THE STORY SO FAR: Mehmet finally returns. But now Meli’s father leaves to fetch Uncle Fadil and his truck. Meli’s mother confides in her that they have decided they must leave the camp before they lose Mehmet to the KLA.

CHAPTER NINE

A School in the Hills



With Papa gone, there was much more work for the rest of us. When the little ones would ask about him, Mama would say something like, “Well, a good son has to visit his old mother, you know.”

Maybe I was the only one who knew the real reason Papa was goneto get Uncle Fadil to bring the truck and take us all back. Of course, I wasn’t sure where “back” was anymoreback home where the police were likely to arrest Mehmet again? Or to Uncle Fadil’s farm, which was probably already crowded with his family?

Anyhow, I told myself, anywhere would be warmer than in these hills. And even though Mama made everyone sleep so close together that I spent every night with someone’s foot in my ribs or fist in my eye, the children still cried out from the cold. At first Mehmet objected. It offended his “dignity as a man” to be curled up like a puppy in a litter, but as it got colder, he stopped complaining.

Every day and every night I imagined I heard the rattle of Uncle Fadil’s old truck. But then the sound would turn out to be one of the old cars used by the KLA or the arrival of some new family seeking refugeor nothing at all. It was never Papa coming back.

Summer was long past, and fall was going. I thought longingly of home, of the old house that had been our school, and of my friends, especially Zara. But when I remembered Zara, my mind always went back to that horrible day I had misbehaved and Mehmet had disappeared. If I had just not drawn that stupid picture of Mr. Uka looking like a pelican, we would probably still be in our home, warm and safe, I told myself.

The mountains were full of families who had fled cities and towns below. Surely their being here wasn’t my fault. Each family had a different reason for hiding in the hills. I tried to comfort myself, blaming everything on Milosevic and the Serbs who wanted to get rid of everyone who wasn’t Serbian in Kosovoeven though we Albanians far outnumbered the Serbs.

“Mehmet,” Mama said one cold morning as she was cooking the morning gruel over the fire. “I think you should start a school for the little ones. All they do is shiver.”

Mehmet shrugged. “I don’t have any paper or pencils, much less books.”

“You can clear a place where’s it’s flat near the fire and write in the dirt,” Mama said. “At least you can help them with their letters and numbers.”

It wasn’t much of a school, with Mehmet writing words in the dirt while a dozen little voices screamed out the sounds and a dozen little bodies jumped up and down to keep warm. Mehmet pretended to hate it, but I knew he relished being in charge as much as he liked the funny little fuzz that had appeared, at last, on his cheeks and upper lip. He even borrowed a ball from the KLA soldiers and found an almost clear spot where the boys could practice football. Being Mehmet, he refused to let the girls join the sport, but we were allowed to watch and chase the ball when it rolled down the hill.

To our surprise, children flocked to the makeshift school. They may have been shivering in the weak autumn sunshine, but they seemed to listen to Mehmet, and even the smallest ones tried hard to write in the dirt the words he was teaching them.

“I only teach Albanian words,” he said proudly. “When the revolution is won, there will be no more need for Serbian obscenities.”

At last, one day, I really did hear the sound of Uncle Fadil’s truck. A tired Papa and Uncle Fadil climbed down out of the cab. I ran and threw my arms around Papa’s neck. “Oh, Papa,” I said. “I thought you were never coming back.”

He patted my head as though I were Vlora’s age. “Don’t fret, little one,” he said. “First we had to bring in the harvest. A farmer can’t leave at such a time, you know.”

It didn’t take long to pack the truck, for we had so few things. Only Mehmet seemed reluctant to leave the mountains.

“I’m needed here,” he said to Papa. “I run the school. All the children count on me.”

“We need you too, my son,” Papa said. “We can’t risk losing you again.”

“Next year I’ll be fifteen,” Mehmet said under his breath.

He was grimly quiet on the way down the mountain. “He treats me like a child,” he said finally.

I couldn’t say, But you are a child. It would only have made him angrier. So instead I said, “Papa knows best, Mehmet. He only wants what is best for each of us.”

Mehmet gave his horse snort. How I hated that insolent noise! He used to worship Papa. But everything would be all right now, I kept telling myself. Papa had come, and he and Uncle Fadil were in charge. They were taking us away from the mountain, where the KLA would have been happy to have a fourteen-year-old boy as a recruit hungry for Serbian blood.

But what had happened to my big brother, whom I’d alternately worshipped and resented? What would become of him, poisoned as he was now by such bitterness?

(To be continued.)

Newspaper shall publish the following credit line in each installment of the work:

Text copyright 2005 by Katherine Paterson

Illustrations copyright 2005 by Emily Arnold McCully

Reprinted by permission of Breakfast Serials, Inc.

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Pronunciation of Albanian proper nouns:

Meli (Ml-lee)

Fadil (F?-d?ll)

Mehmet (Mm-m?t)

Vlora (Va-lra)

Uka (Oh-k?)

Zara (Zr-?)

Milosevic (Me-LOW-sheh-vih-ch)

Kosovo (KOH-so-vohSerbian pronunciation; Koh-SOH-vahAlbanian pronunciation)