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mosque.
    Most likely the old man was right. How odd this whole situation seemed to me now. How bizarre that after fifteen years, I would meet my grandfather without an official moment of recognition, without an affectionate embrace to mark the instant of my return. And then I understood that we reunited the way we’d drifted apart—gradually, over time; that I returned the way I’d left.

 
    SIX
    MORE THAN FORTY YEARS AGO , as a punishment for his scandalous membership resignation, the Bulgarian Communist Party had exiled my grandfather to the village of Klisura. A schoolteacher, he had taught the Klisuran children for four years before returning to civilization. This was all I knew, all I had learned from my father.
    To claim that Grandpa despised the Communist Party would be an understatement of great proportions. And yet he never showed his contempt. To say that he expressed joy when the Party fell would also be inaccurate. “The wolves have retailored their coats,” he once said, regarding the new democratic leaders. “Woe to the lamb who thinks the wolf his guard dog.” In short, Grandpa claimed to give the Communists no thought at all. He wished for them what he considered the ultimate curse—the Cup of Lethe. “May no one remember them in fifty years,” he told me once, during my senior year in high school. I was writing a paper on Communism and he had shut down my request for help. “May their children forget them. I certainly have.”
    But wasn’t short historical memory a dangerous thing? I asked him.
    â€œYou muttonhead,” he said. “People don’t write history books so others can learn from their mistakes. They write them so they will be remembered. And I for one will not remember.” For years I was convinced that his animosity toward the Party stemmed from the fact that in 1944, along with the reins of Bulgaria, the Communists had seized our family land. But when, upon Grandpa’s sudden disappearance from our lives three years ago, my father spoke of Klisura, I realized that the old man’s hatred must stem from some deeper, darker place. I decided that Grandpa’s punitive exile to the Strandja Mountains had brought him much suffering and pain. But if I was correct, why had he returned?
    â€œYou had no right to disappear like that,” I said. We were eating dinner on the covered terrace of his Klisuran house, some bread and cheese Elif had given us on the way out. Silently we had crossed the bridge, the small square. Silently we had followed the eroded cobblestone road. Every now and then Grandpa would pinch the scruff of my neck.
    â€œLook how you’ve grown,” he’d say. “Had I known you were coming, instead of a rooster, I might have bought a lamb.” Then he’d tousle my hair as if such playfulness could mask the truth—neither I nor he knew where to begin. And yet we had to, somewhere.
    â€œWe were worried sick. We thought you were dead.”
    He shook the crumbs from his sleeves. “Good bread, this,” he said. He reached for his jar and for a long time gulped water. Then he picked on the crumbs stuck to its sweaty walls.
    â€œGrandpa,” I said. He pushed the jar away and the newspapers we’d spread on the table rustled.
    â€œQuite frankly, Grandson, I didn’t think you’d notice.”
    I begged his pardon.
    â€œBeg all you want,” he said. “For all I know, you have no grandfather. You certainly acted it for years.”
    â€œI was busy with school. Preoccupied. But I always made time to call you.”
    â€œMy erections are more frequent than your calls.”
    What very useful information, I said. I asked him if it was daily reports he expected. He asked me to repeat myself.
    â€œThis mumbling,” he scowled, “this so-called Bulgarian of yours. It’s pitiful.”
    He’d dealt me a low blow. I bit my tongue, then chewed it as