The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  We both stop at the corner of the courtyard because we hear voices and a car engine. After a second, Tariq squats down and peeks around the corner. It seems it’s our people out there, and he stands up immediately and goes forward. Voices are raised inside the courtyard, feet run toward him, implore him to lie down, but he refuses.

  I stay on the other side of the corner, barely breathing, not sure what it will do to me to be confronted by the consequences of what I’ve done. I lean against the rough concrete of the wall, close my eyes, and breathe as deeply as I can. But I can’t hide any longer and force myself to look around the corner.

  The entire courtyard has been transformed into a gravel pit. What was packed sand, stone, and yellow grass is now dirt and dust, eight-foot-deep pits where the missiles struck. Two rusty ambulances stand just inside the entrance to the courtyard, their snorting engines running. Medics and soldiers are scattered all over the yard. I see an older man with a stained white coat and a mustache holding a shoe in his hand. It takes a moment for me to realize that someone’s shin is protruding from the shoe.

  The ambulances are here, but there’s no one to rescue. And the paramedics must have been here a while, even before the drones left, because they’ve lined up the bodies they’ve found. I try to avoid seeing the details. But I can’t. I see torsos without legs. Bodies without heads, without arms. Bodies with holes blown out of their chests. And some bodies are completely intact, which is the most confusing thing of all.

  I’m drawn to those bodies. Suddenly I have to see them. I need to know how many are there. So I go toward them, as if in a dream, and count them. I don’t notice that someone’s wrapped a blanket around me, until I’m right in front of the bodies, until I start to walk along them, pointing to them one by one.

  “One. Two. Three,” I count out loud in Swedish. “Four. Five. Six.”

  Sometimes I’m not sure if pieces of bodies belong together. Which bloody legs belong to which shattered trunk. If that one-eyed head belongs to that chest. It’s like a puzzle.

  “Seven. Eight. Nine.”

  Someone has put his arm around me, but I try to shrug it off. Twist my shoulders out of his grasp.

  “Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.”

  The arm tugs at me, and I stop and turn toward the person next to me.

  “It’s no use,” Tariq says. “It was God’s will. They’re being rewarded now. We should rejoice for them.”

  He keeps his arm around me, and I find it incomprehensible that he’s standing there, Tariq who thought I was a traitor, who knows it was me who caused this. Not Allah. Me. Yet he holds his arm around me and leads me away from the bodies, toward the ambulances.

  “There were only sixteen bodies,” I say to the man in the white coat, who was holding the shoe and the shin. “We must have been at least twenty-five.”

  He makes me sit down, gives me a bottle of water, and forces me to take a sip.

  “You never find all the bodies,” he says. “Some are just smoke and rubble.”

  And I feel it then, when he says that. I know that this is how it must be. That it’s our only option.

  Later I sit with Tariq at the rim of the crater. The stench is overwhelming now. Gunpowder and fire and death.

  “I have to go back to Sweden,” I say into the devastation. “I have to destroy those who did this.”

  Tariq says nothing. He just nods with his eyes down on the gravel.

  “They can’t get away with this,” I say. “Wallah. I swear. They have to pay for this.”

  Tariq turns to me.

  “How are you going to do that, brother?” he says.

  “I’ll become smoke,” I say. “I’ll become smoke and rubble.”

  38. STOCKHOLM/BERGORT—THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015

  WHEN SHE WAKES up the sound in the room seems different, even though she pulled the curtains as close as she could, as if that would shut out whoever is watching and threatening her. She rolls over on her side and checks her telephone. 7:34 P.M. There’s an email in her in-box. She sits up. She’s been sleeping for over an hour. How is it even possible for her to sleep?

  She drowsily clicks on the email.

  Hey Yasmine, it begins in English. I just wanted to check how things are going for you in Stockholm. We have a project that the symbol you showed us is just perfect for. Please contact me as soon as you can. We’ve already started to think about campaigns, and we’d like to have the background work complete.

