Knock Knock

Continuing with our Ukraine series this month our fiction newsletter is excerpted from Lily Hyde’s extraordinary forthcoming book. Hyde is a British journalist based in Ukraine. Hyde’s upcoming book, which is not yet titled, looks at Crimea after its annexation by Russia and is based on Hyde’s extensive research interviewing Crimean Tatars, a largely Muslim Turkic group indigenous to the region. Hyde has documented stories from diverse perspectives: activists who oppose the Russian occupation and those who have collaborated with it, Ukrainian servicemen who stayed in Crimea after the invasion and Crimeans sentenced to prison by Russian forces. The book uses fiction, essays and creative nonfiction to offer a deeply personal view of human relations and acts of heroism under extreme political stress.

In the following fictional story “Knock Knock,” we meet several Crimean Tatar families navigating life under occupation. Hyde explores the ways that political and military circumstances seep into even the most intimate friendships.

—Kira Brunner Don, Editor in Chief 

To knock, стучать: to inform on someone (Russian slang)

“Has someone been knocking again?” 

Alim looked at the papers on the desk in front of him. “We’ve had some information.”

“From Baba Katya.”

“From a citizen. I can’t tell you that.”

“Alright, alright.” Enver leaned back, trying to sprawl comfortably in the uncomfortable wooden chair. “Go on then. Out with it. What have I done this time?”

“On Tuesday evening this week, you were talking in your kitchen. In Crimean Tatar. About Putin and Islamic State.”

Tuesday. Yes, Lenura’s parents had been ’round, and they had indeed been speaking Crimean Tatar in the kitchen, over kobete hot from the oven and a little bit of Bitay Katibe’s cherry brandy.

Enver waited for Alim to look up and meet his eye. “Baba Katya doesn’t speak Crimean Tatar.”

“…No.”

“So she can’t possibly know, the old dear, that what we were saying about Islamic State was that the idiots who join it need their heads examined, and that Putin, on the other hand, is our adored hero and the sun shines out of his arse.”

Alim looked back down at the papers. “I think she does know the Crimean Tatar word for ‘arse,’ actually.”

Enver lowered the front chair legs carefully back to the ground. “How so?”

“Because she also complains that you were talking about your cat. Which likes to shit all over her garden.”

Enver snorted so abruptly that a bit of snot flew out of his nose. Alim’s lips were twitching, the dimple showing in his cheek.

“Kiss my arse,” said Enver in Crimean Tatar, which sounded in Russian a bit like “clever cat.” Alim let out a smothered yelp. “Alright, what do I sign? Do I sign something? Or I can publicly flagellate myself down the village high street? Will that do?”

• • •

He walked out of the police station entrance whistling. There were snowdrops growing by the path outside, clean little scraps of spring. Enver waited for a bit, looking at them vaguely. Then he stepped over and made his way round the building to the back door.

Alim was there smoking a cigarette.

Enver lit up. “So what other misdemeanors of the good citizens of Kamenka have you got from your knocking shop?” he asked, with a good-natured leer. “Who’s knocking up whom, for example…” Alim didn’t smile this time. “Oh come on, you can tell me. Or am I really the only one anyone ever informs on? I’m flattered.”

“You should really be careful, Enver,” Alim said.

“The cat’s grounded,” Enver promised solemnly. “Don’t worry so much! It’s not your fault. It’s not Baba Katya’s fault really. How much does she get each time—2,000 rubles? If they paid her a better pension, she wouldn’t do it. Well, actually, she would. She enjoys it, the dear sweet vicious nosy old so-and-so.”

“What happened? I remember you used to be great neighbors.”

“What happened?” They had been great neighbors once, Enver’s two girls forever running ’round for Baba Katya to spoil them rotten with sweets and homemade jam. “Russia happened. And she went completely batshit crazy.” Enver winked. “Catshit crazy. On the other hand, you should see Nikita on the other side. My neighboring alcoholic. He’s discovered some long-lost family in Siberia, tidied up the yard, donated his spectacular collection of empty vodka bottles to some museum of Russian eternal victory. Now he’s forever out there, puttering about and planting and watering things. He’s even found money to fix the fence. Hey—” Enver looked at Alim with a sudden idea. “He’s not knocking as well, is he? Is that where the money’s from?”

