Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (34 page)

There it is, the awful truth.  Once you begin risking your life every day, you become addicted to the adrenaline rush, and the romance of rebellion.  Staring death in the face, you feel exhilarated and alive.  Everyday existence feels oppressive. 

Gerda looks at me sternly, knowingly.  “We can't risk losing your position.”

“Something.  A one night gig.  Anything.”

“Are you sure you can get away without notice?”

“Kazan works all the time.  He doesn't want servants in the house.  Getting out is easy.”

Gerda looks at Hansen, then back at me.  “Doesn't that seem strange?  Most Muslim men require a servant or female relative to stay with you overnight if he is going to be away.”

“He isn't as strict as the others,” I say lamely. 

“Based on the bug in the Basturk household, we've managed to intercept several arms shipments, but we need to know more.  You've given me nothing I didn't already know.”  

I blush to my roots.

She looks at me for several moments, evaluating me, running through options.  She hands her tea cup to Hansen for a refill.  “We need someone inside the Basturk household.  We had hoped that would be you.  Newly married couples often live with the groom's parents, especially if the husband travels.  Could you find an excuse—you're frightened to be alone—something to get you in there.  We need someone with access to Ahmed's office.  Someone who can overhear conversations, take note of Ahmed's visitors,  photograph documents.”

Kazan has made it clear he doesn't want me living with his family.  Befriending one of the servants would take time, and bribes do not ensure trust.  My ally, Melis?  No.  Rebelling against onerous rules is one thing, betraying family quite another.  “I think I might know a way,” I say. 

“Go on,” says Gerda.

“Rabia Basturk's sister, Dilara Yilmaz, loses servants all the time.  She is continuously looking for new ones.  She spends most of her day with her sister in the Basturk household.”

“Can a female servant get access to the men's chambers?”

“Yes.  Women are not allowed in those rooms, except the female servants.  They are not considered important enough to exclude from male conversations.”

Gerda shakes her head grimly.  “Perhaps you could ask one of the household staff how they were hired.”

“I have a better idea.  I need to hire a housekeeper, one of our own.”

“You work well with Nasira,” Gerda suggests.

I shake my head.  “The Basturks would never have a black woman as a servant.”

“How about Femke?”

“Too pretty.  Pretty servants are often taken as sex slaves by the men in the household.  I need someone who is middle aged, extremely competent, and pleasant.  Someone who makes great desserts.”

“Wilma.  She'll be perfect.”  Gerda gets up, excited, when I tell her my plan. “I never imagined we might get someone in Ibrahim Yilmaz's household.  This could be huge.”

Tea

Wilma starts as my housekeeper.  She is over forty, an incredibly nice woman, very efficient.  I learn she was a veterinarian in her former life, before the Islamic Council banned dogs and abolished swine farms.  There isn't enough work from cats to keep her business open, so she joined the
Resistance full time.  Before the war, she loved to bake to unwind after a day of work, a hobby most difficult to pursue with butter and sugar shortages.

Wilma is kind and sweet, and loves to laugh.  It is easy to adore her.  The more I adore her, the more Dilara will try to steal her.

I invite Kazan's sisters over for tea, including his sister-in-law, Basma.  I also invite his mother, knowing she hates to leave the house and will send Dilara in her place.  This is better than inviting Dilara in the first place.  She will arrive with a chip on her shoulder, and will need to put me in my place.

Just in case she hesitates, I ask Melis to encourage Dilara to come.  “Tell her she needs to chaperon the younger women.”  Melis senses collusion and immediately agrees.

Pim works overtime getting me extra coupon cards for chocolate, butter, and sugar.  I ask Jana to come over, and Wilma teaches us how to bake petits fours, profiteroles, pots de crème, chocolate truffles, and cherry clafouti.  I stop by Niko Nazar's.  I know Dilara has a weakness for his chocolate éclairs.

Of Kazan's sisters, only the three oldest come—Fatma, Pinar, and Melis.  Basma is busy taping her show.  As expected, Rabia sends her regrets; Dilara accompanies the younger women.  She enters the house, chin in the air, obviously put out by this social obligation—until she sees the spread of delicacies.  She has barely taken off her niqab
before she rushes into the living room, eye's wide at the powdery confections.  “Salima, did you make all of this yourself?  I can hardly believe it!”