  She blinks, trying to get some focus. It’s signed Mark and comes from an address with shrewdanddaughter.com at the end. Damn, she’s hardly given her assignment a thought. They’re expecting something from her. After all, they’re paying well over four hundred dollars a night for this room.

  She can’t even think about that. Not now. She doesn’t want them to freeze the card, so she sends a quick email saying things are happening, and promises to return after the weekend.

  She gets up and goes over to the window again. She pushes the curtain aside with one hand and holds the gun behind her back with the other. She peeks out carefully toward the quay. But the man in the tracksuit is nowhere in sight, and she pulls the curtains again.

  Whatever his reasons are for trying to keep her away, it’s time to go back to Bergort.

  “Do you have any other exits?” she asks the clerk at the front desk. “I mean for someone who doesn’t want to exit straight out onto the quay, or whatever you call it?”

  It’s the same guy she ordered breakfast from the other day, the same mustache.

  “I mean, you have celebrities who stay here safely. Do you have a back door for them?”

  He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even ask. Just steps out from behind the counter and holds out his hand.

  “Absolutely. The staff entrance is over here.”

  With all the stress and tension wound up inside her, the uncomplicated kindness he shows her almost makes her want to hug him.

  It’s almost half past eight by the time she gets back to Bergort. If the mood was palpable this morning, now it’s magnetic, thick, and as oppressive as an approaching storm. There are clumps of kids in jeans and tank tops standing on the platform, smoking and spitting onto the tracks. But there’s none of the usual pushing and laughing tonight, no catcalls or wolf whistles. The small groups are overfilled balloons tonight, with their own force fields, crackling and hissing, waiting to burst.

  TV trucks are parked near the bottom of the ramp and excited reporters and cameramen are untangling their wires and microphones. And on the other side of the square the police stand with their police vans and helmets, their short, blond hair and neat uniforms. It’s like a football match, Yasmine thinks. But it’s unclear what the teams are. Unclear what the goal is.

  Near the edge of the artificial grass everything is quiet—just a couple of small boys kicking a ball against the high fence. The rattle of it echoes among the buildings. Yasmine remembers what Fadi looked like when he was younger and came home from doing this—red in the face, with his T-shirt sweaty and dirty, his knees scraped bloody by the plastic grass. He’d eat bowl after bowl of cornflakes, standing in the kitchen, half of him still outside, still with his friends. He never looked more like a little brother than then.

  She sinks down on a slanted bench a little ways away and leans back. That was a long time ago, but when she closes her eyes, the kids’ voices on the field sound like Fadi’s.

  Finally, it starts to get dark, and somebody calls out for the boys on the field, it’s time to go in, and there’s something in their mothers’ voices that makes the boys obey immediately. This is not a night to stay out, no night to disobey your parents, unless you’re already part of the shadows, already a hoodlum, already hopeless.

  Yasmine knows that if she and Fadi were still children, no one would have called for them. She sees the image of her mother before her, her tired eyes and scrubs. Thinks how she never shouted for them, never asked them to come back in. She jus
t kept working. Just made sure there was food on the table, clothes in the closet. And the duality cuts through Yasmine. Her mother was never there for them. Her mother was always there for them.

  The field is deserted, and Yasmine goes down to the kiosk to buy a coffee, mostly just to move a little. Cup in hand, she crosses between the buildings and the bushes, while light disappears along the rooftops and then away over the fields, and the pines, until darkness, or at least the shadows, settle over the balconies and the tunnels beneath the tracks. Finally, she goes back to the football field, uses her purse as a pillow, throws her legs up onto the bench, and gets ready for a long wait.

  At midnight she sits up again, her body feeling stiff and heavy. The darkness has settled over Bergort, deep and heavy as velvet. The air is still warm, but summer is close to over. She turns her eyes toward the plastic grass, where she can now make out dark silhouettes through the mesh of the fence. She tries to count them. Maybe twenty or so.

  Suddenly a voice is raised, louder than all the others.

  “Ey, shut up! Listen to me now! Tonight we go like hell! We’ll show them what Bergort is made of, won’t we?”

