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"Light me a cigarette will you, Bernie?" she said.
I put a cigarette in my mouth, fired it up, and guided it between her lips.
"Thanks."
A minute later we took a bend in the road a little too quickly, which had Merten sprawled onto my lap for a moment. I pushed him away roughly.
"There might be capital punishment in Greece, Bernie. But the Greeks don't much care for killing people. Unlike Germans. Germans like you, that is. Because this is where the story starts to become really unpleasant, Elli. I'm afraid I can't help that."
"I wish you would shoot him, Bernie. It's what he deserves, not just for stealing that gold but for being such a bore. I'm tired of listening to his voice. We should shoot him and throw his body in a ditch."
"Then Bernie's your man, Elisabeth. Perhaps you already know something about the mass murders that took place in Russia and the Ukraine during the summer of 1941. Bernie had volunteered to join another senior policeman, his old Berlin friend Arthur Nebe, as part of a police battalion attached to what was called an SS _einsatzgruppe_. This is not an easy thing to translate, my dear Elisabeth. It means the group was tasked with just one special action. Can you imagine what that was? Yes. That's right. I can see you've guessed it. There was only one sentence that those SS men were obliged to carry out: the sentence of death. In short, Einsatz Group B was a mobile death squad operating behind Army Group Center, and tasked with the extermination of Jews and other undesirables such as communists, Gypsies, the disabled, mental retards, hostages, and generally speaking anyone they didn't much like, in order to terrorize the local population. They operated in and around Minsk, and were very successful. Nebe and Gunther here were good at mass murder and managed to fill enough mass graves to render that part of Ukraine Jew-free in double-quick time."
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"I didn't murder anyone in Minsk. But you have my word, Max, that I really don't mind killing you."
"Why then you wouldn't get your precious passport back. Not that it's worth much since it's in a false name. Ask yourself why that should be the case, Elisabeth. How it is that I'm here with a passport in my real name, and Bernie has a passport in a false name? Anyone might conclude that he has more to hide than me. It might just have something to do with the fact that between July and November 1941, Group B managed to kill almost fifty thousand men, women, and children. _Fifty thousand_. Try to imagine what kind of men they were who could do such a thing, Elli. I've often tried myself and again and again I find myself without an answer. It's inexplicable." Merten smiled. "What's the matter, Bernie? Is the truth too much for you? I think it's getting to be too much for poor Elli.
"After the horrors of Minsk, Arthur Nebe and Bernie returned to Berlin and were both decorated for a job well done. Didn't Martin Bormann give you the Coburg Badge, Germany's highest civilian order, for services to Hitler? That must have been a proud moment. Bernie was even a guest at Heydrich's country house in Prague, a few weeks before his assassination. Again, quite an honor. Meanwhile Nebe and Bernie resumed their more routine duties with the Criminal Police, and even worked for Interpol, this in spite of the fact that they had just helped to perpetrate the crime of the millennium. The arrogance of it simply beggars belief, does it not?"
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"The only thing that beggars belief," she said, "is your arrogance."
"I, on the other hand," he persisted, "a humble army captain and no one's idea of an entertaining Nazi houseguest, was sent here, to Greece. Please note the fact that I was never in the SS or in the SD or the Gestapo. Nor did I receive any medals or promotions. This much is easily verified. Even Bernie will admit that much, surely. It's true I stole some gold from SS men who'd already stolen it from Salonika's Jews. But that's the limit of my felony. I never killed anyone. The only time I ever saw anyone get shot was when Alo Brunner killed that poor man on the train from Salonika. Meanwhile, Bernie went on to do special work for Heydrich and the minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels himself, no less; he was even sent to Croatia with some sort of carte blanche from the minister in his pocket. You would think he'd had enough killing but not a bit of it; in Croatia he assisted the fascist Ustase in murdering many thousands of Serbs and Gypsies, to say nothing of Yugoslavia's Jews."
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"You're good, Max. Smearing me in the hope that some of this mud sticks."
"It's exactly what any unscrupulous lawyer would do," said Elli. "If he was really desperate."
"You know I really do think she loves you, Bernie. Or at least she thinks she does. Look, Elisabeth, I can see that it might be hard to accept all of what I've just told you about a man you're fond of. I can't say I blame you. Believe me, after the war many German wives had the same problem. Could my dear Mozart-loving husband Fritz really have murdered women and children? Tell me you didn't shoot any children, dear husband mine. Please, tell me you had nothing to do with that."
"Didn't you hear me, you lying _malaka_?" she said loudly. "I don't believe a word of it."
"But you can certainly believe this, Elisabeth dear: Bernie also has a wife. Perhaps he's already told you about her? She lives in Berlin. You didn't know? No, I thought not. In which case you're in for an even bigger surprise. You might say it's a coincidence and maybe a convenient one at that—since he should have no trouble remembering your name. I expect it was hard enough remembering his own, or at least the one written on his passport. You see his wife's name is Elisabeth, just like yours."
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FIFTY-THREE
–
Elli had stopped the car and switched off the engine. We were in a western suburb of Athens and surrounded by a strange landscape of fuel tanks and gasometers. In the distance we could just see the range of mountains that guarded the peninsula of Attica like the giant walls of a more ancient Troy. A beggar came to the window of the Rover and Elli shook her head angrily, which sent him away. She gripped the steering wheel firmly and stared straight ahead of her as if she'd been planning to crash into one of the storage tanks so that we could all die in the explosion like the final scene of _White Heat_. She probably found my silence even more deafening. I know I did. Merten stayed silent, too. He'd done his worst and this was all that was required; it was obvious to everyone in the car that anything else said by him would have been redundant, not to mention the fact that it would have earned him a punch in the mouth. It was also obvious that Elli was upset. There was anger in her eyes and her voice sounded hoarse, like she was getting a cold. Suddenly I was feeling pretty cold myself.
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"Is it true?" she asked, after a while. " _Do_ you have a wife in Berlin?"
"Yes, but we're estranged."
Even before I'd finished this short sentence Elli had got out of the car. She collected her bag off the passenger seat, slammed the door behind her, leaned back on the wing, and lit a cigarette angrily. I followed her outside.
"She left me more than a year ago while I was living in France, and went home to Berlin. Unlike her, I can't ever go back there. At least not while the communists are in charge. The Stasi is every bit as bad as the Gestapo. Worse, probably. Anyway, the last conversation I had with my wife she told me she wanted a divorce. And for all I know she's already got one. Given the fact that the city is surrounded by the GDR, communication is difficult, to say the least, so we haven't spoken in a long while. A letter I had last year turned out to be a put-up job by the communists trying to lure me back to Berlin."
"And is her name Elisabeth? Like that Nazi bastard said it was?"
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"Yes."
She stared down at the ground for almost a minute while I stumbled, badly, through the rest of my explanation: since my wife and I hadn't seen each other in months I'd ceased to think of myself as married and so, I imagined, had she; we'd known each other as friends for more than twenty years; we'd married for the sake of convenience as much as anything else since we both needed to escape from Berlin at around the same time; this wasn't very long ago—1954—which ought to have provided a useful snapshot of just how inconvenient the convenience of our marriage had become when, finally, she lit out for Germany and home. It wasn't much of an explanation, but it was the only one I had.
"When were you thinking of telling me?" she asked. "If at all?"
"I should have mentioned it before," I admitted.
"Yes, you should. You could have mentioned it last night, for instance. Before we checked into a double room at the Poseidonian Hotel. But you didn't. You were oddly silent about your wife back then."
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"You're right. But in my own defense, yesterday I still half-believed you were going to shoot me with your little Beretta. I'd only just started to believe in you and me so it didn't seem to be that important. It felt like a small thing. At least while I was trying to put that rat Merten in the bag. As if I couldn't concentrate wholly on you, the way you deserved, until Max Merten was properly out of the picture. But I would certainly have told you eventually. When we were both back in Athens. Made a better job of it, too, with dinner and chocolates and flowers. I could still do that, you know."
"Flowers wouldn't have helped this."
When she said nothing more, I felt obliged to add an explanation about everything else Merten had told her.
"As for the rest of what he said, there was less than ten percent truth in any of it. I was a detective at police headquarters in Berlin and I did work for the Nazis but only under considerable duress, and while I did meet some of those people he talked about I never murdered anyone, Elli."
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"Damn that man," she said angrily. "Damn him for finding the weak spot. And not yours. This is my weak spot. That's the irony. He was looking for yours and he found mine. Look, I'm sorry but I don't like married men. Especially when they're married to someone else. Maybe I should have mentioned _that_ last night. A few years ago I had an affair with a married man, someone in the ministry, and I swore then I would never get involved with a married man again. That's not your fault. But it's just how it is, do you see?"
"I told you; we're separated. And we're getting a divorce."
"That one's as old as the _Odyssey_ ," she said. "You should read it sometime. In the end Ulysses goes back to his wife. I have to say that this is what happened to me."
"That isn't going to happen with me."
"Like everything else, I've only got your word for it."
"And my word won't do, I guess."
"If you didn't happen to be a man it would probably do just fine."
"So where does this leave us?" I asked.
"I'm not sure where it leaves you, Bernie, or whatever your real name is, but I already know the way out of this particular labyrinth. Me, I'm going home. On my own. Leaving you and your fat friend to sort things out between you."
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"You're reading this all wrong, sugar. I was fixing to stay on in Greece a while, just to be with you. With the hope of making that stick."
"That's going to take a box of tools you neither own nor know how to use."
"Tell me where to get them and I'll try to make this work."
"I'm standing on higher ground than you, Bernie. I already see what you can't. I was brought up Greek Roman Catholic and we believe in dead wives, not in divorced ones. Which reminds me. I'm pretty sure you told me your wife died eight years ago, in Munich."
"Kirsten. That's right." I thought it best not to mention that I'd had a wife before Kirsten. I figured there were only so many ex-wives, dead or living, that poor Elli could take.
"That explains but doesn't excuse it. Not in my book. When you changed your name, maybe you forgot that women don't change quite as easily as that. In fact, most of them don't change at all. Most of us want the same things: a nice handbag and a husband we can trust, but we'll generally settle for one or the other."
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"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"You don't know the half of how I feel. Honestly, it's not even your fault. I'm that kind of woman and you're just that kind of guy. A survivor. I guess maybe the war did that to you. Perhaps you had standards once, and lived up to them, too. I don't know but I have standards, too. My only regret about all this is that I threw away my father's Beretta. Probably just as well. If I had it now I might even shoot you. Maybe I wouldn't kill you. What you've done to me isn't so bad in the great scheme of things that you need killing. I can't answer for the rest of humanity. But you'd always have a little hole to remember me by."
"I suspect I'll have one anyway. I'm not likely to forget you, Elli."
"I think you'd best try," she said, and walked quickly away.
I watched her go. I felt a pang of regret seeing her go. There was a real possibility that it might have worked between us. Then again, we might just have been friends and it wasn't like I had many of those. You can never tell how these things will play themselves out. But if I'm honest I have to admit I also felt a degree of relief that she had walked out on me. The age difference was only one thing. There was something else, too, and again it wasn't her fault: The fact was I didn't have the patience for any woman, not anymore, and not just her. I'd probably been on my own for too long and I guess I preferred it that way.
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I kept on watching Elli for a while thinking she might look back, but of course she didn't and I didn't really expect her to. I watched her until I couldn't see her anymore and then turned to look at Max Merten still seated in the back of the Rover. I pulled the Bismarck from under my waistband and waved him out and when he stayed put I opened the door and, ignoring the pain in my arm, hauled him out by the scruff of the neck.
"Move."
"You're not going to shoot me?"
His eye was nervously on the ditch behind him and the gun in my hand as well it might have been. I had killed people—he'd been right about that much, at least, although arguably most of them had needed killing. But it had been a while since I had shot anyone and although it would have paid him back for his lawyer's smart mouth, I knew it wouldn't have solved anything very much. It never does. It certainly wouldn't have brought Elli running back.
"No, I'm not going to shoot you," I said. "I want you to drive. Drive the car, Max."
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"Sure. Whatever you say, Bernie. Just say where to."
He slipped behind the steering wheel and I got into the front passenger seat.
"Police headquarters. Constitution Square. Next to the Grande Bretagne Hotel."
"Right away." He checked my expression nervously and then said, "She'll be back. Just as soon as she's calmed down a bit."
"Not this one."
"It's not their fault. They're irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves—all of them ruled by their ovaries. Take my word for it, Bernie. She'll get over it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Look, women are sensitive beings. Like children. They feel things more than us men. Especially Greek women. They're very excitable. All they need is firm guidance and direction. You see a woman like that and you can understand Aristophanes. I tell you, she'll think better of whatever it was she said to you and then come crawling back. They always do."
"I don't think so and neither do you."
"Maybe you should have listened to me."
"I think that's where the problem lies, Max. Look where listening to you has brought us today."
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"I did warn you. Look, you might still have had her if you hadn't wanted me as well. You could have let me go and held on to that lovely girl without any difficulty. But you were greedy."
