Dream Land by Lily Hyde

mean back to piss-poor Uzbekistan, where you belong?”
    “I’m going to Adym-Chokrak. Please let me pass,” Safi said calmly. Even if Lutfi hadn’t been coming to meet her, she wouldn’t have been too alarmed, because there weren’t that many children, and several adults were walking close by.
    “Oh,
Adim-Chakrak
,” they mimicked, pronouncing it wrongly. “There’s no place called that.”
    “Unless it’s Tatar for squat.”
    “Tatar for pigsty.”
    “Tatar for hole in the ground that doesn’t belong to you.”
    “Don’t be so silly.” Safi was determined not to be scared by a few children. She had police and unfriendly locals sitting practically on her doorstep half the time, after all. Several of the nearby adults had noticed what was going on, but they were just watching as if this was some kind of entertainment. Safi hitched her bag up on her shoulder and walked on. And then suddenly she stumbled and went flying, her bag falling off, her palms thudding painfully onto the chalky roadside. She actually thought she’d just fallen over a stone – how
stupid
– when a foot kicked her bag away and she realized someone had tripped her up.
    “What did you do that for?” she said, pushing herself up on her knees and thinking that
now
would be a very good time for Lutfi to appear. “Give me my bag back.”
    “Yuck! We don’t want it.” The feet were kicking it around.
    “It stinks.”
    “She stinks.”
    “It’s got her dinner in it, oh, puke…”
    “Boiled sheep’s eyeballs…”
    There were pounding footsteps, a thump, and Lutfi had arrived.
    “Leave her alone, you little creeps.”
    That was only the beginning; Lutfi knew a lot of rude words. There were more thumps, and then he was off, chasing the children away up the road.
    Safi inspected her palms miserably. There were sharp white stones embedded in them and they were starting to bleed. She began to gather together the things that had fallen out of her bag.
    “There’s this as well.”
    A girl was standing along the road, holding Safi’s pencil case. Safi recognized her from the bus, but not from the crowd who’d surrounded her.
    “It didn’t get broken,” she added encouragingly.
    Safi wondered whether to take no notice or run away, but her hands hurt and she needed her pencil case. While she was deciding, the girl trotted up and held it out. “Here. You should ignore those morons. I like your hair. Is that a Tatar style?”
    Safi put a self-conscious hand to her several long red-brown plaits that Mama still helped her with, even though she was growing up now, and hoped they weren’t too full of dust. “It’s just mine.”
    “It suits you. Was that your brother? He’s
gorgeous
.”
    And then everything was just as Safi was used to. The girl was gazing dreamily after Lutfi, like girls always did. It was something about his curling reddish hair and green eyes; they couldn’t resist him, not anywhere.
    “You don’t look like Tatars.”
    “What do you mean?”
    The girl shrugged. “I dunno. I thought you’d be really dark, or have funny eyes, like Uzbeks or Arabs or something. What’s your name? I’m Lena.”
    “Safi.”
    “Sophie?”
    “No. It’s short for Safinar.”
    “Safinar.” The girl tried it out experimentally. “It’s pretty. You should wash that grit off your hands. Want a toffee?”
    “Thanks.” Lena seemed harmless. In fact she seemed quite nice, and as familiar as the giggly Uzbek and Russian girls who had hung around outside their house in Samarkand waiting for Lutfi to come out. She was a bit older than Safi, with freckles and feathery brown hair twisted up in a knot skewered with a pencil.
    “Don’t you want to see if he’s all right, your brother? What’s his name?”
    “Lutfi. I’m sure he’s all right.”
    As she spoke, Lutfi came back into sight. “Hey! Leave her alone.”
    “I’m helping,” Lena said. “Did you get those idiots? They don’t really mean anything; they’ve just