Alim looked surprised. “No. Not to me.”

“Oh well. Anyway, it’s an improvement, I can tell you. I almost feel like I should be planting flowers and writing poetry myself, to keep up with the Joneses and the bedtime stories they tell you.”

“I hate hearing them,” Alim muttered. “I just really can’t stand it.” He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, childishly. Ash fell from the cigarette between his fingers, down his blue uniform shirt.

Enver brushed it off for him. “Meryeshka still keeping you awake all night?” The younger man nodded, face still hidden by his hand. “Can’t Elmaz take her to her mother’s for a bit? You’d be able to work on the house. And it’d be easier for Elmaz, having her mother there.”

“Ilmi’s living there with his new wife. Anyway, you know what her mum thinks of me.”

Enver could have said something reassuring, but on the other hand, the whole village knew that Elmaz’s mother’s brief honeymoon with her son-in-law around the time of the wedding had long since soured. He said: “Well, that’s why I thought she might be happy to have Elmaz and Meryeshka without you, to be honest. So she can do a bit of subverting back to the Dark Side.”

He nudged Alim cheerfully. “As if that’d work. Meryeshka’s the spitting image of you; stubborn as a mule up to its arse in oats. When you were in nappies, you howled all night like a banshee, too.” Alim still looked pitiful. “Alright, why don’t you send them round to us, then?” Hell’s teeth, where had that come from? Meryeshka was gorgeous—of course she was, she was a baby—and the funny thing was that she really was the spitting image of Alim, with the red circles in her cheeks and the lick of dark hair standing up from her forehead. But she did howl, not actually like one but like a whole coven of furious banshees, out for blood.

“Elmaz doesn’t really like—I mean, she’s nervous about trusting Meryeshka with other people,” Alim muttered.

“Lenura brought up our two pretty well, despite all my attempts to drop them on their heads or give them a solid grounding in Nietzsche before the age of two,” Enver said, deciding not to feel offended. “Hasn’t Baba Katya told you about that yet? Oh, she will, she will.”

“I don’t want to know,” Alim said. “I hate this. It’s shit, this job. You’ve got no idea how shit it is now.”

Enver could have taken offense at that, too. It had been mostly his idea to encourage Alim into a police career; a regular income, maybe promotion, and a right smack in the eye for Elmaz’ mother always going on about her friends in the Mejlis and how Crimean Tatars should get into positions of authority to protect national rights.

And it had worked: six months after he got the village police position, Alim and Elmaz had been married. Six months after that, Russia had arrived. So yes, to be fair, shit was probably the word. Enver shrugged, unoffended. “So pack it in.”

“How?” the word came out almost a shout. “I’ve got a baby to feed, Enver! There are the payments on the house. What will Elmaz say if I quit?”

Alim rarely shouted. Crying babies, honestly, they were worse than armies of occupiers. “You could get another job,” Enver said. “Elmaz’s mother would understand if you asked for an extension on the loan. But you wouldn’t need to ask,” he added, at the look on Alim’s face. Mothers-in-law, Hell’s teeth, they were worse than crying babies. “There’s other work around. I could get you in at the taxi firm, I’ll ask Emine.”

“You haven’t got enough work there for yourself.”

“I started taking less. I told you, I want to cultivate my garden and write poetry, like a disgraced Chinese Imperial official. Or there’s building work—all those new cottages down near Koreiz. I’ll ask Dilyaver. Handy bastard like you, you can get work.”

Alim put his cigarette out slowly and deliberately against the wall. “It’s not so bad, really,” he said, looking at the stub squashing and squashing against the dirty plaster. “We got new boots; look.” He stuck out a black-booted foot, dropped the stub and ground it under the sole. “I told you we got a new boss in Bakhchisaray. He’s Dagestani. I get time off for Friday Namaz now.”

“But you don’t go to Namaz,” Enver pointed out. He’d recently started going to the mosque on Fridays himself, but Alim had never shown an interest. “You’re not solid and respectable enough.” Alim didn’t even have a disreputable policeman’s beer gut; he was looking positively scrawny these days.

