Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (48 page)

We have drawn number eight, which means breakfast will be around eleven o'clock.  When our time comes, Belma motions to two other women I met last night, Filiz and Zaide.  Apparently the eating groups are made up of four to eight women.  She opens a locker, takes out four plastic plates and soft aluminum silverware, and lays the table.  Other women bring out food from other lockers, which are protected by padlock.  We eat Turkish-style moussaka bought from the food vendor, a pot of beans, olives, feta, bread, and tea.

Belma eats carelessly, her nimble fingers darting from her full plate to her mouth. Filiz, short and heavyset, eats slowly, daintily, and I realize she is very pretty, her heavy dark hair pulled back from her heart-shaped face, her smooth unblemished skin the color of cappuccino.  Zaide, wiry and young, waits until everyone else has served themselves, then gobbles up every last crumb.

While Zaide finishes eating, Belma and Filiz and I drink tea.  They smoke Samsun cigarettes, an unfiltered Turkish brand.  The whole country stinks of them, and there is no escaping them here.  I can't bring myself to smoke, but do appreciate that it covers up some of the more noxious smells of the prison.

Coffee is barred by prison rule because the women prisoners can't resist reading the future in the grounds in the bottom of the cup.  Fortune-telling is strictly
haram—
which makes it the women's favorite pastime.  They make do with tea leaves.

There is a short discussion about money.  I'm to give Belma two Turkish lira every morning for purchasing food from a man who comes around selling food.  Two lira is about sixty cents.  Belma asks for another ten lira for my share of staples—butter, olive oil, canned tomato paste, beans, rice, and pasta.  Apparently Zaide has no money, and does the cleaning up for us.  We split her share. 

After we eat, the women return silently to their bunks, curl up, and sleep through the afternoon.  I lay on my shared bunk and look at the stained mattress above me poking through a metal mesh. 

I feel myself slowly slipping into a thick fog of despair.  I am caught in a riptide, and everything seems to be floating away, until I realize I'm the one floating away.

This will not do.

Okay, Salima, you are twenty, you've been in scrapes before.  This time it's worse.  Even more reason to prepare yourself to fight back.  You mustn't let these women get into the habit of thinking you're a helpless foreigner, a woman expecting her first child, clueless and frightened.  You must be calm.  You'll find a way out.  You always do.

#

Durin
g
the body count the next morning, the ground gives a sudden jolt; the walls tremble, and the metal security doors clank and rattle, sounding like a hundred metal lockers slamming shut.  The guards and soldiers spring to attention, scrambling out of the prison into the courtyard, shouting nervously.  They look up anxiously, as if expecting some kind of ambush.  A few dive under concrete picnic tables at one end of the courtyard, hands over their heads.  The female prisoners laugh at their cowardice, and the warden yells at them to be silent.  After a few minutes, with no follow-up shaking, the warden orders the guards to go back to their stations.

Later Belma explains.  “We have earthquakes all the time.  Five years ago, several guards were killed by a falling wall in an older part of the prison during an earthquake.  That is why it was condemned.  The guards are terrified of earthquakes, and scatter like mice whenever we get a little shaker.  It amuses us.  They aren't so tough after all.  I wish we'd get a real shaker and bury the fuckers.”

“
Inshallah,”
I say.  God willing. 

A Visitor

“Get up!”  Belma jiggles my shoulder, irritatingly insistent.  What could be so urgent?  “Soldier here.  You get visitor.”  I hear a rattling of keys behind me, and raise my head.  Two guards, a particularly nasty pair, stand grim-faced outside of the open cell.  I roll out of bed, and clip on my veil.

“Abeela
Burakgazi
.  Come with us.”

My stomach sinks.  This can't be good. 
No . . . please, I don't want to be tortured. 
I quietly get up and follow them, looking around for any chance to escape.  I see none. 

