On my walk along the Warsaw I come across a kebab store with three young Lemons loitering in front of it. Already from the distance I get the feeling that they’re looking for trouble. These children of the gutter usually communicate in a blend of German, Arabic, English, Turkish, and Russian. The teens sport sweatpants, gold chains, and gilded watches. And the ubiquitous base caps, which have been part of the uniform for decades. The scimitars the generation before them only wore as pendants around their necks, are now dangling from their belts, ready for action. On my approach I listen in on their conversation—or whatever you want to call their staccato-like grunts.
“Wanna go X’berg, slap rich dudes, yalla?” Shorty’s just suggesting to his two companions. As if these jokers could simply take a stroll across River Spree when the mood hits them.
“Yalla” and “Hey, man, gross.” His friends don’t seem to be averse to a little outing. “Yalla” originally means “Let’s go!”. Meanwhile, the word has found an inflationary use and is good for almost everything, even as a verb. “I’ll go home” in street lingo is “Me yalla home”. And “Me yalla yo” stands for “I’ll kill you”. I think so, at least, because things turned nasty every time someone said it to me.
Shorty plants himself in my path, legs spread. “Yo, kuffar, yalla,” he accuses me, the infidel. I give him credit for the fact that he doesn’t know who he’s messing with. Always watch out for the small guys. They often need to make up for something and are nimble fighters and also hard to shoot. He fondles his crotch. De-escalation is useless with dudes like him. They only chalk it off to weakness. Therefore, I resort to my standard program. “Anything interesting to discover down there?”
“Deez-cov-er?” Shorty repeats. The word obviously isn’t part of his vocabulary.
“Because you seem to have trouble finding it,” I reply, pointing at his crotch.
“Yalla! Sonofabitch, yalla.” Shorty is clearly not amused. Self-irony, my friends, is something gang bangers are sadly lacking in.
“Show de fucker, Jihad,” one of his comrades edges him on.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but my briefcase happens to be rigged. If you want to survive in the Ghetto, it’s advisable to have a couple of tricks up your sleeve. The lower edge of my briefcase is equipped with a telescopic needle, which I can release by pressing a button underneath the handle. A little nudge with the case, just in passing and hardly noticeable, and the fine needle shoots out, pierces the flesh, and injects half a milliliter of neurotoxin into the opponent’s bloodstream. This is the treatment Jihad gets, who’s still blocking my way. The thug’s leg immediately turns numb, making him drop to the ground.
“Yalla, sonofabitch, I fuck yo and yo family, yalla.” He’s a little confused and tries to get his head around what has just happened to him. Still, he continues to list the members of my extended family he plans to bring to bodily harm and keeps on spouting abuse, all the while feverishly rubbing his paralyzed leg. I pull my Glock and release a rubber round that hits home smack in the middle of his forehead. Blissful quiet settles over the scene, at last. His friends scurry into the kebab store. Respect is something money can’t buy. You have to earn it. I keep on walking without looking back. If they try to cause me any more trouble, it’ll be time for escalation step two.
Natasha is waiting for me at the entrance of RAW. I throw her a quick, suggestive look. Inside of me, a mad longing rears its head, but I don’t give in to my urges. Sometimes you have to bid your time, it only hones the desire. But it isn’t easy. I have the impression that she wouldn’t mind either, because she runs her hand through her blonde hair and smiles. The SWAT guys who are with her comment our casual flirt with sneers. In the eyes of these upright civil servants I’m nothing but scum. Vermin, albeit useful sometimes. I’m not fooling myself. The tough guys have shown up in four armored Mercedes off-roaders. Balaclavas covering their faces and twitchy fingers on the triggers of their HK416s, they have taken position in the doorway where three letters rule supreme: RAW. A telltale name. Especially when I think of the sado-maso whorehouse Natasha’s now taking me to. I can almost hear the question that’s on the tip of your tongue: How do sado-maso practices go with Sharia? But even prostitution is halal—allowed—as long as the Imam makes a profit. The man is resourceful enough to interpret the laws of the Quran to his own liking, while keeping his people under his thumb with the help of arbitrary rules. Hell. Just like the Pope in the Vatican, the Imam is a questionable man of the cloth.