“I’ve got to get back.” Alim turned to go inside.

Enver raised a hand. “Mention it to Elmaz, about coming to us for a night or two. And I’ll do something absofucking-tastic for Baba Katya to inform you about next time. It’ll be the dog’s bollocks, my friend. You’ll get a fat bonus, and you can finally quit on the back of it. You better give me a cut, mind.”

He walked back through the village, wondering how he was going to persuade Lenura to invite Elmaz and Meryeshka over for a couple of nights, while he himself went off somewhere else. He’d take Alim away fishing—that was it—like he had in the old days when Alim was a teenager busy going to the bad, eyes too big for his skinny face and knees poking out the holes in his jeans, and Enver had decided to take him on because he needed fixing. A couple of days fishing’d get the poor doleful bugger back together.

Back home, Nikita was out on one side, doing something with a hoe. On the other, Baba Katya was putting crumbs on the bird table Enver had helped her put up. Enver had been one of the lucky ones when he’d returned to Crimea 20 years ago; he’d managed to buy an existing house in the village. But as the saying went, you don’t buy a house, you buy neighbors. It was a shame, really, because while all Nikita had ever contributed had been a rubbish- and rat-infested yard and the occasional drunken knife fight, Katya had been a great neighbor. She’d been a marvel of comfort and good sense through all the shrieks, sulks, doom and despair that had accompanied Enver’s daughters’ awful boyfriends or disappointing exam results, while all their father had been able to do was make inappropriately humorous remarks.

Enver leaned over the fence, big with contrition. “Afternoon, Baba Katya. I’d like to apologize for our cat—” he began innocently, but of course his big gob ran away with him “—cat’s arse and its predilection for defecating in your garden. And I promise that next time we’re discussing Islamic State, we’ll do it in Russian and invite you ’round for your valued contribution.”

• • •

“Knock knock?”

“We’ve had some information.” Today, the accumulating papers in front of Alim were in a gray cardboard folder.

“I haven’t even done it yet!” Enver complained. “It’s still in the early planning stages, and if she’s informed on me about it, she’s been reading my mind, the old witch.”

Alim didn’t look up. “You’ve started going to Friday Namaz.”

“I know,” Enver said, a bit taken aback. He was sensitive about his attendance at the mosque; it was like a little, new-found tender shoot that had sprouted inside him, inexplicable even to himself. “And you know. You get permission from the great Russian state to take time off from policemanly duties to go to Friday Namaz. It’s practically a civic regulation, like the boots. Respectable people go to Namaz.”

“And you slaughtered a sheep for last Bayram.”

“So did half the village. And we gave Baba Katya a big chunk. Not my fault it was chewy as leather.”

“You’re growing a beard, she says.”

“I am not growing a beard! Lenura’d leave me for our clean-shaven newly spick-and-spiffing-span neighbor Nikita if I grew a beard. I haven’t shaved for a few days because it’s spring and I’m allergic to pollen and I get this rash. Not just on my chin. Do you want me to share with Baba Katya all the highly personal details?”

“She’s—the citizen’s—concerned about your piety.”

“My what?”

“Your piety,” Alim repeated expressionlessly.

“I think Baba Katya might need a dictionary. I mean, the word impious was invented with me in mind….” Alim still wouldn’t move his gaze from the folder. “Alright, alright. Hang on a minute. I’ll take the oath and do the penance.” He waited for Alim to look at him, then held up his hand in a Pioneer salute and recited, piously: “Thou shalt honor Putin and the Russian state; thou shalt not covet thy neighboring state’s freedom of speech and religion…”

• • •

Where the snowdrops had been by the police station entrance was a thick patch of violets now. Their sweet scent vanished in the warm air almost as he noticed it. Enver breathed in slowly. Out. Then, he went ’round to the back.

“Do you think Baba Katya’s seeing some potential conversion in me that I haven’t seen yet?” he asked, lighting up next to Alim on the back step. “Maybe I should send you to warn Lenura to hide all the alcohol before I get home. Just turn a blind eye to all the banned Islamic literature lying around, won’t you?”

“Enver.” Alim had the same harassed look as when he’d made the pioneer salute inside. “You really shouldn’t go ’round saying things like that.”