"Don't talk to me about greed, Max. Better not say that again. And don't even think of apologizing, because then I really will do something I'll regret."
Max ground the car into gear and we set off. On the way we passed Elli walking along the street, and when we drove by her it was like she was wearing blinkers and we weren't even there. She paid us less regard than if we'd been just another couple of racehorses coming up on the outside in a big steeplechase. I think that was the moment I knew I was right about her: she wasn't coming back, not ever, and I let out a sigh they could have heard on Mount Olympus. Merten heard it, too, and must have concluded he needed to say something—anything—to take my mind off her.
"However did you catch Gormann anyway?" asked Merten. "I always meant to ask."
I suppose he was asking in order to avoid having me smack him in the mouth with the pistol. It was certainly what I felt like doing, and if ever a man needed to lose teeth, it was Max Merten. But since the gift horse had already bolted, I saw little point in fixing his rotten dentistry. So I answered him as calmly as I was able, which was a very useful way of controlling my own violent temper.
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"There was nothing to it. My whole reputation around the Alex wasn't built on anything very substantial. The key to being a good detective is to find time to do nothing, which runs counter to the whole idea of being German. Teutonic efficiency seems to cry out for someone to be busy. That's the problem with Germany—we worship industry—but avoiding work, or at least what other people perceived to be work, was the only way I had time to think. I would close the door, clear away the reports, take the phone off the hook with orders that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed. Only that way did I ever find the time to think. You're wasting your time if you don't find time to waste. Letting your mind wander above the clouds like Caspar David Friedrich is what makes a detective any good. That's what I mean by doing nothing. Doing nothing is usually the best thing to do, at least until you have worked out something better to do. Just like now. My first instinct when she got out of the car and stalked off like Achilles in a sulk was to put a bullet in your face, Max. Only I am not going to do that. In fact, I am going to do nothing to you I wasn't going to do before she left."
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Merten breathed a sigh of relief.
"Now that she's left there's no reason for us to stop being friends," he said. "You were trying to do the right thing in her eyes. I understand that. But those beautiful eyes have gone. And nothing much is going to be served by handing me over to the Greek cops."
"Just for the record, we were never friends."
"Sure we were, Bernie. Hey, what was the name of that brandy bar you took me to once, near the Alex? The one near that weird hotel with the word 'Hotel' upside down? You know—that bar with the picture of the lion over the electric piano."
"The Grüne Quelle."
"That's right. Do you remember the sign on the wall? 'Roar like a lion roars when you need another shot.' I could use a glass of that stuff now, couldn't you, Bernie?"
I didn't answer but I remembered the bar, all right, and the taste of the brandy. I could even hear the tunes on the pianola, too: "I Kiss Your Hand, Madame," followed by the Glorious Prussia March and everyone in the bar full of cheap brandy and singing along at the top of their voices. I even found myself recalling the taste of the giant fifty-pfennig steamed sausages they served. I missed it all and more than I cared to admit; I certainly wasn't about to start reminiscing about the old days with a man who'd just scared off my girlfriend. It was important not to forget, but sometimes it was even better not to remember, to permit the new to overwrite the old.
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Merten was still full of talk about old Berlin but because I knew why he was doing it I'd almost stopped listening.
"And surely you remember that little restaurant near the courts? Hessel's, was it? You'd been giving evidence in a murder case—the Spittelmarket Murders. It was there you gave me the best advice I ever had. About not joining the SS."
"You should have taken it."
"But I did take it. I told you, I was just an army captain."
"Perhaps you didn't join the SS, Max. And maybe you didn't kill anyone, like you said. But what you did was as bad as anything any of those others did: Eichmann, Brunner, the whole rotten crew. You lied to all those people in Salonika. You took all their money and all their hopes and then you sent them to their deaths. That's a terrible thing to have done."
"Nonsense. Look, the war is history. No one gives a damn about Hitler in Europe. That's the whole point of this new EEC. So we can all forget about the horrors of the war and become good Europeans instead. Life is one enormous horror, Bernie, and periodically society proclaims its natural fascination with evil and then feels obliged to destroy itself. For the last time, there is no soul, there is no creator, there is merely this poor thing of flesh and blood called man, which, for whatever reason, other men feel compelled to gas and to burn. It's been happening for centuries. Take my word for it: no one is going to remember the Jews of Salonika in a few years' time. Hardly anyone remembers them now."
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"You're wrong about that, too, Max. It was another German, Heinrich Schliemann, who proved that the Trojan War was a real event in history. Homer was writing about it five hundred years after it probably happened. And we're still talking about it today. It's the same with the Second World War. This stuff isn't going away in a hurry. We Germans are stuck with it, like the Greeks and the Trojans were. Whether we like it or not."
"So what happens now?"
"You're going to drive us into the center of Athens. To police HQ. And there you're going to volunteer yourself as a witness in the ongoing trial of Arthur Meissner. After that it's up to the Greeks what happens."
"Look, you're still not thinking straight. Maybe she has gone, but there are plenty more fish in the sea. Think of the gold on that sunken ship. Think how many girls like her you could have with a proper share of that treasure."
"Maybe you weren't listening but there is no proper share of money obtained like that, Max. And I just lost the only treasure I was ever likely to have. That's the nature of real treasure. You just don't know how precious it is until you lose it. So, drive." I brushed his earlobe with the sights on the gun. "And please, Max, not another word until we get to police headquarters. If you can keep your mouth shut until then, you stand an even chance of staying alive for the rest of the day."
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FIFTY-FOUR
–
Crossing the palatial lobby of the Grande Bretagne Hotel I saw her, seated underneath an enormous gilt mirror, with her back to the wall and facing the main entrance. It was the best place to sit if you wanted to see everyone who was coming in or going out and you were professional about this kind of thing and, given that profession, very serious about staying alive, which I had no doubt she was. On this occasion she was wearing a brown two-piece business suit with square chocolate patent buttons and a little brown beret.
I thought about ignoring her and then decided against it. I thought it unlikely that she was alone and although I couldn't see him I felt sure one of her more muscular men would have shepherded me to the empty seat beside her. So halfway across the marble floor I checked my walk and went back toward her. She stood and smiled pleasantly as if she'd been an ordinary housewife, there for a more prosaic purpose than revenge and murder, and extended a gloved hand for me to shake, which I did if only to show I was unafraid.
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"Where is he?" I asked.
"Who?"
"Your sniper, of course. Behind the potted palm, I suppose. Or hidden among all of those liquor bottles in the bar. Just be careful he doesn't put the wrong kind of optic to his eye. He's liable to see things very differently."
The bandit queen smiled. She was smaller than I remembered and better looking, but not so you'd have wanted to do something about that. Her brown eyes were on me and then on someone I didn't see, someone over my shoulder who stayed out of sight for the moment. I glanced around but didn't make him; the lobby was full of largish men in cheap suits attending an air-conditioning convention in one of the hotel's many conference rooms, and her armed guard could have been any one of them. Now that I was about to renew my acquaintance with the bandit queen I wouldn't have minded a little extra air myself; just looking at her gave me a tight feeling in my chest, like someone was going to put a bullet in one of my lungs.
"Good idea," she said. "Alexander's Bar, I mean." She glanced at the steel Rolex on her bony wrist. "And not too early, perhaps. So. Let me buy you a drink, Herr Ganz."
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"Sure. Why not? Poison's more discreet in a place like this."
"If we wanted to do that you'd be dead already. Trust me on that. We'd have added a secret ingredient to your toothpaste. Radium, probably. That's standard procedure in these circumstances. Radium adds a whole extra dimension to the idea of tooth decay. They say that victims have the cleanest teeth in the morgue."
"Maybe I should switch brands. Nivea doesn't seem to shift tobacco stains very well. But you know, I don't scare so easily in this place. For one thing I've started to carry a gun."
"You've nothing to fear from me, I can assure you."
"I'm pleased to hear it."
I followed her into the bar to a table in the quietest corner with a reserved sign and a waiter who was already hovering there, as if he'd been briefed to wait on us with extra vigilance. For all I knew he worked for the Ha'Mossad, too, but I couldn't have said if he looked Jewish. As a copper who never once took a race education class under the Nazis, I wasn't much good at identifying Jews. It has to be said that some people do look Jewish but neither the bandit queen nor the waiter did. We sat down and ordered a pair of large whiskeys. She found a packet of Tareytons in a tapestry handbag, lit one, and smoked it with what sounded like a sigh of relief, her first sign of weakness.
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"I'm trying to cut down so I make myself wait until I have a drink in my hand before I can light one."
"That's not the way to cut down."
"What would you recommend?"
"You could try having a drink only when you're celebrating murdering another old Nazi."
"To be honest we don't do that anymore. We used to, of course. Grawitz, Giesler. Geschke. Back in the day we were very active all over Europe."
"Did they only give you the _G_ s? You're making me nervous again. My name is Ganz, remember?"
"These days we're keen to show ourselves in a better light, as a democratic country with fair trials and proper legal procedure. That's why we wanted Brunner, with a _B_. To give him a fair trial in front of the whole world before we hanged him."
"I like your idea of justice, lady. It doesn't suffer from any nit-picking jurisdictional doubt. Trial first. Then the hanging. And to hell with any reasonable doubt."
"We can't afford doubt. Not when we are surrounded by our enemies. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Eventually we will have to defend ourselves, most likely against all three at once. This makes for a certain conviction in everything we do."
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"I noticed that about you the last time we sat down together. Tell me something. Did you really have a guy with a rifle on the rooftop? Aiming at my head?"
"We never make idle threats."
"Nothing wrong with a little idleness. Especially in the threat department. Too many people are in a hurry to hurt other people. That's the way I look at it. I figure we could all use a little more humanity."
"I hope that works for you. But it didn't work for us Jews."
The waiter came back with the drinks and she took hers like it was nothing stronger than an infusion of tea. I sipped mine more carefully; the demon drink was best handled with care when you were drinking with a genuine demon, albeit one who was currently behaving herself very well.
"By the way, have you a name now? Or is that still not important?"
"Rahel Eskenazi."
"Is that true?"
"Mostly."
"But I'm right in thinking you are from the Ha'Mossad."
"We prefer to call it the Institute. Or just Glilot. It's more discreet."
"As an insurance man I can certainly see the sense of that. Why take risks if you don't have to?"
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The bandit queen looked up at the ceiling and nodded. "I always liked this hotel," she said quietly. "The German insurance business must be good if they can afford to put you up here. In what was Göring's favorite hotel. He knew a thing or two about luxury."
"It doesn't spoil it for you? Knowing that?"
"Knowing what happened to Göring, no, not at all. In fact, it makes me like the place all the more. It reminds me of how quickly a moral order can be restored. More or less. I like to think of Göring in his suite upstairs quite unaware that in the next room Nemesis awaits her chance to enact retribution against those like him who succumb to hubris. Yes, that's what I think." She smiled wryly. "I also think a man like you is wasted in the world of insurance."
"I get paid sufficient to drive a car, eat sausage, and drink enough beer to be drunk once a week, not necessarily in that order. In Germany we call that making a living."
"There are not many insurance men who carry a gun."
"They might sell a few more policies if they did."
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"A living, perhaps. But not a life. Not for you, Christof."
I shrugged and let that one go. I figured if she was driving at something she'd pull up and let me take a peek at what was on the front seat, eventually.
"I hear you have your passport back," she said. "And that you're leaving Athens today."
"That's right. I was on my way out to visit the Acropolis when I saw you. All these weeks I've been here and I still haven't been up to take a look at the thing. I hear it's seen better days but that it's worth a look."
"You can see it another time. It will still be there in a thousand years."
"Yes, but I'm not so sure I will."
"I also hear that Max Merten has been arrested by the Greek police."
"Not arrested. Not quite yet. But his passport has been taken away. And they've got him in a safe house in Glyfada. They'll arrest him only after he starts to give evidence in Arthur Meissner's trial. That's the deal I made for him. Makes him look a bit better."
"In Greece? I doubt that. But it makes you feel a bit better, and that's important, too, right?"
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"Also right." I shrugged. "I'm only sorry I couldn't deliver up Alois Brunner for you."
"We'll get him one day."
"I hope so."
"Do you mean that?"
"Sure. A man like Brunner gives all Germans a bad name. And who better than Germans to help find him? I can't say I agree with Adenauer's policy on this matter very much. I think it will come back to haunt us. That's one of the reasons I persuaded Merten to give himself up to the Greeks."
"We'd have hanged him for sure."
"That's the other reason."
FIFTY-FIVE
–
"It won't stick, you know," said the bandit queen. "The charges against Max Merten. Not in a Greek court. Not for long, anyway."
"I don't see why. There must be plenty of witnesses still alive. People from Salonika, victims of genocide, men and women who came back from the camps, who'll testify against him. Surely the Nazis didn't kill all of them."
"You're so naïve. This has nothing to do with justice or genocide or crimes against humanity. There's too much going on behind the scenes you don't know about. Sure, the Greeks will go through the motions of giving Merten a proper trial in open court. And the public will lap it up like cream. Toussis, the state prosecutor, will sound like Ajax when he narrates this country's misfortune. The judge may even hand down a prison sentence. But Merten has too many friends in the government to serve any real jail time."
