Amsterdam 2012

This book is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Kindle Edition

Copyright, 2010 by Ruth Francisco

All rights reserved

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Note from Author:

I finished the first draft of this book in March of 2007.
 
I am not prescient in any way, but it is alarming how many of the things I wrote about have come to pass, from the spike in gasoline prices in 2008, the election of a democratic president, the terrorist attempts in Denmark and Amsterdam, the ideological confusion in the Republican Party, and the emergence of Somalia as a hotbed of terrorism.
 
I did not predict the killing of
Osama
bin Laden or the banking meltdown in Europe, and the ramifications of the “Arab Spring” still have to be played out.
 
Yet the similarities to reality are startling.
 
I hope the events I predicted for 2013 and 2014 do not come to pass.

We’ll see, won’t
we.

If they do, I’ll wish I had used my predictive powers on lottery tickets.

I know for sure that you, Oh America, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh
Hirsi
Ali, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.

 

—
Mohammed
Bouyeri
, 2004

Murderer of Theo van Gogh

 

 

 

No, my former countrymen, you are guilty, guilty, guilty,
guilty
! . . . The streets of America shall run red with blood.

 

—
Adam
Gadahn
, 2004

American born member of Al Qaeda

 

 

 

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country.

 

—
Osama bin Laden

Fatwa signed in 1998

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

Kan ya ma
kan
.
 

There was and there was not a time when women walked the streets, hair blowing, without fear of attack, and married men they loved and of their choosing, when girls danced and played at school and competed on swim teams, when writers and artists expressed opinions to engage controversy and discussion, when our rights and our democracy seemed as assured as the sun above our heads, and you and I could while away the day at a café or bar, and talk about anything we pleased.
 
That time, like this tale, is now for the storybooks.

I was there when the first shots rang out that started the Muslim rebellion, which touched off riots throughout Europe and led to the Great
Eurabian
War—World War III, as some now call it since the United States got involved.
 
The guns went off less than sixty feet away from me, yet I didn’t hear their report.
 
I was asleep in the arms of my lover in the loft of a restored windmill, beneath a goose down comforter on a soft rag mattress, a gentle wind spinning the turbine outside.
 
Like the bullet delivered by the Serbian Nationalist
Gavrilo
Princip
that assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and started World War I, any number of things could have set off the Great
Eurabian
War—a racist cartoon, an act of terrorism, an inflammatory speech by a Dutch Muslim imam
,
a new policy implemented to discourage immigration.
 
Europe was bubbling with dissension.
 
Yet it was these six bullets that started the war that would change the course of Western civilization.

Peter and I arrived in Amsterdam after an exhausting flight from New York City.
 
Security had been tight at all of the airports.
 
Before we left JFK, everyone was ordered off the plane, which was searched.
 
We had to go through security screening a second time before
reboarding
.
 
By the time we got to
Schiphol
Airport, we were beat.
 
We splurged on a taxi, which dropped us off on
Prinsengracht
Street, right in front of the Anne Frank Museum.
 

I had come to Amsterdam with a burning passion to see the house of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who hid with her family from the Nazi occupation from 1942 to 1944 in a secret annex.
 
I don’t know why my feelings were so strong.
 
I have read that Anne Frank’s diary—her fury at her confinement and the brutality of the Gestapo, her hope for release and dreams of making her own future, her yearning for love, her escape into fantasy—affects many young women this way.
 
As if through Anne Frank’s words—the reality of her looming extermination—young women realize the only answer to oppression is defiance and independent thinking.
  

Peter offered to watch our packs while I went into the museum.
 
I sensed his indifference was nearly as strong as my obsession.
 
Rather than trying to coax him out of his obstinate mood, I left him on his own.
  

I spent nearly an hour inside.
 
Afterward, Peter and I walked south along
Prinsengracht
Canal.
 
How I loved the mix of people, the counterpoint of foreign languages, the chaos of bicycles and pedestrians.
 
How I loved the soothing canal waters, the elegant trees and quaint doorways, the tipsy rooflines and gables.
 
How I loved peeking into the old brick houses to see rooms lined with bookcases, tidy collections of glassware, ancient clocks, cozy couches and chairs—scenes that stood outside of time, as precious and charming as snow globes.
      

We stopped at one of the many canal side cafes, drank a couple of beers, then continued on until our adrenaline ebbed and weariness seeped from our bones.
 
We staggered over a few more bridges and discovered
Vondelpark
, a large English style green with ponds and winding paths, lawns and thickets.
 
After finding a grassy spot, we laid our heads on our backpacks for a snooze.
 
We slept for several hours and woke up starving.
 

The air was filled with the smell of butterscotch.
 
We followed our noses to a cart on the edge of the park that sold
Liège
waffles, fluffy squares of butter-fried batter coated with caramelized sugar.
 
Ever sensible, Peter suggested we get something more substantial in our stomachs.
 
I allowed him to pull me down the street—how my mouth watered for those waffles—until we came to a cart that sold raw salted herring sandwiches.
 
I begged for something else, but Peter said he was too hungry to take one more step.
 
Several other young couples stood at the cart.
 
A tall blond woman turned and smiled at me.
 
I must’ve worn a crinkle on my nose, because she laughed and said in excellent English, “The herring is very tasty here.
 
We come almost every day.”

“Oh, good,” I said.
 
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

The woman shifted her chin—almost imperceptibly—to the left, her lips flinching, eyebrows raised.
 
It was a look I would later come to recognize, a uniquely European scowl bestowed on Americans to express disdain and forbearance.
 
“No, no,”—I rushed to clarify—“I don’t eat horsemeat.
 
God no.
 
It’s an American expression, like ‘raining cats and dogs’ for when it showers.”
 
I lifted my hands over my head and fluttered my fingers as I lowered them, as if performing the gestures for
The Teensy Weensy Spider.
 
“Americans don’t eat horses.”

She laughed, amused by my embarrassment.
 
She wore a black raincoat over a grey ribbed turtleneck and black slacks, simple and chic.
 
She made me think of Emma Peel in her black cat suit—unflappable, gorgeous,
ready
for anything.
 
“My name is
Marjon
,” she said.
 
“This is my husband Nicholas.
 
You are students?”

Peter and I introduced ourselves.
 
The four of us chatted while we ate our herring sandwiches, which, with the onions and mustard, were not as awful as they sounded, although kind of squeaky on the teeth.
 
We told them of our horrible flight, and when I complained that we thought the airport security measures were excessive and probably did little to stop terrorism, they nodded their heads silently.
 
Marjon
changed the subject and said she and her husband were on their way to a friend’s opening at a nearby art gallery.
 
She invited us to join them.