“Yes but I’m saying them to you,” Enver pointed out.

“That’s—” Alim started a gesture, and then let his hands fall to his sides.

“It’s either you or Tolik, and you’re more fun.” Tolik, dim, torpid and Ukrainian, was the village’s other policeman. He’d been on the job forever and was as bent as a dog’s back leg, but fortunately too lazy to fully take advantage of his own bentness. “Why is it always you and not him on the knocking desk, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Because they know how much I hate it,” Alim said. He was already on his second fag. He looked exhausted, worse than last time. “Stop joking about it.”

“Have you seen my beard? Exactly. Sherlock Holmes’d need a fucking magnifying glass. Has Russia started issuing regulation police magnifying glasses yet, to spot the microscopic signs of extremism?” He cut off whatever Alim was going to say. “Have you asked Elmaz about coming ’round to stay with us?”

Alim shook his head. “Is there any work with the taxi firm?”

“Emine’s been busy,” Enver replied evasively yet encouragingly. “So you see, yes, probably loads of work.”

In fact, he had asked Emine a few days ago if she could take on another driver. Emine had been doubtful; the firm was suffering from the influx of drivers from Donbas pushing down prices. Still, they were here today, gone tomorrow, and the tourist season was coming up—maybe there actually would be a tourist season this year.

“I’ll take a few less hours,” Enver had said to her. “I want more free time to finish dictating my scandalous memoirs to my neighbor.”

“Hmmm?” Emine was scrolling through time sheets on the computer. “He’s reliable, I presume. Clean license?”

“He’s more than reliable; he’s the only clean cop in Crimea. His license is so clean he could wipe his beautiful baby’s bottom with it.”

Emine’s hand stopped twiddling the computer mouse. “A cop—you mean Alim?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t think so,” Emine had said. “Times are hard. No. Sorry.”

Enver had been puzzled by the change of tone. “So Alim’s a Chingene* and an orphan who married above himself—is that it? Hardly a sin. And now he’s got a family to look after; debts to pay off.”

Emine had just said “We’ve all got family to look after. And Alim will pay for his sins before the Almighty.”

No point in repeating that to Alim. “Something’ll come up,” Enver said now to his friend, whom he’d been looking after like family for years now, because he’d seen something that needed fixing, and he was able to fix anything with a bit of wheeling, a bit of dealing, dealing and dealing the cards until the right one turned, bright side up.

Alim sighed and then cleared his throat, as if hoping Enver wouldn’t catch the sad little exhale. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go.”

“Me too. Pious deeds are waiting. I’ve got to carry shopping for helpless old ladies, and recite prayers for the everlastingless of Putin and the Third Fucking Rome.”

“Enver.”

• • •

“Knock knock. What’s the story this time?”

Alim held the fattening file upright on the desk between them, so not much was visible beyond that lick of dark hair that wouldn’t stick down. “You’ve been using profanity in public.”

“Yes…So?” Enver was baffled. “I do, I do use profanity, I admit it, I swear frequently, lavishly, inventively, and sometimes in languages she doesn’t understand. Does she quote the exact words?” He tried inquisitively to see round the edge of the folder, but Alim held it firmly. “Baba Katya swears herself. You should hear how she talks about Ukrainians, for example. Shocking.”

Alim still didn’t say anything. “I don’t swear at Baba Katya, by the way. Her dear, sweet, innocent old heart wouldn’t take it. Is there a law against swearing these days? Anyway.” He rocked forward to lean over the desk. “Any-fucking-way, last time I seem to remember she said—”

“Yes, well. That’s just it. She says it’s ‘unbecoming and offensive and suspicious,’ coming from such a pious person as yourself.”

“…Pardon?”

“A person renowned for his piety. Swearing.”

Enver reached out and tugged the folder towards him, so that it fell flat. They stared at each other solemnly across the police desk, waiting to see who would crack.

“Can I laugh?” Enver enquired at last. “Or should you do that first?”

• • •

Outside the front entrance were daffodils now. Enver watched them bobbing about in the wind before he noticed that Alim’s car was parked beyond them. Odd. It was a 15-minute walk from Alim’s place to the police station, and Elmaz liked to have the car in the day, to drive Meryeshka around in an attempt to get her to sleep.

