Free Dream Land by Lily Hyde

smoking, boys—”
    “Asim.” Mama spoke quietly, but in a tone Safi had never heard from her before. “If you want your daughter’s skirt to be longer, perhaps you should buy her a new one.”
    There was no money for clothes; Safi knew that perfectly well. There wasn’t even enough for things like sugar and toothpaste. All the money went into the building: the wooden beams for the ceiling, glass for the windows, plaster for the walls. It was looking a bit more like a proper house these days, with a sturdy floor and even a door between the kitchen and the next room. Unfortunately the hinges must have dropped, because it didn’t shut properly. Mama went through it now, pulling it to behind her, and it scraped along the floor and then stuck.
    For a moment, Papa looked as though he was going to stride after her. Then he checked himself and subsided onto a stool instead with a short, angry laugh.
    “Women!” he said. “Girls!” he added, reaching over to tug one of Safi’s plaits with fierce affection. “Who’d have them! Are you really so desperate for a new skirt, Safi?”
    “It was
you…
” Safi began indignantly, but Papa, with one of his abrupt changes of mood, was laughing at her.
    “I remember a story about a skirt,” he said, “and it’s one you can tell to your history teacher, because it’s about how Grandpa’s cousin Khatije joined the partisans. Eh, Father?”
    Grandpa put down his teacup. “I was thinking of another story,” he said, in his slow voice. “About how you came to join the Tatar national movement, Asim.”
    “I don’t know that one.” Safi found it hard to imagine that Papa had ever
not
been in the Tatar national movement. “What happened?”
    Papa looked at Grandpa. There was a flush of colour across his cheekbones. “Now then.”
    “Your father,” Grandpa said to Safi, “was much more interested in girls than politics. And one fine day he ended up in the middle of a protest march in Uzbekistan by accident, because he followed a girl there. Quite the hero, Asim. He saved the girl from a police beating, and she shouted at him all the way home for it. Elmira was ready to die then; whatever it would take for the Tatars to return to Crimea.”
    “And that was Mama?” Safi was fascinated by this glimpse of her parents when they were young.
    But Papa got up from the stool and said, “That’s enough now.” Still looking a little flushed, he gently eased the ill-fitting door open and went through to the other room, pulling it closed just as gently behind him.
    Grandpa held out a hand to Safi. “I think we should go for a walk.”
    They left the house to Mama and Papa, because even with the new door there was not much privacy. Safi hoped they weren’t still arguing.
    “So was the way Khatije joined the partisans like the way Papa joined the nationalist movement?”
    “A little. I suppose they are both love stories. But my cousin Khatije was in love with a boy called Abdul, and if Khatije is our pride, then Abdul is our shame.”
    They had wandered past the pond to the campfire Ibrahim had lit to keep himself warm. The men took it in turns to sit by their protest signs, because if they didn’t the police or locals kicked them down.
    Ibrahim glanced up as Grandpa and Safi held out their chilled fingers to the flames. “Come to keep me company?”
    “
Khartbaba’s
telling a story.”
    “Oh, good.” Ibrahim carefully laid his pen and notebook aside. Stories were among the few things that could tear him away from his studies.
    “My cousin Khatije was a bit older than me. She was a big, brave, laughing girl until she met Abdul.” Grandpa smiled to himself. You could see that he had been very fond of his cousin. “Abdul’s family had sent him from Akmesjit—”
    “That’s Simferopol now,” Ibrahim put in, for Safi’s benefit.
    “—to live in our village when the war broke out. He had dewy black eyes and mincing city ways that would make you puke, but I suppose