“I don't cook,” I say modestly, “but I found the most wonderful woman to help me.  She cleans and shops, too.  Kazan adores her cooking.  I couldn't run the household without her.” 

Wilma cleverly picks this time to enter the room, carrying a plate of chocolate éclairs.  Dilara lets out a small gasp.  

All the women dig in, gorging themselves, even Pinar, who never lets anyone see her eat.  It is a rare treat.  No one has seen marzipan since before the war.  The sugar high loosens tongues and the women chat and giggle, gossiping about their husbands and children.  Talking about sex is strictly forbidden, so naturally that is the women's favorite topic.

I make a point of getting up and talking to Wilma, touching her hand lightly in appreciation.  She makes a small bow, and hurries out as if to do my bidding.  I see Dilara take note of Wilma's submissive demeanor.

The women stay longer than they had anticipated, but finally stagger out.  Before she leaves, Dilara pulls me aside and says, “I would kill for a cook like Wilma.  It would make Ibrahim so very happy.  Do you think I could borrow her every now and then?”

I pretend to look shocked and annoyed, then I bow my head in deference.  “It would please me very much, if it would please you.”

“Tell her I'll pay her double what you pay.”

“Of course,” I say, trying to appear hurt, looking sadly over at Wilma, who is clearing the plates.

“You really shouldn't be eating so much sugary food if you're trying to get pregnant,” says Dilara.

“You are right, of course.  I'll send her over tomorrow.”

Dilara, gloating over her little victory over me, puts on her abaya
and niqab
,
and steps out into the rain with a spring to her step. 

Eighteen, February 2021

Roommates

Kazan is trying to spend more time with me, but there is a formality about our encounters.  He is unfailingly polite.  I think of a sixth form school boy showing off his campus to the parents of a perspective student.  Yet I find I look forward to seeing him, and sense the same from him.

Sex is off the table.  He will not tell me why.  I have tried to initiate sex, wearing gauzy nightgowns (making use of Faruk's carefully chosen ensembles), posing against the light of the window, stretching my neck, smiling, or standing close to him in the kitchen, brushing his shoulder, touching his hand as I pass him the morning paper.  He clearly knows what I am doing, soaking in that slow pulsing heat that exists between two people who either are attracted to or hate one another.  He refuses to meet my eye, and sometimes we stand that way for a long moment, silent, matching our breathing.  I'm surprised the curtains don't catch on fire.  Invariably, he moves away. 

Most of the time we keep our distance—five feet seems to work—and talk about safe things.  Food.  Movies we remember.  The weather.  He is full of little kindnesses, and never returns from a trip without bringing me flowers, as if apologizing for how much time I have to spend inside. 

“Do you know why Muslims love tulips so much?” he asks, as he fills my arms with brilliant red blossoms.

“We need a reason?”

“Because their shape is like the Arab word for Allah.  During the spring in Turkey, the boulevards and public parks are filled with tulips.”

“Is that why so many Turks immigrated to The Netherlands?”

“No.  We came for the weather.” 

Eight months have passed since we married.  But no one has proposed divorce.  I guess Dilara's threats were empty, or perhaps only postponed.  I suspect the Basturks have been discussing my failure to get pregnant behind my back.  Perhaps Kazan refuses to divorce me.  For reasons of his own.

One day he gives me a present.  Anticipating yet another piece of jewelry I will never wear, I open it.  It is a CD player, strictly
haram. 
The kind people carried with them before the iPod. 

Now when he returns from trips, he smuggles
me music, CDs of all kinds—jazz, Afro-pop, classical, bassa nova, Swedish pop, and my favorite, Shakira.

“Do not play it outside of the house,” he warns me.

“I won't.”

We do not listen to music together, but it becomes a way for us to relate.  He gives me music, we talk about it.  Sometimes, when I am singing to myself in the kitchen, I will turn around and see him watching.  “Don't stop,” he says.

I learn nothing about his work and feel like an absolute failure.  I'm wasting my time here.  I get a few stories about his childhood, going to school in Switzerland, learning the diamond business from Uncle Osman in Zürich.  I wait for him to drop some clue, something I can work with.  I get nothing.

One morning he tells me he will be gone for three weeks.  He holds both of my wrists and makes me face him, the way you try to talk sense into a stubborn child.  He looks me directly in the eyes.  “Listen to me, Salima.  If I don't come back, the numbers to the safe are scratched into the frame over the toilet.  I'm sorry . . . about everything.  You'll be fine.  There are instructions and money.”  He kisses the top of my head and leaves.