  Young guys shout and whistle. Pull on the fence to make it rattle. Yasmine carefully sneaks over to some bushes closer to the field. She recognizes that voice. She knows who it is. All these threads converge and part here. All these connections and interruptions. She peeks through the sparse branches and leaves. He’s older now. Not fat anymore. More large and muscular. But with the same high-pitched voice.

  Mehdi.

  From Fadi’s old gang. Parisa’s man now.

  She should have known, that was why Parisa looked so uncomfortable. That was why the cat ended up on her hotel wall. Mehdi is mixed up in this of course. But why all the drama? Why the threats and the craziness? Why the dead cats and tattooed gangsters? And what she truly doesn’t understand is: What does Fadi have to do with all of this?

  “Wait! Wait, brothers!” Mehdi’s voice comes from the football field. “We have a friend here who’s going to help us tonight, just like he helped us yesterday! Wallah! I swear! Tonight, the pigs are gonna get it!”

  Another man steps out of the shadows on the other side of the field and goes over to Mehdi. Yasmine can’t see his face—he’s wearing a ski mask—but he’s wearing glossy blue track pants identical to the ones the man outside the Lydmar had on.

  On his upper body he’s got a loose-fitting tank top and she catches glimpses of green tattoos from his back up to his neck. Everyone has those kinds of tattoos now, they’re not rare, but it’s the same man. She’s absolutely sure.

  But who is he? What is this?

  “Listen carefully now!” says the man in the tracksuit pants. “Tonight we’re gonna burn this shit down!”

  He throws a bundle of ski masks down in front of him.

  “Put these on. You’ve seen the square, it’s full of TV cameras. You don’t want your face to end up on the news.”

  The kids laugh and bend down and each one grabs a mask and pulls it over their heads. And in that moment, they are transformed. That simple gesture of pulling those hoods over their heads changes everything. They don’t laugh or shove anymore. They’re no longer bored or idle. They’re no longer just boys.

  With the ski masks on they become men, faceless soldiers. They’re no longer individuals, they’re a mass. They can no longer be understood or protected, they’re something that must be fought.

  They fall silent and the tension crackles around them, sending out shockwaves, which seem to flicker and jump, blue and red, along the chain-link fence.

  “This is no game tonight, brothers,” Tracksuit continues. “Tonight it’s not just us. Tonight we’ll spread chaos not just in Bergort, but everywhere. All brothers are united across every area!”

  The mass, who were just boys before, stomp and bang on the fence, shouting and jumping.

  All brothers united, thinks Yasmine. There are twenty of them. Maybe thirty. How many people live in Bergort? Three thousand? Four thousand? Hardly all the brothers have united here on the field. Just a bunch of guys who don’t want to go home.

  Tracksuit pulls out two large, apparently heavy bags, and opens them. He holds a glass bottle in one hand and a can of liquid in the other.

  “Molotovs,” he says. “Here are funnels and bottles and fabric.”

  He shakes the can.

  “And fuel. All you have to do is make them.”

  The brothers divide and fill the bottles. When they seem ready, Tracksuit hands out what look like metal slingshots with thick rubber bands to some of the kids.

  “We’ll do like yesterday,” he says then. “You start at the parking lot.”

  He points to a group of maybe five guys.

  “At least five cars, bre,” he says. “Ideally more. When the pigs come you run up onto the footbridge. Then wait under the bridge.”

  He selects maybe ten kids.

  “Use the Molotovs. Rain fire down on those fucking pigs. Make them pay for all the shit they’ve done to you. Let the fuckers burn!”

  The guys are agitated now, can hardly stand still. The excitement rises like vapor off them.

  “And then,” Tracksuit says, “you torch the grocery store.”

  He points to what looks like two big hammers on the ground.

  “Smash the windows in with these,” he says. “Take what you want and destroy the rest! Then we’ll see where things lead, OK? Brother Mehdi will stay in contact with each group. Make sure you have his number and do what he says, OK?”

  The soldiers, who were just boys before, stomp and jump. They’re ready for this, ready for the streets, ready to set fire and flee, ready for chaos.