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"Which government are you talking about?"
"Good question. So then ask yourself why the Greeks have never before tried to extradite anyone from Germany for war crimes committed in this country."
"All right, I'll play. Why?"
"Until recently it was quite simple: The Greek government wanted the German government to pay reparations for its war crimes. They proposed an amnesty on all war crimes committed in Greece in return for half a billion dollars. An important part of those reparations was that gold stolen from the Jews of Salonika. But the government in Bonn refused. Called it blackmail. Which it was. And which is why Arthur Meissner was put on trial, as a very small and unimportant example of what might follow if Germany continued to drag its feet on this issue. After all, Greece is a NATO member state and it would be embarrassing if Greece started applying for the extradition of German nationals on the soil of other NATO members, as well they might."
"Max Merten is hardly small," I objected. "He's the real deal, I tell you. A genuine war criminal. Maybe he didn't summarily execute any hostages. But he extorted hundreds of millions of dollars in gold from your people and then abandoned them to their fate."
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"Oh, certainly. I didn't tell you before but it's always been our belief that the vast majority of this gold was actually sent to Germany aboard a special SS train in 1943 and currently remains on deposit in a Swiss bank; that the West German government is well aware of this fact; and that only a tiny percentage of the total amount was ever put on a boat privately owned by the likes of Merten and Brunner for their own nefarious use.
"In spite of what you may have been told by Merten and Meissner, there is no vast hoard in a sunken ship off the Peloponnesian coast. Indeed, it's my own suspicion that all the time he has been here in Greece Max Merten has been the secret agent of the West German government, witting or unwitting. That this whole scheme was cooked up by someone in the German intelligence service—most probably Hans Globke—to persuade the Greek government that Germany doesn't have _any_ of the gold looted from Greece back in '43. I think you have been played, my friend. Played by your bosses in Munich, who were themselves doing the bidding of others in the West German government. My prediction is that Max Merten will be back home in Munich within the year, where he will find himself very well compensated for his trouble."
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"I don't believe that. Look, what you say doesn't make any sense, Rahel, if that is your real name. Frankly, what you're suggesting—it's much too far-fetched. Merten financed this expedition by the commission of another crime in Munich. Why would he have to do that if the West German government was backing him?"
"You're talking about General Heinrich Heinkel, aren't you? An old Nazi who was once of interest to us in the Institute. It so happens that your German BND wanted the Stasi man bankrolling General Heinkel removed, permanently. And having removed him, they decided that the money could be used to bankroll Merten instead. Christian Schramma worked, occasionally, for the BND. As an ex-policeman surely you understand that's how these things operate. One covert operation is often wrapped into another for the sake of convenience. And state intelligence agencies usually employ a lot of criminals, like Schramma, at a lower level for the sake of deniability, so that they can carry out undercover work without revealing their true hands."
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"Is that how you got the job with Ha'Mossad?"
The bandit queen smiled patiently. More patiently than previous acquaintance might have led me to expect. "Formerly I was a colonel in Amman. Our military intelligence section. I'm telling you this because I want you to take me seriously since I have a favor to ask of you, Christof. If that's your real name."
"You haven't finished telling me why I'm being naïve about Max Merten. Why would Merten go along with a scheme like the one you're suggesting? Why would he risk going to prison for the rest of his life?"
"He may be in on the conspiracy, or not. I'm still unsure of how far his complicity in the scheme goes. But there's certainly no risk of him spending the rest of his life behind bars. If you were a real insurance man you'd price that risk at next to zero. And my explanation would once have been simple enough for anyone to understand. But nothing about this whole affair is simple anymore. Not since the Treaty of Rome was signed."
"You'll have to explain how the EEC is the least bit relevant, Rahel."
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"Would it surprise you to learn that the person who signed the Treaty of Rome with Konrad Adenauer was Professor Walter Hallstein?"
"That name rings a bell. I seem to remember Schramma mentioning him back in Munich."
"Hallstein was a member of several Nazi organizations and, after the war, a close business associate of Max Merten. Walter Hallstein will be the first president of the commission of the European Economic Community."
"I still don't see how this is relevant."
Rahel Eskenazi smiled. "I told you this was complicated. Sometimes I'm not even sure I understand it all myself. And I haven't even started. You see, Greece has already applied to join the new EEC. However, my German sources tell me that Adenauer and Hallstein will certainly veto Greece's application unless Max Merten is released. Meanwhile my Greek sources tell me that Greece will defy them and put Merten on trial regardless, but that following his conviction and sentence he will be sent back to Germany before serving any time. In return for his freedom and a general amnesty for other Germans, Adenauer and Hallstein will not only approve and fast-track the Greek application for membership in the EEC, but they will also approve a two-hundred-million-dollar loan to Greece by the German central bank. A loan Greece does not expect to have to repay. Although I'm not so sure the Germans think that. It's their belief that membership in the EEC will be more than enough compensation. You've no idea how financially advantageous this new economic community can be to all who are in the club. But especially Germany. No one stands to benefit as much as your country. Or to suffer as badly as Greece if Germany turns its back on her. What, for instance, do you think would happen to all that valuable tobacco that Greece exports to Germany?"
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The bandit queen finished her whiskey and snapped her fingers for two more like one who was used to being obeyed. A former military colonel, she'd said. I didn't doubt it. She finished one cigarette, lit another, and leaned back in her armchair. Her arms were almost the same color as the mahogany woodwork and probably just as strong. Easy enough to imagine her fighting Arabs, I thought.
"You may think you've done a good deed by handing Merten over to the Greek authorities," she said, "but I'm afraid it's our considered opinion that he always planned to be caught."
"But what about Brunner? You're forgetting he killed three people in pursuit of that gold."
"I doubt anyone in the BND expected Brunner to put in an appearance down here. That was where the plan went badly wrong, as plans often do. As for the gold itself, I seriously doubt there was ever more than a million dollars' worth of gold on that boat. A half share of a million dollars is not chump change. Certainly enough to interest a rat like Alois Brunner. But it's nothing like the hundreds of millions of dollars' worth that was sent back to Germany in 1943. It was one thing to steal from the Jews but tell me, honestly, as a man who used to be a detective with Kripo, do you think the likes of Eichmann, Brunner, and Merten would ever have had the courage to steal from the SS? Those who did and were caught risked being sent to the camps themselves. Isn't that so?"
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"Now you come to mention it, that does sound a little unlikely."
"Take my word for it, this whole thing was a put-up job designed to mislead the Greek government into thinking the West Germans don't have a single ounce of that gold, that it really is lying on the bottom of the Aegean Sea in some secret location that only Max Merten knows about. And that there's no point in asking the Germans for the gold back because they know nothing of its whereabouts. Neat, wouldn't you say?"
"If it's true."
"I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove any of this. But we might hurt a few of the principal players. Adenauer's state secretary Hans Globke, for example. Yes, we might make some trouble for him. It was Globke who promulgated the Nuremberg Laws, and who was the most capable and efficient official of the Nazi Ministry of the Interior. His participation in the so-called Reich Citizenship Law is a similarly irrefutable fact. Think of that for a minute, Christof. One of Hitler's leading Jew murderers has a hand on the helm of the West German state. He is without doubt the prolonged arm of the chancellor and his most intimate confidant. But worse, this means that when Adenauer takes a holiday, Globke becomes the de facto federal chancellor of Germany and the nearest thing to Martin Bormann that there exists today. Which brings me to the question I wanted to ask you. Are you going back to Munich now?"
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"Yes."
"Then my question is this: When you get back to Germany, when you're ready, will you help us get Hans Globke?"
"What do you mean by 'get'? Don't you mean murder? There's a strong rumor your people ran down and killed Globke's Nazi boss Wilhelm Stuckart in 1953."
"I mean get by any means necessary."
"I don't know why you think I can help get a man like that, and in that way."
"I'm asking because I sense in you the need to do something to atone for your country's sins. For your own, perhaps. I don't know but I think that's why you helped Lieutenant Leventis to get Max Merten, isn't it? Because you have a conscience about what happened here?"
The next round of drinks arrived and the bandit queen snatched one of the glasses off the tray and started drinking it before the other was even on the table. But she waited until the waiter was gone before she continued speaking:
"I know that's an emotive word, 'atonement.' In Judaism this means the process of causing a transgression against God to be forgiven or pardoned. So perhaps it's blasphemous of me to take it upon myself to offer you that chance, Christof. But that's exactly what I'm doing. A chance to do something good with what's left of your life. Israelis and Jews—there are plenty of them I can get to work for the Institute. None with the experience I need. What I really need are a few _Germans_ who aren't Jews. Germans with a conscience. Germans like you who are in respectable jobs, and who have some background in intelligence. That's you, isn't it? You're not quite as innocent about these things as you like to pretend."
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I nodded. "It's a long time since I felt innocent about anything."
"Then take it from one who knows all about collective guilt. I'm a Jew. We've been paying for the death of Jesus Christ for two thousand years. Well, I certainly don't believe we could or should even try to atone for that particular fairy story. But I do believe that an individual can help to atone for something that happened not much more than a decade ago. An individual like you, perhaps. Someone who could help to influence the future of his own country and the new moral order for the better."
"Those are grand words for a small man like me."
"Make them yours, Christof."
"You really think Max Merten will walk free?"
"Not today. But before the end of the year, yes, I'm more or less certain of it."
I thought for a moment. It's not unusual for intelligent people to end up working in intelligence; some of them are very intelligent indeed; but I was struck by the bandit queen's great perception—by the way she seemed to see straight through the hard carapace to the part of me that was a man with a vestigial conscience. It was almost as if somehow this Israeli spy chief had, like some Hebrew prophet, managed to spy into the very depths of my soul. I answered her carefully before shaking her hand again.
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"I'm not sure how I can help you get Hans Globke. But I think I can help you get someone else."
*
• • •
I CAUGHT A TAXI up the Acropolis, to see the Parthenon up close and touch it as I might have touched a valuable holy icon. After all the tea towel prints and plaster model copies of the temple I'd seen I hadn't expected the real thing to be as impressive as it turned out to be. Had it been as refined a piece of architecture to those poor ghosts the ancient Athenians as it was to us living mortals now? I couldn't see how not—how it wouldn't always have been viewed as one of the premier works of man and no less of an achievement now because it was substantially ruined, perhaps _more_ of an achievement, for did this not remind every man of his own temporal fragility? There's nothing like a Greek ruin to make you feel like reading one of those old books by Plato or Aristotle.
Built as the temple of Athena, it became a Christian church in the fifth century AD and, for a while, in spite of its amorphous, pagan origins, it was even an important destination for Christian pilgrims. I wondered if they'd really cared all that much what God was called. Or what the hymns were, silent now, once sung by those high priestesses of Athena. Surely what mattered to them more was this perfect celebration of the immortals. It was certainly what mattered to me. I was hearing voices all right.
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Following the Ottoman conquest, this anonymous stone glory was a mosque for more than two hundred years, until 1687, when it was heavily fortified and turned into a gunpowder magazine with the result that the Venetians turned up and bombarded it with cannon, and the Parthenon was partly destroyed, perhaps the first sign of where science would one day lead us. But somehow it had survived all that. And since 1832 the Doric ruins had been the most important cultural site in Greece, which was why I was there now, I supposed, with an hour to kill before Garlopis took me to the airport, and feeling unexpectedly moved, like one of those Christian pilgrims, perhaps. There were plenty of tourists around, most of them Americans and Japanese from the real world of salaried salesmen and menu-making housewives, but I expect I was one of the few who were there who saw the front façade of the Parthenon and felt homesick for my real home, which was in Berlin. With neoclassical buildings such as the Brandenburg Gate, the New Guardhouse memorial, and the National Gallery, Berlin had more Greek revivals than the cult of Dionysus and knew more than one thing about destruction, too. By the time the Red Army had finished its own brutal pagan handiwork, the old island of Berlin and its Parthenon copies looked much more like the original than anyone except Stalin would ever have wished.
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Walking quietly around and through this petrified forest of columns and the epic affirmation of what man was capable of, I could also reflect on perhaps the other major lesson of the place, which, at least for me, was that anything and everything could change, even something as great as the Parthenon.
And if that, then why not Bernie Gunther?
It seemed that when things from the past looked to every cynical eye as if they'd been irreparably destroyed they might yet have a future. A different future but, perhaps, a no less important one. Like Gunther, parts of the Parthenon still looked hopelessly beyond repair; the causeway leading up to the façade was a builder's yard of fallen pediments, damaged metopes, and broken columns; perhaps the Parthenon would take as long to preserve and repair as it had ever taken to build. Longer, perhaps, since preservation always moves at a slower, more reverent pace than construction. But I decided you could either complain about the cultural vandalism of the Turks and the Venetians, hope that someone else better qualified would one day get around to fixing the place up a bit or, perhaps, you could find a crane, pick up some of the marble stones, and erect some scaffolding yourself.
