Shake Off

by Mischa Hiller

  After leaving Helen to meet her friend Maria, I stood in a snack bar run by Lebanese twins on the Edgware Road. Although she had asked me to go along I wasn’t keen, or in the mood, to meet anyone new. I was savoring a grilled chicken pita covered in garlic sauce. I watched a group of middle-aged men sitting at a table smoking and, as Jack would say, putting the world to rights. Their accents made them Iraqis; they could have been in a street café in Baghdad were it not for the fact that they were exiled in London to escape Saddam Hussein’s torturers.

  The owners of the café tried to strike up a conversation but I wasn’t having any of it; I was still worried about my encounter with the competition the day before. According to Abu Leila, the Arab community was riddled with informers and he was forever lecturing me on the dangers of trusting anyone. I suppose I probably shouldn’t have come down here.

  “Sometimes you will be drawn to your own, but remember that they are the prime target for the enemy,” Abu Leila had said. According to him, people thought they were working for some Arab state when they were feeding intelligence back to the Israelis. “The competition are experts at this sort of dissemblance, Michel. They get people to think they are helping the cause when in fact they are doing the opposite.”

  So there I was, drawn to my own yet unable to have a proper conversation. I was an outsider. They were a foreign people to which I no longer belonged, from a land from which I had been exiled. Exiled by Abu Leila. The truth is that the Arabs are a diverse people, both ethnically and geographically. True, we are united in many things, like our famed ability to welcome complete strangers into our homes and give them the last of our food. And there is a common language, at least in formal Arabic, a legacy of the Islamic empire—colloquial Arabic is another matter—and a common religion, if you discounted us Christians and a handful of Jews. But we are always lumped together, and sometimes, when it suits us, we pretend we are one people. There are other, more bloody, divisions within the Arab world, to do with religious factions, tribe, money, class and politics. I watched a Mercedes-load of young men in sunglasses cruise past, blaring Arabic pop music from open windows. Back in Beirut Mama would have been cleaning their rooms while they were out, making them tea when they were home.

  I finished my sandwich and left, playing the innocent the rest of the afternoon, wandering around like a tourist and deliberately not taking any countersurveillance measures. I went to the cinema, and even into the National Gallery, before heading towards University College and the student union building where I was to meet Helen.

  Gower Street is a dirty line of buildings blackened by years of bus fumes. Walking down it from Euston Square underground station, I passed the entrance to Russia House (MI5 headquarters, according to Vasily, who said they had their own door that led straight into the tube at Euston Square). Ramzi’s hospital was down a street on the other side of the road and Helen’s college just further down on the left. I walked past it, turned a corner and went into Waterstone’s, where I had bought my new copy of Primo Levi. I had plenty of time before I was to meet Helen and I wanted to make sure I didn’t tie my followers to her.

  I spent an hour in the bookshop, looking out of the windows onto the street, browsing books in the art section, then moving to electronic engineering to see if familiar faces followed me around—the likelihood of someone else being interested in both art and electronic engineering seemed slim. Eventually I convinced myself that I was alone.

  Leaving the bookshop, I crossed the road to the student union building. I hung around the empty lobby and watched for Helen through the dirty glass doors. I saw her and her tutor walking towards the building together and my chest seized up: so much for her being with Maria. They were deep in conversation and he was gesticulating as he talked. Why can’t we Mediterraneans keep our hands still? Helen was nodding her head, dressed in sandals and a summer dress. He was holding her attention, judging by her expression. They stopped on the other side of the road and she gestured to where I was. I thought I’d been spotted but she was just pointing to the building. Zorba started to say something but she shook her head and frowned. He took her hands in his and I like to think that she tried to shake them free. She said something to him and he shrugged and held out his palms in surrender. She laughed and they hugged each other, longer than I found comfortable. She had to pull away from him because he wasn’t letting her go, and I was about to go outside when they separated. He was laughing as she wagged a finger at him.

  She crossed the road to come into the building while Zorba stood there watching her. I went down the hall towards the toilets before she came in, then doubled back so that she didn’t know that I had seen her with him.

  “Michel! You’re early.” She grabbed my hands harder than necessary.

  “Shall we go?” I said, gesturing to the door. Zorba’s bulk was still visible through the glass behind her.

  “Why don’t we get a drink here first? I’m gasping.”

  “I thought you hated the bar here?” But she was already heading for the stairs. I looked back through the doors, but the fucker was gone.

  Twenty-Nine

  Abu Leila’s voice came down the phone in reassuring cadences, even in his bad German.

  “Don’t worry about it, Michel, we carry on as planned.”

  I was in a call box near Archway underground station, a short bus journey from Tufnell Park. Abu Leila was referring to the Cambridge meeting. I reminded him that venues and accommodations were all sorted.

  “When is the first board meeting?” I asked.

