Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (19 page)

In truth, it had been a hard assignment, much harder than she expected.

She finds Rafik at the kitchen table, drinking
Akvavit. 
She's never developed a taste for it, but gets a glass out of the cabinet and pushes it toward the bottle.  Rafik gives her a I-suppose-you-know-what-you're-doing look, pours her a glass, and pushes it back at her.

He studies her, her quivering fingers, her white face.  Absent a car crash, only one thing could make his daughter look so traumatized.  He nods silently.  “
Prosit,
” he says.

She lifts her glass.  “
Prosit.
”  The first sip burns her throat and immediately calms her.  They sit in silence for a while.  The refrigerator hums.  Branches scratch against the window.  Over the sink, the kitchen clock ticks.  “Do you remember when we used to go on hunting trips—you and Father and I?”

He gives her a surprised smile.  “Yes.”

“You would shoot at targets, but you never tracked animals with us.  You stayed in camp and read books.”  Her voice comes out paper-thin and childlike.

He regards her grumpily, guessing guns were involved.  “That's true.”

“Why?”

“I never wanted to kill anything.  Not even a rabbit.  I'd rather let them live their little lives.  We make it hard enough for them to survive.”

Salima presses her lips together.  “Have you ever shot a person?  As a cop, I mean.”

“No.  I hope I never have to.”

She nods thoughtfully.  A police commissioner doesn't go on patrol or arrest criminals.  “They say the first time is the worst, and after that it's like killing anything else.”

“I've heard that.”  His expression softens, understanding.

Tears run down her face.  She can't help herself.  Rafik makes no attempt to comfort her.  She understands he is telling her she has to learn to take care of herself.  To learn to live with the consequences of her actions.  He won't always be there.  She takes his hand and presses it to her lips. 

“Don't say it,
liefje,
” he says
.
  “Whatever it is.  Don't tell me.”

Tears turn to sobs, her chests convulsing.  She never knew secrets could hurt so much.  Rafik watches until the sobs mellow into hiccups. 

She gets up and sits in his lap, arms around his neck, clinging.

He pulls her hard to his chest, kisses her hair, then releases her.  “It is a dangerous game we play,” he says. 

She doesn't respond, letting him pet her hair and hum in her ear, an old Turkish melody, which is now illegal to sing.  She nearly falls asleep.

#

She stares at Laura Dekker for a long moment, then peals off her faded and curled black construction paper headscarf.  The tape has fused with the glossy paper.  She trims it with scissors, rather than tear the poster, leaving bandages of tape on Laura's head.  A dark halo of unfaded paper frames Laura's scowling face.  It looks ghastly. 

She should take it down, she tells herself.  A woman takes down the posters of her childhood idols.

Angry tears trickle down her face.  She doesn't know why.  As if Laura had betrayed her.  Or she had let Laura down.  A power urge to rip it down and tear it to shred makes her whole body tremble.  Yet she cannot bring herself to take it down.

She feels so ashamed.

Laura would be twenty-four now.  Faring the seas by herself for almost ten years. 

Salima can't help but think that she would understand.  The uncomfortable hardening she feels going on inside her body.  Her desire to flee.

If she ran, what would she do with the rest of her life?  Wait for the war to be over?

She has changed a great deal in the past few years.  Her senses sharpened.  She walks in the street, her eyes scanning faces, potential threats, exits—without breaking stride.  Strategic planning consumes her daily life.  Every move analyzed, risks weighed against worse options, zeroing in on the best path for survival.  

What if the changes are permanent?  What if killing becomes easy?  Easy as it is for twelve-year-old Syrian boys, mowing down refugees with their AK-47s.

What if she loses her humanity?

Salima stands on her pillow, and carefully takes down the poster, rolls it up, and puts it in her closet.

#

It doesn't take long for Gerda to get word of Salima's shooting expertise and to make use of it.  She tells her to hone her skills.

At 16 Madelievenstraat,
Salima pushes aside the wardrobe and enters the secret annex.  It's been a while since she'd been there, usually to add money, change out expired food and supplies, or clean and oil her father's guns.

