“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.