I vaguely remember passing this intersection enclosed by bars when I first came here.  Several guards and UNI soldiers hang out, watching television.  We turn left down a corridor of small cubicles, where an emaciated man is getting a haircut.  Pre-execution grooming?  He looks groggy, his head lolling.

I am led to a small windowless room with a large table and two wooden benches.  A woman in full burka sits, elbows on the table.  I wonder if Erol has come dressed as a woman.  But no, he is far too large to pass for a woman.  I sit down in front of her. 

A guard, who does not appear to speak English, stands inside the door, observing us.  A plastic ashtray, caked with the brown sap of nicotine and filled with ashes, sits in front of me.

The woman leans in close and drops her veil.  “
Gü nyden
.  Your husband has a friend, whose mother loves Donatello.  Do you know who I am?”  Her voice is cordial, if officious, with a slight Italian accent. 

“Yes,” I say, recalling Kazan's vivid stories about Laszlo's eccentric mother.  I am astonished she is here. 

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Yes, I'm fine.  The women here are kind.  How did you find me?”

She taps her fingertips impetuously, lowering her voice.  “What you did—coming to Turkey—was reckless, but going out alone in Istanbul was totally irresponsible.  When Erol realized you'd been arrested, he immediately contacted us.”

For a moment, I am suspicious.  How do I know this woman is who she says she is?  Maybe she is a plant, here to wheedle secrets out of me.  But I realize the prison staff could have no idea I have any connection to a woman named Ana Luzzatti.  “You are Mossad?” I guess.

She nods slightly.  “I would've let you rot in prison, but Erol said you were pregnant with Kazan's child.  I promised Kazan I would make sure you were safe.”

“Where is he?”

“Still in prison.  We are working to get him free.  We should be able to get him out with bribes.”

“Has he been tortured?”

“No.  They think he is a small time smuggler.  They are far more interested in political prisoners.  You, on the other hand, were caught with a pistol, a grave crime, and it points to you being a Resistant.  We may be able to get you out on a prisoner exchange, but it will take time.”

“Will Kazan be able to visit me when he gets out.”

“That would be unwise, but I may be able to pass on his letters.”

My heart sinks.  I bury my face in my hands.

Ana continues.  “When you are released, I will put you on a ferry in Izmir to Italy.  I will give you a contact name in Otranto, where we have a safe house.  You should be fine there.”  She leans in closer, her voice a whisper.  “Prepare yourself for a shooting star.  Do you know what I mean.”

“I think so.  When?”

“Soon.  You know there will be no working phone lines, no way to contact me, or anyone.”

“Yes.”

“If it happens before we get you out, you must make it to the coast on your own.”

“How?  I'm in prison!”  This cryptic conversation is making me irritable.

“When the authorities realize it isn't one of their weekly blackouts, and discover their generators and radios don't work, and hear the planes overhead, they will abandon their posts.  Resistants will storm the prisons and free the prisoners.  You are a half mile from the Sea of Marmara.  Find an oyster fisherman named Aydin.  He will give you a new ID and take you to the Izmir ferry.”

“How am I supposed to leave without knowing if Kazan is safe?  If he got out of jail?  If he's caught in the middle of the invasion?  I can't live with that.”

“Trust me.  Word will get to you.  Kazan needs to stay as a liaison between Coalition Forces and the Resistance.  As soon as Turkey is under Coalition control, he will join you in Italy.  The work of the Resistance will be over.  Until then, there are few places in the world as beautiful as Otranto.”  She pats my hand, which makes me want to slug her.  “I left some reading material for you with the prison director.  They'll be examined and sent on to you.”

It suddenly hits me how very hard other people have gone out of their way for me, and I feel deeply ashamed.  “I trust you
,
” I say.  “
Grazie
.  You're my angel.”

Perhaps an odd thing to say, but she knows what I mean.  “
Prego,”
she says, smiling.  “Good luck.  Keep a low profile.  You do not want to get interrogated.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Is there anything else I can bring you?”