“Why are you driving to work?” he asked, at the back door. “Oh, wait, I get it: the boots. How very Russian to carpet Crimea with jackboots, but not bother to check if they fit. Or is it one size fits all? I hate to tell you, but your uniform’s too big, too.” It was literally hanging off him, now Enver came to look. “Isn’t Elmaz feeding you at all these days, Alim? Have you suggested yet that she bring Meryeshka ’round to us for a bit? Lenura’ll send her back with her pockets stuffed with kobete for you.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Alim muttered, ’round the cigarette in his mouth.

“Why not? I may have got a tad more eccentric now my daughters aren’t here to keep me in line, but I’m not yet running naked ’round the garden singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Although, come to think of it, Baba Katya—” But Alim wasn’t even looking at him waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “You know everything I say; I say it to you,” Enver said. “Or if I don’t, Baba Katya does.”

“I don’t know what Dilyaver said to you about a building job.”

“He didn’t say much. Just that he’d talk to his uncle.” Enver was a bit disconcerted. In fact, last week, when it became clear that Enver was asking about work for Alim, Dilyaver had said “For that collaborator?”

“Tell him not to bother asking,” Alim said. “I don’t need your help, Enver. I’m fine where I am. This way, I get to finish the house. I keep my promises, I pay my debts.” He gulped the last bit of smoke and threw the stub down, hard. “I’ve got to go.”

It was a bit of luck that on his way home Enver bumped into Sayid coming out of the shop. Sayid was head of a bigger building brigade, with a Russian boss who had work coming out his ears.

But Sayid said straight off: “No.”

“Why not? Alim knows his stuff, he’s building his own fancy place; it’s going to have turrets and everything.”

“He’s a collaborator,” Sayid said flatly, as Dilyaver had said.

“Your wife’s a teacher at a state school,” Enver pointed out. “We all do what we have to do. Alim—”

“My wife is teaching our children their native language. Your Alim’s part of the machine that’s repressing us for being Crimean Tatar.”

“He’s got a kid to feed.”

“Islyam Memedov’s got two; Ibraim has got four kids to feed, while they’re in prison.” Sayid leaned close, speaking low and harshly. “Do you really think he doesn’t know what you’re doing, that stuff you post about what’s going on here?”

“That’s not me,” Enver objected. “I’m just the court jester providing entertainment for that representative of Crimea’s god-given rulers, my batty neighbor Katya. Come on, Sayid. You’ve known Alim since he was bite-sized. There’s no harm in him. It’s not his fault Russia came along.”

“Russia came along three years ago. Why didn’t he quit then?”

“So that a policeman as bent as Tolik could’ve taken his place? Alim’s one of us.”

“One of us,” Sayid repeated. “Have you heard about the Osmanov wedding yesterday, in Kyzyltash?”

“I heard it got raided.” Kyzyltash was over the other side of Bakhchisaray, but of course the news had traveled immediately. “Because they were playing Ukrainian folk songs and someone informed on them. I heard they bought themselves off with cake and the musicians’ fee and a blast of the Russian national anthem—”

“It was Alim,” Sayid said. “Center E, and Tolik and Alim.”

“Well, he’s chingene. He’s a bit particular about music.” Enver’s joke fell flat, even to himself. The musician’s fee was all the money the wedding guests held up as they danced in turn with the bride and groom. He’d danced so himself at Alim and Elmaz’ wedding. Alim had borrowed hugely and invited everyone; there’d been a long line to dance with beautiful Elmaz like a princess in an embroidered dress that swung like a bell. Alim, hair stubbornly sticking up above his hectic, rosy face, had gleamed and shone opposite Enver. He remembered the feel of the crisp Ukrainian banknotes folded between his fingers.

He said, “If Alim hadn’t been there, Tolik would probably have tried to make off with the bride as well.”

“One of us,” Sayid said again, with total disgust.

“Yes. Sayid, you know how much I appreciate an absurd situation. Everyone’s blaming Alim for not quitting his job, but at the same time, no one will give him a job so that he can quit. Something’s got to give. He’s having a hard enough time trying to be decent and keep up with his debts and responsibilities. Good thing he doesn’t realize yet how you’re all so prejudiced against him.”