I give him a half hour, then go to each of the toilets.  Only the guest toilet has a picture over it.  I take it off the wall, and study the back of the frame.  My thumb senses a rough spot along one edge.  I get a magnifying glass, and find a string of thirteen numbers, etched into the back molding of the frame.  I write down the numbers, memorize the string, then burn the paper.

I realize he never told me where the safe is.  I cover the house top to bottom yet again.  No safe. 

He expects me to figure it out.  Some kind of test.  To see what kind of brain I have—a conniving, puzzle-solving brain, or the innocent and obedient brain of the young Muslim woman I pretend to be. 

No, he knows me better than that by now.

What clues has he given me?  The music he's gifted me?  Stories from his childhood in Turkey?  Does any one stand out as different?

“We had television—not our family, but in town,” I recall him saying.  “The schoolmaster had one, the pharmacist, maybe one or two more.  Once a week our teacher played a movie in the schoolhouse—
Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, Terminator, Speed, LA Confidential, Matrix, Harry Potter—
we saw them all
.
  After it finished, we'd make him run it again.”

“Your teacher let you see
Pulp Fiction?”

“He made us promise not to tell our parents.  They probably wondered about the new Travolta gestures we added to our dances.  What do you call it—that V thing he did with his fingers?”

“Snake eyes?  I don't know.”

“The thing is, the electricity was always going out—usually during some heart-pumping action sequence.  It drove us crazy.  We had all these junk cars sitting around, so I took an old car generator, hooked it up to a paddle wheel on the stream, getting 12 to 14 volts, then ran it through an inverter to get 120 volts, and plugged in.  We got to see a whole movie, uninterrupted.  Only worked when the water was high, of course.  We looked forward to bad weather.”

I recall seeing an electrical panel in the mud room and one in the pantry.  Two for one house?  It had never struck me as odd until now.  I go to the pantry and switch off the circuit breakers.  The refrigerator stops humming.  I flip them back on, then try the electrical panel in the mud room, switching them all off.  The overhead light does not go out.  My nails slip under the edge of the panel.  I tug hard, but it doesn't budge.  I shouldn't have to force it.  Pressing firmly with my fingertips, I edge around the panel. 

Suddenly it pops open.  The gleaming steel door of a safe. 

I spin out the combination and slowly open a twenty-square-inch vault.  A Jericho gun sits on top of papers.  I take everything out.  A passport and travel documents for me under a different name.  Twenty thousand euros cash.  A small bag of diamonds.  A joint bank account statement for Kazan and me at a Danish Bank with a balance of eighty-three thousand euros.  The deed to an apartment in Copenhagen in my name.  And a sealed envelope with my name on it—the instructions he mentioned, I assume.

Several things strike me.  He is doing something very risky and doesn't expect to return.  If he doesn't return, he thinks I am in danger and should disappear.  He also doesn't trust his family to treat me fairly after his death, and wants to provide for me.

Like a husband.

Why does he have a Jericho pistol, standard issue of the Israeli police?

I can only conclude that he is going on a suicide mission.  But that makes no sense.  He is too far up the food chain for that.  Suicide missions are for young adolescent boys with golden keys in their pockets, who don't know better. 

I decide not to open the envelope.  If he comes back, he'll know I have snooped.  I put everything back in the safe, spin the lock, close the circuit panel, and turn out the light.

A Curious Event

The
Islamic Council
issues a new fatwa.  It bans women from walking with pride, or walking in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Where are we supposed to walk?” I demand of Pim truculently.  We meet at Freyja's, where I do my grocery shopping.  I cannot live without seeing the people I care about.  Uncle Sander keeps an eye out for us. 

“Walk wherever you want.  Just not in the middle,” Pim says, grinning.  “No one wants to have to say 'excuse me' to a prideful woman.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.  We wear veils.  How could anyone tell if we're walking with pride or not?”

“I'm sure I could tell.”  He grabs my hand and pulls me onto his lap.  He kisses my neck, his hands groping, struggling to find a way under my burka.

“You better let me go before we break another fatwa.”  I kiss him on the cheek and slip off.

The National Fatwa Council has more than 300 bans on the books.  Amsterdam has 700 more. 

