Hidden Colours, page 21
Regards,
Rex Silberling
Interior Minister
Emir leaned forward. “What does sequestered mean?”
“Taken away,” said Doris, her voice small.
May the fifth.
That left five days.
“How can he do this?” said Emir. “Does the man have no honour? And to think, in two weeks, it’s the start of Ramadhan, and here we will be with our prayer mats but no home, no family to call our own. What have we done to deserve this?”
Yusuf’s anger twisted inside, a swirling storm that controlled him. He should have known better than to trust Silberling. His instincts had always told him to be wary. All this time, he’d wanted to prove to Silberling that the circus folk were good enough to merit German citizenship. What a fool he’d been.
They had travelled great distances to escape war, but sometimes it appeared as though war had followed them, or they’d carried it within them, a raging beast caught within living carcasses. It hit him then, that maybe Allah had imposed a penalty on him for escaping, for severing the tether to the land of his ancestors and to his mother while true Syrians stayed to die or suffer.
Maybe none of his circus family deserved to be happy.
They had squandered their chance of a new life together.
In five days, their family would be torn apart.
Chapter 28
Later that afternoon, Doris convened a meeting for the circus folk in the common room, in an effort to smooth over the tensions and offer solace following Dawud’s detention and Silberling’s letter. She fluttered like a bird, anxious about their well-being but completely at the mercy of the department she worked for but didn’t agree with. Her careful words of comfort stopped short of concrete assurances for her charges, and Yusuf discerned her helplessness in her whitened knuckles when she gripped the table, the eyes that darted from face to face, wishing she could do more.
The performers splintered into groups based on nationalities, frightened, talking in their respective languages rather than the broken German they had come to use as a group. Even Emir and Zul, who had believed the project would work and who’d thrown their whole energy into it, grew silent, as if their fight had been drained.
“We’ll close the circus with dignity,” said Emir, placing his top hat on his head. “We’ll give Berlin a week of shows it will never forget.”
“Maybe they will change their minds,” said Zul, lacklustre, already defeated.
“The decision has been made,” said Doris, crestfallen. She hung her head in her hands as if the closure were her failure, as if she hadn’t toiled to make her home theirs.
Five days and it would all be over.
The passivity riled Yusuf. “Come on! There must be something we can do.” How could they sit here so calmly when he itched to retaliate against someone, anyone, for the lies they had believed? They had been promised safety and opportunity, and instead, their lives crumbled once more. What an illusion security was for people like him. He’d been separated from his mother for nothing. All that time apart, and he had nothing to show for it. He wouldn’t pretend he could accept this outcome. He wouldn’t pretend the Germans harboured only good will.
Someone had to pay, but instead, his friends sat around talking.
Yusuf stood, knocking back his chair. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You’re not staying for Isaiah’s art class?” said Esme.
“No. Not today.”
He headed outside to do chores, hoping to dampen the unease in his mind. He’d been hard at work for an hour, mucking out the stables, when Isaiah startled him.
“Esme said you were in here,” said Isaiah, wrinkling his nose as he caught a whiff of manure. “I know that look. Girl trouble?”
Ellie flashed into Yusuf’s mind. The warmth of her hand on his knee, her eyes wide with concern, their foreheads touching. He shook his head to wash away the thought of her.
“Nah. There’s no girl.”
Isaiah clapped him on the shoulder. “I was joking, man. Emir filled me in on Dawud and the circus closure. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
Yusuf set down his shovel. “It’s not your fault.”
“It sucks, bro. When the chips are down, I like to let off steam.”
Yusuf sighed. Isaiah could be so young sometimes. “I don’t want to come spraying.”
“Not to kick a brother when he’s down–your body might be a work of art but your spraying skills are awful.”
“Thanks.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to come to Witches’ Night tonight? There’s a sick warehouse party my friends are going to. Or how about Kreuzberg for the May Day protest tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Yusuf. His hair flopped across his forehead. He pushed it back with impatient fingers.
The stallion whinnied and nudged him with his muzzle.
Isaiah stuffed his hands deep into his jeans pockets. “Looks like the horse thinks you should come.”
“I remember seeing the May Day images last year. It was chaos,” said Yusuf. There’d been burnt out cars and even Molotov cocktails.
After his fall from the trapeze, when he’d looked back on what happened, he’d been sure the fire in Esme’s act had triggered the flashbacks. It couldn’t be sensible to expose himself to heightened stress right now, but when had being sensible ever helped him?
“There’s the May trees celebrating Spring, there’s concerts and girls and beer, and the workers’ protests. It’s the one day the bulls go easy on us if we cause a bit of mayhem. How about it? Fancy tagging along before the straitjackets go back on?”
Mayhem. No rules. A loss of control.
Yusuf’s internal voice that told him to beware.
A heaviness settled in his stomach.
“Aren’t you tempted to show the white boys and the bulls how you feel? You need to live these protests. Just once. You don’t know Berlin until you’ve experienced it. It’s a day for the oppressed. It’s for anarchists, feminists and anti-capitalists. It’s for all shades of the left. It’s for punks. For the people who feel wronged or want more. Come on, bro.” Isaiah’s gaze swept around the stables and out to the circus tent standing erect against the sky. “They’re shutting this place down. Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to show it? What do you have to lose?” He punched Yusuf’s shoulder, not in jest, but as a challenge.