The Imam’s Salafists, all clad in white, give me the stink eye when I enter the building with Natasha and her entourage. I’d love to hide from their hostile stares. They cover their guns with their hands, while the SWAT team walks past.
Natasha gives me a detailed description of what’s awaiting me inside the whorehouse. But I’m not really listening. Like always, I’m distracted by her beauty. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. She’s a sight that makes the heart of an aging Pusher beat faster. A sylphlike woman, but tough as nails. Even though I don’t want to come across as being sentimental, pushers, too, can fall in love. You’d understand if you could only see her. Stroking her ponytail with her left hand, she strides along the narrow hall past the chambers that house the dominatrixes. Reddish light illuminates haphazardly stuccoed walls, where the paint is flaking off. All my attention is on Natasha. On the streets of the Ghetto unveiled women have stopped to exist, you know. The times when female Lemons showed at least their faces are long gone. It all started with simple headscarfs. In all variations. Slung around their heads a couple of times and secured with pins. Or loosely placed on top of their hair in granny-style. They also wore makeup, skimpy clothes, or spray-painted jeans. However, even back then there were those who hid under niqabs with only their eyes being visible. A few fans of the burka were also around. Since then poverty in the ’hood and the steady influx of people from the Lemon territories have drastically altered women’s lives. The frivolous game, originally meant as a protest against Western values, quickly turned brutally serious. First, it was the jeans and miniskirts that vanished under dark shapeless tents. Next, makeup was gone from the faces. Until finally the faces themselves were obscured by curtains of fabric. Walking ghosts. The double-walled burka is the latest fad. I’m not joking. Should the top layer tear, there still is another one below to protect the women from prying eyes. The principle also used for double-walled oil tankers. The level of escalation can always be raised yet another notch. Times aren’t getting any better, I’m telling you. Meanwhile, women affiliated with gangs and the human wrecks who have fried their brains with meth have become the only unveiled women around. The young men don’t seem to mind. They just don’t know any better, I guess. I, on the other hand, find it frustrating to be denied a glimpse of half-exposed tits and pert asses, when making my way through the ’hood. Freedom, my friends, is something you only learn to cherish once you’ve lost it. Thank God, I have a permit that allows me to get out of the Ghetto at least four times a week. Otherwise, I’d lose my mind. No idea how the Lemons put up with it. The only nude flesh they get to ogle is that of the girls on the billboards behind East Side Gallery. Digitalized lust on huge flat screens, about sixty feet high in the air. A free morsel, that the detested Capitalist-Christian society beyond Ghetto limits deigns to throw them. Maybe all those devout Lemons spend their time standing at their apartment windows and working their mangled dicks, while gawking at those hot virtual broads. Don’t ask me. When the screens aren’t occupied by scantily clad women bearing witness to the superiority of Western lifestyle, the watchtower staff belabors Christian catch-phrases, aimed at converting the Lemons to the Church of our Savior. A job cut out for Sisyphus.
“Hey, are you listening to me?” Natasha’s voice eventually reaches my consciousness.
“What?” I ask, admiring her feminine curves. “Digital asses,” I blurt.
Natasha laughs. “What’s wrong with you? Seems like you haven’t seen the inside of a whorehouse for
a while.”
Embarrassed, I scratch my head. “I’m a little distracted... by... I...,” I stammer like an idiot.
Natasha turns and lasciviously puts her right hand on her gun in its belt holster, while tilting her body a bit to the side. I have problems meeting her eyes. She is in her thirties, but looks a lot younger. Like a ripe fruit. I should have let off some steam before this meeting. After having spent time in a Catholic boarding school the feeling that you missed out on something never seems to leave you. “What do you have for me?” I eventually ask.
“See for yourself,” she replies and motions to the SWAT guy out in the hall to wait for us. Then, she leads me into a kitchen.