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My own hymns to love were probably forever silent now, but what of it? I was too old for all that malarkey anyway. Elli couldn't have known it but in a way she'd spared me. Probably we'd spared each other.
And to mark where I had been and to testify to what I still had in me to accomplish, I needed only that place in the new moral order offered by the bandit queen, where a drifting ghost like me could feel like something real again and breathe the dream of true atonement.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
DR. MAX MERTEN was arrested in an Athens court during Arthur Meissner's trial for war crimes and property pillage in the spring of 1943. Queen Frederica of Greece (herself a German) questioned Merten's prosecution, asking if "this is the way Mr. District Attorney understands the development of German and Greek relations." When he was held in Averoff Prison on remand, the West German government strenuously protested his arrest. Two years later, on February 11, 1959, Merten went to trial accused of murder, property pillage, gold coins expropriation, and other war crimes against Jews. The president of the court, one Colonel Kokoretsas, excluded the attorneys for the Jewish community of Salonika from presenting evidence in court; only individual Jewish plaintiffs were allowed to testify, thus diminishing the true scale of the crime against Greece's Jews. Merten pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and his defense was paid for by the federal government of Germany. On March 5, 1959, Max Merten was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. After serving just eight months Merten was freed by Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis in a general amnesty on November 5, 1959. In March 1960, an "economic agreement" was signed between Greece and Germany stipulating the sum of just 115 million marks (about $26 million) to be paid as reparations. A laughable amount of money, given all that Greece had suffered. Germany also agreed to provide separate sums as "loans" to Greece. Max Merten returned to Germany, where he received substantial damages for the period he'd spent in jail. He provided written evidence during the Eichmann trial in 1960 although he did not attend, and he died in 1971 or 1976. He never returned to Greece.
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After serving with the SS, ALO IS BRUNNER probably worked for German intelligence before traveling to Egypt in 1954, where he was an arms dealer. Later, he moved to Syria and may have worked for the Syrian intelligence services of Hafez al-Assad. The exact nature of his work is unknown. In 1954 he was condemned to death in absentia in France for war crimes committed at Drancy. In a 1985 interview with a German magazine called _Bunte_ , in Damascus, Brunner was unrepentant about his work for the Nazis. The Israelis tried twice to kill him, and failed. As a result of a letter bomb in 1961, he lost an eye and the fingers on his left hand. He died in 2001 or 2010, depending on which source you believe. At the time of his death, he was the most wanted Nazi war criminal in the world. He was buried in Damascus.
DR. HANS GLOBKE gave evidence both for the prosecution and the defense at the Nuremberg Trials. He left office in 1963, following attempts by the federal government to influence the Eichmann trial; material that exonerated Globke was fed direct to the Eichmann prosecutors by the BND. Globke died in 1973 but not before he was honored by Konrad Adenauer with the War of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He remained an active adviser to Adenauer and the Christian Democratic Union right up to his death.
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All of my information about MUNICH RE comes from the company's own website which, to its enormous credit, makes no secret about the company's wartime history. It states that Munich RE's chairman in 1933, Kurt Schmitt, was appointed Reich Minister of Economics and, on the strength of his convictions, Alois Alzheimer joined the Nazi Party, the only other member of MRE's board to do so. MRE did indeed insure the barracks and "operations" at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Ravensbrück, and Sachsenhausen. After the war, Schmitt and Alzheimer were taken into custody by the US military. Neither faced charges, although other board members were given prison sentences. Alois Alzheimer became chairman of MRE in 1950 and directed the company until 1968. If only all German companies were as open about their pasts as MRE! As far as I am aware, the chairman of Munich MRE was no relation to the more famous Alois Alzheimer who gave his name to a type of presenile dementia.
In 1960 _Der Spiegel_ published excerpts from Merten's deposition to the German authorities, which claimed that various members of the Greek government and their relations were informers during the Nazi occupation and had been rewarded with businesses confiscated from Jews in Thessaloniki. Some of these same figures successfully sued _Der Spiegel_ in 1963.
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Following a coup in 1967, GREECE was ruled by the military—the so-called Regime of the Colonels—for a period of seven years. Thousands of communists were imprisoned or exiled to remote Greek islands. Many were tortured. After the restoration of democracy in 1975, Greece applied to join the EEC and successfully acceded in 1981. The country joined the Euro in 2001, having faked the figures required to qualify for entry; since then, the country has buckled under the weight of debts the European Central Bank seems unwilling to forgive.
The GOLD of Thessaloniki's Jews has never been recovered. In 1945 vast quantities of Nazi gold were moved from the Reichsbank in Berlin to Switzerland for "safekeeping." In a book called _Nazi Gold_ (1984), by authors Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting, it was estimated that this gold would be worth approximately ten billion dollars on today's market. Of course, anyone who has seen the movie _Kelly's Heroes_ (1970) knows that the gold was stolen by Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas.
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In 2003 KONRAD ADENAUER was voted the greatest German of all time by viewers of German television station ZDF.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels have been national bestsellers and finalists for both the Shamus and Edgar awards. He is the recipient of the British Crime Writers' Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction. As P. B. Kerr, he is the author of the young adult series Children of the Lamp. He lives in London.
philipkerr.org
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Contents
1. COVER 2. ALSO BY PHILIP KERR 3. TITLE PAGE 4. COPYRIGHT 5. DEDICATION 6. CONTENTS 7. EPIGRAPH 8. PROLOGUE 9. CHAPTER ONE 10. CHAPTER TWO 11. CHAPTER THREE 12. CHAPTER FOUR 13. CHAPTER FIVE 14. CHAPTER SIX 15. CHAPTER SEVEN 16. CHAPTER EIGHT 17. CHAPTER NINE 18. CHAPTER TEN 19. CHAPTER ELEVEN 20. CHAPTER TWELVE 21. CHAPTER THIRTEEN 22. CHAPTER FOURTEEN 23. CHAPTER FIFTEEN 24. CHAPTER SIXTEEN 25. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 26. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 27. CHAPTER NINETEEN 28. CHAPTER TWENTY 29. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 30. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 31. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 33. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 35. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 36. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 37. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 38. CHAPTER THIRTY 39. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 40. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 41. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 43. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 45. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 46. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT 47. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 48. CHAPTER FORTY 49. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE 50. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO 51. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE 52. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR 53. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE 54. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX 55. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN 56. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT 57. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE 58. CHAPTER FIFTY 59. CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE 60. CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO 61. CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE 62. CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR 63. CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE 64. AUTHOR'S NOTE 65. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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1. Table of Contents 2. Cover 3. Cover 4. Title Page 5. Start
1. i 2. ii 3. iii 4. iv 5. v 6. vi 7. vii 8. viii 9. ix 10. x 11. xi 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220. 221. 222. 223. 224. 225. 226. 227. 228. 229. 230. 231. 232. 233. 234. 235. 236. 237. 238. 239. 240. 241. 242. 243. 244. 245. 246. 247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257. 258. 259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265. 266. 267. 268. 269. 270. 271. 272. 273. 274. 275. 276. 277. 278. 279. 280. 281. 282. 283. 284. 285. 286. 287. 288. 289. 290. 291. 292. 293. 294. 295. 296. 297. 298. 299. 300. 301. 302. 303. 304. 305. 306. 307. 308. 309. 310. 311. 312. 313. 314. 315. 316. 317. 318. 319. 320. 321. 322. 323. 324. 325. 326. 327. 328. 329. 330. 331. 332. 333. 334. 335. 336. 337. 338. 339. 340. 341. 342. 343. 344. 345. 346. 347. 348. 349. 350. 351. 352. 353. 354. 355. 356. 357. 358. 359. 360. 361. 362. 363. 364. 365. 366. 367. 368. 369. 370. 371. 372. 373. 374. 375. 376. 377. 378. 379. 380. 381. 382. 383. 384. 385. 386. 387. 388. 389. 390. 391. 392. 393. 394. 395. 396. 397. 398. 399. 400. 401. 402. 403. 404. 405. 406. 407. 408. 409. 410. 411. 412. 413. 414. 415. 416. 417. 418. 419. 420. 421. 422. 423. 424. 425. 426. 427. 428. 429. 430. 431. 432. 433. 434. 435. 436. 437. 438. 439. 440. 441. 442. 443. 444. 445. 446. 447. 448. 449. 450. 451. 452. 453. 454. 455. 456. 457. 458. 459. 460. 461. 462. 463. 464. 465. 466. 467. 468. 469. 470. 471. 472. 473. 474. 475. 476. 477. 478. 479. 480. 481. 482. 483. 484. 485. 486. 487. 488. 489. 490. 491. 492. 493. 494. 495. 496. 497. 498. 499. 500. 501. 502. 503. 504. 505. 506. 507. 508. 509. 510. 511. 512. 513. 514. 515. 516. 517. 518. 519. 520. 521. 522.
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Guantanamo Boy - Anna Perera
ISBN 978-0-8075-3077-1 (hardcover)
1. Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp—Juvenile fiction.
[1. Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp—Fiction. 2. Prisoners—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. Torture—Fiction. 5. Cousins—Fiction.
6. Muslims—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P42489Gu 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010048016
Text copyright © 2009 by Anna Perera.
First published in Great Britain by Puffin Books.
Published in 2011 by Albert Whitman & Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 LB 16 15 14 13 12 11
For more information about Albert Whitman & Company,
visit our web site at www.albertwhitman.com.For JLK, with love_Guantanamo Boy_
Advanced Praise for the US Edition
"Teen readers need and deserve stories that open windows to worlds they cannot and do not inhabit. _Guantanamo Boy_ opens wide a window that casts a bright light on the ethics of interrogation. Like Cory Doctorow's _Little Brother_ , it should raise questions for which there are no easy answers."— _Teri S. Lesesne, Professor of Library Science, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX_
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" _Guantanamo Boy_ is one of those rare reads that bridges a fictitious story to that of a real time, place and event making the story so vividly real in its telling. Khalid is a normal fifteen-year-old English boy, who loves soccer, computer games and has a crush on a girl at school. Soon after 9/11, on a trip to visit Pakistan to visit family Khalid finds himself kidnapped, tortured and eventually incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists. Terrorism and its consequences on the innocent are brought into such focus that you are shocked beyond belief with the sheer reading of this story. This is a must-read for young adult readers and a great crossover for adults. A book that will stay with you a very long while; a book you'll want to tell others about, discuss and ruminate over."— _Becky Anderson, Anderson's Book Shops_
"All I could think about while reading _Guantanamo Boy_ was this could happen to one of my friends! I'm a sixteen-year-old sophomore and Khalid the main character is only fifteen, an innocent, when he is kidnapped and eventually thrown into prison at Guantanamo Bay. What kept going through my mind was the injustice, the pain, the loneliness, the anger, the tears, and the hopelessness. What a read—it really opened my eyes to the hysteria that terrorism causes in our world."— _Hallie, age sixteen_
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"A chilling and horrifying story of an innocent fifteen-year-old London-born Pakistani boy who is captured by the US government, taken to Guantanamo prison and tortured until he collapses. The novel will raise important questions related to government profiling, human rights, and the use of 'torture.' This may well become one of the most important teen novels about social justice of the new century. It will be chewed up, debated, and hopefully digested."— _Pat Scales, librarian, author, and member, National Coalition Against Censorship Council of Advisors_
"Anna Perera has written a book for young people, but it is a real world book, with lessons for adults as well."— _Clive Stafford Smith, Founder and Director, Reprieve_
Praise for the UK Edition
"This powerful and humane book shows that hatred is never an answer, and proves the pointlessness of torture and the danger of thinking of anyone as 'other.'''— _Sunday Times "Children's Book of the Week"_
"One of her greatest achievements is to make the frightening monotony of the two years [Khalid] suffers so full of suspense." _—The Observer_
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"An excellent novel . . . superb." _—The Times_
"Exteremely powerful, and the descriptions of torture are genuinely harrowing." _—The Guardian_
"Timely, gritty fiction." _—Times Review_
"Could it happen? It has happened. That's why teenagers should read this book." _—The Irish Times_
"The argument is as well balanced as the moral outrage is palpable." _—The Financial Times_
"Rising star: Anna Perera. Her novel highlights the teenagers sent to the camp as it tugs readers into its vivid nightmare journey."— _The Independent_
"Guantanamo Boy's ability to deal with difficult issues surrounding the camp makes it a compelling read for people of all ages and a remarkable achievement." — _Politics.co.uk_
"Compulsively readable . . . a powerful novel, sure to generate debate." — _Courier Mail_
"Exploring the war on terror through the eyes of a child, Perera handles this confronting subject matter with great sensitivity." — _Daily Telegraph (Australia)_
Contents
Author's Note
1. Game
2. Blood'S Thicker Than Water
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3. Karachi
4. Missing
5. Easter
6. Power
7. Bread
8. Masud
9. To Kandahar
10. Processing
11. Red Cross
12. Wade
13. Lights
14. Water Tricks
15. Sleep
16. Guantanamo
17. Sweat
18. Every Shred
19. The Jinn
20. Exercise
21. Hair
22. News
23. Lee-Andy
24. Harry
25. Echoes
26. Hot Shots
27. Touchdown
28. Home
29. Assembly
30. Gul
Guantanamo Bay Timeline
Guantanamo Boy Synopsis and Discussion Questions
Chapter Discussion Questions and Prompts
Sources For Timeline
About the Author
Author's Note
I would have preferred not to write this story, but it wouldn't leave me alone.
