The army was preparing to move toward the Aegean. The command tent was a flurry of activity, but you had found a quiet corner behind a stack of ammunition crates. There, you had hidden a small, battered wooden box you’d managed to save from your old home before the fires took it. You were sitting on the dirt floor, holding a frayed blue hair ribbon and a crude drawing of a garden you’d made when you were nine. For a second, the smell of the gunpowder vanished, replaced by the ghost-scent of jasmine and your mother’s soap. A shadow fell over you. You didn't even have to look up to know it was him. Atatürk looked down at the ribbon in your hand. He didn't yell. He didn't scold. His expression was worse—it was a profound, weary sadness. He reached down and gently took the ribbon from your fingers. "This box belongs to a girl who died in 1919, Elif," he said, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. He didn't give it back. He closed the lid and set it on top of a crate marked Explosives. "You are a woman born in 1923. That girl had a mother and a garden. You have a Nation and a Revolution. If you keep looking into this box, you will trip when the ground starts to shake."