‘But I died a little bit.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw my mum. She was holding my hand in the water and pulling me and pulling me, and she was telling me not to go to sleep, because if I fell asleep I would sleep forever and I wouldn’t be able to wake up again and play. So I think I died a little bit but she told me not to.’
I wondered what had happened to his mother, but I didn’t want to ask. Apparently another NGO vessel would be coming to pick us up, to take us to another island; in the meantime we had to wait here on the shore. There was a large shipping container, but this was already full of people; the story going around was that they’d arrived earlier that night from another part of Turkey, further along the coast. They were meant to go to another island but the engine had stopped working and their boat had drifted towards Farmakonisi. The coastguard had found them, and brought them back here. Some of the men and children came outside to talk to us and to warm themselves by the fire.
‘Uncle Nuri!’ Mohammed said, a huge smile revealing a missing tooth. ‘This place is called Biscuit Island! The girl from the container told me!’
It was a cold morning and gulls and pelicans dipped down to the sea. On the safety of this land and in the warmth of the fire and the sun, people began to fall asleep. Mohammed was lying flat on his back. He was not asleep; he was looking up at the vast blue sky, squinting his eyes against the brightening light. In his hand he held his tiny marble, rolling it around in his fingers. Afra was sitting on the other side of me. She had her head on my shoulder and her hand grasping my arm as if I might slip away. She was holding on to me so tight that even when she fell asleep her grip didn’t loosen, and I remembered Sami when he was a baby, the way he used to fall asleep with Afra’s nipple in his mouth, his little hand still clutching the material of her scarf. It’s amazing, the way we love people from the day we are born, the way we hold on, as if we are holding on to life itself.
‘Uncle Nuri?’ Mohammed said.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me a story so that I can fall asleep? My mum used to tell me a story when I couldn’t sleep.’
I remembered a tale my own mother used to tell me when I was a little boy in the room with the blue tiles. I remembered her with her head in the book, a red fan flickering in her right hand; eating kol w Shkor, her beloved Aleppo sweet.
‘Come on, Uncle Nuri!’ Mohammed said. ‘Come on, or I will fall asleep by myself and not hear a story!’
I was suddenly irritated with the boy. I wanted to stay in my own mind, with my mother’s voice, with the fan flickering in the lamplight.
‘If you can fall asleep, why do you want a story?’
‘So that I can fall asleep better.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The story goes like this: a wise caliph sends his servants – I can’t remember exactly how many there were – on a quest to find the mysterious City of Brass in the far desert wastes, which no one has ever entered. The journey takes two years and a few months and it is full of hardship. The servants take one thousand camels and two thousand cavalry. This I remember.’
‘That’s a lot! What would anybody do with a thousand camels?’
‘I know, but that is how the story goes. They pass an inhabited land and ruins and a desert with a hot wind and no water and no sound.’
‘How can there be no sound?’
‘There just isn’t.’
‘What – no birds or wind or talking?’
‘Nothing.’
Mohammed sat up. He was more awake than before. Perhaps I’d chosen the wrong story to tell him.
‘Come on!’
‘OK,’ I continued. ‘One day, they come to a wide plain. They see something on the horizon, tall and black with smoke rising to the sky. When they come closer they see that it is a castle, built of black stone with a door of steel.’
‘Wow!’ Mohammed’s eyes had widened now, full of curiosity and wonder.
‘I don’t suppose you’re getting sleepy now?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking my arm so I would go on.
‘OK. So beyond is the City of Brass, protected by a towering wall. Behind the wall is a shiny paradise of mosques and domes and minarets and high towers and bazaars. Can you imagine it?’
‘I can. It’s beautiful!’
‘It is very beautiful and gleaming with brass and jewels and precious stones and yellow marble. But … but …’
‘But?’
‘But the whole place is empty. There is no movement, no sound. The men find no people. In the shops, in the homes, on the streets … only emptiness. There is no life in this place. Life is as useless as dust. Nothing can grow here. Nothing can change.’