The idea came to me after I attended a benefit for a charity called Reprieve, which fights for the rights of prisoners around the world. When Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's founder, said that children have been abducted, abused and held without charge in Guantanamo Bay, I was so shocked and appalled that I felt driven to write this book. The title came to me immediately.
Many people have asked how I managed to spend months poring over such a harrowing subject. All I can say is: I felt the story had to be written. To be honest, I asked myself the same question several times but at no point did I want to give up. I like Khalid and his family and friends, and I rooted for him, and for justice—though the justice system has been ripped apart and abandoned to the four winds. I struggled daily with the issues I had to examine, and at night I was kept awake imagining the consequences if I didn't hit the right note—the right combination of pressure and sensitivity—in telling this story. Above all, I was determined to enable you, the reader, to find—through the pages of one boy's fictional experience—some way to understand the stories behind the news.
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Once the character of Khalid formed in my brain, I needed to get him to Guantanamo. This turned out to be easier than anticipated: Through my daily research of newspapers and Internet articles I saw that the paranoia, hypocrisy, and fear that led to the creation and maintenance of this prison also provided endless opportunities for Khalid to become an innocent victim of the "War on Terror."
Two books that I turned to while writing mine were _Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons_ by Clive Stafford Smith and _Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantanamo, Bagram, and Kandahar_ by Moazzam Begg. Both provided valuable facts and insights. The British film _The Road To Guantanamo_ was useful in providing visual details, as were many news items. I purposely had no contact with anyone who had firsthand experience of the prison because I didn't want to steal or be influenced by another's ordeal.
Telling this story was an ordinary act of compassion. It is a plea for another vision in an increasingly war-torn world because, as we know, there really is no "them," no "they"—there is only us—and more of us.
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—Anna Perera> An eye for an eye and the whole world will soon be blind.
> —Mahatma Gandhi
1
GAME
_Sometimes_ , Khalid thinks as he drags himself home after another boring day at school, _I'd rather be anywhere but here_. The thought of having to explain to his dad what happened yesterday is making his guts turn over and he hopes and prays the letter from school complaining about his behavior in the science lab won't be there waiting for him. But as soon as he unlocks the door to 9 Oswestry Road, the envelope catches the corner of the mat.
_Great._ Khalid shakes his head at the sight of the school crest of Rochdale High on the back of the white envelope. Picking it up, he dumps his bag at his feet, throws his school blazer at the hook on the wall and, breathing in the smell of last night's curry, hurries to the kitchen, where there's more light.
For a moment, Khalid spaces out looking round the open-plan kitchenette. At the knives in the correct slots of the wooden knife holder. At the blue striped dishcloth, folded neatly on the metal drainer, and bar of pink soap in the see-through plastic dish between the shiny taps. Everything's clean and bright, nice and neat, and nothing like the mess and terrible panic he feels at the thought of his dad reading this letter from his science teacher. He slumps down on a chair and listens to the hum of distant traffic. Checks the clock, ticking steadily on the wall, counting down the seconds until the front door clicks open. For the last three days Dad hasn't left the Vegetarian First restaurant in Manchester, where he's been working for ten years as a lunch chef, until around six o'clock and it's only three forty-five now. It could be hours before he gets home.
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The sweet smell of polish is coming from the small wooden table pushed up against the yellow wall beside Khalid. He lifts his feet up to rest them on the table. With the letter from school in his hand, he waits patiently for his sisters, six-year-old Aadab and four-year-old Gul, to charge down the hall, followed by Mum rustling bags of shopping.
"Sadly, Khalid, you cannot be trusted to behave sensibly in the science lab," Mr. Hanwood had said. "I'm going to write to your parents about this."
Thanks a lot.
"I never liked him," Khalid says out loud. Yesterday wasn't even his fault. His mate Nico was angry with Devy, who owed him money, and when he asked for it Devy told him where to go and Nico reached for his collar and Devy went crazy and tried attacking Nico with his science book. But Nico ducked and he hit Khalid in the face instead. Naturally Khalid threw his school bag at him, which knocked most of the lab equipment off the bench, sending everything flying. And the only thing Mr. Hanwood saw as he came through the door was Khalid flinging his bag.
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Oh well, it's too late now. Unless he gets rid of the letter . . . Things get lost in the mail all the time, don't they? But a moment later the front door bashes open and he hears Aadab and Gul squealing.
"Ouch! Mum, Gul's pinching me," Aadab complains loudly.
"Khalid, how many times have I told you not to leave your bag on the mat and your jacket on the floor?" Mum shouts, ignoring the girls' bickering.
"I didn't!" Khalid shouts back, taking his feet off the table and stuffing the letter quickly into his pants pocket. "I put my jacket on the hook. It must have fallen off."
"Yes, because you didn't hang it up properly," Mum says, suddenly there beside him with a white plastic shopping bag cutting into each arm. Behind her Aadab and Gul thunder up the stairs to change out of their school clothes.
"Sorry." Khalid jumps up to take the heavy bags from her. "What time's Dad home tonight?"
"Any minute now," Mum says. "He'd better not be late again or I'll be having words with that boss of his. He works too hard, your father, and never complains."
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Khalid stares at his mum. She's frowning, always worried about something or other, which is probably why her thick, shiny hair is starting to turn gray. Her eagle eyes are all over the place, looking for anything out of order that she might need to put right. Of course he could give her the letter, but she looks tired out and is too busy unpacking groceries, and anyway, she'll just tell Khalid to wait until his dad's back.
Trying to act normal, Khalid wanders into the living room and switches on the TV. There's a news item about Guantanamo Bay, the prison in Cuba that Mr. Tagg was telling them about in history yesterday. A picture flashes up of a group of soldiers pointing guns at men in orange prison suits bent double on the ground, surrounded by high wire fences with a couple of nasty-looking dogs to one side.
"The camp is being expanded to house more Taliban prisoners," the newsreader says.
_Poor guys_ , Khalid thinks.
"Six months after 9/11 and the world is getting madder by the day," Dad says, suddenly behind him.
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"Oh, hi, Dad. Didn't hear you come in. How's it going?" Khalid's heart is pounding faster and faster as he tries to sound calm.
"My feet are killing me," Dad mutters, not noticing anything odd as he shuffles away.
Half an hour later, Dad is sitting beside Khalid at the table, telling them all about his day. How much lentil khoresh was wasted. How many half-eaten naan breads were thrown out. He goes full tilt through the contents of the restaurant bins with pain on his face. Aadab and Gul frown along with him, trying not to giggle during his long pauses, and wait patiently for him to unwrap the tin foil from the slices of nutmeg cake he keeps in his pocket for dessert.
Khalid worries and fidgets, not daring to fish the letter from his pocket.
"Things will get worse before they get better," Dad says. "A man came into the restaurant today, pointed his finger at the waiter and said, 'You better watch your step round here, mate.' Can you believe it? The boy hasn't done anything wrong. Nothing except wear the shalwar kameez. That's it."
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"The table is not the place to discuss world events," Mum says. "Food goes down badly if you are concerned at all." She doesn't like sitting on the floor to eat either, like her brother's family. "We are living in England," she says. "Not Turkey or Pakistan, and English floors are cold, with or without cushions."
Khalid always does the dishes after tea. It's something Dad taught him to do when he was six years old. "Helping your mum shows her respect," he says, and Khalid's glad to do it, because Mum works hard in the office at the local primary school and is always tired when she gets home.
Today, Khalid dries while Mum washes, picking up the cutlery with the tea towel in one swoop to save time. Quickly arranging the red tumblers in a line on the shelf, anxious to get it over with, because he has plans to meet his Pakistani cousin online at six o'clock. Tariq's in Lahore, so this time works out OK for both of them.
Mum spots him checking the clock. "Tariq isn't a bad boy." She smiles, reading Khalid's mind. "But he can't settle to anything, Uncle says."
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"Can't settle? He's learning Arabic, isn't he?" Dad laughs, unfolding his newspaper. "That's not something I ever managed to do. Tariq speaks English, Urdu, Punjabi—now Arabic. He's going places, that young man! You'll see."
Khalid glances at his mother, but there's no smile on her face.
"Why don't you like Tariq, Mum?"
"He's having too big an influence on you. All the time you are Tariq this, Tariq that, as if he's someone very important." Mum folds her arms and raises her eyes to heaven. "Even Dad says this." She glances at Dad's blank, innocent face with disbelief. "Yes. Yes, you do!"
Dad smiles secretively at Khalid, as if to say, _Let it go_. But Mum can't let it go, insisting on staring at the computer in the corner as if it's an evil monster.
"My brother tells me Tariq spends too much time on the computer and he doesn't listen," she continues. "What kind of young man lives like this? A very bad way to behave, and don't argue."
"I wasn't going to!" Khalid protests, while remembering it was Mum who encouraged their friendship in the first place. For a long time, because of her, he's hero-worshipped his older cousin. Sending his first e-mail to him almost two years ago, when he heard the news from Mum that Radhwa, the two-year-old sister Tariq adored, had died. Died slowly after a long illness. Mum explained that Tariq went totally crazy, refusing to believe she was gone, and had nightmares for weeks on end. At the time Tariq was fifteen, Khalid only thirteen, and though the whole family was brokenhearted, no one took Radhwa's death harder than Tariq.
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"Write to him, your cousin," Mum had ordered. "Say something to help him get better." So he did, e-mailing him the hottest Web links for his home town, Rochdale, and their football club. It was strange at first, e-mailing someone he didn't really know, but bit by bit they became friends who chatted mostly about the stuff they had in common. Computers, video games, football, movies, the usual things that everyone likes whether they live in Rochdale or Lahore.
If Mum ever found out that Khalid sneaked downstairs to talk to Tariq for hours on end, in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, she'd have a fit. But if she knew how much he was learning from his cousin, not that he was ever going to tell her, then perhaps she wouldn't worry so much. He could talk to Tariq about stuff that his friends wouldn't care about. They were probably all going to stay in Rochdale their whole lives, but Khalid wanted to see the world. He didn't want to end up like his dad, working hard for someone else all his life. Khalid was always telling his dad to set up a restaurant of his own, but he wouldn't listen.
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"There's nothing I haven't seen," Tariq writes in his e-mails to Khalid. "I've been to Turkey, to Medina, seen the first mosque at al-Quba. You wouldn't believe how green the dome is."
Khalid tries to imagine a green that's brighter and greener than any other green, but he can't. Green is just another color to him.
Tariq tells him about the sacred places of Islam, especially Medina, where the Prophet Muhammad is buried. But they are places Khalid finds it hard to care about. His curiosity sometimes closes down when he reaches these bits of Tariq's e-mails. The places that interest Khalid are cold and isolated, like remote parts of Iceland and the Arctic. Countries with few people and loads of floating icebergs would suit him. He hates being hot. Greenland, for example, he'd love to go there.
Plus he hates being preached to. It annoys him because it makes him feel he's back in school, not at home chatting to his cousin. Tariq's only two years older than him, yet sometimes he treats him like a little kid. For a start, Khalid doesn't know where any of these places are. He's only been to Pakistan once, and that was eleven years ago, to see Uncle, his mother's brother, who moved there from Turkey. He hadn't met Tariq, who was staying with his grandmother at the time. All Khalid could remember was the heat and the dusty roads, plus the curved gold sword on the wall in Uncle's living room. It's not much of a memory.
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He's never been to Karachi to visit Dad's sisters. But he imagines it to be just as boring as the small town near Lahore where Tariq and his family still live.
The bits of Tariq's e-mails that really interest Khalid are about computer games, and now that Tariq has invented a game of his own, Khalid can't get enough of their online sessions.
"Khalid's actually touch-typing now. You should see him," Dad boasts to anyone who'll listen. Mostly, that person is Mac, their Scottish neighbor from number 11, with daughters the same age as Khalid's sisters. "He types faster than the wind." Mac pats Khalid on the head whenever he pops round, which makes everyone laugh. Then Dad and Mac wander outside to talk about petrol gauges, drive shafts, tuning, or something else that the rest of them don't care about.
Mum hurries Aadab and Gul to get in the bath and the kitchen falls silent. Always the best time of day for Khalid.
The barrage of words from Tariq begins the moment the kitchen door closes and Khalid is at last alone in front of the computer, which takes up all the space on the smaller corner table.
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"Hi, cuz," the e-mail starts. "I haven't had time to look at Rochdale Football Club's results for Saturday. How did they do?"
"It was a draw—a bit of a tough game," Khalid fills him in.
"Which means they have to win the next match or they'll be in danger of being relegated, yeah?" Tariq types.
"Looks that way." Khalid sighs as he waits for Tariq's response.
