Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (7 page)

“Like a ghost?”

“Yes, like a ghost.  The spirits protect anyone who enters the theater, and especially watch out for children.  Right now they are standing by the doors and windows, guarding, making sure you are safe.  King Lear, Henry IV, Joan of Arc, Willy Loman, Henry Higgins, Hedda Gabler—they're all watching out for you.  This is the safest place in all of Amsterdam.”

“Are you a ninja?” 

This isn't the first time my black
shalwar kameez
has been mistaken for a ninja outfit. 
“It's a character I'm playing.  When I hang up my costume tonight, my ninja spirit will be watching over you.”

She turns and looks me in the eye.  Her eyes darken.  She's old enough to disbelieve such stories, but young enough to wish they were true.  “Okay,” she says, nodding.  She slides off my lap, takes the towel, and begins drying the hair of her sister, whispering softy.  Understanding the rituals of bedtime. 

Signora Caputi looks at me gratefully.  I slip out of the dressing room, across the stage, and out the door.

I run in the shadows toward my home.

Indecent Proposal

Sneaking into my house, I carefully take my shoes off in the hallway.  I close the door soundlessly behind me and press my back against the wall, trying to stay upright.  Exhaustion overtakes me and I can barely stand.  As I
unbutton my tunic
, I hear voices from the dining room.

“Do you really think it's necessary, Jana?”  Rafik scrapes his chair away from the table.  “I suppose you're right.  Come here—” more chair scraping, a giggly gasp from my mother, a lap plop, a kiss “—I guess I'd hoped she could wait until the war was over.”  

I hear a quiet shifting of bodies gently embracing.  Then I hear my mother slowly stand and begin clearing dishes off the table.  My stomach clenches, guilty, hungry.  They must've put off dinner, waiting for me, then gave up. 

“The war is not going to end any time soon,” Jana says.  “It's the best way I can think of to protect her.” 

“The way I protected you?”  Rafik laughs easily, and there is a warm ring to it.  You can hear how much he adores my mother.

“Yes.”  I can tell she is smiling.

“Well—”  Rafik clears his voice, a lingering thickness “—I suppose you have someone in mind.”

“Kazan Basturk,” she says.

“You're joking.  The son of Ahmed Basturk?  I do nothing but butt heads with the
mutaween
every day.”

“Ahmed Basturk is a moderate on the Islamic Council.  He is no
t
a
mutawa.
  His son has lived in Switzerland, and has been to university.  He's pleasant and smart.  The women at the mosque think he is a good catch.”

I am getting a bad feeling about this conversation.

“You don't think it is . . . how do you say . . . sleeping with the enemy?” Rafik mumbles. 

“The arrangement will protect our family, and secure your position as police commissioner.  Ahmed Basturk will approve of the marriage because linking the two families gives the religious police legitimacy.  I have already discussed it with his wife at the mosque.  She approves of the match.”

Rafik chuckles.  “I always wondered what you women are up to in your secret chamber.” 

In the new world order, mothers make the wedding arrangements, including the matchmaking.  All which occur in the women's prayer room at the mosque, where most of their daily socializing and gossiping takes place.  The men don't think wives are important enough to give it much thought—they let their mothers handle it.

“You are Turkish,” mother points out.  “The Basturks are Turkish.  Ahmed will like that.”

“A slight difference.  My family came here as Ottoman traders in the 16
th
century.”

“Which gives the Basturks the legitimacy they seek.”

I don't want to hear any more.  I tiptoe upstairs, slip inside my bedroom, and collapse on my bed.  My head spins from exhaustion.  And dread. 

The word
marriage
floats across my eyeballs, written on white linen, folding over me.  Binding me like a mummy.  I can't breathe.  Just of thought of it makes me ill.  Marriage is for other people.  How in the world am I going to do my work if I'm married?  To the son of an Islamist?  I can't begin to imagine. What about sex?  Do we have to do it through a sheet or something?  I am horrified.

No.  The whole idea is outrageous, unthinkable, infuriating.

I bolt up in bed and use the last of my energy to wad up my
shalwar kameez
and throw it in a heap in the corner.  I can't deal with this right now.  I'm too worried about Pim and the van.  Wondering what we could have done differently.  I'm frightened for my refugee family.  For the rest of us in the group
.
 

I wonder who betrayed us to the Landweer
.  

Overwhelmed with fatigue, I collapse back into my pillow and doze off for a few minutes.  Then I hear Jana knock, asking to come in.  She creaks open the door, walks across the room, and turns on the light beside my bed.  I turn on my back, grim faced, arms across my chest, like a sarcophagus.  

