Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (31 page)

Tarek had disappeared for a second—which was probably just as well given my libelous text—but returned with a gift.

“Take this,” he said. “It’s one of our CDs. I hope you’ll listen to it.”

“I definitely will!”

“Right—to the bar!”

The night was coming to an end and Tarek and I knew it. We were sitting outside at the Strandbar, yards from the River Spree,
with sand underfoot and tropical plants all around. It was a hot night, with a happy at mo sphere, and the distant, irregular
toot of car horns the only reminder that the World Cup had even happened.

“Maybe we should get some bubbly,” I said, “so people could catch you rubbadubbin’ in it.”

Tarek laughed and I looked over at his pals.

“You’ve got a nice bunch of mates,” I said.

“They’re cool. And Papo even said he felt a bit inspired to try and find an old friend of his. I said he’s not old enough
yet.”

I laughed, but I didn’t know what Tarek meant.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, and Tarek nodded. “You mentioned you’ve been doing this too? Trying to track people down,
I mean?”

Tarek nodded.

“It was all to do with turning thirty,” he said, and I kept quiet, even though all I wanted to do was shout “Me too!” But
it slowly dawned on me what he’d meant about Papo.

“I don’t know why, but every time I looked for someone, or found the old school website, I would think about turning thirty.
When I found someone, or I talked to them, I’d always ask them if they’d turned thirty yet. I don’t know why. I don’t know
why it was so important. But it started because I found this old website for my first school. There were about forty people
looking for friends they’d known in the seventies. About twenty people trying to find people they knew in the eighties. But
from the nineties there were only two or three. And that made me think, maybe people gradually want to reconnect with the
past. It’s a cycle. It happens to nearly everyone. And I thought, well, maybe it’s my time. And it seems like you’re the same.
Have you turned thirty yet?”

“I’m a few months off,” I said.

“I was too. It was coming. I turned thirty-one last week. Seems like you’re exactly one year behind me.”

It did. And it seemed strange. I’d found a kindred spirit here.

“It was a strange thing, turning thirty,” said Tarek. “I wasn’t scared of it. It’s just that ‘thirty’ sounds so much older
than ‘twenty-nine.’ Your twenties are gone. That exciting period, that whole decade, when you’re becoming your own person.
And now you realize you’re supposed to
be
your own person, and if you don’t feel ready, or you’re not sure you’re ready, it can be scary, somehow. In a way I miss
being young. When you see a kid who’s seventeen, eighteen, on the streets, you can see what it feels like. Not worrying, being
cool, being indestructible, and suddenly when you’re about to hit thirty you worry that all that is gone. And for me, that’s
why I looked for my friends. It’s why I looked for
you.
”

“You’d looked for
me?
”

“Sure. I’d even sent an email to one I thought was yours.”

This was incredible to me. Sometimes, in years gone by, I’d wondered where people were. Wondered if they’d ever wondered where
I was. Maybe right now someone is wondering where
you
are, how
you
are, what
you’re
up to.

“Who else?” I asked.

“Josh. The three of us had so much fun together. It seems a pity all that’s gone, man.”

How cool would it have been if the three of us could have gotten back together? Just for one night. One night in Berlin. That
would’ve been amazing. And then I realized… maybe there
was
a way…

“When Josh moved back to Colorado, he made me learn his address, like a little rhyme… the number of the house rhymed with
the street name…”

The only other time in my life I’d been forced to learn an address was when I was five years old and living in Dundee. A Malaysian
kid named Zairul told me I had to go and visit him when he moved back to Malaysia. I promised I would and asked him where
his house was. He told me it was number 3. To this day, a part of me still wants to try and find number 3, Malaysia. But how
about
Josh?

“It was…
something
Drive. 635
something
Drive. Or 195
something
Drive. It ended in a five and it was a drive, and it scanned perfectly… and it was in Boulder, Colorado… and his dad had
a weird name, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” said Tarek. “His dad’s name was Chuck.”

“Chuck! That’s it! But what was the address?”

Tarek shrugged, and said, “Why?”

“Give me a second,” I said. “What’s the number for German international inquiries?”

Tarek told me and I dialed it up.

“What country, please?”

“America, please…”

“City and state?”

“Boulder, Colorado…”

“Name?”

“Miller.”

“Address?”

“Ah…”

“Address, please?”

“Well, it ends in a five, and it’s a drive.”

“Sir…”

“Please! This is really important! It’s C. Miller, in Boulder, with those details!”

“There are
a great deal
of Millers in…”

“Please! I’m in Berlin with a very old friend of Mr. Miller and we’re trying to get through to him with some vital news, and
all we’re missing is the…”

“I have a C. Miller at Lindauer Drive…”

“That’s it! Lindauer! That’s
it!
”

I high-fived Tarek, took down the number and high-fived him again.

“Shall we call him?” I said. “Shall we call Josh?”

“Yes—but last I heard he’d moved to Missoula…”

“Well his parents might have a number for him if they still live there… what time’s it over there?”

“Morning! Do it! Call Josh!”

I dialed the number and Tarek and I held our breath. The dull monotone of the American ring crackled slightly down the phone,
as if to remind us just how far away we were pinning our hopes… but no one was answering…
if only his dad would pick up,
I thought… and then…

“Hello?”