A dead man is slumped forward on a chair, his head resting on the table. He’s white as a sheet, his limp arms dangling on left and right. His skull has been shattered. Hairs are stuck in the dark red blood that’s drying on the oilcloth. The Salafist has slippers on his feet. One of it has come off. Eyes wide open, he’s staring at the sink, where dishes have been left to soak. It’s Yussuf Bansuri, the manager of this brothel.
“Somebody wanted to make sure,” I state, when I notice the brain-matter in his hair.
“Sent to the great beyond with love. Looks like it was a matter close to someone’s heart,” Natasha agrees.
I just love her cynicism. A rare trait with women.
“Look at this,” she points out to me.
“What?”
“Look what he’s holding in his hand.”
I kneel and study the dead man’s hand. There’s a poker card stuck between two of his fingers. Someone must have placed it there after his death, I suppose. “Ace of clubs,” I announce the value of the card.
“It was the killer who wedged it between his victim’s fingers,” she echoes my own assumption.
I nod, yes. “A sign?”
Natasha lifts a brow, thinking. “Ever come across this symbol?”
“No.”
“A gang?”
“None that I know of.”
“What does it mean, you think?”
“Gambling? Gambling debts?” I joke.
She shakes her head as if I’d just said something stupid. “Stop fooling around, Hauke.”
“Why are you guys here, anyway?” I ask. “I mean, since when do you care what happens inside the Ghetto?”
“The Imam has notified us,” she explains.
“The Imam?” I’m surprised. “He wants the LKA involved? Why?”
“He figured that there might be trouble that couldn’t be contained inside the Ghetto.”
“Because of the dead manager of a whorehouse?”
“It’s one of his cousins.”
“So what? He’ll live. Half of the Ghetto is somehow related to him.”
“There seems to be more behind it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have called us in,” Natasha speculates.
“The Chechens?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who else? The Turks?”
Natasha shakes her head, no.
“The bikers wouldn’t dare pull such a stunt,” I think aloud. “Thor doesn’t have a death wish. It’s also the Chechens he has an ax to grind with, not the Arabs. What good would it do him to raise up stink with the Imam?”
Natasha bends over the dead Salafist, examining the deep gash on his head. “What, do you think, did this? Baseball bat?”
“Maybe,” I reply, nodding. I study her sparkling eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. This simply reeks of bikers. But it doesn’t mean a thing.”
Natasha gives me a serious look. “The Imam has issued a threat against us.”
“So?”
“If we don’t hand the killer over to him, he’ll declare holy war.”
“So what?” I wave her off. “Why should it bother you when these jokers finish each other off?”
“Don’t you understand? He wants to start a jihad against the infidels. The idea is to export the fight outside the ghetto.”
“Out of the ghetto? What makes you think so? The ace of clubs?”
“He reads it as a Christian symbol, because the clubs are shaped like little crucifixes.”
I snort. “Bullshit—it’s nothing but a playing card.”
“You know the Lemons. They wallow in the past and have successfully convinced themselves that we’re the oppressors.” Natasha waves her hands. “Booooh, conspiracy, watch out,” she scoffs with a tense smile. “Man, they still blame us for the crusades.”
“What does Ali Bansuri think? That the LKA is behind the whole thing?”
Natasha strokes her chin. “No idea what he might be thinking.” She again studies the battered man.
Same as me. “Looks pretty happy, right?” I say. “Maybe he’s with his 72 virgins now.”
Natasha turns around to face me. “Is everything okay with you?” she asks.
“Fine and dandy,” I reply, fascinated by her luminous blue eyes and the pride reflected in them.
“You need fresh junk?” she wants to know.
I nod. “My case’s almost empty.”
“I brought something with me. It’s outside in the car.”
“Great.”
“Hauke?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your eyes open for things that might be getting out of control.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Lay low a little. Calm down the Arabs. Don’t antagonize them.”
“That’ll only encourage them even more.”
“The violence needs to be contained under all circumstances.”
“Cheer up,” I tell her. “When the going got tough last time, everything stayed inside the Ghetto.”