"What a shame for Rochdale. The only real lesson I learned today is that no matter how much you learn there is always more to find out. Reading many books has shown me how little I know about anything! And I thought that match was going to be a sure-fire thing. For something happy I will tell you what I have been doing today . . ."
Khalid rushes through the news about Tariq's Arabic lessons. Scrolling quickly down the page to the bit he wants. Leaning forward, elbows on the table, to grab every detail.
From the very first sentence, "Latest game news," Khalid hangs on every word of his cousin's ideas and plans, whether he understands them or not.
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"I haven't decided what to call it yet," Tariq begins, "but I think six characters placed in different countries would be the best. Then we can have multiple players online at the same time dissing each other. What do you think?"
"Yeah, six would be brilliant," Khalid types quickly. "It's gotta have a real cool name, though!!!!"
Khalid doesn't notice time passing as he reads about the complexity required to implement the programming language. Plus the goals, rules, mathematical framework Tariq's been working on to put the game together make it sound as if his invention is going to be even better than _Counter Strike_. Khalid loves _Counter Strike_ , a war-based shooting game that he plays at Nico's place on his console. One team are the terrorists and the other are the Special Forces who have to sneak in and defuse the bomb. Tariq and Khalid both love playing _Grand Theft Auto_ too, getting an adrenaline rush from blowing stuff up and stealing cars. _Starcraft_ , the online strategy game set in space, is their favorite at the moment, but they chat about loads of other games while Tariq finishes off his own invention, which doesn't have a name yet. It's going to be basic, but it's much more fun knowing that it's their own private game.
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These e-mails make Khalid feel so much better that he forgets about giving Dad the letter from school. Then the door opens and Mum silently crosses the kitchen to pluck something from the fruit bowl.
"It's half past seven. Get off the computer, Khalid!"
It's always the same. There's never enough time to talk to Tariq. Reluctantly, Khalid quickly types, "Later, cuz!" and then closes the computer down.
"Nations around the world are strengthening their anti-terrorism laws. Pakistan is providing America with more military bases and airports to use for its attack on the Taliban," the newsreader states from the TV in the living room.
"Haven't you got any homework to do?" Mum sighs.
"I can't work with the TV on in there," Khalid says.
"Oh, that's a good one." Mum refuses to be taken in by his excuse for a moment, then gives him an only-kidding smile before heading back to the living room and shutting the door behind her.
Dragging his school bag to the table, Khalid is soon absorbed in Galileo.
Galileo, the genius who knew everything about astronomy and mathematics. He even managed to improve the telescope. Khalid sits back and folds his arms. How did Galileo know the telescope needed improving? Thinking about this makes his mind go fuzzy. There's so much to take in and most of it Khalid has to read twice before it makes any sense at all. One thing Khalid's sure of, though, is that Galileo is way cool. Everyone throughout history knew that. He even took on the Catholic Church.
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"We're all part of this misery." Dad pops his head round the door to get a glass of water. Khalid doesn't know what he means or what he's talking about. Nor does he ask. But he thinks about it for a moment. That's Dad all over. He says things you can't pin down, which is a major part of the problem between them. How exactly is Dad going to react when he hands him the letter? He just doesn't know.
The thought flashes through Khalid's mind that his friends, if they were here, might think Dad was a bit weird saying something like that out of the blue. But then his family aren't what people suppose they are. Mum has never worn the veil and neither did her mother in Turkey, where she was brought up. Maybe Dad was referring to the fact there has been more hostility in the neighborhood lately towards Muslims. Though Khalid hasn't been called any names, or been punched or anything, a couple of the Muslim guys at school said they felt totally unsafe being out at night now, while before 9/11 they had felt fine.
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OK, they sometimes say Friday prayers and usually eat halal food, but that's as far as the Muslim religion goes in Khalid's family. Dad was brought up in Karachi, Pakistan. His father, who is now dead, owned a furniture shop there and Dad was the last child born to his mother, when she was thirty-nine years old. His three sisters are much older than him and only the oldest is married, so the others live with her and her husband.
"Those whispering ninnies!" Dad calls them. He doesn't like them much and hardly ever mentions them.
"Your dad's just like my grandpa," Nico says. "Always telling you to straighten your shirt and comb your hair before you leave the house. As if anyone cares about that stuff any more!"
Whenever Khalid sees Nico on the street, he's wearing a black T-shirt and blue low-riders, eating a bag of chips. Always grinning like a lunatic, as if he's just seen something mad. Nico's a mate but he's also the main supplier of alcohol to kids in the area. Being lucky enough to have an eighteen-year-old brother, Pete, who looks just like him, Nico only has to flag up his brother's ID at the local store to buy crates of beer, which he then sells at inflated prices. Why he spends so much on chips, Khalid can't understand. But then Nico always has an answer.
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"Eating chips, drinking beer and nailing those steroid heads in the park, how's that for a brilliant life, eh, mate?" His deep laugh sounds more like a barking dog than a fifteen-year-old boy, which makes Khalid laugh too. Nico's never mentioned nailing Muslims and Khalid doubts he ever will. He's not that kind of kid. None of his mates are. They don't see color, race or religion, any stuff like that. And the kids they call the steroid heads are a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds with shaved heads who live on the estate behind the school and get their kicks from acting hard and bullying old ladies.
"You finished your homework?" Mum's back in the kitchen and watching Khalid out of the corner of her eye as she makes a cup of mint tea.
"Yeah. Think I'll go round Nico's for a bit to talk about the match tomorrow."
Mum's mouth twitches as she sits down at the table with a magazine. "Ask Dad first, Khalid. I don't like that cocky boy!"
"Mum! Nico's top of the class in math and his brother's at Manchester Uni doing electrical engineering. Dad says you don't get much cleverer than that."
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"All the same, there's something strange about him. I don't care what you say."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever!" Khalid kisses her on the cheek, pretending to be interested for a moment in her _World of Cross-Stitching_ magazine. The sudden smell of her jasmine perfume catches him before, quick as a flash, he grabs his cool blue cap and dashes out.
"Wait a minute, son!" Dad lifts his head from under the hood of Mac's old Ford Fiesta as Khalid scoots past. "You can't go out in your school clothes. You'll wreck them."
Khalid puts on his innocent face. "I'm only going to Nico's to check some math—a few equations and that."
For some reason this makes Mac laugh.
"When I was your age we didn't go round bothering our heads about math and footie when the streets were packed with girls."
Dad sighs. He hates Mac passing on advice like this to Khalid. But at fifty-four Mac is always that bit out of touch, so Dad doesn't need to worry that Khalid is listening to him properly. Khalid tries to imagine what it would be like for Mac to hang round with his mates in the park, see what life is really like now.
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"Aye, you couldn't move for hotties round our way!" Mac laughs to himself.
"Yeah? Cool!" Khalid grins, wandering off. "See you later."
At the end of the road, Khalid rolls back his shirt cuffs, pulls his school trousers low until they sag, turns right, then second left and cuts through the cul-de-sac to the park. Once there, he runs past the swings. Straight to the spot by the oak trees where everyone hangs out on the broken benches.
"Eya, Kal! Whassup?" Tony Banda grins. "Nothing's like going on here, mate."
They were all there: Nico, Mikael, Holgy, Tony, a few other random kids from school, all making their own entertainment. Rough-readying each other with fake punches, dirty jokes, cigarettes and the odd can of lager. Fighting each other for the last of the Pringles.
"Idiot face! Give it back!" Holgy tries grabbing the green tube from Tony.
"Nah, you ate all mine last week!" Tony whacks him over the head with it. Then Holgy, thick brown hair in his eyes, elbows Tony until he drops the Pringles. Nose-diving the tube as he runs backwards, pouring crumbling crisps down his throat. Everyone laughing because, let's face it, Holgy's a nutter.
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"Goal. Goal, yay!" Mikael shouts out the picture flashing at the front of his mind, which makes Khalid smile. The main thing they have in common apart from school is the fact they're on the same five-a-side football team on Thursday evenings. How their little team is doing is never far from anyone's mind, especially Mikael's.
"We need a game plan for tomorrow's match." Tony Banda looks at Nico.
"Let's just try and win for once." Nico drags on a cigarette. "How about that for a change?"
"Yeah, we were a bit sluggish last week," Khalid adds.
"A bit sluggish?" Holgy roars with laughter. "We haven't scored a goal in ages and, Tony, try not to get another card from the referee for spitting tomorrow, eh?" A nifty goalie with big calf muscles, Holgy croaks like a sea lion with every spectacular save he makes. He's the best player of the lot.
"Leave it out," Tony says. "That wasn't my fault."
Tony's a great attacker, Khalid thinks. He pushes forward like no one else. But no matter how long Tony's played foot-ball, he still can't keep to the rules. It's a shame his mind is usually somewhere else.
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"Where's Lexy tonight, Tony?" Mikael asks. The mention of Lexy makes Tony go all gooey. In fact, with her blonde hair, big blue eyes and a great figure, she makes them all go gooey. Standing there on the sidelines at every match, dressed in a pink duffel coat whatever the weather, she runs up to Tony in her high-heel black boots when he's sent off (which happens every other game) and throws her arms round him as if he's just scored a goal.
"Dunno," Tony says. "She'll turn up, I expect." And, just like that, there she is, tripping towards them in her high heels.
"What does she see in you, Tony?" Nico shakes his head in disbelief as she comes across the park.
"Lexy needs her eyes tested," Mikael states, and they all laugh.
"Too right she does," agrees Khalid. Lexy is fit, but he really fancies this Irish girl from school, Niamh. _Why am I too shy to do anything about it, though?_ he asks himself, falling back in the damp grass to stretch out. There's a sudden chill in the darkening clouds, which adds to his nervousness as he finally rips the envelope from his pocket.
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"Whoa!" says Nico, whooping with laughter as he spies the school's crest.
"Go on, Hanwood, do your worst," Khalid announces. Holding the envelope to the sky, he tears it open and begins reading in a teacher-like voice for everyone to enjoy:
"Dear Mr Ahmed,
Your name was mentioned at the committee meeting today for the school fête, which is being held next term on July second. We wondered if it would be at all possible for you to set up another curry stall as you did so successfully last year? _Blah, blah, blah._ "
Khalid kills himself laughing at the wasted hours he's spent worrying over nothing. "Hanwood said he was going to write a letter about my behavior in the lab."
"He's said that to me a million times. School fête? It's still only March," Nico says.
"So you've learned the months of the year, have ya, Nico?" Holgy grins.
"Januwaree," Mikael joins in. "Febooraree."
"Shut up!" Nico kicks him.
Then, beyond the dissing, a spiraling warmth breaks out between them. These lads of the same age who share the same streets and school. The same teachers. Same gelled spiky hair. The same stupid jokes and sometimes the same dreams that just might, one day, come true.
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2
BLOOD'S THICKER THAN WATER
The next evening, Gul and Aadab are chattering away in the warm, cozy kitchen, bathed in the glare of the red shade hanging from the ceiling. The whole family sits at the table, finishing off a delicious plate of chapattis, curry and vegetable fried rice. The room smells of fried onions, tomatoes and garlic, Khalid's favorite smell, and he's happy about more than the delicious smell of food today because Mr. Tagg gave him a B plus for his essay plan on the Spanish Inquisition. Not that it changes anything once Mum tells everyone what's happening.
"We're going to Karachi next week for the Easter school holidays," she says casually, as if announcing they've just run out of salt.
Khalid sits bolt upright. For a moment he's too stunned to speak. "What? That sucks!" he moans. But Mum just frowns at him, as if to say, _Don't try that. Don't start that._ But surely this can't be right? "There'll be nothing to do there. If we have to go, why can't we stay with your brother near Lahore instead? I'd rather see Tariq than those whispering ninnies you're always complaining about, Dad. You can all go, but I'm staying here with my mates." He slumps down, exhausted by this sudden shower of protests.
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"That's enough from you!" Shocked by his outburst, Mum shakes her finger at him, while Dad lowers his eyes. "Dad hasn't seen his sisters since before you were born and, well, maybe you'll think twice when you know your grandmother has just died and that's why we're going."
"What?" Khalid looks from one to the other, suddenly ashamed. It's typical of Dad to hide his news and get Mum to tell them what's happening. It's also annoying to Khalid that he's shot his mouth off so quickly and ended up embarrassing himself.
"Of course the funeral happened within twenty-four hours, so we're too late for that," Mum adds.
No one speaks for what seems like a very long time, though it's probably no more than a couple of minutes. Then Mum gets up. Gul and Aadab follow to help her clear the table, making faces at Khalid for being in the wrong, leaving him and Dad sitting there in deathly silence. No mention of the pieces of nutmeg cake in his pocket they always fight over after dinner. No mention of the half-eaten potatoes and chickpeas thrown in the bin during Dad's time at the restaurant today. No mention of the grandmother Khalid's never met who's just died.
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Khalid wonders why he hadn't noticed Dad's lack of conversation earlier this evening. Why he hadn't guessed something was wrong. Perhaps because he was too pleased with himself over his B plus? Enjoying the family's praise too much to notice Dad's serious face. Now he feels ashamed and too embarrassed to apologize or ask for his father's forgiveness.
