the next morning mo woke me so early i thought i was dreaming, and we packed our thinkgs and went back up to the village to start in on the ram. i did not know that the roast began so early, but it did, almost at dawn, and by the time we arrived at mehmetalan the roasting fire was already burning low in its white ash. there were tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and cheese on the little varnished coffee table that stayed outside with the plastic chairs, and some juicy meat on a wooden cutting board with legs to serve as a low cutting table. there was a knife on the cutting board. water dripped from the outdoor faucet. altogether the fire looked too low to do any serious cooking, mo placed the quivering cuts on a wire rack and suspended it over the ash on bricks, and shortly the smell of roasted meat poked through, and we ate with knives.
meanwhile the girls arrived one by one or two at a time and ducked through the bead curtain into the house. then they would emerge in ornate turkish costumes with jangley decorations sewn around the borders.
we lingered for only a few short minutes before sabile was wiping the table down and moving things inside. mo emptied out the pickup truck, moving four bags at a time two per arm, and the others carried out plastic bags of picnic food including the baklava i'd bought from the kipa. the girls all climbed into the back of the truck where there was a blanket down. one of them had bright red lip balm in flat metal tin. another watched her put it on, then took the tin and put spots of the red on her own cheek and smoothed out the colour. the rest of them did the same. then mo and emir and ruchan got into the cabin of the truck, and i did too, and asked mo where we were going, and he said plainly that we were going to for a picnic perhaps down by the cemetary. and so we drove off slow down the bumpy road, heading for a picnic perhaps down by the cemetary.
