At the edge of the forest she turned the flashlight off. A half-moon broke through the clouds, then disappeared, but I could see ahead of us a clearing split by a tall barbed-wire fence. There were gates in the fence, for people and vehicles to pass, and large, rusted warnings that trespassers would be shot on sight.
Elif stood on her toes and whispered in my ear, “Right there, a hole,” and pointed, as if I could see a thing. Her breath was vile from what she had smoked, but nonetheless to feel it so warm on my cheek made my knees go slack.
The opening was where she said it would be. She lifted the fence for me, and once I’d crawled under, she followed with great agility. Like that, we were in Turkey. And not a soldier was around to deny us passage. Once again we hid in a forest; once again we emerged in a clearing. A few shepherd huts stood in our way, abandoned, desolate — an old Turkish hamlet; and to one side wooden frames for hay, bare and sticking up in the dark like Inquisition stakes.
My heart was pounding, but now, with the adrenaline, all fear had turned to excitement. I pulled Elif closer. I whispered, “We snuck across the border!” She laughed, once again loudly, not afraid we could be heard. “Go, go,” she said, stuck the flashlight in my hand, and nudged me forward. Now I was leading and she followed. It felt good to be in charge even for a short while. Finally, here was the kind of romance I had dreamed of.
“Where now?” I turned to ask her. “Elif? Where now?”
But she was gone. I waved the flashlight — at the collapsed earthen wall of a hut, at the tall grass that flowed with the gusts, at the ugly stakes, and at the forest from which we had emerged.
“Elif?” I called more loudly. “Elif!”
My heart turned inside out. My feet and fingers grew deathly cold. But I wouldn’t have the chance to wander — the roar of an engine exploded in the night, and soon a globe of blinding light had locked me in my tracks, like a hare.
“Stay! Don’t move!” someone yelled in Bulgarian. I couldn’t lie on the ground, though I wanted to. I couldn’t even hold my hands up like the voice commanded. A giant man stepped from the light, an entirely black figure that grew larger the closer he neared. Captain Kosta, I thought, in my terror, in my confusion. “On your face,” the man screamed, and I recognized, undeniably, the Kalashnikov he carried. And so I took a bite of the mud, my nose an inch from the tips of his boots, and could say nothing, nothing at all, no matter how angrily he screamed.
Like a feather he picked me up; like a feather he carried me to the idling jeep. He leaned me against the back fender, and now that the light was not in my eyes I saw him better: a young man, a border soldier in full combat uniform and gear, his face running with sweat and mud in a grotesque mask. With each wipe of his hand, the mask twisted, changed form so that it looked like he was wearing many faces. “Who are you?” he was saying, pointing the Kalashnikov my way. And then the sound of laughter from a hut made him freeze. He turned. “Come out,” he yelled. “Hands in the air. Come out or I’ll shoot!”
The laughter chimed with the clarity of crystal glasses shattering to pieces. The sound of clapping hands drowned it momentarily and Elif stepped out from behind a ruined wall.
“Halt or I’ll shoot!” the soldier screamed, but she laughed and clapped and neared. And so he fired, rat-tat-tat right at her feet, and the mud boiled with the rounds. And then he seemed to recognize her; she laughed louder, and before he knew it she was hanging on his neck and kissing his lips.
“Elif, you little shit,” he yelled in Bulgarian, and pushed her away so hard she almost plopped on her back. “You little, little shit,” or something to that effect.
But she was in his arms again.
“It’s good to see you too,” she said, and faced me. “You were adorable,” she said. “So cute!”
I tried to move, but couldn’t. The soldier had handcuffed me to the jeep and I hadn’t even noticed when.
NINE
THE MATCH IGNITED and its tiny flame spread through the pile of sticks and straw. Our lungs filled up with smoke and, coughing, we huddled by the fire. Light pushed back the night, and heat spread through my bones, slowly, the way a snake devours its prey. We were sitting on solid rock, surrounded by boulders and remnants of ancient walls — I on one side of the flame, Elif and the soldier on the other.
“I could’ve shot him dead,” the soldier had cried out only a few minutes earlier. “Damn it, Elif, I could’ve shot you dead!”
“What luck that’d be!” She’d reached for his rifle, but he had slapped her hand away. “Get in the jeep!” Unlocking my cuffs, he’d asked, “And you? Have you no head on your shoulders? Or do you do all that she says?”
“We came to see the ruins,” she told him later, from the front seat. We were flying through the brush and in the back I felt as though we’d thrown ourselves, voluntarily and irrevocably, toward the bottom of a dried-up well.
“And here I thought you’d come to see me,” he said, and stepped on the gas harder. She put her hand on his, switching gears, and rubbed his knuckles.
“No way,” he said. “Do you know what’ll happen if they catch me off my post? No way. I hate that place.” But then he yanked the hand brake. The jeep skidded and we flew in a different direction.
“Get out,” he ordered once we reached the bottom of a cliff face. And after that we followed him uphill, without the flashlight, the sky still plastered, but the clouds thin and radiant with moonlight. The cliffs had softened in their edge; the wind blew colder the higher we ascended and tossed at me now the smell of damp earth, now that of the soldier’s sour sweat. The path was slabs of rock, and in the distance atop the hill were boulders, like the rocks at our feet, arranged artificially, remnants of what most likely had once been a Byzantine fortress.
“So who are you?” the soldier asked me now by the fire. The mud on his cheeks had dried and fissured and made him look as ancient as the rocks, and tall as he was, he seemed himself to be a boulder.
I told him who I was. He told me he would have never guessed.
“You speak well,” he said, “no accent,” and Elif snickered.
His name was Orhan, he said, and he was in the third month of his twelve-month mandatory army service, in case I wondered. He lived in a village a couple of hills to the east and he’d been lucky to get a post here on the border.
“Luck in the form of seven rams,” Elif said, “which his father slaughtered for the members of the draft committee.”
Orhan laughed a hearty laugh and raked the fire with his army knife. “My heart still hurts. What loss!”
“You think he’s joking,” Elif said, though I was thinking nothing of the sort. “But this boy loves his sheep. Tell him about your dreams!”
Orhan shifted on the ground. He poked the fire some more, turning the blade, blowing the sparks away from his face and from Elif’s.
“They aren’t really dreams as much as plans,” he said at last, but softly, like he was afraid that merely uttering the words would ruin things. “I’d like to close the cycle, you know? Not just herd the sheep. I’d like to apply for European funding and with the money build a proper farm — a large roofed space for the animals, a feeding belt, machines to milk them…”
“And that’s his dream.” Elif laughed.
“More like my plan,” he said, and stabbed the flames some more. “Hey, now,” he said suddenly with a smile. “It’s a good plan. And if it works, Elif, I’ll bathe you in milk. I’ll roll for you the softest bed of wool.”