Her thoughts drain her, and she feels too exhausted to take another step, even though she’s almost home. In the end she sinks down onto the curb. But she forgets what she’s holding in her hand, and the bottle in the thin plastic bag hits the asphalt hard and shatters, and wine flows out of the bag onto the street.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” she hisses and jumps aside to avoid getting soaked by wine.
She feels powerless. She thinks she might start crying, and she hides her face in her hands and leans forward. But the tears won’t come, and through her fingers she sees the cracked asphalt, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, gravel.
When she finally opens her eyes panic washes over her, as heavy and stifling as a wave. And across the street, less than thirty feet away, a man stands staring straight at her. There’s something familiar about him, something that makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. It takes a second for her to realize who he is. But then everything falls into place: the night in the alley, losing consciousness, the computer. She is completely sure. Patrick didn’t take her computer.
The man across the street did.
47. BERGORT—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
THE MEN ARE close now. They stop, maybe four or five yards from her, with their arms at their sides, black leather gloves, black masks. In the background, there’s the sound of a train speeding out of the tunnel, glaring lights. She backs up, turning so that she always has all of them in sight.
“Please,” she says, holding up her hands, she hears how empty it sounds, how helpless and pathetic. “Whoever you are . . . I’m just looking for my brother.”
They stand still, just staring at her, completely neutral in their masks. She moves her gaze between them, tries to really see them or find some surface, make eye contact. The one with the tattoos and the tracksuit pants studies her calmly; his eyes are like small stones, dark gray and smooth in the holes of the mask. The one in the middle has brown eyes that seem completely calm and indifferent as well. But there’s something in the eyes of the man at the very edge. It’s as if he can’t concentrate, his eyes wander back and forth from the others to her. There’s something in them, something familiar.
She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry and sticky. She turns to the familiar eyes, trying to catch them, begging them.
“I’m just looking for my brother,” she repeats.
Tracksuit takes a step forward, holds out his hands with palms up, as if to show her he doesn’t intend to hurt her. But she knows that gesture, she’s seen it a thousand times. Its meaning is inverted, not passive, but aggressive, and she takes a step backward. She sees the legs of the man with nervous eyes trembling, and she turns to him.
“Damnit, I’m from here,” she says. “Wallah, I’m one of you.”
“We warned you,” Tracksuit says suddenly. His voice is deep and muffled like sound inside a prison cell. “We’ve made it clear that you needed to stop poking around. But you have shown us no respect, len. So you’ve left us no choice.”
She doesn’t know how it happened, but he’s holding a knife now. The blade glitters, throwing reflections on the trees, and it blinds her.
“Please,” she says again, “I’m just looking for my brother . . .”
“Seriously,” says the one with the nervous, familiar eyes. “We said . . .”
“Enough!” Tracksuit hisses sideways and turns toward the person who questioned him. “Shut your mouth, you little cunt.”
He turns to Yasmine again, leaning back a bit, self-assured, as if this is commonplace for him. The knife gleams in his hand. Yasmine takes a step back, she feels pine needles and gravel beneath her, feels the beginning of the slope, feels the trees around her.
“You don’t seem to understand,” he says, as if he were explaining something to a child. “You need to forget about that. There’s nothing here for you. Nothing to figure out. Your brother, the haddi, is dead. We’re nothing, you understand? We’re ghosts.”
The nervous eyes are fastened to the knife now.
“He’s not dead,” she whispers.
“What did you say, whore?” Tracksuit says.
He’s almost next to her now, maybe an arm’s length—a stab—away. And there’s something in it that wakes Yasmine up, something in the way he says Fadi is dead, how he calls her a whore.
Something about the way he stands there with his shitty tattoos, his fucking knife, and his shiny, douchey Adidas pants. It’s as if she falls headlong into a well from a mountain, headlong into where she came from. How many times has she seen them with their knives and knuckles and shaved heads, their broken noses, and their wasted fucking lives? Just like David, just like everyone here. Your own rules and expectations, your own violence and threats. And she thinks about Fadi and the weapons and David’s fist against her temple. And she thinks: It’s enough now, she can’t take another second. It ends here.
And before she knows it the gun is in her hand. Before she’s even caught up with her own reaction, she’s cocked it, just like she remembers from the shooting range. Before the adrenaline even has time to flow through her body, she’s holding it in two hands and pointing it straight at the forehead of the man in those tracksuit pants.
She took the blows in the living room and in the kitchen and in the bedroom all through her childhood. Took the bruises and the shame. But it was for Fadi’s sake. She took the abuse and the blows from David. She let him do it, asked him to, forced him to. But it was for her own sake. No more. All the hatred she carried, for that, for Fadi and David and her mother and father and Parisa and this whole sad place, Bergort, is suddenly in her hands. It’s as if she’s embracing hatred, as if it’s made of steel and death.
She sees how the eyes behind the mask change, something flashes in them. She sees how the other two draw back, how the one with the nervous eyes holds up his hands and backs away.
“Do not call me whore,” she says. “My brother is not dead.”