My mother's grandparents immigrated from the Pulia region of Italy to Amsterdam in the 1930s to run a coffee import business.  Her maiden name was Catanzaro.  She is dark-haired, with large chatoyant eyes, that seem to take in everything all at once.  Even at fifty, she is beautiful.  Before American movies were banned, people would stop her in the street and say she looked like Sophia Loren.  She has a great figure, too, but it is those limpid almond-shaped eyes that mesmerize.  It is hard to stop looking at them.  And almost impossible to lie to them.  Formidable adversaries when it comes to motherly interrogations. 

“
Liefje
, did you get something to eat?” my mother asks warmly, sitting on the edge of my bed.  When I don't react, she knows I have eavesdropped.  Her eyes flash in anger, then soften, a slight lift to the corner of her mouth.

“Do I have to?” I say, with the crushed voice of a penitent.

“Eat?” she asks, intentionally misunderstanding.  My body radiates a chill.  “No,” she amends, “you don't have to marry.  Not if you don't want to.”  She takes my hand, which resists her like the gnarled arthritic hand of an old woman.  “But it may be your best option.  You'll be twenty soon.  You have three choices.  That's the law.”

“I'm too busy to get married,” I say sullenly.  I suppose because of my work with the Resistance
,
I had somehow imagined I'd escape it.  Marriage, military service, work camps.  A choice between three death sentences.  

“
Do you really think I don't know what you do, Salima?” Jana asks gently.   “Sneaking around Amsterdam in your
burka
after curfew
. 
Do you really think no one can see you?”

A blast of heat swooshes over my body.  I had suspected she knew what I did.  Those eyes miss nothing.  But we have never talked about it.  Such things are not discussed even within families.  “At least I'm doing something!”  It comes out a whisper.  I'm too tired to even whine effectively.  

“I know,
liefje
.”  She leans down and gently kisses my forehead the way she did when I was a child.  She sits back and opens my hand, and runs her fingertip down the inside of each of my fingers.  “Which is why you should marry.  You can't get a better cover than being the daughter-in-law of one of the most powerful men in Holland.”

Slowly I sit up in bed and look at her, astonished.  She's been thinking this out longer than I.  “Does Rafik know?” I ask.

“That you work with the Resistance?  No, Rafik doesn't know.”  She brushes a matted lock off my face. 
“Tomorrow he will meet Ahmed Basturk to arrange your marriage. 
If you are lucky, your new husband will be like many Muslim men, and care very little about how you spend your time.”

“That's not true about Rafik.”

“Rafik is special,” she says warmly.

I groan, covering my face with my hands.  “The son of an Islamist?”

“He is a moderate
,
” she corrects.

“There isn't such a thing.”  I feel increasingly like a rat in a trap.

“Some are more rigid than others.”  Jana stands and butts me with her hip to make me move over.  She sits beside me with her back against the headboard.  As if we were waiting at a bus stop.  “Sometimes all we have are bad choices.  But making a choice you can live with will give you greater happiness than indecision and worry.”

“I'm not worried.”

“Well, you should be.” 

I cringe, remembering what went down only a few hours ago at the docks.  Only sheer luck got us out alive. 

Most women in the Resistance are married to converts, Muslim in name only
.
  They make their own matches.  Getting married to a true believer is an entirely different matter.  I think of Pim or Janz or Garret.  I could make my life with one of them, but Jana would never agree to such a marriage. 

“I don’t understand why I have to get married at all.  It's ridiculous.”

“It's the only way to keep you safe.  Unless you have another bright idea.”

I am too exhausted to have any ideas, much less a bright one.  There is a fourth option, one neither of us dare propose—renouncing the world, going underground, living as an
onderduiker,
an under diver, a dangerous, lonely life, hiding each night in a different safe house, completely isolated.  I would never be able to contact my family or friends again.  The thought makes me nauseated.  The only thing keeping us going is those we love. 
“You didn’t marry until you were thirty.  Not until you were pregnant.”

She laughs lightly, without embarrassment.  “That was a very different time,
liefje
.”

“Do you miss Papa?”

“More than words can say.”  She laces her fingers between mine, and rests her head on my shoulder.  “I love them both, you know.  But between Rafik and I, there is something deeper.  It's hard to explain.  Like the difference between buying a puppy, and rescuing a dog off the street.  You love both, but the dog you rescue sleeps in your heart.”

“You're saying Rafik rescued you like a stray dog?”