Even the most ardent Muslims are beginning to object.

Then overnight, posters go up all over the city—on construction sites, on bridges, on the walls of canals, on store windows—declaring “National Pet a Dog Day.”  The poster shows a woman in
a headscarf
holding an adorable Pomeranian with the biggest doggy grin you've ever seen.  Three things are incredibly wrong here.  The woman is not veiled and is grinning; dogs are impure, and should never be touched; and except for religious events, meetings of more than five people is forbidden. 

I ask Nasira if she knows who put up the posters.  “I don't know,” she says.  “It isn't anyone from the Resistance, as far as I know.”

“Where do you think it will be held?  It doesn't say on the poster.”

“That's probably on purpose, to divide police presence.  My guess would be any place dogs hang out.”

“The parks?”

Melis drops by and asks me to go.  Her face glows, eyes twinkling in a feverish state of excitement.  I've never seen her so animated.  “I want to pet a dog.  Please, Salima.  I can't get any of my sisters to go.  They think dogs are disgusting.  I know you had a dog.  I saw the picture in your bedroom.”

“Angus.  My Golden Retriever.”

“Will you go with me?  Please, Salima?”

“Of course.”  I know I shouldn't.  I know too much to risk arrest.  And if the Basturks discover our outing, they will never forgive me for corrupting Melis.  Honestly, is a sloppy dog kiss that horrifying? 

Off we go, a short walk from Kazan's apartment.  In the middle of the sidewalk.   

“What's it like,” Melis asks, “to own a dog?”

A warm rush floods my body, surprising me.  I bite down on my lips, searching for the words.  “It's like all the happiness in the world rolled up in one wiggly creature, who adores you.  A dog is your best friend, your child, your workout buddy, your clown, your bodyguard.  When he lies beside you, you feel a warm golden connection between you.  A dog is love.”

“You've slept with a dog?”  She giggles, scandalized.

“Many times.  More than one at a time.  Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”

“As long as we keep you covered, it's okay.  No one will know it's you.”

Laughing in the streets.  We can't stop breaking laws. 

We turn the corner.  Thousands of people and hundreds of dogs.  Where did they all come from?  How were they kept secret?

The mood is festive.  Dogs yipping and yapping and tearing all over the place.  Islam strictly prohibits abuse to animals, so the
mutaween
are flummoxed, spinning in circles, spouting Hadiths no one listens to.  Even the soldiers are petting the dogs.

Niko Nazar hands out small bags of doggie treats, tied in pink ribbons.  I wave and sidle up to him.  “Did they teach you to make doggie treats at Le Cordon Bleu?”

“Only in the master chef classes.”

The cookies are in the shape of fire hydrants, which look scandalously similar to an imam in ceremonial garb.  And to a penis.

One
mutawa
in a white beard and a crisp blue tunic rants at the top of his voice.  “If a dog licks the vessel of any one of you, throw away whatever was in it and wash it seven times.”  A Husky trots over and sits in front of him, watching him, growling whenever he tries to take a step.  Good boy.

Melis is like a kid in a candy shop, going from dog to dog, petting each one.  At first she reaches out and tentatively taps their heads, laughing excitedly.  Then she dives in for a hug, grabbing fistfuls of fur, burying her face in their coats.  I wonder what's gotten into her.

We stay an hour or so.  I wait for the crackdown, for IRH soldiers to start shooting and throwing tear gas, for mass arrests.  But nothing happens.  Melis walks home content, her head on my shoulder.  Public touching, even between cloaked women, is forbidden.

“What happened to your dog, Angus?” she asks quietly.

“You mean, how did he die?”

She nods.

“I was out walking him.  I was about thirteen.  A
mutawa
saw us and ordered a soldier to shoot him.  They wouldn't even let me take his body home to bury.”

She squeezes my hand.   

Later that evening I realize why no one was arrested at the park.  The Islamic Council recognizes that people are suffering from fatwa fatigue.  It is better to allow them to let off a little steam than have it build into a revolt.

I read in
De Telegraf
the next morning that the National Fatwa Council has a new fatwa for us.  Touching or owning a dog is
haram.
  Only service dogs are allowed.

The fatwa backfires on them.  Everyone registers their dog as a service dog, and soon, instead of being hidden, dogs prance about the city in little yellow jackets.

Ambush

“One of our couriers was arrested at the railroad station in Den Bosch.”