The glint of fear or confusion has passed.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Tracksuit says. “Are you gonna shoot me, whore?”
He says the last word quietly and slowly, and the last syllable is drowned out by the deafening sound that erupts when she pulls the trigger.
48. BERGORT—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
I GET UP BEFORE six. I read the digits on my cell phone, relieved that it’s finally tomorrow, even if time is more complicated down here in the dark. I couldn’t sleep last night. How can you sleep when your whole life is twisting around inside of you? How can you sleep when you see your sister’s face every time you close your eyes, hear her voice, see the rows of your dead brothers, rows of bad decisions—a short, wasted life?
Sometime in the middle of the night I pushed open the heavy door to the hallway, found my way to the stairs in the dark, and was relieved to discover that the door opened without a key. I remembered one time about a hundred years ago when we climbed up onto the roof of one of these buildings, and I felt like that was the only thing that mattered. To get to the top, all the way up, as close to the sky as I could. And I crept up the stairs, all the way up to the top floor, all the way up to the attic, right up to the last staircase to the roof.
The air in the attic was so heavy and damp, so filled with concrete and abandoned junk that it felt like breathing in all of Bergort, and it made me so miserable that I hurried up the last stairway. Two steps at a time, then out the door, out onto the roof, ten floors above the ground, the wind so warm and mild, the stars faded in the gray summer night sky. I crawled on all fours right up to the edge.
It looked like the school was right at my feet, so small I could have put it in my pocket. There were high-rises all around me, like the towers of a castle, a fortress, or a prison. I saw Camp Nou, which looked like a postage stamp, and the playground and the low-rises. I turned my head and saw cars burning in the big parking lot, which looked like birthday candles, of no importance at all. I could hear voices even up here, could see the kids and the
cops engaged in their meaningless dance.
When I crawled to the other side, I could see our building, so small and identical to all the others, and I thought, That’s where it began, sister. That’s where we started. It could have ended up differently, sister, but this is what is.
This is how it turned out.
And I turned my gaze just a few degrees, past the grove where we used to play and where I met the brothers, just a bit more, and there was imam Dakhil’s apartment. This is where it ends, sister, I thought. Just an inch from where it started. And I crawled to the middle of the roof and rolled over on my back. Looked up at the sky, the stars, and everything else. And I made one last attempt. Maybe the only sincere attempt I ever made. For a moment I thought that now it was going to happen, that it happens when we are in need.
I stood up, turned in the right direction, made the right movements, mumbled the right words, and fell to my knees. Slowly, I let myself fall forward, my head on the rough, dry roof. All around me was dawn light and burning cars, timber and concrete, and my whole life. If God exists somewhere, I thought, he is here. And I recited the verses with a sincerity I’d never before been capable of. Right there, in that moment, I sought mercy and forgiveness and humility more intensely than I ever did before.
I don’t know how long I lay there, how long I waited and prayed. Long enough to finally become so exhausted that I fell down on my side, in the gray, grainy light. Long enough to know that I got no answer. Long enough to know that I was completely alone.
Maybe being alone is somewhat of a relief, I think now, as I stand up on the warm concrete floor in my basement. All I want is to be reconciled to the past. I should have understood a long time ago that there was never any context outside of us. There was never anything that could fill the void you left behind.
But it’s not true, that’s not all I want. More than anything, I wish I’d never let you disappear. That I’d never given you any reason, that I never forced you to go. But these are thoughts I don’t have the strength to think. Instead, I force myself to focus on the only task I have left. The traitors are going to have to answer for their betrayal. Beyond that, everything is dark.
I reach my hand into the sleeping bag, down to the foot, and haul out the old Russian gun, check the magazine. This was all I took with me from Syria. Two handguns, a rifle. The instruments to exact my vengeance. I double-check the safety and wedge the gun into the waistband of my jeans. I inhale and sit down on the mattress.
There is only one thing left to do. I tear a page out of my notebook, grab a blue ballpoint pen. And I start to write.
I write to Mehdi first. I thank him for everything. Then I ask him to save the rest of the letter. To hide it and wait for you. In case you ever come back.
And then I start from the beginning and write everything down. I write about waiting for you next to the bushes outside the school, about how we slept on the floor in that cold apartment. About my brothers and the Syrian’s car and the fires and all this fucking shit. About how I flapped and cawed and chased your shadow through Bergort. But most of all I write about how it wasn’t your fault, nothing that happened was your fault. It was only me, just concrete and my brothers and the ones who call themselves our parents and the school and the darkness that pushes and pries. . . . But mostly it was just me.
I write about Dakhil and al-Amin, I write about his betrayal and the bombs, about legs blown off and the line of bodies. I fill the paper and tear out one and then another. I write until the ink in the pen is gone, until the text becomes paler and thinner, ultimately just an imprint on the paper.
When there’s nothing left, I collapse on the mattress, emptied out by the past, emptied by what led me here. Empty of everything except what I have left to do.
