by James Reston
“I really think you should call him.”
“Please, my darling, no one else. I’ll call him if I think I need to. I promise. Really, it was very nice of you to call.”
Karima hung up and then immediately placed a call to her mother.
“Have you had any strange phone calls, Mutti?” she asked, immediately regretting that she had asked so directly.
“Strange phone calls? From whom, liebchen?”
“Oh, never mind. If you haven’t, you haven’t. Everything’s fine. My mind’s a bit scrambled, that’s all.”
“I can certainly appreciate that,” her mother said. “But please tell me what’s going on, Karima. This is about your boyfriend, isn’t it?” And then in a whispering voice, “They’re saying he was one of that group that attacked America … God forbid.”
“Yes, Mutti, God forbid.”
As if the walls weren’t closing in on her enough already, Recht called Karima the next day at work to inform her that that her name had been placed on an international “watch list” and that she had to turn over her passport. “Some things are simply beyond my control,” he said.
She gave him no response.
“Karima, are you there?”
“I’m here, Kommissar.”
“Okay, I see. Well then, I’ll be in touch.”And he hung up.
When she got home, she had three voice messages. The first was from a reporter at Der Spiegel, requesting an interview. It did not take a genius to guess what they were after. And then the second message came on. She heard static, and then a voice, speaking in a near whisper through the crackle.
“Hello, Sister Karima. Here is Omar. We honor your love and your support for our hero, Sami. I have made an arrangement to pick up his personal effects. One week from today, the Witnessing Day, go to Lades Chicken on Steindamm at 1 p.m. and order Adana kebab. When a waiter asks if you would like wedding soup first, hand Sami’s things to him.”
June 10, 2001
“I’m just back from Las Vegas and a little tired. We stayed at the Luxor Hotel on the famous Strip and played a little blackjack. I wish I could take you there someday. It’s really an amazing place. I’ve never seen anything like it. We flew first class on a Boeing 737.
“But I was telling you about Omar. I started meeting him more and going to class less and less. I felt like I was in a kind of daze, and my professors had noticed. My grades were slipping into dangerous territory. Sometimes, to be honest, I just forgot to take the tests. My professors all gave me second chances. I was their project. But I had run out the string.
“Then, right before leaving to meet you, I was summoned to meet my academic adviser. Professor Strate looked at me straight with pained disappointment. ‘You seemed to have such promise when you first came here, Herr Haddad,’ he said. The university had so few eligible Arab candidates, and the faculty tried to make allowances. They appreciated that our community faced ‘special hurdles,’ but things had gone too far.
“‘Listen, Samir. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can no longer recommend a program that would put you on a path toward flight training. Perhaps you can become an airplane mechanic. But with candidates in aeronautical engineering, the first thing we look for is reliability. A captain’s first job is the safety of his passengers.’ And so it went.
“I could scarcely blame them. It was true: something had come over me. I was finding it hard to concentrate. Sure, I wanted to fly airplanes someday, but I was losing interest in academics. I began to worry about what you would think. And my father? I could not expect him to continue sending me money. He would say I had fallen in with a bad crowd. And Omar? All those jokes about me and the Red Baron. Why would such a brilliant person waste time on a C-minus student about to flunk out of school? I was not only a lousy student. I was a lousy brother.
“The train whistled along toward Lübeck, and Atta’s rage flitted in and out of my mind. Atta had never been to America. Israel was an abstraction to him. And yet he linked the two places as the same. The mere mention of these evil black holes could send him into a rage. How much contact did he ever have with Jews? I wondered.
“Could it be that he hated himself? When he looked in the mirror, did he only see a short, ugly cripple? Was that why he was so uncomfortable with women? Was his manliness in question? His shouting and bombast, his bullying, his grandiosity: something very deep was tormenting him. I couldn’t believe it was Israel or America. Sometimes I pitied rather than despised him.
“And yet, it was true, Atta had gotten into my head. I can’t deny it. He’s brilliant and dedicated. He’s serious and focused. All the things I am not. He knows who he is and what he believes and what he wants. I admire that. I can’t help it. Between Atta’s aggression and Omar’s persuasiveness, I feel constantly offguard. Before, I was just plodding along. Now I’m frequently upset, unsure, longing for something without knowing exactly what it is.
“When the train stopped in Rostock, I pulled out the book that Atta had given me for my ‘edification.’ It was The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, published in 1896.
“‘A little outdated, isn’t it?’ I said to Atta as I took his gift.
“‘Read and learn,’ Atta said.
“When the train started to move again, I dipped into its yellowed pages. ‘Herzl’s goal was nothing less than the regeneration of the Jewish nation as a political entity,’ the introduction read. ‘There was no Jewish nation in a political sense; only Jewish communities scattered throughout the world.’ The idea of a Jewish State had the power to motivate Jewry, for ‘all through the long night of their history the Jews have not ceased to dream this royal dream.’ My eyes drifted out the window to the passing countryside. This royal dream. It sounded familiar. Like the Caliphate. A world governed by the Sharia. Our royal dream. Isn’t it about the same?