Jana squeezes my hand.  “We rescued each other.  Some day I'll explain better.  I converted and married a Muslim because of you, darling.  I want you to marry Kazan Basturk for the same reason.”

“What's that?”

“Survival.”

An involuntary shiver shoots through my body.  “But at least you chose Rafik!  You knew him!  You wanted to marry him!  I don't
want
to marry!”

We sit in silence for awhile.  Something slowly crumbles in me—my defiance, my independence, the sense that I can do it all on my own.  I wrap my arms around my mother, clinging.  I love her warmth by my side, her gravity.  She has always made me feel safe.  She smells of butter and
zoute drop,
the little liquorice candies she likes after dinner. 
“Was it hard for you to convert to Islam, Mom?  You were raised Christian.”

She lifts my hand to her mouth and kisses it.  “Are you worried I made a huge sacrifice for you?  I didn't.  My life is good.  I did what I had to do, like any mother.”

“
Ik hou van je
,” is all I manage to get out.

“I love you, too.”  Jana pats my thigh with reassuring vigor.  “You'll see.  Marrying the son of an Islamist is a good thing.” 

I sit silently for a minute or two.  My mind spins, looking for a way out.  Maybe he already has a girlfriend.  Maybe he'll feel forced into this marriage as much as me.  Maybe he'll refuse to marry me.  No, it is unlikely he'll defy his mother's wishes.  He'll agree to the marriage, then do as he pleases.  “You said he went to school in Switzerland?” I ask hopefully.

Jana smiles, confirming I eavesdropped earlier.  “Kazan is twenty-eight.  He's a good-looking boy.  He has a good job.  He has already said that he wants only one wife.”

Twenty-eight seems terribly old. 
“Can I at least meet him before we're married?”  Most Muslim girls are now married without ever seeing their future husbands.  Only after she says her vows and the veil comes off, does the bride see her husband clearly. 

“I think Rafik will be able to manage that,” Jana says kindly. 

And so it is decided.  I am to be married.

How do I tell Pim?

Six, February 2013

The Mutability of Identity

“When your mother and I marry, you will need to change your name.  To an Arabic name.”  Rafik sits opposite Katrien's mother at the dining room table.  Where Pieter used to sit. 

Since the horrible weeks of the Great Purge, when Rafik saved Katrien on the steps of Centrale Bibliotheek, lifting her above a thousand stampeding feet, whisking her to safety, he has watched over them.  The roads in and out of Amsterdam were shut down for weeks.  Muslim mobs bombed coffee shops and bars, torched the red light district, and burned bookstores.  Food was scarce.  Rafik made sure Katrien and Jana had something to eat.  On days when the rioting was close to their house, he spent the night on their couch, his pistol on the coffee table.

The Islamic Council decided to keep a civilian police force, the
Amsterdam-Amstelland. 
At first they were ordered to surrender their weapons, but soon were instructed to take them back. 
All
non-Muslim officers were fired.  Rafik, with his calm and practical demeanor, rose quickly in the ranks, and is now
Hoofdcommissaris,
the
Chief Commissioner. 
His office in the
Hoofdbureau
is in the Oud West on Elandsgracht. 
The officers love him because he does not let the Islamic Council push them around.

Rafik
wears a beard now, worn short with attractive stripes of gray on his mustache and chin.  It is hard for Katrien to see him as the same person.

Katrien knows Rafik and Jana have done nothing to cause their being thrown together.  They did not cause the Great Eurabian War.  They did not cause the Occupation.  They did not cause her father's murder.  Yet they clasp hands, looking guiltily at one another. 

As if they had imagined something like this in the past.  Being together.  As a couple. 

“Your mother likes the name Salima,” Rafik suggests.  “Salima means peaceful, flawless, faultless, safe, and healthy.”

Katrien snorts through her nose.  She doesn't feel any of those things.  She feels the exact opposite.  She feels violent and angry.  She's so mad, she could spit.  She counts her numerous flaws, and blames herself for her father's death.  She hasn't
felt safe since she was eleven. 

“I suppose I am healthy.”  She squints at her mother, who blanches, bracing for more sarcasm. 

“I think Salima is a beautiful name,” adds Jana lamely.

“Why do I have to change my name?” Katrien challenges, firing on Rafik.  “I never once saw you kneel on a prayer rug before the Occupation.  You are no more Muslim than we are.”

“I go to the mosque every day,” Rafik says.  “I pray five times a day.”

“Only so you don't lose your job.” 

Rafik looks stung.  He nods, then pats her hand, his face full of compassion.  As angry as she is, Katrien does not pull away.