“You’re a fool, Enver. Why do you think he’s started driving to work? So he doesn’t have to look any of us in the face on the way. He knows what a traitorous shit he is, even if you don’t.”

After that conversation, Enver was not in the mood to get a call, as he turned in through his garden gate, from his cousin Ernes in Kyiv. Ernes had left Crimea right after annexation. He called Enver every week or so, urging him to do the same. Enver leaned against the gate, absently watching his neighbor Nikita watering some flowers he’d planted where all the rubbish and old bottles used to be, and tried to listen with his usual tolerance. He appreciated his cousin’s concern, especially as it was easy to brush off with jokes. And yet today, he suddenly found himself shouting, to his own surprise, “I’m not going anywhere! Who would I even be, in Kyiv? Nobody. Crimea’s my home, and I’m staying. I’d be a traitor to abandon it.”

Nikita dropped his watering can and squashed a tulip. Enver gave him an embarrassed wave. “I want to stay and cultivate my garden, like whatsisname, Candide,” he said into the phone. “I want to plant tulips and daffodils and whatd’you­callits, those frilly pink things.”

“…Roses?”

“No, like big pink pompoms. Whatever they’re called. Wait, I’ll ask Lenura.”

“Ask her about leaving,” Ernes said. “Promise me you’ll talk about it with her, Enver. Now, before they catch up with you. Promise.”

“Alright,” Enver grumbled. “Leaving, yes, alright. I’ve got it. I’ll think about it.” He shoved the phone back in his pocket.

Lenura had gone out for something, leaving a bowl of cake mixture on the kitchen table. Maybe a missing ingredient that, in happier times, she’d have borrowed from Baba Katya. Sighing a bit, Enver scooped out a big glob and ate it, to cheer himself up. He was licking his fingers when someone knocked.

It was Nikita from next door, sober, awkward and clutching two tulips in a plastic bag.

“Afternoon, Enver,” he said. “I, er…Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Are you really thinking of leaving?”

“I might be,” Enver said cautiously. “Why?”

Nikita wordlessly held out the tulips. Enver looked at them. They’d clearly been hastily dug up, grubby bulbs, earwigs and all.

“I know I’m a fantastic neighbor,” Enver joked. “But it’ll take more than a couple of tulips to persuade me to stay, you know.”

Nikita glanced round anxiously. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can I come in?”

• • •

Enver only managed to get Alim to come over after his shift by promising that Lenura was with Elmaz, and then threatening to come and drag him out of the police station himself, draped in the Ukrainian flag. He installed the policeman at the kitchen table—making sure the window was shut—and laid out Lenura’s freshly made cakes, and his own proposal.

“Twenty thousand,” Alim said, staring at the lino tablecloth patterned with giant, faded daisies among which unicorns frolicked, chosen long ago by Enver’s daughters. “It’s not enough.”

“A month!” Enver crowed. “What do you mean, it’s not enough? Well, of course it’s not enough. I’m worth far more than that; I’m priceless. But it’s per month, Alim. It’ll help cover your debt to your mother-in-law. And once you quit your job, you’ll get other work; people will come ’round. I’ll help you out.”

“Twenty thousand rubles,” Alim murmured again.

“Hey, he offered me 10 to start with, if I stay. I got him up to 20. It’s half of what the FSB pays him to watch me. Knock knock! That’s who Nikita’s long-lost Russian family turned out to be. He told me all about it. No wonder he’s turned into such a sober and industrious bloody horticulturalist.” The warm cakes in front of the younger man were untouched. Enver reached over and shook the uniform sleeve. “Come on, Alim!”

Alim looked up at last. The habitual high color in his cheeks was sharp and hectic. “Aren’t you ever afraid, Enver?”

“Of Nikita? Nikita’s so fond of me these days that he’s offering me half his FSB blood money if I stay here in Crimea. We’re going to plant peonies together and discuss geopolitics and ethics. I’m his cash cow; he’s going to make sure I’m in permanent clover. And as it turns out, the FSB is going to pay you to quit your job in the police. Twenty grand! It’s perfect. It’s fucking genius!”