Aadab clatters dishes in the sink one after the other, while Gul runs around for no reason. In the end Mum ushers them out of the kitchen. And Khalid sits and sits, fiddling with the stainless-steel salt cellar. Moving it up and down, around and about, waiting for the lecture from Dad to begin. He doesn't dare leave the table before him, but Dad doesn't say anything at first, just looks at him for a long time in a way that makes him feel bad. Then he gets up, pushes the pine chair back and pauses for a second. Khalid feels the hesitation bearing down on him and twists in his seat.
A moment passes before Dad turns and quickly walks away. Khalid bites his lip to stop himself from saying something silly to lighten the mood.
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That's how it's been lately between them. Pretty distant. Both of them have been suffering from strong emotions that are too complicated to find words for. Even harder to share. Nico's right: he's more like a grandfather than a dad. Old-fashioned. He's nothing like his mates' fathers, who swear and have a pint like other people. Khalid wishes he could talk to his dad about the things that matter to him, like Tariq's computer game for example, but even imagining doing that flashes up a picture of Dad tutting and frowning. "Games are not what life's about," he'd say.
If only he'd come down the park just once to see Khalid play football. If only he'd ask about his mates. Dad's never horrible about anyone, not ever, but he seems to live in his own world and sometimes Khalid thinks he might as well not be here. Plus he's so irritating these days, where once Khalid had thought him funny and basically a nice guy.
For instance, Nico's dad always wears baggy jeans and T-shirts and has recently had his head shaved and a five-centimeter tattoo put on his neck which says "Defend Her." "That's awesome," his mates say. "So cool for a guy his age!" While Khalid's dad wears a white shirt and black trousers every day, as if he's a kid going to school. Black hair neatly combed with a side parting makes him totally boring too, but in actual fact he's far better-looking than Nico's dad. Everyone can see that. If only he'd get a nice haircut or do something different apart from cook at the restaurant, then come home, clean his shoes and watch TV. Or chat to Mac next door about cars.
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Khalid tidies the spectacular mess of salt he's made with his fingers on the table and is scooping it into his cupped hand when Mum appears at the door.
"I can see you've been thinking about your rude behavior," she says.
"Nah, I haven't been thinking about anything, actually," Khalid says with a slight tone of irritation in his voice.
"I see. Khalid, please don't be the way you are around these friends you're always with. Understand family is the only way to live. Family is thicker than friends."
"Blood's thicker than water, Mum!" Khalid smiles, his irritation gone.
"That's what I said." Mum's expecting Khalid to argue some more, but instead he bites his lip.
"I didn't know she died, did I?" he tries explaining.
"Submission to your parents shows respect. You know that, Khalid."
"Only said that ten thousand times before, Mum. Will you really not let me see Tariq if we're going to Pakistan anyway?"
Mum sighs. "Lahore is too far from Karachi. Going there would only add to the cost." She starts playing with her hair in a childlike way, her big brown eyes staring into space as her mind races elsewhere. Then she rushes to get the notepad and pencil from beside the phone. Quickly, she makes a list of things she must take to Pakistan for Khalid's aunties. Once she starts writing, she can't stop.
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Khalid slowly, very slowly, gives up hope of a nice Easter holiday hanging out with his mates as he glances at Mum's boring list:
1. Shampoo
2. Soap
3. Hairbrushes
4. Toothpaste and toothbrushes
5. Nail files
6. Hand cream
7. Moisturizing cream
8. Pencils
9. Paper
10. Books
The list goes on and on, the only interesting item being "21. DVDs." Khalid smiles. _Oh no_. Surely Mum isn't going to bring them her favorite film, _The Sound of Music_?
Soon he drifts off to the computer on the table in the corner to google Karachi. It's a place he knows nothing about. The first page tells him it has a population of fifteen million and lots of international restaurants and high-rise office buildings, as well as a beach called Sandspit, which makes him laugh. He learns that 69 percent of people in Pakistan don't have access to running water or a flush toilet. There is massive unemployment and water pollution, as well as a high rate of illiteracy, which turns him off the whole subject. Helps him switch his search to the Spanish Inquisition, before Mum says, "Run to that new shop on the main road for chilli powder and tamarind paste, Khalid, please. We're totally out." She hands him some money.
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"Do I have to?" Khalid moans.
One look from Mum sends him running to the door, jamming his school shoes on without a backward glance. When Mum narrows her eyes in fury like that she usually just shouts for Dad.
"Hiya, Kal," voices call from behind as Khalid reaches the shiny, bright shops. It's Holgy and Tony, lounging about outside Rashid's Electricals. Khalid hoped to run into them at the park on the way back. Not here at the shops.
"There's been a right punch-up at the park. Some nerd's in the hospital. Don't bother going down there later, because they've locked the gates early." Tony jumps off his swish bike, chewing gum madly. Black hoodie pulled low over his round, innocent-looking face. Dance music twittering in his earplugs.
"Yeah? What's gone on?" There are always fights round here after dark. Khalid hopes it's no one he knows. Holgy pulls a face. Tony shrugs. Neither of them care much, knowing bad news always travels fast. If it was a mate or someone close they would have heard by now.
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"By the way," Holgy says, laughing, "Mikael's parents are bunking off somewhere on Saturday so he's having a party."
Khalid's about to get the details, as he's never been to Mikael's before, when a commotion starts up outside the fish-and-chip shop a few doors down. A slim woman in a gray tracksuit and gym shoes, about thirty years old, is arguing with the steroid heads from school.
A slightly tubby kid swigs from a bottle of beer. Behaving like an idiot, he starts jumping up and down as if bouncing on a trampoline, while the others surround the woman, grabbing her chips and flinging them in the air. "There goes another one—wooeee!"
Taunting her with a blizzard of daft hand movements, they pump her space with their shoulders so one of them can dip his hand in her tracksuit pocket to steal her mobile.
_They're at it again_ , thinks Khalid. "Hey!" he screams at the top of his voice. Being the kind of kid who likes a beer now and then, has stolen a couple of things from the stalls down the market for a bet, he often finds himself pretending to be wilder, more confident and stronger than he really is to prove he can hold his own with some of the older kids. But today resentment at the steroid heads' stupid behavior rises in him like never before.
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Holgy and Tony laugh their heads off as Khalid angrily runs over to push the kids aside. "Give it here!" He knocks the mobile out of the little fair-haired one's hand, then grabs the bag of chips from the tubby one, who now has them.
"Sorry," Khalid tells the woman as he hands back the phone. "They're a bunch of losers."
She thanks him briefly with a nod and refuses the remaining chips with a sour expression. Gives him the feeling she doesn't want his help, then strides off proudly, swishing her ponytail as if she was never in any danger in the first place.
"Whaddya do that for?" One of the kids frowns. "We were only having a bit of fun."
"Push off, you jerk!" Khalid says. "Do that again and I'll thump you."
When he turns back to Holgy and Tony, they are still killing themselves laughing.
"What are you like? Fess up, Kal. Didn't you see—ha-ha-ha—how pale she went—ha-ha—when you screamed at them?" Holgy says. "I mean, you're pretty tall, Kal. She was more scared of you than—ha-ha—of that lot."
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"If you had a beard, you'd be a dead ringer for Bin Laden, mate," Tony adds, and both of them crack up again.
"Yeah?" Suddenly it dawns on Khalid that the woman maybe thought he was a terrorist or something. "These are dangerous times for Muslims," his dad said the other day. And he was right. That much he does know.
It's pouring with rain by the time Khalid turns the corner to the new Indian grocery shop. A teenager from school, Matt Garwell, shouts to him from the pavement opposite. He does a mental dance to show how wet he is, his brown, stringy hair falling like worms over his pug face.
"Hiya, Kal. I'm freakin' soaked." As Matt runs off, Khalid reads the message written in large black words on his flapping white T-shirt: SMALL-MINDED FLAG-WAVING XENOPHOBE. Eh? Khalid stops for a second to wonder at the meaning of the word "xenophobe."
Hands tucked deep in his pockets, Khalid stands under the green canvas of the shop, staring at the display of grapefruits, cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, ginger and garlic, suddenly unable to remember why he's there. Unable to remember anything but the look of contempt on the slim woman's face and Tony's words, which he knows were supposed to be a joke, but even so . . . It's the first time world events and George Bush's so-called "War on Terror" really come home to him.
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A sudden shiver rises up his spine. A damp, fearful chill spreads over him, sinking deep inside, until a weird kind of paralysis sets in. He'd run out of the house in his open-necked school shirt and trousers, thinking he'd be back home in ten minutes. But in that time one event has changed his life. Being resented and feared for what? For having brown skin and black hair? For being a Muslim? A bitter, nasty feeling opens up inside, making him angry with himself for helping a woman who can't look beyond the surface and see he was only trying to help.
In the end, the owner of the shop pushes the door open and waits stock-still, hands on hips, gazing out at the passing traffic, pretending not to notice Khalid, who's been staring at a pile of plump grapefruits for quite a while.
Finally, their dark eyes meet.
"It's not like I'm doing anything wrong," Khalid says crossly.
"No." The man stares at him, stroking his modest gray beard. "I can see that."
"Sorry!" Khalid is cross with himself now. There's no need to take it out on this old guy just because that woman made him feel like a lump of dirt.
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"I've got an old fleece jacket upstairs if you want it," the man says.
"Nah, I'm cool. Thanks, mate." Khalid gives him a quick grin. "I do need some chilli powder and tamarind paste, though."
Pleased he's all right, the man nods him into the brightly lit shop and insists on getting him some hot tea. Disappearing behind a blue striped curtain to fetch Khalid's drink, he beckons him to sit on the wooden stool beside the till. The counter is crammed with chocolate, soft mints, chewing gum and scratch cards. There's a smell of ginger mixed with carpet cleaner, which adds to the strangeness of it all.
"Kindness is the quickest path to heaven," the shopkeeper says when he returns, as though Khalid's thoughts were written all over his face. Then he tells him his name's Nasir and he's been in England for twenty-five years but here in Rochdale for only three weeks. "I always wanted to be my own boss. Now I have a shop."
Khalid snaps out of his trance. Wishes his dad could be more like that.
The youngest of six children, Nasir grew up in a mountain village in Pakistan, where his elderly mother still lives, growing her own vegetables and keeping chickens, just as she's always done.
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"Does she live far from Karachi?" Khalid says.
"About fifty miles," Nasir answers. "Why?"
"We're going there for Easter to see my aunties." Khalid half smiles.
"I'm thinking you must be careful, lad. My wife's family have plenty of friends who live there and they say the Americans are paying people big bucks to report anyone suspicious to them. US soldiers came with guns in the night and kidnapped two brothers who were in Karachi for two weeks from Saudi to set up a business selling cooking oil.
"Neighbor saw soldiers dragging the brothers from the house. Nice boys, she said they were. Not a bit suspicious-looking. The next day she heard that another neighbor had been paid a lot of money for reporting them to the American authorities. Remember, most people have so little money in Pakistan. The Americans are offering more than five years' wages for these reports."
"That's stupid," Khalid says. "Once they find out the brothers are innocent, they'll want their money back."
"The brothers never returned." Nasir shakes his head. "The rich neighbor has bought a car and rented a big house with the money the Americans gave him and now his friends want to cash in too. They are on the lookout for anyone new in town."
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Khalid can't believe it. "That sounds like bounty hunters like back in the Wild West!"
"Yes, exactly the same lawlessness is there now," Nasir says, nodding.
"Why don't they pick up some real terrorists?" Khalid asks.
"Like George Bush?" Nasir laughs, raising his gray eyebrows.
"But we're from England. We speak English," Khalid says. "Surely we're safe?"
"Were you born in England?" Nasir frowns.
"Yeah, I was. Turkey's where my mum comes from. My dad's from Pakistan, but he's lived here for twenty years."
"Ah! But still you have to watch your step if you're going there," he warns.
"Our whole family's more British than anything else, to be honest," Khalid says. "Anyway, I've only just turned fifteen."
"That might not be young enough." Nasir looks concerned. "Five thousand dollars is a lot of money to get for a foreign Taliban."
Hints of a dangerous trip begin gathering in Khalid's mind as he swigs the last of the tea. The sound of a vacuum cleaner suddenly humming behind the curtain makes him think Nasir wants to lock up, so he shifts from the stool.
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"I bet they let the brothers go in the end," Khalid says, nodding goodbye and wandering home with the chilli powder and tamarind paste safely stowed in a blue plastic bag under his arm. All the time puzzling how anyone can sell lies about people they don't know for money.
Then he starts questioning the truth of Nasir's words. _Surely the brothers were released when their story was checked by the Americans and they legged it home to Saudi?_ Khalid is itching to find out more. He unlocks the back door, deciding not to mention anything to Dad about Nasir in case he rubbishes him. Tells him not to speak to Nasir again.