I think of the list of things I had bought for Kazan.  “Toiletries.  And a Turkish dictionary.”  I think for a moment and add, “Vitamins and folic acid.  Toilet paper.  Plastic dishes and silverware.  Everyone has to provide their own.  Clogs.”

“Clogs?”

“There are puddles everyplace.  Oh . . . and a couple of birthday cards.”

She raises a skeptical eyebrow, but asks no more questions.  “I'll make sure you get them.  You should write to your husband, Erol.”

“Erol?”

“It will look strange if you do not.”  She squeezes my hand.  “Take heart.  It shouldn't be more than a few months.”

A few months?  Here?  You've got to be kidding.

Ana gets up and motions the guard, who leads her away.  Another guard takes me back to my sisters in the cell block.

Imprisonment Drags On

You think it is the end of the world.  But the world doesn't end.  It just becomes something else.  It is amazing how quickly one can get used to things.

The following days are much like the first—roll call, waiting to eat, eating, sleeping, watching TV.

Every week we have cell block searches.  Young female soldiers in smart khaki uniforms frisk down the prisoners, pulling apart beds, strewing papers and books.  Fights break out among the women, weeping and raging as they witness the hording and petty thefts of others.  Violence is routine, and becomes acceptable.

I am the only European, and therefore a novelty.  One by one, women come to talk to me, or communicate however best they can, trying to find a connection.  Some tell me their boyfriends are European, or they once had a friend who was Dutch.  Or they like tulips.  Or cheese.  They give me offerings.  A ring.  A cobalt blue evil eye pendant.  A jar of Nutella, which is much appreciated.  One woman lived six years in Germany with her husband.  She has forgotten most of her German, but we manage to communicate.  Several women want me to explain the lyrics of American pop songs.

I fight this overwhelming and paralyzing fear that's growing inside of me, a feeling of powerlessness, of abandonment.  Although I receive Ana Luzzatti's care package, I begin to doubt  whether she ever really visited me.  I begin to doubt if Kazan ever existed.  Or the world out there.  I begin to doubt my Dutchness.  All I have is my memory.  What if I begin to forget?  Who will I be?

My biggest fear is that I may never see Kazan again.

I wake in the middle of the night.  The TV is still on in the corner.  One of the sixty-watt light bulbs has flickered out.  I hear muffled moaning and faint clanking, as if someone is hitting a pipe.  I slip out of bed and pick my way to the far wall.  The moaning and clanking is coming from the other side.  Like the moaning of ghosts.  I wonder how the other women aren't awakened.

The next morning, when we line up in the courtyard, I observe that our cell ends twenty feet before the outside wall.  Several feet below the roof-line are two small windows, sealed with aluminum sheeting.  Later, I ask Belma about it.

“They took Gül,” Belma explains.  “One of the terrorist girls.  Their leader.  They take one at a time to interrogate, then lock 'em in there.”  Her chin lifts and points to the far wall.  “No light, only bread and water.  Very bad.  She's been in there for a week.  Soon she gets out.”

There's no particular reason the “terrorist girls” should trust me.  The authorities put moles in among prisoners all the time.  But I think I should warn them about what's coming.  Whether they choose to believe me or not, or think I am a spy, is not important.  If I were their leader, I would at least consider the possibility that what I say is true.  I would tell everyone to lay low—no protests or hunger strikes.  And devise a plan.

The question is how to talk to them without raising suspicions among the rest of the women.

It isn't long before I learn that one of the women, Omay, has a birthday.  I take one of the birthday cards, a very pretty photo of spring in the mountains, and take it around to each woman to sign.  I don't know what the card says in Turkish, but the women like it, giggling and making furtive glances at Omay.  Those who can't sign their name make an X or a smiley face.

The errand brings me to the terrorist girls.  As I go from one to another, I tell them in French that I need to speak to Gül when she gets out.

That evening, after a long discussion among the women as to who will have the honors, Belma gives Omay the birthday card, who makes a short speech and cries.  She has never received a birthday card before.