I could see a group of Japanese tourists toying with their cameras, the lenses so long they almost touched the embers. And a few kids with colorful hair swaying with the drum, waving their hands, and scratching green lines in the dark with their glow sticks.
“What the hell is he doing?” Elif whispered, but she didn’t have to point. On one side of the circle a shirtless man struggled to take off his left shoe. He’d already taken off the right one. Dirty sand glistened on his fat belly—like me, he too must have rolled on the ground a few times.
“Hey, back off,” someone cried, but the man wouldn’t listen. Before we knew it, he’d jumped in the embers and taken a few wobbly steps to the circle’s center. I still don’t know why the crowd started laughing. Maybe because his screams struck us as too high-pitched for such a big guy; maybe because he was calling for his mommy in Russian. Before long, he was out of the fire, but even after the men in the white shirts had carried him off to the darkness we could still hear him calling.
“That ought to teach him a lesson,” someone said behind us.
“Fat Russian bastard,” someone else said, laughing, and unexpectedly a wineskin was shoved into my hands.
“Take a sip, pass it forward,” a girl told me.
“What’s in it?”
“Divine nectar. What do you think’s in it?”
It was wine—thin and sour and tasting like leaves of geranium. I knew the taste; even in America my mother had insisted on adding the herb to our Christmas Eve compotes.
“Where did you get this?” Elif asked when I passed her the wineskin. But she didn’t wait for an answer. She gulped and the wine trickled down her chin and glistened.
Then her mother drank, then Baba Mina, and even Aysha took a few small sips.
“Easy now,” I told her, but someone laughed behind me.
“Let her have it. It’s better than milk and honey.”
For a while we watched the embers glowing and white smoke rising every time the rakes spread them thinner. Baba Mina took tiny steps in her place, and so did Aysha, keeping her eyes now on the old woman, now on the live coals. But her mother stood calmly and when the wineskin made it around the circle once more she took another deep gulp. She seemed victorious now, away from her husband, liberated if only for a few hours.
One by one, the men began to extinguish the torches. The music fell silent and we heard down the beach, where I imagined the Veleka entered the sea, the sound of another bagpipe, of another drum coming near. A shush spread through the crowd. Whispers and sighing. “They’re coming,” a Bulgarian said on one side. “The nestinari,” said a woman in English, and the word sounded so funny in a language that didn’t contain it.
The cameras flashed impatiently and out of their flashing the piper was first to appear. I’d never seen a bagpipe like this one: the head of the kid-goat from whose skin the bag was made preserved perfectly; the glassy eyes and black horns reflecting each new flash. Ahs and ohs moved the crowd and the cameras flashed even more greedily. The drummer followed and then the nestinari. Light chased darkness in a mad alternation and made their movements appear sharp and choppy. They cut through space like specters, now in one place, now in another. A young man carried a giant icon, half covered with a cloth as red as his sash. A young girl followed behind him, and in her steps another man and another girl, all carrying icons. Their bare feet kicked up sand as they weaved a circle around the spread embers.
“They’re so pretty,” Elif whispered, and again rested her head on my shoulder, this time without tears. The music picked up—the other bagpipe and drum had joined in. I saw that a large smile was stretching Aysha’s lips and she was clapping to keep rhythm. Her mother too was smiling and clapping and neither of them seemed even remotely interested in entering the fire. Could it be this easy, I wondered, to cure their sickness?
But Baba Mina wasn’t smiling. She’d stopped taking her tiny steps, and when she turned to me, her face twisted in fear. I understood that all I’d imagined—how she saw herself in the fire, young and pretty—all that was nothing but hogwash.
“Take me home, my boy,” she whispered, and reached for my hand, but couldn’t grab it.
“It’s all right, Grandma,” Elif hushed her. She put her palm on the old woman’s shoulder and kissed her head through the black kerchief. “Let’s watch the dancing. Aren’t they pretty?” Baba Mina mumbled something—maybe the crowd had spooked her—and the bagpipe shrieked so near now that all other sound disappeared.