49. BERGORT—FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FAST now. Everything stands still. The sound stops and for a moment there is complete silence. One of the men in the hoods has turned around and is running like a hare through the bushes and brush, down the slope toward the weedy field below. Yasmine lets him go, barely glances at him, confused by what she’s done, confused by the silence and stillness.
The man in the tracksuit pants and tattoos lies in front of her in the long grass, rolled up in a little ball, whimpering like a kitten, with his hands pressed against his thigh where she’s just shot him.
The other man, the one with the nervous, jumpy eyes, is down on his knees now, holding his hands up in front of him.
“Yazz!” he says. “Please Yazz, don’t hurt me! I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to . . .”
She just looks at them. It’s surreal. The sunlight. The man whimpering. The other man begging for mercy. She realizes that she still has the gun in her hand. She’s still pointing at the other man, aiming for his head. And she realizes she knows who he is. She’s known it the whole time.
“Take off your mask, Mehdi, you little fucking sharmuta,” she says.
He obeys, and when he lifts it, she sees tears flowing down his broad face.
“Yazz,” he says. “I’m a father now, Yazz! Let me live.”
She lowers the gun slowly.
“You’re such a fucking ass, Mehdi,” she says. “I’m not gonna shoot you. I wouldn’t have shot him either if he hadn’t pulled a fucking knife on me.”
Mehdi nods quickly, pathetically.
“I swear, Yazz, I didn’t know anything about this.”
But she’s not listening. She bends over the man she shot and pulls off his ski mask.
“We better put something on that wound,” she says. But he just stares at her with cold hatred in his eyes and lifts one hand from the wound to try to hit her. She jumps away.
“Fuck it then,” she says. “You’ve just been shot, bre. No matter how much I hate you, I don’t want you to die.”
She turns to Mehdi.
“Take off your shirt and tie it around the wound. Do you have a phone?”
Mehdi nods and takes off his jacket, pulls his shirt over his head.
“Call an ambulance, then, len. Your friend needs help.”
“But what should I say? I mean, he’s been shot?”
“No fucking ambulances!” the shot man says and tries his best to get up on his side.
But he collapses on his back, his hands pressed against the wound.
“Tell them he’s shot. Seriously, I don’t care. But don’t pull me into this bullshit any more, I want to make that absolutely fucking clear to you.”
Mehdi bends over the other man and wraps his T-shirt hard around his thigh. The man refuses to look away from Yasmine.
“You’ll die for this, whore,” he hisses. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”
He tries to laugh, but it comes out as a hiss.
“This isn’t just about Bergort, you little sharmuta. This is fucking real.”
Yasmine bends over him again.
“So what is it then?” she says. “What’s this about? And what does my brother have to do with it?”
“All I know is that you’re gonna fucking die, whore,” he hisses between clenched teeth.
Mehdi shrugs.
“We have to get out of here,” he says. “Before the cops get here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Yasmine says.
She suddenly feels the weight of the gun again and aims it at the man on the grass, at his other leg.
“I’m not going anywhere until this fucker tells me where Fadi is and how he’s connected to all this. Time to talk, bre, otherwise I’ll fuck your other leg up, too.”
There’s something intoxicating about all this. Something almost arousing. After all she’s had to take, all the blows and shit. She has the power now. The violence is in her hands. She almost hopes he’ll keep his mouth shut. She wants nothing more than to put a bullet in his right leg too. But Mehdi pulls on her shoulder, sobbing.
“No, Yazz,” he says. “I swear, he doesn’t know anything about Fadi. I swear! Nobody knows. No o
ne besides me.”
They’re all the way to the high-rise where Mehdi and Parisa live with her mother when they hear the sirens singing over the expressway, then slow down and turn off on the other side of Bergort.
“Damn, they were fast,” Mehdi mumbles.
Yasmine doesn’t answer, just snatches open the door to the staircase. She doesn’t have time to care about what just happened. All she can think about is—Fadi is here, Mehdi’s been with him the whole time.
She stops inside the damp, echoing stairway and turns to Mehdi.
“And now?” she says. “Where are we going?”
He walks past her, unlocks the door to the stairs to the basement, and heads down in front of her. Their footsteps echo dully behind them. He leads them farther down into the dampness, past rusty, dripping pipes and a humming laundry room. Finally, he stops in front of a white steel door that’s identical to all the other white steel doors down here.
Yasmine’s head is pounding, and she’s having a hard time breathing. Mehdi goes to the door and leans forward to insert the key.
“Wait,” she says.
She sinks down on her haunches, and her throat feels thick and rough from suppressed tears. It’s been four years since she left him. Four years of betrayal and emptiness, and life without him and Bergort. Just weeks ago she learned that he was dead. She closes her eyes and sees the cat hanging from a lamppost, the symbols on the walls, the burning cars. Sees Fadi when he was small, asleep on her arm. Sees his eyes that last night, when she left him to his fate. She sees blood on the grass in the grove just minutes ago. What happens now? she thinks. Where do we go now?
She swallows and looks at Mehdi, gestures for him to open the door. He knocks gently.
“It’s just me, brother,” he says.
The Believer Page 24