Natasha nods pensively. “If it just wasn’t for the crucifix,” she says. “It’s making me feel really uncomfortable.”
3
I live in the subway, station Samariterstrasse. Train number 5 hasn’t stopped in the Ghetto for a long time and the stations here have been closed off. But I’ve discovered an access to the tunnel system in a derelict building. Subways or sewers, I know my way around the city’s underbelly. It’s a good way to get from A to B unnoticed. As the intervals between the trains to Hauptbahnhof, the central train station, are rather short, I always have to be on the alert while walking the hundred feet or so to the abandoned platform of Samariterstrasse. From time to time police or security launch raids in the tunnels, but they leave me alone. One of the benefits of my job for the LKA is that it allows me to bribe the sheriffs with coke. I’ve made my home in the little ticket booth on the deserted platform, where I even have electricity and running water. Free of charge. My place is fixed up like a trailer: sleeping area, tiny kitchen, a crapper that even flushes, and a sofa. A kiosk about twenty yards away on the same platform serves me as my library, even though reading is not my only pastime down here. Every day I sit in the lounge chair I have pushed to the edge of the platform and watch the trains go by. When they slow down on approach to the station, I can make out the faces of the commuters, traveling from the boroughs of Marzahn or Hellersdorf to their jobs in Mitte, the heart of Berlin. Most of them are just dully staring ahead. But those who have window seats look at me, while I relax in my bathing shorts, my hand holding a cocktail from which I lift the little paper umbrella now and then to take a sip. Surrounded by rats and dirt. Temperatures inside the tunnel are cozy almost all year around. In the summers it can be downright humid. The working stiffs just gawk at me like at an alien. I guess to them it’s like catching a glimpse of a foreign world: the thrill of the Ghetto. The situation makes it okay to take a quick look into the abyss before having to face a day at the office. I even have a couple of fans—almost exclusively female. A brunette always presses a sheet of paper to the window. “You want to marry me?” it says. Funny, how daily rituals make people eventually become parts of your life. Maybe I’ll bump into her at Alexanderplatz one of these days and buy her a coffee. The thing with the rats was a bit of an exaggeration on my part, by the way.
We’ve learned to coexist. When the occasional rodents come passing through, I usually toss them something. A piece of cheese or a bit of bread. Smart critters, they are. They learn extremely fast.
A little under three weeks ago I started sharing my little ticket booth with two roommates who otherwise would have been lynched by the Lemons: Lucas and Quasim. Even though it makes my place a bit crowded, the two of them stop the Diggers from taking over. Diggers? If you’ve ever lived below ground, you know what I’m talking about. Rough guys who feed on the city’s waste. Me, they respect, because I provide them with the occasional trip to a better world. I wouldn’t exactly call myself a Good Samaritan, but I don’t make empty promises.
Lucas is a Coptic Christian. His wife’s been dead for a long time. She got caught in the crossfire during some fight or the other in Syria and was hit by a ricochet shot. His son got killed that day, too. A real tragedy. Lucas doesn’t dare venture out into the streets, rather spending his days and nights inside the ticket booth. I can’t blame him. Like so many Copts, he’s been through an Odyssey of violence. And when he and his brethren finally managed to escape from Syria in the Twenties, they ended up being bullied by the Arabs in the refugee shelters. Looking back, I guess I was lucky to be taken in by the nuns in the orphanage. They didn’t suffer fools gladly, but at least you knew what to expect.
Quasim is less fearful than his buddy. He even goes out in the daytime now and then. He’s a Yazidi. I like to rib him because of his religion, but I always keep it nice. I’m just joking, I swear. These guys are Zoroastrians. A faith older than Judaism, Quasim claims. Alas, not any more popular, I usually reply. During the exodus of the Yazidi from Syria even children had to lend a hand, toting their ancient tomes. A story, which I find touching. The little ones saved their peoples’ holy scriptures from falling into the clutches of the so-called Islamic State, who saw the trek off with gunshots and grenades.
Berlin 2039: The Reign Of Anarchy Page 2