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from the
chaykhana
had gone quiet. Mehmed and Refat were politely sipping their tea and gazing at nothing in particular. Lutfi looked hunched and unhappy. Grandpa held out his hand. “Come here, Safinar.”
    Safi’s fingers were sore and bruised from lugging around the sharp-edged building blocks, but Grandpa closed his warm, leathery palm round them very gently.
    “We’ve had tea; now it’s time for a story,” Papa said. He was talking to Grandpa, but his eyes were on Mama. “Tell us about my grandfather, Seit Ahmet. To show how we belong here, and always have, in Adym-Chokrak.”

6

SEIT AHMET
    G randpa began. “My father was born and bred here in Adym-Chokrak, like his father and his father before that. Seit Ahmet was my father’s name, and he was the eldest of three brothers. Knew the shape of our valley like his own hand, did Seit Ahmet.”
    “He knew a week beforehand when snow would fall, and when it would melt in spring,” Papa continued. This was a story they had all heard many times. “Then it was time for the shepherds to take the fat-tailed sheep up to the high pastures; time to plant the tobacco field.”
    “And then all summer to watch the plants grow tall and heady with flowers.” Grandpa took up the thread again. “The sheep fattened and the mountain orchards filled with small yellow apples and scarlet pears; the tobacco leaves lay drying in the barn. Adym-Chokrak was where Seit Ahmet was born, and Adym-Chokrak was where he wanted to die. But in between the heart may grow restless, taxes were high, and there were goods to be collected for the
bogcha
Seit Ahmet’s sister was embroidering for her marriage.”
    “What’s a
bogcha
?” Lutfi whispered.
    “Shh!”
    “This was many years ago, when Crimea was part of Russia and ruled by the Russian tsar. When the officers arrived, recruiting for the tsar’s army, Seit Ahmet went away to the wars. After five long years he came riding back to Adym-Chokrak, his carbine on his shoulder and his sabre in his belt, and all the girls in the village looked out of their windows to admire his fine moustache and his medals.”
    “He’d seen the world, and he’d seen the wars,” Papa said. “And he found out that there’s nowhere in the world as fine as Crimea, and no war worth fighting except the war for home.” He was still looking at Mama, and Mama was gently brushing the stiff white skirts of the snowdrops with her finger, and listening.
    “Seit Ahmet sat at the edge of the flowering tobacco field, thinking about a certain girl with gold thread in her plaits who had looked very tenderly out of her window as he passed. That was when a messenger rode into the village. ‘Seit Ahmet! Your father has three sons, and now the tsar needs your middle brother to serve in his army.’”
    “But Seit Ahmet’s middle brother was studying in the Zindjirli
medresse
,” Safi chimed in, “and he couldn’t just leave.”
    “That’s right. Seit Ahmet pondered learning and warfare, family and honour, and at last he said, ‘What must be, must be,
inshallah
.’ He collected his carbine and his sabre, and once again he rode away to the wars.
    “He served for four more years, and when he came back to Adym-Chokrak, all clinking medals and curling moustache, the girls looked out admiringly as he passed, but not quite so admiringly as before, because he wasn’t as young as he had been.”
    “Oh, those girls,” Mehmed said, giving Refat a nudge.
    “Shh!”
    “Seit Ahmet sat at the edge of the field. The tobacco had all been gathered in, and in the distance Ai-Petri Mountain gleamed white with the first snow. He packed his pipe bowl with the sweet fresh tobacco and lay back watching the smoke twirl up into the air. Where’s my pipe, by the way?”
    “Don’t interrupt the story!” several voices cried at once. They’d heard it many times before, but they all loved it.
    “Well, all right then.
Ta-ta-tum, ta-ta-tum
, the hoof beats of a messenger came