She recalls Pieter and Jana fighting over his guns.  Pieter wanted his collection close by, Jana refused to have them in the house.  He finally won, the guns kept in a locked gun locker in his office.  When he moved them into the secret annex, Jana said nothing.  Circumstances had changed.

Salima runs her hands over the rifles.  There are three.  Pim said he would take a look and see if he could modify them into sniper rifles, adding a scope and silencer.  The question is how to get one to him.  There is only so much a burka can
hide.

Pim suggests a plumber, who, after making several trips in and out of her house, carries a pipe that hides a rifle back to the van.  Pim modifies it easily.  Salima takes another rifle to Uncle Sanders farm and practices on marsh rats.  After a few weekends, she feels ready. 

For anything.

PART 2

Ten, April 2001

Turkey

Kazan Basturk grows up in a small town outside of Ankara, the capital of Turkey, in a rural hilly landscape of orchards with flocks of sheep and goats.  When the spring snows melt, before the scorching summer, the hills erupt in lush green grasses, with flowers everywhere, purple hyacinths and bluebells, pink cherry blossoms, and a million white bonnets in the pear and plum trees. 

Kazan's earliest years are his happiest.

He runs barefoot through waist-high grasses, chasing baby lambs and kids born in the winter, wobbly and awkward.  With a single shout, boys converge to play soccer, and when they are hungry they slip off and pick wild lettuces and spring onions by the creek. 

His father, Ahmed Basturk, and Uncle Levent run an import/export business in Ankara with a third brother, Hamza, who lives with his family in Amsterdam.  What do they import and export?  It is impolite to ask.  Ahmed keeps his family in the Turkish countryside.  He says he does not want them spoiled by modern ideas.  He visits every few months, driving a silver-metallic Mercedes, smelling of expensive cologne, his arrival announced by a toot of his horn and a horde of hollering village kids, who chase the car, slapping its fenders and windows.  He emerges from the car, his perfect white teeth grinning, with slicked back hair, wearing a dark brown suit with a light blue triangle of a handkerchief in the breast pocket, cuff links, no tie.  They celebrate his homecoming as if he is returning from war.

Most of the time Kazan lives with women, his mother, Rabia, his two older sisters, Fatma and Pinar, and his younger sister Melis, who follows him around, riding their gigantic white Anatolian shepherd named Genghis.  He spends most of his time hanging around with his brother Faruk, who is four years older, playing soccer and messing around.  

They live in a small house of sun-dried bricks that is plastered with mud and straw.  It has four sleeping mats, a wooden table covered with a green vinyl tablecloth with pink flowers, two straight-backed chairs, a window, shelves nailed to the wall, and a new cast-iron stove in the corner.  There is a tandoor outside for making bread, and a chicken coop with a fence around it.  It is home.

No one in the family has seen where Ahmed lives in Ankara.  Some say he has a second wife and lives in a mansion.  Some say he has friends in government.  But nobody knows.

Come spring, there is much work in the country.  Kazan helps with the chores, paints the trunks of the apple trees with white lime with his grandfather, clears away dead brush, mends fences, plants seeds, collects eggs to sell by the road.

Under the stars on warm spring evenings, the family gathers in a clearing around a bonfire. 
His grandfather begins a story, telling of a time when the Mongols on horses swept over the mountains like the shadow of a great flag, charging across the Anatolian plains in their red leather armor and metal helmets, with red lances and lariats, axes and sabers, bows and arrows.  The children grow weary and are trotted off to bed. 

Kazan stays to hear about the wars.  “Tell me more,
Dede
.” 

The Mongol armies could travel 200 miles in three days, his grandfather tells him, changing out weary horses, placing dummies in their saddles to frighten their enemy.  A Mongol archer could shoot a bullseye at 1,600 feet.  They were masters of ruses, staging false retreats, then slaughtering their enemy.  “No one could resist them,” he says. 

Kazan is spell bound.  “Why did they want our land?”

“They thought it was their destiny.”

He is a bright boy, and even at this young age finds the notion of destiny dubious.  Is everything predetermined?  If it is, then why make an effort to do anything?  And who decides this destiny?  Allah?  Why would Allah care about him?