The first man carried his icon across the embers, his feet taking quick steps, kicking up sparks and raising white smoke. One of the women followed. The drums beat faster and the second girl jumped in the embers and carried safely across them the image of the Holy Virgin. It was a beautiful moment: the girls so pretty, the men so strong and courageous. And yet I couldn’t feel this beauty. The whistles had renewed their blowing. The crowd clapped and cheered the way a crowd cheers at a football game. A bitter taste filled my mouth. It was not an ancient mystery we were witnessing, but a show for the tourists—as strange and exotic as they wanted to see it.
“This isn’t right,” I told Elif. My head had started to spin from the weed and the wine and the people, and I felt my stomach rising. “You watch them, I’ll be back in a minute.”
The beach was littered with bottles and cigarette butts and making-out couples. Boys and girls ran half naked along the shoreline and jumped in the sea, screaming. But in the darkness, the air was cooler and so fresh my head cleared quickly. How sad it was to be standing not ten feet from the sea and not see it. How awful to be looking at embers and fire dancers and not feel them. Anger choked me—not just at the drunken tourists, but at the pipers, the drummers, the nestinari. And I would have felt low and angry a long time if at that moment a car hadn’t roared in the distance.
People yelled, others were laughing, and I watched the car, a jeep really, fly through the beach toward the dancing. Not sure why, I started running. I tripped and rolled in the sand, sprinted faster. A dull sickness lodged itself in my stomach. The jeep, like the one Orhan had driven, had stopped not twenty feet from the dancing and the crowd had broken up the circle, blinded by headlights.
I can’t say I was surprised to see the imam climb out. All night, I’d been seeing him in more than a few faces. But to see my grandfather come out of the jeep surprised me. He stood by the front bumper and for a while fought the wind to light a cigarette. The bagpipes were still shrieking, the drummers still beating, and the nestinari kept dancing, but no one watched them. All eyes were on the imam, while his eyes were searching. He hadn’t said one word even and his wife was already walking in his direction. Her head down, she climbed in the back of the jeep, inside the old, wretched cocoon. She untied her headscarf and spread it over her face to hide it.
Elbowing my way through, I found Elif and Aysha. They held hands, completely frozen in the headlights. And Baba Mina stood beside them, equally frozen. The imam was only a shadow and wind swept the sand at his feet in black puffs. Behind him, Grandpa was smokin
g, the tip of his cigarette a glowing ember.
“I’m not going,” Elif whispered. I’m not sure if she meant for her father to hear it, or me, or if it was to herself she was speaking. But other people heard her.
“Hey, bro,” someone called to the imam, “leave the girl to do her thing.”
“It’s a free country!”
“I’m not going,” Elif said a second time, louder. I felt like she wanted me to reach for her hand and hold it; to give her strength and courage; to pin her down like an anchor. And yet I couldn’t move a muscle. And so she drifted.
“Come on, man!” someone yelled, maybe at me, maybe at the imam. Head down, like her mother, Elif walked toward the bright lights, toward the cocoon she too had been weaving for many years.
By now people were booing and even the bagpipes couldn’t silence their whistles.
Then, just as she had walked past her father, just as she was but a few feet from the idling jeep, Elif turned back and sprinted. Before I knew it her lips were on my lips and the crowd was cheering. And even after our kiss was over, even after Elif had taken her seat by her mother, the crowd kept clapping.
It was a moment hard to rival. Or would have been, if not for Aysha. A woman cried and then another and I turned around just in time to see the little girl running across the embers, barefooted. At once the music fell silent, the nestinari as stunned on the side as the rest of us. We could hear under Aysha’s feet the embers crunching as once more she crossed the circle. But before she had crossed it a third time, a man picked her up in his arms and hushed her: Grandpa, his boots kicking coals on his way out.
People were booing louder and for a second I feared a riot.
“Come on, Grandma,” he told Baba Mina, and took her hand when she gave it. Then he stopped in his tracks for a moment.
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