“How can we just become Muslim?”  Her tone is plaintive.  Resisting the inevitable.

“They have classes at the mosque,” says Jana.  “Joury's mother has agreed to sponsor us.  We'll both go, then say the
Shahada
in front of witnesses.” 

“That's not what I mean.  I mean, how can we just change gods?”

Jana exchanges looks with Rafik, rolling her lips as if to say,
I knew this wouldn't be easy
.  “The important part of all religions is the same,
liefje
,” she says, gently.  “The part that makes you stop and see how beautiful the world is, that makes you see God in all things.  That makes you understand that you are a part of everything.  God doesn't care if you worship him as a Hindu or a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian.  People make up religions to try to understand God.  To explain life, the universe.  They invent rituals and prayers to try to get closer to Him.  But God doesn't care what words you mouth.  No one can see into your heart.  Speak whatever words they tell you to speak, but love with your heart.”

Katrien glares at her mother.  “Why didn't you ever take me to church?  You didn't have time?”  Her tone is acid, meant to hurt.  “I loved church.” 

She recalls slipping into Westerkerk after school.  How she loved the tall white nave with gray molding, the simple Romanesque arches, the ornate gold and silver organ, the dark wood pulpit, that hovered high above like a spaceship.  She loved the quiet, the soft light slanting in from the windows, the sweet smell of sage.  No one bothered her, and she could sit there for as long as she wanted.  Thinking about anything she wanted.  Sometimes talking to God, even though no one had ever taught her to pray.  She had imagined the tourists who walked in stopping for a moment and noticing her. 
Who is that devout little girl?  She looks so peaceful.

Westerkerk is now a mosque.  Females are not allowed into the prayer hall.

She feels robbed, robbed of the God she never knew.  Robbed of her father.  Robbed of her childhood.  Robbed of her dreams and aspirations.

“Nobody seems to care that all the churches are mosques now.  They call themselves Muslim so they can get food coupons.  Nobody cares!”

Rafik and Jana sit silently, taking it.

Katrien's neck goes weak, her chin falling to her chest.  It finally sinks in.  She has no choice.  Choice is for a different time, a different place.  She will become a Muslim.  “What about your name?” she asks her mother softly.  An understudy, meekly accepting a new role.

“I am lucky.  Jana is also an Arabic name.  It means
fruits of paradise
.”

Katrien's chin jolts up, eyes wide with astonishment.  Rafik chuckles.  Jana titters.  Then all three start laughing—raucously—howling, until tears come to their eyes. 

They haven't laughed like this in a long time.

Quran Tajweed

Salima and Jana eat dal with pita at a halal restaurant before heading to the mosque for class.  A loudspeaker hanging in the corner softly plays Fairuz songs, lilting and plaintive. 

“I thought music was banned in public places,” Salima says.

“Maybe they mean
outside
public places.  Or Western music.  Maybe the
mutaween
have other things to worry about.”

All restaurants must be halal, or else pay an extra tax.  Salima doesn't know what food has to do with God, but it is cheaper and easier to change one's eating habits than pay the higher prices.  Ironically, only rich Muslim men high in the bureaucracy can afford to eat at European restaurants. 

Fairuz's continuous wail puts a knot in Salima's stomach, and the dal sticks in her throat, not going down.  “She sounds like she has a splinter in her foot.”

Two Moroccan men at the next table overhear her and laugh.  Jana freezes and lowers her head, but the men smile at them, not unkindly.

“We'd better go,” says Jana, quickly paying the bill.

They walk down the block in the drizzle and enter the mosque.  They take off their shoes, put them on the shoe shelf, then head to the restroom.  They perform
wudu,
washing their faces and hands, then enter the women's prayer hall
. 

The room is empty of furniture, except for a few benches against the wall for the elderly and disabled.  The red carpet is new.  Round circles of light from a cupola dot the walls.  A shelf with Qurans on one wall, with a stack of kneeling pillows below. 

It smells pleasantly of incense, new carpet, and moist abayas.  But under those smells, the faint odor of the old beer factory, which the building once was. 

Women are arriving for a Quran Tajweed class.  Women in all shapes and colors.  Turkish, Somali, Malaysian, Sudanese, Indian, Dutch.  Each woman whips off her burka like a magician's cape.

Joury waves to Salima, who joins her in a large circle of girls, sitting on the floor.  Jana sits with the older women.