The village has no secondary school, and Kazan's teacher says it will be a crime if his father does not send him to Ankara, but Kazan does not think about it.  He reads the books his father brings him.  His teacher tutors him in English and French and mathematics.  Learning is as easy as breathing, and as long as it doesn't keep him away from soccer, he doesn't mind. 

Kazan knows there is another world out there, a world of televisions and cities and cars and planes and spaceships.  At the same time, he never thinks of himself as poor or disadvantaged.  Usually there is plenty to eat, and always plenty to do. 

Building things is what he loves most, working with his hands, diverting the creeks for watermills and moats and reservoirs.  The valley he lives in is plagued by too much water during spring snow melts, and drought in the long hot summer.  Kazan organizes the boys to build a simple retention pond, and lines it with broken roof tiles and glass bottles.  He invents a pulley system to irrigate a small orchard, and plants a long slender garden between two rows of trees, protecting tender lettuces from the summer sun.  He asks his father for books on hydrology and irrigation, and studies them.   He uses the coins his father gives him to send away for a kit and builds his family a solar power stove. 

The old women in the village tell him one day he'll be president of Turkey.

Kazan doesn't make much of the special attention.  He has no particular ambition.  He loves his life, and floats through the days like a fluff of milkweed.  The women spoil him when he is little, tousle his thick dark hair, give him sesame cakes, and laugh when he brings them his latest inventions.  Later his sisters tease him and say he can squeeze water from a stone, but he ignores them and takes it all in stride. 

#

On market day, Kazan and Faruk hitch a ride on a wagon to the next town over, which is somewhat larger, and lies on a major road. 

The bazaar is a riot of smells, over-ripe fruit, sheep dung, roasting kabobs.  The two boys snake their way amid the bustling crowds—the merchants and beggars and shoppers—and through the alleys cramped with rows of tightly packed stalls. 

They stop to watch the
çingene,
the Turkish gypsies, playing music, the men, lean long-legged dancers, who leap strange twisted jumps, roll their groins, and tap dance, the women, dressed in colorful shawls and golden bangles, who read fortunes, and dole out homemade cures for eczema and loneliness.

Mesmerized, Faruk watches one gypsy dancer in particular, a handsome young man, who prances and struts, bursting with vitality, a stallion, shiny and black.  Perhaps without realizing it, Faruk begins to imitate him.  Tentatively at first.  His body begins to shimmy and pulse, as if he has a castanet in his body, his feet stomping out the syncopated beats. 

Vaulting into the circle of dancers, he and the gypsy circle each other like bull fighters.  He copies the dancer's every move, lowering his chin, walking on the balls of his feet, back and arms arched, as if preparing to fly.  Like two cocks, circling one another.

The other gypsies gather round, watching, fire catching in their eyes, like hungry wolves.

“Faruk!” Kazan calls out, afraid they are going to fight.  His brother doesn't hear him, but stomps and leaps, circling tighter and tighter until they are brushing shoulders.

When the music ends, the tempest dissipates.  The gypsies cheer, and the gypsy dancer claps Faruk on the shoulders, and pours him a glass of
raki.  

Later as they meander home, Faruk seems distracted, and for a moment, Kazan worries that Faruk will run off with the gypsies.  Halfway home, his brother stops and crosses his arms over his chest, looking across the valley.  “One day, Kazan, I will go to America,” he boasts.  “I will go to Hollywood, and drive in a Cadillac.”  Kazan senses that part of him has already left.

In the weeks that follow, Faruk often hitchhikes, not to the small market town, but to Ankara, the big city.  He refuses to take Kazan.  “You are too young.”  When he returns, usually late at night, he shows Kazan movie magazines he's brought back.  His lean body is tense, jittery, excited, and he bounces around the room.  One time he sports a new watch, other times a pair of cool sunglasses or a new pair of sneakers.

“Did you steal them?” asks Kazan.

“No, stupid.  I wouldn't do that.  They're presents.”

“Presents from whom?”

“Don't ask stupid questions.”

Their father generally doesn't visit during national holidays, but he always spends at least one day of Eid al-Fitr, the three-day feast following Ramadan.  In Turkey it is calle
d
Ş
eker Bayramı,
the Holiday of Sweets.  Apart from the special clothes, and visiting of neighbors, going house to house for treats, there are shadow puppet shows, music, and dancing in the village square.

