Miroslav Penkov - East of the West

“Nonsense,” her father said when Kemal asked him. “You are a bagpipe maker. To make bagpipes, you need a man’s name.” Then he took her to the mosque and when the hodja refused to let her in — when he cried, “You’re making Allah angry!”—her father laughed loudly and pushed her inward regardless. Kemal prayed with him, and later, in his workshop, her father taught her verses from the Qu’ran that she recited while she worked on the bagpipes, so the work would flow lighter, so their music would pour out sweeter.

Kemal was six when her father made her her own bagpipe — small enough so she could put her arm around it, so she could squeeze it with her elbow. For months that’s all he taught her: how to keep a steady tone; no melody, just air gushing out in an even stream. At first Kemal could not do it. In bed, she held her pillow like a meh and squeezed it, not too harshly and not too lightly, until one day her father lay his dusty palm on her shaved head.

“That’s it,” he told her. One day, he said, she could forget her own name, even, but she’d never forget how to squeeze the bagpipe. Then he covered the windows with old newspapers, picked up a kaba gayda himself and filled it up with air. “Don’t think,” he said, “just follow.”

The shriek exploded — the songs too large for the small hut, the songs longing for sky and meadow. They thrashed, wrecked, shattered and then curled up in the corner, curs who’d recognized their master.

“You are,” her father told her, “a conqueror of songs now.”

And so they played together, days on end, long hours; they danced in circles around the lathe, with shadows of words on their faces, Kemal’s chest ablaze, her fingers enflamed like the roots of sick teeth. And they emerged of the hut reborn, to air fresh and sunsets so sharp, Kemal had to seek refuge in her father’s arms or else go blind completely.

But he gave her no refuge. “Hugs are for girls,” he’d tell her.

4.

When Kemal was ten, her mother went away to the city. Before she left, she stopped by Kemal’s room and made her put aside the bagpipe. “I’m not feeling well,” her mother said, and rested a hand on her belly. “Give me a kiss so I’ll feel better.” Her face was yellow, and when Kemal kissed her, her sweat tasted of dogwood blossoms. “Do you feel better now?” Kemal asked her. “I feel better,” said her mother.

For a whole week after that Kemal’s father stayed locked in his workshop. But the lathe didn’t turn, and the hammer lay quiet. He wouldn’t let Kemal in, no matter how much she begged. She boiled milk and hominy for dinner and every night she left a wooden bowl at the threshold. The hominy always turned chunky — her mother had never really taught her how to cook it properly — but still, in the mornings, she found the bowl empty, washed it and filled it up with breakfast. She fed the chickens, and though a couple died of something, she did well for the most part. She hoed the garden. She watched bats draw nets in the blue night and listened to the hodja from the minaret call everyone to prayer. She missed the sawdust and the cold of the chisels. And there was no one to talk to. So sometimes, when the silence got too thick, Kemal walked above the village, above the gorge and the river, and played her bagpipe. Her songs flowed screeching and smashed against the hilltops and bounced back muffled, as if there was another piper blowing in answer, as if it were her father playing back from the hilltops.

On the second week Kemal’s father stepped out of the hut another man. He held her up and she tried to tear off his beard, to see if his real face was not hidden beneath it. He took her to the mosque to pray for her mother, but Kemal prayed for other things: she prayed back home he wouldn’t lock the workshop; she prayed he’d shave off his beard.

5.

On the first school day Kemal rose up before the cocks crowed. When she stepped out of the house, her father splashed water at her feet, for good luck. He said he wished her mother could see her. Kemal wore a white shirt and black trousers, but her shoes were her cousin’s. “Drag your feet a little,” her father told her, so she wouldn’t walk out of the shoes. In the school yard she was given a paper flag, white-green-red, and lined up with the other children. She chewed on the flag handle, which was like a stick for cotton candy, and so one of the teachers scorned her. Divak , the teacher called her, thinking Kemal was a boy, a savage. Kemal was this close to tears. But she remembered what her father said to people. “My daughter,” he told them, “does not know tears. Even when she was born, she didn’t cry.” So while the teacher wasn’t looking, Kemal bit off a chunk of the flag stick, chewed it and swallowed. The splinter was salty from all the hands that had touched it, but by the time they led her inside the classroom she had eaten half of the stick. By the time it was her turn to recite the poem, she was already chewing on the flag. All kids recited the same poem. A teacher had come to Kemal’s house a month before this to make sure she had a copy. A classic by Ivan Vazov. A3 the poem went. I am a little Bulgarian. I live in a free land. I cherish all things Bulgarian. I am the son of a heroic tribe. When Kemal said heroic tribe she coughed out a piece of the flag. Her spit had washed the dye away and the piece lay wet on the floor like a cat tongue. All the children started laughing. The teacher sent Kemal home for her father.

“That poem you learned,” her father said on the way back from the headmaster’s office, “you must forget it. You’re not Bulgarian, no matter what people tell you. You were born a Turk and you will stand a Turk before the Almighty when He calls you. ‘Kemal,’ the Almighty will tell you, ‘recite me a poem.’ What will you tell Him then, Kemal, lest he throw you down in Jahannam to eat thorns from the thorn tree?”

“What poem, Almighty?” Kemal answered, frightened to look up at her father. “I remember no poems.”

6.

Kemal’s mother, too, came home not her mother.

When Kemal was still very little, her father had asked her to take an old shirt of his and stuff it with hay to make a scarecrow for the garden. And now, when she watched her mother stooped at the threshold, weightless, her hand on her belly, her skin the color of spoiled tobacco, cheekbones like sharp stones and face like a wolf’s under the head scarf, Kemal thought of that scarecrow, of how the scarecrow had needed more hay for the stuffing.

From then on, Kemal rarely saw her mother. Her mother ate no breakfast and had no dinners and Kemal was not allowed to talk to her or hold her hand, even. Her mother’s room stayed locked at all times.

When Kemal blew up her pipe, hoping they could play together, her father brushed her away and demanded silence. But there was no silence. Doors opening, closing, water running in the bathroom. And in her room Kemal’s mother weeping softly, and her father trying to soothe her, his voice calming to her, but to Kemal dreadful. Why wouldn’t he talk to Kemal this way? Why was he allowed to hold her mother’s hand, while Kemal herself wasn’t? And even when her mother didn’t weep, her father’s voice kept Kemal awake.

At night she held her bagpipe, face buried in the meh like in a bosom, and sucked the blow stick, and breathed that goat smell, and prayed Allah to make things quiet.

Once, while her mother was taking a shower, Kemal snuck in her room and rummaged through a drawer of packaged syringes. The whole room smelled like camphor, like piss and shit, and the floor was covered with large sheets on plastic to preserve the rugs from staining. In the corner she found a box of nylon pouches, took one and tried to blow it up, to get it to make music.