Yusuf winced. His body still ached from his fall. Under his shirt, bruises in bright green and deepest mauve danced over his olive skin.
“Seriously man, we have anxiety as people of colour to justify our space. To be good. To not be a burden. Even when our luck is down. When our home is in peril, and our brothers are dying. Even when those who have it all don’t want to help us.”
He was riffing now, a young man in the throes of his beliefs. Not someone who should be trapped in an empty record store, but someone who inspired and could drive change.
He slowed down, rubbing his neck. “We don’t even vote, bro. We sing. We rhyme. We march. But we don’t vote. But there’s one day, one day we can take up space and the police make way. One day when we can protest and let our anger soar. Are you in?”
“Of course you can vote,” said Yusuf. “You’re a German citizen, aren’t you? Voting is a privilege.”
“No, it’s rubber-stamping. Who on the podium speaks for me?” Isaiah dug into his pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized iPod with tangled headphones. “Listen to the first playlist. Focus on the lyrics, bro. Tell me they don’t speak to you. And if they do, meet me at Plänterwald S-Bahn at 10 a.m., and we’ll go into the fray.”
Yusuf took the iPod. “And do what?”
“Be what they fear.”
Isaiah’s playlist consisted of an eclectic mix of rap, blues and soul music from America and Germany, songs that Yusuf had heard on the radio in the common room, in addition to gems Isaiah had most likely discovered at the record store where he worked. Yusuf listened blind: the iPod lacked a display and his knowledge of Western music fell short beyond Michael Jackson and Prince, whom Selim had loved. On some tracks, he struggled to unravel meaning from the lightening fast vocals.
Even so, one song in particular moved him. He lay in his bed with the headphones vibrating in his ears, staring at the beige walls with Talkin’ Bout a Revolution on repeat. He spooled it back until the lyrics became an anthem and fanned out in front of him, a banner, a flag of his own.
A spark flared inside him, dangerous and wild. Following the rules had brought only disappointment and despair, so why bother at all?
For all the West’s talk of opportunities, it failed to deliver. Germany would never accept people like him, not really. The West knew only carrot and sticks, reward and punishment, never understanding or acknowledging how innocents had been wronged. Even so called progress showed the rot to the core. People of colour had witnessed and internalised the backlash in the USA after Barack and Michelle Obama strode into the White House amidst fanfare. What should have been a high-point for race relations unravelled quicker than a moth-ridden jumper.
Yes, he’d meet Isaiah. After all, when had the state ever protected him, here or in Syria? Hadn’t his father taught him that violent people get their own way? Hadn’t Silberling shown once again that even in the hallowed West, under the mask of democracy, the corrupt pulse of power throbbed?
He didn’t recognise the rage in himself, the dormant power inside that had woken.
His whole body pulsed with the need to discard his demeanour of calm and burn up the rulebook.
The thought electrified him, a contagion.
Chapter 29
The moon faded from the sky and the birds chirped, and still Ellie tapped away on her computer in her father’s study. She’d spent the whole night locked in one position. Her neck had grown stiff, and she rolled her shoulders back in an arc, and doubled down again to wrestle the words into existence.
In the morning, Tom came through with a list of editors and their contact details, men and women who commanded the respect and attention of millions of readers. At first, Ellie balked at approaching them. Her ousting from BAZ had knocked her confidence, and she shied away from the possibility of further rejection so soon. Still, to publish without the umbrella of BAZ or another newspaper would be an act of self-sabotage and diminish her credibility as a journalist. There could be no way that the new WordPress blog she had created would take off overnight of its own accord. She needed the patronage of an editor to draw attention to the story. Fear of rejection couldn’t stop her if she wanted to make up for her previous error and rally people in support of the circus. Maybe then her own prickles of guilt would subside.
She drafted a cover note to accompany the story outline and the evidence she had collected, then she sent an email to the editors of her three favourite publications on the list, together with her credentials, asking them to respond to her within two days.
When she’d finished, she flopped on the desk with her head cradled in her arms and fell asleep as a train of words continued to trail across her mind, kernels of thought she couldn’t quite capture.
The buzz of Ellie’s phone pierced through the fog of her sleep. She woke to find her mouth had crusted with saliva, and swept her sleeve across it. She reached for the phone, her body slow and heavy and not yet replenished.
“Hello?” Her fingers rubbed the side of her face where a circular motif in the metal desk had imprinted itself on her cheek.
A voice like a purring engine met her ears. “Frau Richter? This is Simone Mayer from Die Welt. I received your email. Can you talk?”
“Of course.” Ellie sat bolt upright and tossed off her blanket. She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner of her father’s study. She hadn’t expected a response so soon.
“So, Marina Schmidt is up to her neck in it? These are quite some allegations you’re making. You can send me the proof?”
