Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) (33 page)

Kazan looks at me, surprise drifting into wistfulness.  “It
was
joyful.  Every day, not just Eid.”

“You drank wine?”

He chuckles.  “Turkey is the fourth largest grape producer in the world.  Did you know that?  A million and a half acres of vineyards.  A thousand different types of grape.  The vineyards in the Euphrates valley are in one of the world's oldest wine regions in the world.  That's where Noah had his vineyard."

“That old drunk?” I say smiling.  “I thought Turkey was Muslim.”

“Mostly.  Perhaps a more enlightened version than the present regime.” 

His wry smirk disarms me.  “Do the women veil?” I ask.

“They didn't back then.  They covered their heads with scarves when it was cold, or if there was a lot of dust.  No one had a seizure if they saw a woman's hair.”

So Kazan is critical of sharia.  I am fascinated, but don't dare press him.

We sit in silence with our own thoughts.  Perhaps wondering the same thought.  How the worlds we loved as children had changed.

“I am sorry, Salima.”

“For slapping me?”

“No, not for that.”  There is a flinch of a smile on his lips.  “You have a lot to learn.  As you saw tonight, rules can be broken, boundaries can be pushed.  But you have to know how . . . when.  I haven't given us time to get to know one another.  It's my fault.  That's what I'm apologizing for.”  He spears one of my unruly curls with his finger,  He pulls it out, and lets it spring back, which makes him smile.  “I hear you spend a lot of time going about the city.  You aren't sneaking around seeing another man, are you?”

I jump away, genuinely shocked.  “Gosh, no.”  When I look at him, he is smiling.  Teasing . . . I think.  I cuff his arm.  “I don't appreciate being spied on.”

“Not spying.  Just trying to keep you out of trouble.”

“Spying.”

He laughs and takes me into his arms.  The forced intimacy is not entirely comfortable, but not entirely uncomfortable either.  Slowly I begin to relax.  I feel his warmth, the power of his chest and arms.  I melt with the animal-need to be close to another body, so basic, so necessary, so rare.  The sound of his heart soothes me and makes me sleepy.  After a few minutes he helps me up and leads me upstairs.

We stand outside my door. 
He stands close.  My heart pounds, the atmosphere charged between us.  My breathing changes.  He leans down, his jaw clenched, his eyes half-closed.  “Please be patient, Salima.  Maybe this can work out . . . maybe it won't have to.  But it has to wait.”

I push him back at arm's length, as if holding out a squirming bug specimen.  “Are you gay?” I ask archly.  “It doesn't make any difference to me, but I have a right to know.  The women from your family won't leave me alone until I get pregnant.  Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely.  If you're gay . . . fine . . . good for you.  We can scoop some of your sperm into me.”

“I'm not gay.”

“Do you have a secret wife?  A girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Am I so repulsive?  Can't you just close your eyes and do it?”

One brow lifts, and he looks sourly amused.  “You are beautiful, Salima.  So much that . . . .  Nothing is right about this.  I didn't want this.  I didn't know I would . . . I don't want to hurt you, I can't . . . maybe when we have more time . . . it is more than I can bear.”

More than HE can bear?
  His vulnerability shocks me.  He's not done shocking me.

“If you have a friend . . . a male friend with whom you can have sex . . . someone with my coloring, of course . . . I will say it is mine.”

“What in hell is wrong with you?  Just fuck me!”

It is the wrong thing to say.  He quietly turns and leaves the house. 

I slam my fist in the door.  Now I'll never get anything out of him.  Especially not a baby.

#

I toss and turn in bed, the fight going round and round in my brain.  Certain things he said, “Maybe this can work out . . . maybe it won't have to,” leave me puzzled.  Why might the marriage not have to work out?  His father won't allow a divorce without cause.  It's too politically important.

And why is he so concerned about hurting me?  That's certainly atypical.  All Muslim men do is hurt their women.  Control them.  Suppress them.  Dominate them.

No, I'm being unfair.  But why this show of sensitivity?

His suggestion that I sleep with another man to get pregnant seems completely bizarre.  Surely he isn't setting me up to be stoned to death.  I think of the woman I saw at Chop-Chop Square, naked to her waist, covered in blood, a pile of rocks at her feet.  Surely he doesn't want that for me. 

There is something between us.  A heat.  I know he feels it, too.  I cannot understand what he is waiting for.

#

The next evening, Kazan comes home early with tickets to a film neither of us have ever heard of, apparently an Egyptian classic.  “Would you like to go on a date?”  He gives me a goofy grin, and all of my anger and consternation fade away.  I don't spend much time trying to figure out what this gesture of rapprochement means.  I'm dying to see a movie. 

Every time the Coalition Forces make a major victory, the Islamic Council relaxes its reign a little bit.  They try to keep us in the dark, but eventually word gets out, and the Islamists worry we'll rise up and agitate.  The vice squads withdraw, the
mutatween
shrivel back into their mosques.  Women start to take chances.  They wear makeup underneath their veils.  Headscarves blossom like tulips into bright colors—pinks, blues, yellows.  People have loud parties where music can be heard in the streets.  Movie theaters are reopened.

Everyone wants American films, of course, but the Islamic Council decides to host an Egyptian Film Festival—censored and without subtitles.  Lines wrap around the block hours before the box office opens, and tickets sell on the black market at four times the ticket price.  Fights break out. 

The last film I remember seeing was an American film,
The Hunger Games,
just before the Jenever Theater Murders changed the world.  I was eleven.  I don't remember much about it except that wonderful feeling of getting sucked into a completely different world, and the spectacular fiery costumes.  Joury and I hid out in the bathroom and waited for a second viewing.  It showed a dystopian world.  Many films that year envisioned bleak oppressive futures—
Looper, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Dredd, Battleship, Underworld: Awakening
.  I can't help but think Hollywood imaginations saw this coming.  Islamic totalitarianism.

