A Time of Miracles Read Online Free PDF

People are running toward the wobbly stairs. But nobody shouts, nobody cries.
    Gloria picks up the khaki canvas bag with the samovar, which sticks out, and we run toward the exit of the U, hand in hand, our hearts drumming in our chests.
    It’s dark. We knock into other people without recognizing anyone, just like cows entering the slaughterhouse where Old Max lost three of his fingers. I can just make out Old Max, Kouzma, Jalal, and Nasir, our lookout team. They’re armed with shovels and hammers, and they protect our escape by barring the street. I can hear noise farther away, along with shouts and the thumping of boots.
    “The militia is making a sweep of the area!” someone whispers.
    In an instant the Complex is empty. Like a disorderly stream, we flee toward the shore of the Psezkaya River. Gloria is crushing my fingers. She moves her stout body as fast as she can, while I try to make myself light, as if I hardly exist.
    I don’t see Emil or Baksa or Tasmin or Rebeka.
    When we reach the river, there is a bridge. Blocks of floating ice reflect the moonlight. We join other fugitives who are loaded down with boxes, wheelbarrows, old mattresses, and we go across.
    “You’ll see how beautiful it is on the other side,” Gloria whispers to me. “We’re free, Koumaïl, and the world is so big!”
    I hang on to her and think that Vassili was right to call her Gloria Bohème, because no militia, no river, no amount of fear can stop someone like Gloria. In my opinion, I was very lucky she found me the day of the Terrible Accident.
    After we’ve been walking for several hours, the dawn reveals a barren countryside. I ask Gloria whether we’ll go back to the Complex. She says no.
    “Not even to Kopeckochka?”
    “There are better stores in other places,” she assures me.
    “What about your friend at the Turkish restaurant? Isn’t he going to worry if we don’t pick up what he leaves for us in the bin?”
    “He’ll just give it to someone else.”
    I look around me. The small valleys powdered with frost, the thick pine trees, the road that disappears in the distance. The fugitives have all dispersed. I can see only afew tired silhouettes and a family that follows a cart. I am cold and hungry, as usual.
    I would like to know why the militia is after us, why we don’t have the right to stay in the same place a long time. I often ask Gloria about it, but her only answer is that the world is full of mysteries, take it or leave it. The only thing that comforts me is knowing that one day I will go to France. Over there, Gloria told me, there is no war.
    “Is everybody rich in France?” I ask.
    Gloria’s face is red under her kerchief. When she talks, a cloud comes out of her mouth.
    “What do you call ‘rich,’ Koumaïl?” she asks.
    “I don’t know. Maybe people give you lots of coins when you put out your hand.”
    “They give bills,” she says.
    “Oh,” I say, impressed. “OK!”
    Thanks to Mrs. Hanska’s lessons, I know that a bill is worth more than a coin. I know the names of foreign currencies—franc, dinar, peso, dollar, crown, ruble, cruzado, zloty, lev, forint, yen.… I even know that there is a country where you pay with sugar, which seems pretty strange.
    “I promised Emil that I would find
loukoums
for him,” I say, sniffling because of the cold.
    Gloria smiles and says nothing more. After a while, when it gets so cold that it hurts your lips to talk, it helps to think about pleasant things. And if your feet hurt, you have to pretend they aren’t yours. They belong to somebody else. And somebody else’s feet cannot be hurting you, right?

chapter ten
    OUR new refuge is called Souma-Soula. It’s a vast village close to mountains made of recycled materials, like bricks, wooden boards, plastic, and galvanized iron. Everything is built haphazardly, but everyone manages to find a spot, and Gloria says that we’ll be living in clover. I don’t want to contradict her, but I think that the