Ellie’s hand quivered on the handset, but not one note of hesitation crept into her response. “I have everything ready.”
“The article, too?”
Please, please, let me be doing the right thing. “Yes.”
A grunt of satisfaction. “Good. We’ll pay you our usual freelance rate for one article, and additional money for any follow up pieces. This is in exchange for exclusivity. We’ll email you a contract once I have received the piece. Sign the terms immediately, and we’ll run the story this week, assuming I’m satisfied with your work.”
Ellie thought fast. “I’m intending to write a connected blog series about the refugees. Will that impact exclusivity?”
“Big news is ours first. Run anything you need to by my assistant before you post it to your blog,” said Simone, reeling off the instructions with a butter smoothness that commanded respect. “Welcome to the big time, Frau Richter.”
Ellie gulped, said her goodbyes and called up her gmail account to send Simone the promised work.
Half an hour later, her father found her staring into space and placed a fresh coffee next to the stale remnants from the night before.
“You’re working too hard,” he said.
She grasped the mug in her hands and ignored his concern. “Thanks, Papa.”
Her father looped his arms around her shoulders and she could see his grainy reflection on the screen of her computer. “You making much progress?”
“I think so.” She softened her voice, willing him not to get prickly. “You’ve been drinking less recently.”
“Yeah, well, I know when my girls need me.”
She reached up to kiss his stubbly jaw.
He rubbed the prickles against her face like he used to do when she’d been a little girl. “Being cooped up isn’t good for the soul, Ellie. How about I treat you to a champagne brunch in Hackescher Markt?”
“Are you sure a drink this early is sensible? You know what you’re like,” said Ellie. She longed for a leisurely walk in wet woods to clear her head, not a family tête-à-tête, and certainly not alcohol first thing in the morning. No doubt her father would start as he meant to go on. “Besides, I’ve got something I need to wrap up.”
She filled him in on the conversation with Die Welt and his eyes grew wide with pride.
“See, you can’t keep a good woman down,” he said, delighted. “Are you sure we shouldn’t celebrate?”
“Don’t you have work?”
He ruffled her hair and she grimaced. “Sometimes you forget who’s the father and who’s the child. Don’t worry about me. I can go in late today.”
“Is Mama coming too?”
Her mother popped her head around the door, a haze of pink, with a felt-tip in her hands. “I’ve been making up signs for the march tomorrow, but I’m almost done.”
Ellie brushed her thick fringe out of her eyes, and smoothed out her crumpled t-shirt. “Look at the state of me.”
“We’ll give you half an hour to get ready,” said her father.
“Okay. I’ll do the brunch, minus the champagne.”
He patted her shoulder, and left her to it. Ellie lingered a moment, then hit publish on her blog. She pinged a few journalist friends on Twitter. After that, she pushed her anxiety away, deep into the darkest recesses of her mind, where it simmered.
Twenty-five minutes later, Ellie had showered and changed. She slipped into the cool leather interior of her parents’ Audi.
“Ready, love?” said her mother, turning around in the front passenger seat.
“Ready,” said Ellie, tying her damp hair into a knot at her nape and plugging in her seatbelt.
Her father drove across the city and, before long, he’d parked and they entered his favourite brunch restaurant in the tourist trap of Hackescher Markt. The chandeliered ceiling, cornicing and art nouveau paintings adorning the walls were a far cry from the laidback shabby chic charm of the restaurants Ellie favoured in Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg.
They ordered their food and coffee, and her father requested three glasses of Prosecco. Ellie’s scowl at the early alcohol soon gave way into smiles as her parents toasted to her success.
“I knew you’d fall on your feet, darling,” said her mother.
“I bet they’re paying you quite a fee,” said her father, with a wink. “Maybe you should be treating us today, and not the other way around.”
Ellie laughed. “Hold your horses until I’ve signed the contract at least.”
They watched tourists amble past, through rain-splattered panes of glass. Soon, the waitress returned, balancing plates laden with scrambled eggs, sausages, Dutch cheese, avocado and toast. Her mother cast an envious glance at Ellie's bowl of natural yoghurt and pomegranate.
“Maybe I wanted something healthy after all,” she said.
“We can share. I need some stodge after the night I’ve had, especially if we’re going to be walking miles tomorrow,” said Ellie, helping herself to some cheese.
“Are you sure you want to go to the May Day march?” said her father, downing his drink. “Wolfram was at the stammtisch last night. He told me the police expect a bit of trouble this year. Maybe you should stay away.”
“Wolfram getting in a flap really isn’t going to sway us,” said her mother. “We’re battle-hardened Richter women. We can handle ourselves.”
Her father rolled his eyes.
“If you’re really worried, Martin, why don’t you come?” Her mother flashed her most winning smile.
“And miss the game?” said her father.
Her mother sighed. “You really are impossible.”
Her blew her a kiss. “As are you, darling. I wouldn’t have you any other way. Just promise me you’ll be careful, and for goodness sake stay on the edge, won’t you, in case you need to make a quick getaway.”
Her mother nodded.
Her father raised his hand for the waitress. “Time for another glass of Prosecco?”