Kazan flaps the tickets in front of my face, and off we go.

At the theater, the crowd is festive, an odd mixture of young families, off-duty soldiers, students, young mullahs.  I notice a number of Resistants—we turn our heads, pretending not to recognize one another.  Even a few Jews and Christians have sneaked in; they aren't allowed in this part of town.  Everybody shuffles quietly into the theater, single file, full of anticipation.  Everyone is polite.  A whole row graciously gets up and moves down a seat so a couple can sit with their children.  This is the first time in years I have been in a crowd of strangers without fear or anger—neither a demonstration or a public execution.  It feels like church.

The film starts, and the symphony of colors and sounds sucks us in.  We are mesmerized, our faces and bodies washed over by images and music, feeding our starved souls.  We don't understand a word of it, but we are in rapture.  There is a beautiful woman, a beautiful man, a starkly beautiful landscape.  Eyes, lips, hair, emotion.  It is a love story.  Maybe they are of different religions.  Their families don't approve.  Then there is a war.  Our lovers flee together, then are torn apart.  They both die.

At the end, the audience is silent for several minutes, exhausted, drained.  I feel as if I have been rubbed with sandpaper, inside and out.  Kazan takes my hand, and we quietly shuffle out.

Somehow, through the medium of film, we have come to an understanding of some sort.  Not anywhere close to friendship or honesty or love.  Something closer to acknowledged interdependence.

For now, that will do.

Receipts

Whenever Kazan is in town, he takes me out to a restaurant.  Sometimes we go shopping together.  Gradually we become more comfortable in each other's company—cracking jokes, teasing one another.  Still, we are reserved and cautious—like two actors who know that in several weeks they will be filming a sex scene, careful not to let untidy emotions get in the way of their jobs.  Unlike actors, we haven't seen the script.  At least I haven't.

“Why do we always go a different way to the farmers' market?” I ask.

“I thought you'd like to get to know your new neighborhood.”

That makes sense, I guess.  He squeezes my hand, and we take a short taxi ride, which we easily could have walked.  He asks for a receipt.  He buys me a Turkish lamp from a vendor at Albert Cuypmarkt.  He asks for a receipt.  He fills my arms with tulips at the florist.  He asks for a receipt.  We stop for ice cream.  He asks for a receipt. 

Who does that?

I watch him tuck them into his wallet.  Later, when he showers, I sneak into his room and look into his wallet.  The receipts are gone.

Nasira and I wait for Kazan in front of a theater to see a puppet show.  We spot Kazan walking down the other side of the street and wave.

“You see what he's doing?” Nasira asks.

“What?”  All I see is my husband waiting for cars to pass to cross the street.

“He's scanning?”

“Of course he is.  He doesn't want to get run over.”

“He was doing it walking down the street.”

I think about it for a moment.  I
had
noticed it before.  Resistants are trained to look for scanners, one of the easiest ways to spot an undercover Landweer
or
Speciale Operaties
officer.  Their eyes sweep back and forth without turning their heads.  They never smile in public—too preoccupied observing and taking mental notes. 

After the show, I watch him as we enter a restaurant.  As soon as he steps into a room, his eyes scan it top to bottom, pausing briefly at each table.  Later, I test him.

“How many women were in the restaurant?”

“Eleven.  Why?”

“It's nice to see women getting out more.  Did you notice the couple by the window?”

“The dark-skinned woman who ordered fish and ate only a few bites, who was fighting with her husband?  My guess, a low level bureaucrat.  What about them?”

“Oh, nothing.  I thought I saw her at our wedding.”

“I don't think so.  She is a left-handed convert.  She was a little awkward eating with her right hand and she favored her left hand for other things.  You and your mother were the only converts at the wedding.”

“Why do you say they were fighting?”

“She wasn't eating.  If you don't like what you're served, you push the plate away.  If you're refusing to eat out of spleen, you let it sit there.”

I tell Nasira of my little test.  And the receipts.  And how we never walk the same route.  “Either he's an extremely observant fellow who is a little paranoid, and nearly pathological about where his money is spent, or he's working as an operative of some kind.”

“My God!  Do you think he works for
Speciale Operaties?
”

Nasira shrugs.  “His receipts are going to an accountant.  That's why you can't find them.  He wants to get reimbursed.”

“He
is
awfully polite.”

Nasira nods.  We have discussed this before—how the deeper undercover you are, the more polite you become.  You can almost tell who the assassins are—the ones who help little old ladies across the street.  It is probably true for the Islamists as well.

All the traveling, the receipts, the scanning, the politeness—it isn't looking good.  What kind of monster have I married?

Fredrika Maria

I pick up a copy of
De Telegraf
and turn to the crossword puzzle.  The barge has moved to Zuider Amstel Kanaal in De Pijp
,
south of the city center.  It's a good thing I brought my bike
.
 

I spot the barge and park my bike under a plane tree around the corner.  Since the July raid, I approach cautiously, passing once, watching for a trap.  I see Hansen through a porthole, and figure it's safe.  The pig's tail is in the window.

I give Gerda an update, trying not to sound petulant.  “I worry I'm losing my edge.  Kazan is keeping me isolated.  I have very little interaction with the family.”

“You have to change that.  Tell him you want to get to know your new family better.  Befriend his sisters.  I suggest you try to get pregnant.  In those families, you aren't really considered part of the family until you have a baby.  It's a baby that cements the bond.”

Getting it from all sides. 
“Give me something,” I plead.  “I'm dying of boredom.”