Alim shook his head. His lips twitched. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re a genius, Enver.” His gaze slid sideways, to look out of the closed window that faced Baba Katya’s house. The cat was sitting on the garden fence, twitching its tail.

“It might be a bit tricky when Baba Katya finds out how much more she could be earning,” Enver admitted. “It’s a whole new level of keeping up with the Joneses. Well I can always threaten her with leaving as well—”

“I think about leaving,” Alim said. “I think about taking off for the city, Moscow or Kazan or Istanbul or somewhere. Just me. Some big, anonymous city where no one knows me. I wouldn’t take anything; I’d just go. Disappear one night. I can just start all over again.”

Enver frowned at him. “You can’t do that.”

“I know.”

“Elmaz, and the baby. The house.”

“I know.”

“And the cornerstones aren’t really rubies and the streets aren’t really paved with gold, you know,” Enver joked. Alim was smiling, but it was such a bleak smile and his eyes were so darkened that Enver managed to close his big gob on any other frivolous remarks. And yet he just couldn’t do despair. It wouldn’t fit inside him. That unyielding density would always balloon and squeak and turn up its bright side. He watched in helpless bafflement as Alim rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. The shoulders in their blue uniform shook. But when Alim took his hands away his eyes were dry.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m on a bridge. A very narrow bridge, just one plank wide, and I’m trying so hard to keep my balance. And way down below me, there’s the city. All laid out like this—” he held out his hand, the flattened palm upturned towards Enver— “all the streets and houses. Anyone can see everything. All of us down there, running about. Like ants.”

For once, not a single joke came to Enver. Outside, the cat dropped down from the fence. A breath later it appeared silently on the windowsill. Its luminous topaz eyes stared at them through the glass, unblinking.

Enver tipped his chair back and reached for the cupboard under the sink. “It’s your day off tomorrow, isn’t it? Good. What you need, my friend,” plonking a bottle of Bitay Katibe’s cherry brandy on the table between them, “is a drink.”

He sent Alim home after less than an hour, when Lenura called to say she was on her way back. They must have met on the way; when Lenura came in, she was disapproving.

“Have you two been drinking?” she demanded. “You know he doesn’t drink these days. Elmaz doesn’t like it.”

“It was just a bit.” Enver held up the bottle, with a good quarter still glowing ruby-red to prove it. “Believe me, he needed it.” So had Enver, if truth be told. “And it worked. He came ’round. He’ll be fine. It’s fixed. It’s all going to be fine.”

“So long as he doesn’t carry on drinking at home, that’s all.”

“He won’t. What did Elmaz say? Did you persuade her?”

“The poor girl’s really lonely, stuck on her own all day.” Lenura sat down where Alim had been. “She’s coming with Meryeshka on Friday and staying ’til Sunday. Those are Alim’s next days off.”

Enver looked at his wife with melting, doggy eyes. He tried to infuse into them the sense of a gently wagging tail.

“She’s coming early. Five. So you two can go off fishing.”

“Lenurochka. You’re the queen of my heart.”

She threw a cake at him. “Your black, little, scheming, slithering-out heart.”

• • •

At five, he shot up in bed, woken by an awful commotion outside the front of the house. Dawn light seeped in through the curtains. Vehicle engines cut out. Doors slammed. Noisy, determined activity. The gate clanged open, clashed shut.

And this was it. They had come for him, just like Ernes said. Like Sayid said, his parents, everyone’s parents and grandparents. They had caught him up. It was happening. It was in his blood, his collective memory, yet Enver had never really believed it was possible to happen, he discovered. Not to him. Not this hammering on the front door. Not this brutal dawn assault on his peaceful, sleepy family home, his fortress, everything he had gathered close and safe around him.

Beside him, Lenura stirred and blinked groggy, frightened eyes. Should he kiss her? A few noble parting words? Don’t be so melodramatic, Enver. Get dressed? He didn’t want to be arrested in his underpants. On the other hand, he didn’t want them to kick in the door while he fiddled with buttons and buckles.

