The Day of the Pelican Read Online Free PDF Page B

put the lid on, and covered the lid with coals.
    "When can we eat it?" Vlora asked.
    "It takes hours," Isuf said with big-brother importance. "You have to be very patient."
    "But I'm hungry now," his little sister protested.
    "Everybody wants
flija
now," said their father, "but it doesn't hurry for anybody. Now go help Mehmet find more firewood while you wait."
    When the first layer was cooked, Mama took a forked stick and carefully lifted the lid of the pan, added another layer of batter, replaced the lid and the coals, and then sat back to wait until this layer was done. Each time the lid was taken off, one of the children rushed up to see if it was time to eat, but it never was—not until the middle of the day, when the many-layered
flija
was finally fat and brown. Mama cut two pieces and put them on a plate with a bit of the precious jam. "Take these to our new neighbors, Meli, to thank them."
    ***
    With cheese and Mama's
flija
topped with honey, that first full meal at the hillside camp felt a bit like a celebration, but as the days wore on, there was very little to celebrate. So much they had always taken for granted was missing—electricity, a proper stove, a washing machine, running water, an indoor toilet. The fresh eggs and butter and milk that Auntie Burbuqe had given them were quickly gone. Each morning, while Meli and Mama went out to fetch water from the stream, Mehmet and Baba gathered sticks for the next day's fire. Their new neighbor had advised this: They should never let themselves run out of firewood, he had said. "And don't let the children wander too far up that way," he had added, waving toward the top of the hill. "That's where the military camp is. It's off-limits."
So that's where the KLA hide themselves.
It was a thought that both thrilled Meli and frightened her.
    "Do you have children?" Baba had asked the man that first morning. It was simply politeness speaking, but the man stiffened. "I had two sons. The elder, Visar, was slaughtered before my eyes, and the younger..." He paused. "Someday he will come home again.
Inshallah.
"
    Baba had touched his chest in the traditional gesture of sympathy. "May the Lord leave you healthy," he had said.
    "May you be healthy," the grieved father had answered, and sighed deeply. "God wrote it in his book before any of us were born. What can we do? We must reconcile ourselves to it."
    Reconcile yourself to your son's murder? How was that possible? If Mehmet had died, would any of them ever have been able to reconcile themselves, Meli wondered. As for the neighbor's second son, was he in these hills—or some other hills—plotting vengeance for his brother's death? No one asked that question.
    Each morning when they came out of their tent, they could see that other families had come to join the makeshift camp. There were no more proper tents, so the new arrivals had to make do with plastic sheets hung over chestnut tree branches and propped up with sticks. It made the Lleshis crowded tent seem almost luxurious. Every day Meli hoped that a car coming up the steep, curving road would bring Zana, or someone she knew from her old school, but they were all strangers.
    "How do you stand it up here?" a new girl asked her one day. Looking at her clothes, Meli realized that the newcomer was used to a much more comfortable life than even the Lleshis had known. She felt a pang of pity for the girl, her clothes not yet stained and torn, her face untanned.
    "I try to pretend I'm on vacation," Meli said. "If the family is on a camping trip, everyone thinks it's fun to fetch water and cook over an open fire, don't you think?"
    The girl sneered. "I'm
not
on vacation," she said. "And it's
not
fun. Though maybe for you villagers..."
    Meli didn't reply, but she wished she could tell Zana: That girl didn't even have a tent to sleep in, but she thought she was better than me because her father wasn't born on a farm.
    There were advantages to never having been rich, Meli decided.