Hang on. That wasn’t Josh’s dad. That was a
very familiar voice.
That was…

“Josh?”

A pause.

“Speaking.”

I couldn’t quite believe it.

“Hey, this is… this is
Berlin
calling…”

There was a split second where Josh may have blinked a few times before working it out.

“… Danny?”

“Yes! And not only me! Tarek’s here too!”

“What? You
serious?
How
are
you guys?”

“We’re great! How about you?”

“Life just kind of goes on, man… how did you know I was here?”

“We didn’t!”

“But I just happen to be in the house for a coupla days, visiting my dad. I just walked in and picked up the phone. I live
in Anchorage, now. Alaska, man…”

What were the chances of this? Of me and Tarek being together after all these years, of remembering even part of an address,
of phoning the number, and of a man who doesn’t live there anymore and usually lives in
Alaska
being there and picking up? It felt like it was
meant to be
…

“What are you doing in
Alaska?
”

“Just doing my thing, dude, you know me. I’m into cross-country skiing at the moment so it seemed like a good place to be.”

“Where did you used to be?” I said, secretly relishing the word “dude.”

“I was in New Mexico. The skiing is pretty bad there.”

Same old Josh. Dry as a bone. I smiled. It was good to hear his voice.

And then it was like he suddenly realized the odds that had been against us all ever speaking again.

“This is… well, this is
cool,
” he said.

“Here’s Tarek! He’s a rapper now!” I said, taking care to accentuate the double “p.”

I passed the phone over and then watched as Tarek had a delighted conversation with a friend he hadn’t seen in sixteen years,
and I felt proud that I’d been able to make that happen for him, just as he’d made it happen for me by agreeing to meet up.

When the conversation finished, Tarek looked at me with joy in his face.

“He told me he’d looked for us both over the years on the Internet but never managed to get in touch!”

“Seriously? I guess we’re
all
doing it.”

I was starting to think there was something fundamental to all this. A human rite of passage we all go through. Maybe it’s
just easier for us than it was for our parents. The world is smaller these days. A man from London
can
go to Berlin and phone America, all in the same matter of hours, and along the way reignite two separate friendships. Tarek
agreed.

“Maybe,” he said, “this looking-back thing… maybe it’s to do with responsibility. It can be scary. I mean, not getting married,
because getting married was really cool. My wife being pregnant—that was really cool too. But the day your child is born is
really scary. The day I picked my wife and my kid up from the hospital—
that
was scary. The fact that you now have a kid which is yours to look after for eighteen years… that’s terrifying. Plus our
apartment was very small and we had no money whatsoever. But soon the kid becomes the only thing you care about. My wife,
she had a better job than I did so she went back to work after three weeks, so I raised our daughter for the first two years.
And it was hard, a lot of times. But now when I look at the relationship she has with me… that’s great. She’s a daddy’s girl.
And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Suddenly I realized my own crisis of confidence had been the most trivial thing in the world. Why had display cushions and
lattes and Latvian brunches worried me? Tarek had had a child to raise under difficult circumstances.
That’s
responsibility. And he was only one year ahead of me. Our desires to reconnect with the past had crossovers… but his reasons
were more pure than my own shamefully trivial ones.

“So what I mean is, it’s cool to hang on to your past,” he said, thoughtfully. “If you don’t remember your friends, you don’t
remember your life. If you compare the things you remember with your friends, you can get the whole picture—who you were,
what you were like, maybe even why you are like you are. Sometimes, someone else will remember something that was huge in
their life, but which was tiny in yours…”

I was suddenly reminded of something. Something I really wanted to tell Tarek. Something I wanted to thank him for. I looked
around. Papo and BRD were deep in conversation. Axl was chatting to someone else. I felt I could do this without embarrassing
him.

“Do you remember,” I said, “one day after school, we were on the bus. I was heading home, you were going off to play basketball
or something. And there were these kids on the bus, these older kids?”

Tarek screwed up his face, trying to remember where I might be going with this…

“… and I’d just got one of those JFK jackets. The cool ones with your name sewn on in silver, and the leather arms…”

“Okay…” said Tarek, struggling to place the day.

“And one of these kids was staring at me, and his friends were making jokes, and then when he caught my eye he pointed at
my jacket, looked me straight in the eye and gestured that he had a knife.”

“Ah,” said Tarek. “Yeah, that was always happening. They stole my Redskins jacket, too. A group of kids with knives. You don’t
hear it so much these days. So did they take your jacket?”

“No!” I said. “That’s just it! I told you what was going on, and you stared back at them, and they kind of backed off, and
then you stayed on the bus with me for a few extra stops until they’d gone. You had to walk back for ages and you nearly missed
your basketball game!”

“It… sounds familiar,” he said. “I
kind of
remember it.”

“But that was such a big thing for me!” I said. “I’d been looked after by my mate, in a foreign city, when I’d been scared.”

“Maybe that’s what I mean when I say that for you, it was a big event in your life. And for me, I played a small role. But
I’m pleased I could.”

“Thank you, Tarek,” I said, and I shook his hand, getting ready to leave. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

We hugged. I’d banished a demon. I’d
become
a Demon.

And I walked back to Europe’s tiniest hotel room, happy.