“
Bayramınız kutlu olsun!
”
 
The villagers recognize Ahmed and call out to him.  May your
bayram
be blessed.  Many stop and kiss his right hand and place it on their foreheads while wishing him
bayram
greetings, a ritual usually reserved for the village elders.  He smiles and hands them Turkish lira.

Ahmed stands proudly, a hand on each of his sons' shoulders, watching the dancers, nodding greetings to the villagers.  Faruk breaks away and begins to dance.  The other dancers fall back and give him room, clapping as he leaps and swivels his hips and stomps his feet.  The crowd is mesmerized. 

“Isn't he brilliant?” says Kazan to his father.

Ahmed frowns, his easy mood swiftly changing, his face red.  He leaves his family and goes to a
kahve,
where the men are drinking
wine and
raki.

A few weeks later, Kazan comes home from school and sees his father's car parked outside.  He senses something is wrong.  Nobody is gathered, waiting for handouts and stories.  No chirping voices of his sisters squealing over presents. 

He sidles up to a window and hears his father speaking in low tones to Faruk.  He peeks inside and sees Faruk hanging his head in shame, but still can't make out what Ahmed is saying. 

Within a week, Ahmed sends him to a school in America to a place called New England, very far away from Hollywood.

“You are the man of the family, now,” Ahmed tells him.  Kazan looks at his feet, pinching the soft dirt with his toes.  He does not want to be head of the family.  He wants his brother back.

#

When the summers grow long and lazy, everyone in the village picnics by the river, spreading their rugs under the willow trees, amid the blue flowering chicory.  Dogs leap in joy, following new scents, children run and giggle excitedly, young couples walk hand-in-hand.  The women spread tablecloths on the ground, and set out bottles of lemonade, fresh bread, spring onions, salty white cheese, stuffed peppers, and watermelons split open, their luscious red glistening flesh.  Around fires they grill
köfte,
spicy meatballs with parsley, served with crunchy little green cucumbers.  For dessert,
revani,
a honey-soaked sponge cake.  The boys fish and play marbles or soccer or throw sticks for the dogs.  The girls nap and gossip and dip their toes in the creek or pick flowers. 

When the sun goes down, the mountains become silhouettes of slumbering dragons, and the stars come out.  Kazan and the villagers stumble home, lazy and exhausted and sated.

An idyllic childhood in many ways.

The only time they learn of what is happening in the outside world is when a relative visits from Ankara, bringing newspapers and stories.

This is how they learn that two planes crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City on 9/11, and that an Islamist group called al Qaeda claimed responsibility. 

The teacher, who owns one of two televisions in town, shows Kazan and his neighbors video images of the planes, the towers, the people leaping into the air, the clouds of toxic dust.  Several old women whisper, “
Ashhadu al-la ilaha illa Llah.” 
I witness that there is no god but God.  Kazan asks what they mean, and his great uncle tells him that the old women think it signals the End of Days.

“You mean like the end of the world?”

“Yes, when the sun will rise in the west, and Jesus will return to Damascus to defeat the anti-Christ.  After a short period, where everyone lives in peace under Islam, all that is on earth will perish.”

“What happens then?”

“After a while, everyone rises from their graves to appear before Allah to be judged.  Virtuous people are led across a bridge, where Muhammad meets them at a pond on the other side in heaven.  For sinners, the bridge becomes like a sword, and they fall into hell.”

Over the next few months, the older women in the village begin to draw scarves over their hair and mouths.  Men begin going to the mosque more often.  A
muezzin
calls out the
adhan
on the loudspeaker attached to a light pole in the middle of the village.  A mullah
with a chest-length beard and a high croaking voice comes to his school once a week and lectures the children about the virtues of
zakat
and the duty of
hadj. 
He makes them memorize verses from the Quran in Arabic, and instructs them in
salat,
the five daily
prayers.
  Young men talk of jihad, pounding their fists into the air.  They talk of fighting for something greater than themselves.  Fighting for Allah.  They get together during the heat of the day and do hundreds of push-ups and wind sprints, then march around the village looking self important.  One boy gets his hands on an AK-47 and practices shooting against a stone ridge.  Everyone is grateful when he runs out of bullets.