“I’ll just be a minute—” he said to Lenura, compromising by pulling on tracksuit bottoms while hopping out of the bedroom. Thunderous knock-knock-knocking now from the front of the house. He’d replaced the door just last year; it was nice and new and painted purple. Stumbling through the living room, he realized he hadn’t grabbed his phone, hadn’t deleted anything, hadn’t sent the message that was always there at hand, waiting to be sent, for when this happened. Fat lot of good you are in a crisis, Enver. He opened the front door. Oh Lord, Almighty, I am in Your hands.

Outside on the step were not armed soldiers, not the FSB and Center E in balaclavas and riot gear. Elmaz stood there, holding a hiccuping baby.

Enver’s heart came back from wherever it had been off having an attack, and took up residence somewhere around his knees. They trembled. Five a.m.—five a.m., he thought, aghast. Elmaz had gotten the wrong bloody day to come ’round with Meryeshka. He couldn’t go fishing now. He hadn’t borrowed the fishing rods. He was a bit hungover. He was working from two ’til 10. And then he’d have to come home to someone else’s adorable child howling all night.

He said, “Elmaz, love, it was supposed to be next week, Alim’s next day off, not this one.”

Meryeshka wailed. Her black tuft of hair stood straight up; her mouth was a great round “o” between her wet, red, round cheeks. Elmaz’ arms held the baby tightly. And then Elmaz opened her mouth, an identical o, the spitting image of desolation and woe.

“What the—Were you really looking forward to it that much?” Enver found himself asking.

Lenura appeared, plump and furry and sleepily cross in her toweling dressing gown. “Or else Alim did keep on drinking and they had a blazing row. Go on, go and see.” With one hand, she

pushed him out the door while, with the other, she gathered in the wailing mother and child, into the safe warm house.

After a moment, she opened the door again and threw out his jacket and sandals.

Baba Katya’s curtains on one side twitched. On the other side, Nikita’s door opened; he put ’round it a long nose and a hand holding a watering can. Enver waved and beamed reassuringly. Alim’s car was parked outside the gate; he felt like patting it. He set off on still-wobbly knees through the dawn, the beautifully empty, ordinary, miraculous, cool pink dawn, for Alim’s place.

Once, it had been just an open-raftered, dirt-floored house with one window and one door, where Alim had lived with his grandmother. That house was still there, like a sort of miniature child’s drawing of a home now attached to the new, two-story, fancy building. This was half finished, of course, like all Crimean Tatar houses. The early morning light outlined with meticulous clarity Meryem’s toys lying around on the path and steps among buckets and bricks and stacked planks. The front door was unlocked when Enver tried it.

“Alim?” He shouted. “Alim! Alim! Alim!”

No one answered. Silence flowed from the house, past him into the spring morning and dissolved in a silver rinsing of birdsong. Enver had the sudden, incontrovertible sense that there was no one in the house to answer.

“Oh my giddy aunt,” he said, aloud. “He’s done it. He’s actually taken off; he’s gone to Moscow or Kazan, like he said.” The words fell into stillness. “Alim! Alim!”

He ran up the stairs; opened doors onto empty rooms; slowly came down again. The low sun slanted into the big kitchen and living space, turning the bare walls pink, the floating dust motes to soundless specks of light. Soon, Enver thought he would feel angry, disappointed, bereft. Betrayed. But right now, he was suspended in a pure and limpid amazement, tinged with a tiny, rosy flush of admiration. “You left. Alim, you little—”

When had he left? How? He hadn’t taken the car; Elmaz had driven it up to their house. Had he just gone away alone like the wanderer he was, into the morning with a lyepushkaand an apple from the winter store, wrapped in a spotted handkerchief over his shoulder?

Enver opened the door to the storeroom, that had once been the poor, mean, single-roomed house where Alim had grown up with his grandmother.

He nearly bashed his face against the dangling knees. The pair of feet, in regulation black police boots, tapped gently and insistently on his chest. Knock, knock.

The world made one violent lurch, and swung. He was standing, balanced, on the narrow, soiled plank of the threshold, and far below him lay the city, with all its streets and houses, its towers and domes and minarets. From above where the boots hung, the city shone like a ruby, like a single, precious carved jewel suspended far below in the darkness.