“I read a few more pages, and I thought I was beginning to understand Atta better. A diabolical Jewish conspiracy is afoot in the world, and he wants to persuade me of the danger. Herzl is the philosophical underpinning. New York is their Jerusalem, where they control the world economy and the world’s media. They’re launching their campaign to expunge Islam from the face of the earth. Washington is the ‘faculty of black arts,’ as he calls it. Their US Capitol is the symbol of their corrupt Western democracy. Politicians there are bribed and pass laws supporting the Jewish state. All the misfortunes of the Islamic world could be traced back to this single evil conspiracy. The tragedy of Palestine is Zionism’s ultimate triumph. But the omnipotence of the USA is a myth, he proclaims often. But something can be done about it.
I laid Herzl’s book aside. As the small Pomeranian villages went flying by, I returned to my daydreams.
“Since I could not fathom Atta’s anger, I embraced Omar’s intelligence. He helped me to see that instead of studying to be a mere engineer or technician, I could be more than a pusher of buttons or manipulator of nuts and bolts. One day I could be a spiritual and a cultured person like him.
“You must believe this, Karima. It never crossed my mind that I was being manipulated.
“Only later did it dawn on me that Omar’s weekend trips, supposedly a search of the German marriage markets, were actually recruiting trips. I was not his only prospect—just the one who had the technical skills he needed.
“When the train neared Greifswald, I remembered how much I despised my time there, except the time with you. These gray, rectangular rabbit cages that passed for dormitories are so ugly and depressing. As the train slowly pulled into the Greifswald station, all these morose thoughts disappeared. There you were on the platform. I will always hold that picture of you in my mind. It was the last time we were perfect lovers. Leaning against a lantern in the low light of the evening, plumes of smoke wafting from your cigarette, you watched the cars go by, one by one, scanning the windows for me. I did not immediately throw the window open to greet you. I just feasted my eyes on you,
flush with my good fortune.
“You were especially gorgeous that evening, your fitted jacket; snug, short, black skirt; and patterned tights. You had pulled your lush hair back with a clasp, and you wore the dangly, chandelier earrings with the tiny emerald studs that I had given you on our first anniversary. Who needs Atta’s forty virgins, bringing honey and pomegranates, if you have Karima bringing you falafel and lentil soup?
“We had falafel at the Lades Chicken-land, and then went dancing at the Fly-Boy. ‘And then?’ I asked, and you giggled and jabbed me in the ribs. ‘Down, boy, down,’ you said.
I wore rinse Levis, remember? A fitted black T-shirt, and a pullover from Hamburger Hof. You liked me in slim-fitting jeans. You said it made me look like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Before we left your apartment, we admired ourselves in the mirror. We were a handsome couple.
“You could tell how I was afraid that night of being noticed, but even more running into skinheads again like we had the year before. There he was, in my face, that pimply Nazi oaf, shaved head, leather, and tattoos, screaming in the strobe lights about a raghead and a camel jockey in the house. His stormtroopers started chanting, ‘No A-rabs, no A-rabs.’ We got up and hurried out, my arm around you. Never again, I swore to myself. The little maggots are everywhere.
“I couldn’t tell you that night that I was failing all my courses, every one—not just mathematics, but technical mechanics, fluid dynamics, and macroeconomics as well. I was consciously trying to make my life sound normal, nothing special. I needed to be good at being boring. But it was hard to think of commonplace things I did in Hamburg that didn’t involve Omar and Atta. It was getting harder to talk to you without lying.
“‘You seem tense, Sami,’ you said, as we headed toward the club. ‘What’s wrong?’ I just shrugged my shoulders.
“As usual, there was a long line at the Fly-Boy. The crowd was mainly German, remember? The usual mix of townspeople and university students, with a few gays and Goths and overeager kids waiting to do their lines in the darkness. But there were a fair number of Arabs and Turks as well. You got mad when I ogled a few flirtatious, Palestinian girls in their full-body silk outfits. The only visible flesh was their excited faces. The rest was to imagine, their shimmering, vanilla gowns very tight around their waists, especially their lovely …
“‘Sami? What are you looking at?’ you said tartly. I loved your jealousy.
“‘Nothing. Really nothing,’ I replied. ‘I’m just a guy.’
“‘That’s what they call Islamic modesty,’ you scoffed. ‘Head scarves and killer stilettos.’
“Inside, I remember the music was loud and pounding, making it nearly impossible to talk. The strobes and starbursts were blinding. We found a table far away from the dance floor. The Paul van Dyk remix of “For an Angel” was playing. Not long after we sat down, on came my favorite, Madonna’s “Ray of Light.” Before we knew it, we were dancing right next to the Palestinian girls.
“I had noticed this guy across the room. Kind of skinny, flat face and dull eyes, clean-shaven except for a moustache. Wearing a red bandana, the pirate in a masquerade. Ya’youni, I felt someone was watching me and ogling you. Several times I glanced in his direction. He averted his eyes.
“But then I went to the bathroom. When I came out of the stall, there he was.
