I hung up and would have stepped outside if not for some sudden burst of curiosity. The sick girl’s room was empty and air blew through the open window in cool, damp gusts. The bed was neatly made. The burned spot on the floor had been covered entirely with rugs, but there was still soot on the ceiling above it. I lifted the rug and touched the spot. I sniffed the char on my fingers.
“My sister starts fires here,” Elif said from the threshold.
I leapt up, stuttered an apology.
“Each spring, three years in a row. She dances barefoot in the coals and barks like an owl. Vah. Vah. Vah.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “It’s really sad the way her feet blister. The way my father treats her, like she’s a leper. The way he treats me, like I’m his sheep. Would you believe he pays that hag across the street to spy on me day in, day out? A jar of honey every month.”
She forced a blast of smoke through her nostrils, one stream thicker than the other. “You need to loosen up, amerikanche,” she said. “I need to loosen up.” She watched me for a moment as if she was sizing up my weight and finding it unsatisfactory, much too low. “I know this place outside the village where back in the day the Christians danced. Where the storks nest. Where the weed hits you at least twice as hard. Don’t look so scared,” she said, and seized my hand.
EIGHT
EVERY YEAR, for thirteen hundred years, the nestinari dance. Come spring, come May, come the feast of Saint Constantine, the feast of Saint Elena. They build tall fires; three cartloads of wood are torched and burned to embers. And then, barefooted, they take the saint’s invisible and holy hand and plunge into the living coals. They spin, they wave their sacred icons in the air, they rush first in, then out. They feel no pain because the saint protects them. A week, two weeks, a month before the dance the saint descends upon the ones he’s chosen. The women swoon, their eyes like popping chickpeas under their flaming lids. The men blaze up in holy fever. Their temples split; their lips bring fire to everything they touch. And yet, despite the fever, a deep freeze chills them to the bone. Feet come alive, take quick, rushed steps. The muscles spasm, the bodies shake and seek the flame. An owlish cry escapes the throat. Vah. Vah. Vah. And only dancing in coals can bring relief. But if the chosen push away the hand that leads them, if they refuse both dance and saint, their sickness worsens, their blood transfigures into liquid fire, which then incinerates their bones, their hearts and souls. Come spring, come May, come the feast of Saint Constantine, of Saint Elena, the nestinari dance. And it has been like this for thirteen hundred years, here in the Strandja Mountains, and nowhere else.
Such was the yarn Elif was spinning. We walked the bushy bank, upstream and out of Klisura. The river rushed muddy from last night’s rain and so loud I struggled to hear all that she said. The mist through which I’d left Grandpa’s house that morning had rolled away and a warm sun was climbing the sky. The bushes here were in bloom. White and yellow flowers danced before my eyes as Elif pushed twigs and branches out of her way with fury.
“It started three years ago,” she said. The branch she released whipped me across the chest and I sneezed from the pollen. “My sister was coming out of the mosque when she first fainted. A perfectly insolent little creature!”
For two days Aysha thrashed in bed. Her feet twitched, her teeth chattered. A doctor came from town. “I measure no fever,” he said. “She should be fine.” And yet she wasn’t. “Keep her hydrated,” the doctor ordered. Who knew, perhaps it was the flu? After all, six other girls were sick in the village.
But the old women knew. They’d found the cause long before the doctor’s visit. Black magic? The evil eye? What monster could have the heart to hurt the seven little darlings? “Don’t be afraid, my dears,” a woman from the Christian hamlet said. It was Saint Constantine who’d claimed the girls.
The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. A week before, Aysha and her girlfriends had gone to the river to watch the baby storks. They played in the mud, splashed in the shallow pools, then snuck into the abandoned nestinari shack. This was a hut down by the river where once upon a time the fire dancers kept their icons and their holy drum.
A week went by. And then two of the girls lay down with fever.
“There will be more,” the hag from the Christian hamlet said. And she was right. Before long, Aysha and the remaining girls were also sick. The hag came to Elif’s house. Their father was furious at first, but he was also worried and so he let her in. They sat her down under the trellised vine and brought before her the seven sickly girls. The hag fished out a clove of garlic from her apron and popped it in her mouth — she ate garlic, Elif told me, like it was bonbons. Then she ordered the fathers to fill up a trough with water and the seven girls to stand around the trough. Their feet took tiny, frenzied steps. Their eyes rolled white, their teeth chattered. The hag waited for the water to settle and for a long time studied the faces reflected on the surface. That’s how bent she was, Elif said, unable to stand up and look you in the eye. But there was more to it, the women whispered. Only in water could the hag see the things she sought to see. “Don’t be afraid, my dears,” she said at last. “Rejoice!” It was Saint Kosta who held the girls like sugar cubes under his holy tongue. His feast was coming near. “Build a fire, spread the coals. Give the girls icons and let them carry them across.” Only then would the saint be calmed. Only then would the fever go away. “Lucky, lucky doves,” the hag said. “What I would give to have him claim me one last time.” And tears rolled down her cheeks.
Bitter indignation choked the parents. “Our daughters kissing Christian icons and worshipping a Christian saint? For shame before Allah!” Each father seized his daughter’s hand and dragged his sickly girl back home. Windows were sealed and doors were bolted. “I’m the imam,” their father told Aysha, “and you are making a mockery of me. A mockery of God.” And then he smacked the little girl, bloodied her lip.
For seven days and nights Aysha stayed imprisoned in her room. Twice a day Elif was allowed to bring her meals, to empty out her chamber pot. How she wished she could forget that stench. Shit and piss, and her little sister, shaking on the floor and chewing the tresses of her hair. No, she would not forgive this man. As long as she breathed, she’d curse her father’s soul.
The feast of Saint Constantine arrived, and with the feast, just as the hag had told them, Aysha began to howl. She jumped behind the bolted door all night. Then in the morning she was calm, slept through the day, and woke in peace. Elif and her mother washed her gently, combed her hair, and when she asked them why all this kindness, they burst into tears.
Last year the sickness once again returned. Three weeks before the feast Aysha built a fire in her room. The hag had warned them many times that such a thing might happen. Aysha burned a handful of sticks down to embers, and it was because of her shrieking that Elif found her, jumping on the glowing coals. Who knew how badly she would have hurt her feet. And what if the house had caught on fire?
Again their father locked up the little girl. But a few days later Aysha was once more dancing in the fire. At first, Elif couldn’t see how her sister had snuck out, where she had found the sticks and matches. Then she understood. Their mother had helped her. Their mother too was burning with the Christian flame.