Miroslav Penkov - Stork Mountain

These are my girls , one of them said to his left, and then another: And if you want one, I’ll let you have her.

On one condition , a girl said to his right, and to his left a girl repeated, Yes, yes, on one condition.

They’re mad, Murad was thinking, an evil jinn has possessed them. But he could not look away from the girl with the white hair.

Give her a drum , some other girl uttered.

Give her a bagpipe , cried another, though which one he couldn’t tell rightly — they all spoke too quickly.

Let her finish her dancing.

Yes, yes, don’t wake her before the dance has finished.

And when you conquer the Bulgars …

… slay them all if you wish to …

… but the land my girl crosses dancing …

… you must swear to protect it.

You must allow my girls to do their dancing.

Swear it , they cried. Swear it!

And before Murad knew it, he, the Godlike One, the first great sultan, had sworn an oath for the ages.

* * *

“Whatever land the dancing girl crossed in her trance, he would protect it. The Christians who lived on it would be allowed to keep their churches; the nestinari to do their dancing. They would pay almost no taxes. And when a Turk reached their border he dismounted and his horse was unshoed at a smithy. Then he led it on foot to the other side, to another smithy, where the shoes were nailed back on. All this they wrote down in a firman. And the land the girl crossed dancing they called the Hasekiya, from haseki , or the favorite wife of the sultan. But the girl never lived to see Murad, her husband—”

“Why didn’t she?” Elif whispered. We were hiding in the barn at the back of their house now because, well, what better place did we have for hiding? I had chucked pebbles at her window and she had led me across the dark yard.

“Sneeze once and my father will kill us,” she’d said, and pulled me behind a bale of rotting hay.

“He might kill us without me sneezing.” Then I’d told her about my visit to Baba Mina’s; about Murad and the girl dancing, though not nearly in so much detail.

* * *

For seven days the girl danced in her trance, the drum drumming behind her. Not once did she stop to eat or drink water. Seven, fourteen, seventeen villages she encircled and still she kept dancing. And in his boat Murad waited for the jinn to release her. But on the eighth day a messenger reached him — the Serbian armies were marching against Adrianople. “Return at once, my lord. The men need you!”

How could he leave this beach, this girl he had fallen in love with, in the hands of a dark jinn? Despite himself, the sultan called for a white horse; despite himself he rode it across impure lands. The sun was setting by the time he found the girl, still dancing, her feet bleeding from wounds, her hair thorns and nettle. Off the ground he picked her; by his side he sat her, on the white horse.

Don’t wake my girl before the dance has finished , the jinn cried, with her lips.

* * *

“But he woke her,” Elif said, anticipating the end of the story.

“Where Murad left the dead girl lying,” I said, “today there stands a white boulder. Wind and water have undercut it and shaped it to look like a lone tree.”

I pulled out a postcard — one that Dyado Dacho had given me, old and wrinkled as it was — and shoved it in Elif’s hands.

“I can’t see anything,” she said, and lit a lighter for only a moment. Though of course, a moment would have been plenty for the hay around us to catch on fire.

“A stone tree on a black beach,” I said. That’s what the postcard was showing.

“I’ve heard of it,” Elif said. “Byal Kamak. A tiny village.”

“Where a mighty river flows into the Black Sea.”

“The Veleka River!” she said, perhaps more loudly than she had to.

“Where the sand is black with silt from the river.”

“Dear God,” she whispered. “Where the nestinari settled after they left Klisura!”

I BELIEVE OUR PLAN was doomed from the very beginning. And I believe we all knew it. We weren’t stupid. So wrote Captain Kosta — leader of the Strandjan rebels against the Ottoman armies. Or at least, so I’d read in Grandpa’s papers. The poor captain had thrown himself in the enemy’s jaws not because he had expected to crush them. He had done so because, in his own words, to sit still and do nothing would bring a defeat greater and more shameful . And so, I suppose, our plan too was doomed from the very beginning. And I suppose we too knew it.

What the plan consisted of was fairly simple. On the afternoon of May 21, the feast day of Saints Constantine and Elena, Dyado Dacho would wait for the bus at the square. “I have come to collect what you owe me,” he’d tell the driver, and when the driver tried to wriggle out of paying, the old man would make him a tempting offer. “Three out of five. Double or nothing.” So, seeing how there was a lot worse he could be doing than playing some backgammon, the driver would shut off the engine, and, leaving the keys in the ignition, where he always left them, he’d follow Dyado Dacho to the Pasha Café. Three out of five would soon turn into four out of seven, and so would the glasses of mint and mastika . And as these things so often happened, before too long the two of them would find themselves locked in and peacefully snoring on the bench in the corner.

Night would have fallen over Klisura. The imam would call from the minaret for the day’s final prayer, Elif’s cue to lead Aysha down to the square. Baba Mina and I would be waiting already. We’d climb on the bus, start the engine, and drive eastward — thirty kilometers to the village of Byal Kamak. All this under the premise that by the stone tree, where the Veleka entered the Black Sea, there would be nestinari dancing.

It’s not courage that drives us. It’s not madness. It’s hunger for freedom. This Captain Kosta had written, a hundred years before me, and this I was repeating now on the square, behind the unlocked bus, with Baba Mina beside me. Night had fallen. The driver had eaten up Dyado Dacho’s bait, hook, line, fishing rod, and all. The imam was singing. But there was no sign of Elif and Aysha.

“Are you cold, Grandma?” I whispered, then took off my jacket and covered her shoulders.

“I’ll get warm soon, my boy,” she answered. “Saint Kosta will warm me up.”

The imam’s voice flowed out of Klisura, across the hills, and the village was quiet. A dog barked far in the distance and a stork swooped down from the roof of the municipal building and spun a wheel overhead. Baba Mina clasped my waist like a frightened child.

“Don’t let him take me,” she whispered. “The black stork.” Whether the stork was really black or only appeared to be, I couldn’t tell. Nor did I have time to investigate. The metal ropes of the bridge creaked in the darkness, and footsteps echoed over the noise of the river fattened on rain. A silhouette took shape before us. And then another. And when I saw a third shape approaching, my heart leapt and I thought of running.

“It’s over,” I think I told Baba Mina, and in her fear she squeezed my waist harder.

But then we heard Elif speaking. The plan, she told us, had changed a little. And soon I recognized her and Aysha and beside them their mother.

THEN THE KEY WAS NOT IN THE IGNITION.

“Of course I’m certain,” I cried from the driver’s seat. “I’m groping the ignition and the key isn’t in it.” It was so dark inside the bus that I saw nothing but dim shapes. Baba Mina rocked and mumbled behind me, and her seat creaked with every rock and mumble. Aysha said something and then her mother cried, “There, he’s coming. He’s found us!” but it was only a stork flying across the square and so she spat in her shirt to chase away the fear.