“‘Salaam,’ I said and started to walk past him.
“‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I want to introduce myself. My name is Ahmad.’ He spoke in the Hejazi dialect of rural Saudi Arabia. I assumed he probably came from a small, desert village, and I couldn’t imagine how he’d found his way to Germany. But I didn’t appreciate being spied on, especially not in a place like that. He apologized, made some remark about how pretty you were, and I started to get annoyed.
“He put up his hands. ‘Please, I meant nothing. You’re just a lucky person, that’s all.’
“‘I need to get back.’
“‘I followed you in here … so you would know.’
“‘Know what?’
“‘That I am a friend of Omar.’
“I slumped against the wall. ‘Okay, Ahmad, fine. What can I do for you?’
“He gestured for me to put my ear close to his mouth to hear his secret.
“‘I wanted to meet you, Sami, because I’ve been assigned to your team.’”
Within minutes of Omar leaving his demand about Witnessing Day on Karima’s answering machine, Braun and a technician named Klingmann gathered in Recht’s office at Bruno-Georges-Platz to listen to the wiretap. At the last minute, the first kommissar stormed in.
“That’s the second message in a week he’s left on her machine,” Braun said.
“Do we know where the call came from?” the first kommissar asked.
The technician shook his head.
“Not even whether it originated in Germany?”
“No, sir. The calls come from random pay phones.”
“How do we know that this is really Omar?” Braun asked. “The accent doesn’t sound Middle Eastern.”
“You’re right, Braun. It sounds more African than Middle Eastern,” the first kommissar said.
“We don’t know,” Recht said. “Not for sure. What’s our latest on Omar’s whereabouts?”
“We thought he left the country on September 8,” said the first kommissar. “But he could still be in Germany.”
“Omar seems awfully eager to get those postcards and dental bills she told us about,” Braun said with a smirk.
Recht shot a peeved glance at his assistant.
“We might have seized these sacred relics two months ago,” Braun said, rubbing it in.
Recht took another drag on his cigarette. It was true. These gangsters were desperate to get their hands on Haddad’s personal effects. What could possibly be so important to them? Recht wondered, so important that they would risk getting caught. Whatever it was, their desperation made Karima’s situation that much more dangerous…and potentially more productive. And as long as he was unable to lay his hands on the contents of the package due to the infuriating privacy laws in Germany, Recht’s situation was precarious as well with the first kommissar.
“Danke, Herr Klingmann,” the first kommissar said. “Let me know immediately if there’s another message.” And he stomped out as rudely as he had stomped in.
Karima’s thoughts drifted to that terrible spring more than two years before when she had come to the end of her patience with Sami. Her suspicions had been deep, but her evidence was thin. Their relationship had become a roller-coaster ride: spats followed by apologies and tearful reunions and promises, followed by more spats. He had made offhanded references to his friends in Hamburg, and then grown angry when she asked about them. He was often withdrawn, spending hours on the web, even when they were together.
Her attraction to him remained strong, however. He had that beautiful face and that wonderful wide smile. He could still make her laugh. Couldn’t her love for him pull him away from all this? As his beard became full, his sanctimoniousness became overbearing. He spoke more frequently about religion, then grew curt when she asked about his interpretation of concepts like jihad.
“I can’t discuss that with you,” he would say. “Let’s just say it means ‘holy war.’ But I can’t discuss that with an unbeliever.”
Of course, this insult wounded and angered her. Worse, his mentions of Chechnya and Bosnia and Afghanistan scared her. Unsure of where to turn, she decided to call Sami’s parents in Beirut. When she reached Sami’s mother, the sweet woman blurted out her concerns in her halting French. Sami was taking his religion far too seriously and hanging out with unsavory people. She had heard that he spoke frequently about jihad and had even mentioned martyrdom. It occurred to her that he might volunteer to go to some dangerous place to fight for Islam. Please, wasn’t there something they could do with their son?
It was around t
his time when Samir Haddad received the news that his powerful uncle, the daunting Assem, was flying from Beirut to Hamburg to see him. He immediately suspected that Karima was behind it. He called to confront her, and she denied it, but she was a bad liar, at least to him. He hung up on her and went silent. After a while, from guilt as much as anything, she tried to reach him to confess and apologize, but he would not pick up. She began calling every day. Nothing.
Finally, she wrote him a letter.
My dear Samir,
Again I haven’t been able to reach you, though I have called a number of times. I left messages for you to call me back, but you haven’t done so. I want to assume that you’re merely busy or that you didn’t get my messages. But I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I thought for a long, long time about us. What is love for you, Sami? This is what love is to me: to take the other as he is, to share everything with him, mentally, physically, materially, in all areas of life, to do things for the other you wouldn’t do for yourself, and to be there for the other, especially in bad times. I want to ask of you only one thing. Be honest with me, Sami. Don’t just say you love me if you don’t really mean it with all you are, all you believe, all you feel. If you can’t give me that promise of honesty, it is better to forget about our relationship, even though it would hurt me terribly.