  Mehdi says something, and then they set off in their groups, some with their ski masks on, others leaving them off so as not to attract attention. Finally, only Mehdi and Tracksuit remain.

  “You’ll take care of this, len?” Tracksuit says.

  “You know it,” Mehdi says. “It’s cool, brother.”

  They shake hands and Tracksuit turns around and disappears toward the other end of the dark field.

  Yasmine’s thoughts are racing and she feels one of her legs beginning to shake nervously. Should she confront Mehdi now? But she can’t risk not getting to hear what Parisa has to say about Fadi tomorrow.

  But Tracksuit? Who is he? Without really making a decision, she moves farther back into the bushes and crouches down with her eyes fixed on the slowly disappearing figure of Tracksuit.

  She thinks about the stencil on the wall, about the warning he gave her earlier today outside the Lydmar. They, whoever they are, don’t want her here, nothing could be clearer than that. But she’s come this far, risked this much. Seen he’s the leader of the riots. She’s not about to stop now.

  Slowly, carefully, she makes her way through the bushes until she’s out of Mehdi’s field of vision. Then she straightens out and follows Tracksuit between the buildings as carefully as she can.

  He pulls off his ski mask as he walks from the high-rises toward the low-rises. She stays as far back as she can, so he won’t catch sight of her if he turns around. The image of his hand shaped into a gun flashes before her eyes, but she forces it away with Fadi, by thinking this could lead her to Fadi.

  The man is almost to the school now. The barracks are still there, just older, grittier, made more permanent by snow and ice and sun. The man slants through the snowball trees where Fadi used to wait for her, into a parking lot that’s deserted except for a gleaming, midnight blue BMW parked under a streetlamp. It’s different from the few luxury cars you see around here, the ones that belong to footballers home to visit their family or to Serbs or Swedes who’ve scored an armored vehicle. Those cars are always black, always have chrome wheels and tinted windows, always scream gangster or superstar. This is streamlined and quiet, toned down and anonymous, not starved for attention.

  Tracksuit leans down toward the driver’s side and says something to someon
e in the car. From the other side of Bergort comes the muffled sound of explosions, a car being set on fire, and Tracksuit turns toward the sound. For a moment he looks straight in Yasmine’s direction, where she’s standing on the slope down toward the school, barely hidden behind the corner of one of the buildings, probably less than a hundred feet from him. For a moment she thinks he sees her.

  But he quickly turns back to the car again and says something, then stretches out his hand. When he pulls it out again, he’s holding an envelope in his hand, from which he removes what appears to be a small stack of bills. He counts them quickly and raises a hand in a farewell before leaving the parking lot and heading toward the subway.

  Yasmine waits, unsure of what to do now. Should she follow him? There’s a big risk that he’ll see her on the platform—he knows what she looks like.

  As he disappears behind the buildings, Yasmine hears the car in the parking lot start, the lights turn on, and she turns back toward it. Maybe this is the way forward?

  ERG 525.

  She types the license plate number into her phone without looking away from the car. As it slowly rolls out of the parking lot, it passes by her at a distance of no more than thirty feet, and she bends forward to look into the car. In the soft glow of the streetlight she gets a glimpse of the driver.

  He’s probably about ten years older than her. Blond, a Swede with a backslick and a blazer, a straight nose and high cheekbones. He’s so far out of his context here that it seems surreal, like science fiction. He turns his head and their eyes meet for a moment in the yellow light. He looks tired.

  Tired and empty and scared.

  39. BERGORT—SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 2015

  BERGORT. EVERYTHING IS the same. The concrete and grass. The scent of pine and lukewarm kebabs from the food cart. Every step is a step I’ve taken before. Nothing has changed, nothing is new here. Nothing except me. I’m smoke and rubble now. Shaved head, dirty clothes, sleepless nights, and twenty pounds lighter. I have no wings, just shaky hands, and jumpy images of bodies without heads, bodies without feet, calves, thighs, legs, chests, shoulders, arms, hands. Everything is the same here. But I’m nothing more than memories of death, memories of betrayal. I’m nothing. Just the promise of revenge.