Luckily, Dad's standing with his back to him by the sink, busy laying out sheets of newspaper so he can polish his black shoes, which gives Khalid the chance to switch on the computer in the opposite corner before he can object. Cleaning shoes is a job Dad takes great care over. Unlacing them before lining up two brushes and a soft cloth and flipping open a tin of black Kiwi polish, he brushes the shoes methodically from toe to heel to remove the dirt while Khalid frantically types a message to Tariq.
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"Hey, cuz, do you know anyone in al-Qaeda?" he asks.
"Don't ask questions like that, Khalid, you dorkhead, unless you want to get yourself killed," Tariq instantly replies. Which strikes Khalid as slightly over the top. Who on earth would suspect him of anything dodgy?
"OK, sorry, calm down. I just heard the Americans are paying stacks of money to Pakistanis to shop anyone suspicious to them—is that true?"
"Cuz, it's a paranoid hellhole here. That's only one of the terrible things that are happening. Now, tell me how Aadab and Gul are doing."
What? It's the last thing Tariq always asks before he signs off. And he's not just being polite either. No, sisters are a subject they never talk about, because of what happened to Radhwa. But still he asks. Maybe to show he's all right about it now.
Khalid replies in the same way he always does: "Annoying as usual!" But it doesn't register because the screen fades. Crashes. Leaving Khalid staring at the black square in a temper as he reboots, while Dad smiles at his black, highly polished shoes, which he proudly thrusts at the ceiling light.
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"See the shine on that? Look!"
"Can't miss it, Dad!" Khalid nods, taking out his mobile to text Mikael for the address of the party on Saturday night while the computer boots up.
With Khalid there are two types of friends: those who like football and those who don't. Mikael is one of the former. Small for his age and quieter than the rest of them, he's a great defender. Fast on his feet like Khalid, who's solid at the back, Mikael's always the first to praise a teammate and never lets unexpected injuries, bad weather or no-shows dampen his enthusiasm. Khalid laughs at the picture in his head of Mikael charging down the field like a rocket in lift-off while the others skid in the mud after him.
Khalid wishes their team was doing better. They've had a lot of bad luck this season and now he realizes he's going to miss a couple of important matches because of the trip to Karachi. The dream of being promoted to a higher league depends on those games.
"48 Mandela hse c u l8r," Mikael texts back.
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Khalid thinks maybe he shouldn't go to the party. He'd be chancing his arm to stay out past ten thirty. Then he glances up to see Dad staring at him with worried eyes. Obviously a bit put out.
"What's the matter, Dad?"
"Your school shoes are a disgrace, Khalid. When did they last see a jot of polish?"
"What's the point in cleaning them? They'll only get messed up again as soon as I go out."
By the look on Dad's face, Khalid knows it's time to give up and shuts the computer down. Tariq isn't back online now anyway. Under Dad's watchful eyes, he cleans his damp, scuffed shoes, hoping it will partly make up for his earlier outburst.
"Point the toe away from you. That's it!" Dad frowns with concern at the half-hearted job Khalid's making of it. "Shoe polish has a habit of getting on white shirts," he says, grinning widely. Their dark eyes meet with a lightness of touch that says past arguments are forgotten for the moment. Dad laughs at himself for once, instead of listing all the things that drive him mad. Things like Khalid's shirt collar being up on his neck instead of neat and flat like his. Forever pointing out how he slouches all the time and why his eye-rolling and abrupt answers to everything stop him from making the best of himself. The list goes on and on, but for now there's peace between them and it feels nice.
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"They say car-jackings, armed robberies and murders are happening every day in Karachi, Dad."
"That's also why we must go, son. To pay respect to my mother and make arrangements for my sisters. You know Fatima, the oldest one? Her husband is very ill, cannot work at all. This might be the last chance we will have to see him. I must bring money and things for them. Perhaps move them to another part of the city. We'll be safe there, don't worry. It will be good for you to see Pakistan again and remember where you come from. Gul and Aadab have never met their aunties before, so it's a treat for them also. Plus I need you to take care of your mother while I see to everything. Do you think you can do that for me?"
Khalid realizes how selfish he's been. "Course I will, Dad. But how come we can afford the plane tickets? They must cost a fortune." He blows the last specks of dust from his shoes, then snaps the lid awkwardly on the Kiwi tin.
"All my life I've been saving, you know that, son. Every penny I put away for the future. For your future. For your sisters' future. Every day not to waste anything. But I also save for this moment. This I must do with family in a faraway place like Pakistan." Dad carefully replaces the brushes and soft cloth in the cardboard box under the sink. Then takes a satisfying last glance at the tidy box before closing the cupboard with a firm, quiet click.
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Khalid watches him shuffle off in his gray socks to watch one of the travel programs he likes so much on television. A sunny smile on his face and the smell of shoe polish lingering in the air.
3
KARACHI
Scrunching balls of waste paper and empty crisp packets into the plane's seat pocket, Khalid shifts sideways towards the window to take in the sight of the tall buildings of Karachi twinkling brightly below him. The last of the strong black-coffee smells drift from the man to his left, disappearing the instant he pops some chewing gum in his mouth.
Feeling relaxed and unworried himself, Khalid is excited to be here at last. The man to his right, who looks like someone you'd meet in a church, was the most boring man in the world. A pale creature who read his book the whole way, speaking to no one. While Khalid watched three movies and listened to his MP3 player, trying to ignore the streams of mums, dads and kids going up and down the aisles to the loos.
Finally Khalid can stretch his arms and legs when the boring man leaves his seat.
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Mum, Gul and Aadab are on the opposite side of the plane, while Dad spends the flight at the back. He swapped his seat at check-in when an elderly man at the next desk began complaining about the lack of sleep he'd suffer in a seat next to the toilets. Khalid thought of offering him his seat to impress Dad, but then Dad swapped his own. Always quick to help anyone old—it's an important part of his showing-respect thing.
"I'll be able to rest all the way without Gul and Aadab bothering me," Dad said, not entirely unselfishly. "There're plenty of people who will never afford this journey at all," he reminded Khalid. Aware his son was slightly miffed that the man didn't thank him.
Shifting uncomfortably in the seat, staring at the video screen in front of him, his mind drifts back to Mikael's party on the weekend and the chat he nearly had with Niamh. Suddenly he remembers the almond scent of her dark wavy hair swishing from her shoulders when she brushed past him.
"Grand party, eh, Kal?" Niamh winked. "Shame that old gas fire isn't giving out a bit of heat!"
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Khalid nodded, embarrassed. She has the kind of voice you get lost in, so he can't help being dumbstruck around her. The rest of the girls behave like stars in their own movies, jiggling their hips for an invisible camera, unlike Niamh, who's real. No cutesy pouts and head-waggling for her. No, just a little shrug and a look that says, _Here we go_.
Plus, she likes art and books. She always comes in the top three in English exams and Khalid is impressed by that. In fact she looks like someone interesting just by the way she dresses. While the other girls were squashed into tiny shorts and stretchy T-shirts that left nothing to the imagination, Niamh was dressed in that nice, white, long skirt that swung around her dainty ankles when she walked. Plus she had a baggy shirt on with a multicolored belt and loads of silver tinkly bracelets.
That's all she said to him the whole evening. Yet the way she smiled, nodded her head, rolled her big green eyes—they set his heart on fire. To him, she's the most beautiful girl in the world. Not that he'd ask her out. Well, maybe one day he will.
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He watched her crack open another beer and sit on the floor in front of the gas fire, chatting to Nico about his new MP3 player. Then a whole bunch of losers turned up, determined to get blasted, and Khalid walked out in a huff. He didn't like the way Niamh's best friend, Gilly, took over the moment she arrived. Linking arms and making her sit with them. Her glittery eye make-up was all over the place when she took the pink band from her claggy hair and glared at Khalid. Wildly blinking and posing as always.
Gilly was wrecked by the time he left. Everyone was, and though he'd had a couple of cans too, he wasn't prepared to make a fool of himself in front of Niamh, who was sadly going the same way. Anyhow, Khalid doesn't like the muzzy feeling he gets in his head when he drinks too much beer.
Besides, he has to take great care to hide the fact he's been drinking or Mum and Dad will go ballistic. Two beers are the limit before his eyes start glazing over and he slurs his words.
Khalid tucks the picture of Niamh curled up on the floor to the back of his mind as the plane descends into Karachi.
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Now they are here at last, everyone feeling fine, although the tiredness of the long flight shows clearly in Khalid's drooping eyelids. In a swarm, they hurry through the small, bustling terminal that looks nothing like the orderly airport in Manchester they left behind.
It's mayhem here, with men and women in leather sandals and shalwar kameez in every shade of brown, heaving cases, crates and boxes from one of only two carousels. Everyone's busy rescuing other things too: loads tied with string, some the size of boats, while their young, sweet, smiling children tug at knotted carpets, boxes and baskets, eager to help.
Outside, the evening feels strangely muggy to Khalid. He'd expected Karachi to be cool at night.
"Yes, cool at night in winter," Dad explains. "But from now on it's hot all the time."
So hot, Khalid wipes sweat from his forehead as they pile into an old brown taxi, catching sight of a pair of mini boxing gloves made from tiny Pakistani flags that are swinging from the driver's mirror. At the wheel is a man with striking black eyes. He glances in the mirror at Khalid. A look of kindness on his face.
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Dad warns them, "I'm afraid this will be a roundabout journey, because you know I have parcels, letters and money to deliver for my friend from the restaurant who has family in Karachi. But you will see something of the city, anyhow."
So they set off. Gul and Aadab, who are squashed up in the back, instantly fall asleep on Mum and Khalid. Dad in the front proudly points out the city he grew up in.
"Look, the shop where I bought my first book," he sighs. "That's the same furniture shop on Club Road I told you about before."
Their car quickly overtakes a yellow bus decorated like a birthday present in bright reds and greens with tassels and ribbons. Khalid glimpses a huge market crammed with fruits: tangerines, pomegranates, bananas. Coconuts piled high. Then Agha's Paradise, the one-stop supermarket selling imported Western foods, which excites Mum for a moment. Then they drive along a very different road, littered with rubbish. Old cans. Open bin bags smelling of rotten fish.
Khalid is disappointed not to see any signs of a car-jacking or gang feud.
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"Only the rich have deep enough pockets to eat here," Dad says as the taxi turns down a posh road filled with a wide choice of restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and French. Past streets with low, brown buildings. Then dark streets. Empty of people.
A rare car parked outside.
The lamps inside highlight black metal grilles fixed to windows and doors, giving Khalid the feeling there's lots of crime here. Two stops later, the parcels safely delivered, the taxi pulls up outside a plain, two-story gray building.
A concrete box with windows. _What a dump_ , Khalid thinks, instantly fed up.
The door opens and three elderly ladies, Fatima, Rehana and Roshan, in dark shalwar kameez, rush out as one to greet them. Babbling warmly with toothy grins. Their eyes take in every inch of Khalid, giving him no escape from their loving welcome and out-of-control squeals of joy that seem to go on forever.
"I'm tired, Mum," Gul says at last, while Aadab crossly rubs a hand over her nose. Both seem confused by all the fuss and noise.
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At least modesty stops the aunts from kissing and hugging, or even touching them.
"Well, we got here," Khalid says, shrugging. Immediately, he wonders how to say no to the glass cups of hot black liquid smelling of sugary cabbage that are thrust in his face the moment he sits on the long, soft sofa with a wooden ceiling fan whirring overhead.
Eventually giving in, Khalid swallows the whole lot in one go and wipes the remains from his mouth with the back of his hand. Only to see his angelic auntie Roshan fill the dainty glass again. Everyone begins talking at once. This time Khalid slides the drink behind a tall fern, hoping for the best. Gul pulls a face as she tips hers into Aadab's glass. Aadab seems to like the taste, drinking it up as if she can't wait for more of the disgusting stuff. Dad frowns at Gul to remind her of her manners, while Mum pretends not to notice. Khalid dares his sister Aadab with a long, hard stare to please get rid of his hidden drink when she's finished hers, but it doesn't work.
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After tea, the fuss dies down a bit. Gifts are given and politely put to one side for unwrapping later. Bored to tears, Khalid stares at the complicated oriental carpet under his feet until Fatima, the oldest aunt, takes pity on him.
"Come. Come." She points to the door and walks him a few paces down the hall to a small back room done up with red carpet, gold curtains and a big gilded mirror.
In the corner is a wooden bed with an old scarecrow of a man asleep in a pale green Pakistan cricket shirt. Thin black trousers tapering at the ankle. This, Khalid learns, is Fatima's husband, his uncle Amir. And a sight far harder to digest than the oriental carpet from before.
Fatima mumbles something to him, then leads Khalid to another door with a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 777 sticker on it. Fatima points to it proudly, as if Khalid might be pleased by the photo of a plane that looks a hundred years old.
"I have to go to the loo," Khalid says, thinking this is all getting a bit much.
"No. No. No." Fatima seems to be on a mission to bore Khalid to death. Or drive him nuts. Or both. She refuses to let him pass. Insists on opening the sticker door wide. Steps aside to make him peer into a black space slightly bigger than the airing cupboard at home.
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