The teacher walks in.  Her name is Um Aboulela.  She is a friendly, overweight woman, originally from Sudan, who wears wire-frame spectacles and a black hijab.  She smiles a lot and looks as if she is thrilled to have so many students.

Um Aboulela sits on her knees, which makes her higher than the others.  Her voice is deep and clear, the Quran open on her lap.  She adjusts her scarf, tucking in strands of hair that have escaped.

At first Salima was hostile to learning the Quran, but, over the last few weeks, has come to think of it as an exotic language class.  She enjoys learning how to pronounce the letters correctly, when to blur two letters together, pronouncing the n in a nasal way. 

Here the Quran seems to have nothing to do with the collapse of her city and the murder of her father.  Yet she knows it has everything to do with it.

After reading a passage from the Quran, Um Aboulela usually starts a discussion on Islamic customs and their theological basis.  Today she discusses the hijab.

“Muslim women wear the hijab because Allah has instructed us to wear it.  'Women should lower their gaze and guard their modesty.  They should draw their veils over their breasts and not display their beauty.'  In the Hadith it is reported that Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr, came to Muhammad while wearing thin clothing.  He approached her and said: 'O Asma! When a girl reaches the menstrual age, it is not proper that anything should remain exposed except this and this.'  He pointed to the face and hands."

“My mom says a girl is like a jewel," one girl interrupts. “When you have something precious, you want to hide it and keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found.”

Um Aboulela purrs her approval.  “That is correct.  The hijab is not merely covering up, but, more importantly, is your behavior, manners, speech, and appearance in public.  Wearing the hijab is intended to reflect one’s personal devotion to God.”

Um Abolela's fingers nervously tug at her scarf by the hair line.  “Westerners see the hijab and think it is a sign of women's oppression.  But if a woman wants to be evaluated for her intelligence instead of her looks, if she wants to stop men from treating her like a sex object, then she must veil.  We want men to be attentive to our minds, to take us seriously and treat us as equals, and not just chase us around for our physical looks.” 

Salima lowers her eyes, confused—women can't work, can't walk freely in the streets.  Their testimony in court is worth half a man's.  Her inheritance rights are half a man's.  How is that equal?  She is about to ask and satisfy her impertinent curiosity, when two
mutaween
swoop into the room like great hawks.  They yank a young woman up from the floor and drag her out.

The women scramble for their face veils and burkas.  By the time they turn around, the
mutaween
are gone, the woman's screams echoing in the marble hallway.

“What did she do?” asks one girl.

Um Aboulela shakes her head sadly.  “Her husband found contraceptives in her drawer.  Anything that interferes with a man's right to father children is
haram.”

“What will happen to her?”

Knowing the grim options, they sit silently, until Joury pipes up, “I guess she doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant anymore.”

Madrassah

The muezzin wakes Salima at 6 AM, blaring from loudspeakers mounted on top of Westerkerk, four blocks away.  At least she's never late for school.  She sits up in bed and whips off the covers.  Laura Dekker sneers at her conformity.  “Easy for you,” Salima retorts.  “You can just sail away.”

She washes, rolls out her prayer rug facing Mecca, performs the s
alat,
then goes down to breakfast.

Jana never does her prayers, except when she is at the mosque.  Salima fears she will forget the words and be found out, and asks her to practice with her.  Jana shrugs.  “I don't understand Arabic.  If praying is talking to God, I prefer to do it in a language I know.  I assume an omniscient God understands Dutch.”  When Salima mentions it again, Jana pretends she doesn't hear, and sets a plate of syrup-smothered
poffertjes
on the place mat in front of her.

“
Bismillah,”
mumbles Salima before she stuffs a forkful of dripping pancake into her mouth.

“Eat with your right hand,” Jana reminds her.  When Salima gives her an evil look, Jana says, “Well, at least one of us should know how to do it correctly.”

Salima switches her fork to her other hand.  It's hard to get used to, but her mother is right.  It is the little things that will give you away.  In WWII, English spies had to learn to hold their cigarettes like the French.  Slip up at the wrong time and . . . .

The rules don't bother her that much.  Grownups always have rules.  These are just different rules.  

She puts on her headscarf and heads out the door.

It used to take her longer to walk down Prinsengracht, all the tourists lined up an hour before the Anne Frank House opened, clogging up the sidewalks, causing bicyclists and pedestrians to veer around.  The bustle of the city is gone.  Amsterdam is a strange place without its restaurants, cafés, and bars.  Without its tourists.  The gloomy weather becomes oppressive.  Like a widow, whom nobody bothers to visit, sitting in a dark corner in a heavily curtained room.