  “We’ll discuss that face to face. Let’s meet in Paris next Tuesday.” Meeting in Paris next Tuesday meant meeting in Berlin the day after tomorrow.

  “That’s fine, I’ll get back to you when I have a flight booked,” I said, which meant I would ring him when I was in Berlin. “What about the competition?” I asked. “They’re showing great interest in the business at the moment.”

  “Don’t worry about them. They have probably lost interest. Just bring the product samples. Bring them to Paris.” He paused and I heard him light up—I could almost smell the tobacco. “Are you in London?”

  I hesitated. Why was he asking me a question he knew I wouldn’t answer?

  He didn’t wait for an answer, however, and asked, “Have you looked at the samples?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, surprised that he needed to ask. “Why would I?”

  “It is important that you bring them to me as you found them.”

  To avoid detection I decided to stay in Tufnell Park until I traveled to Berlin, on the basis that the competition, if they were still on my tail, wouldn’t be looking for me there. I figured that Abu Leila’s reassurances that they had lost interest were just that, reassurances, and I thought it irresponsible of him to make them. It was possible, although unlikely, that they knew they had missed their chance and gone home. I walked home from the phone box, choosing to reflect on Helen instead of the conversation I’d had with Abu Leila, which left me feeling uneasy.

  Last night and this morning Helen and I had spent in Tufnell Park, either making love (although that’s not what she called it) or talking. That was when I had confronted her about being with Zorba, after giving her what I thought was enough time to bring it up on her own. She said that she’d bumped into him after seeing Maria and it was hardly worth mentioning. Why, she explained (after making clear that she was under no obligation to explain anything), would she have asked me along if she was planning to see Niki? I had no answer to that, and she didn’t give me a chance to think of one, distracting me with a pre-breakfast “treat” in her bed. Afterwards, though, when she had gone to the toilet, I came up with at least three alternative scenarios, which involved her changing her mind about seeing Maria when I’d said I wouldn’t be going with her. Two of these scenarios involved her having sex with Zorba (once in his office), while the third involved them arranging to meet in Turkey for a holiday together. This last one gave me the most heartac
he and was given added credence when she told me, in our by now ritual post-sex bath, that she would be going to Turkey after all. It was only for a week, and Zorba wouldn’t be going, as he would be on holiday with his wife in Greece. It was after this news that I got out of the bath and went for a walk to call Abu Leila.

  As I neared home I thought it might be prudent to test the emergency entrance to the house. I also decided to tell Helen my true feelings for her. I turned off Fortress Road onto the street that connected to mine. Halfway before my street I stopped to tie my shoelace and, when I was sure no one else could see me, ducked into a narrow passage that ran along the bottom of my garden. At one time there must have been gates to the gardens either side, to allow access to them, but over the years these had been fenced over, or, like the one leading to my house, been padlocked on the house side. Except that some time ago I had picked the rusty padlock, leaving it unlocked and in situ, so that from the house it still looked locked. The path ran through to another street that came off Fortress Road but was so clogged with overflowing bushes and trees, as well as debris thrown from gardens, that you couldn’t actually see all the way down it. This meant once you were on the path you couldn’t be seen from the streets at either end.

  The garden to my house was a neglected, overgrown rectangle into which nobody ever set foot. The owner didn’t maintain it, using it to dump unwanted furniture and rusting appliances. It was a discarded cooker, with weeds sprouting from underneath, that served as one of my caches. I removed a dirty plastic packet from a cavity in its back. Inside was a thin leather case. Inside that, the steel flat-lock picks and the torque wrenches were in pristine condition, like dental instruments.

  Once I had the back door open (twenty-five seconds; Vasily would be proud) I kept it from closing with a piece of cardboard and replaced the picking set in its hiding place. Back inside, I was on the ground floor next to the stairs, the front door being at the opposite end of the hall. I closed the back door behind me, went up to my floor and tapped on Helen’s door. My nerves jangled; I knew what I wanted to say to her but just not how I would go about it.

  She opened the door, newspaper in one hand. “Are you still sulking, ma belle?”

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” I said.

  She smiled and started to undo the buttons on her jeans. “Good—shall we use your room or mine? Your mattress is firmer.”

  I shook my head. “No, not that—I just want to talk.”

  “I’m only joking, silly.” She opened her door wide and let me in, patting my behind as I passed her. I felt belittled by this action. I sat in her armchair and she sat cross-legged on her bed, spreading out the newspaper in front of her as if to read it. “OK, Mr. Serious, tell me off then, but I’d really prefer some punishment.”

  “Everything is about sex with you,” I said.

  She looked surprised. This wasn’t how I’d planned to tell her how I felt, to try to explain my jealousy.

  “I think you take things a little too seriously, Michel.” She looked over to the window, then back at me. “Sometimes, I have to say, you are a little too intense. It could scare a girl off.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. We sat in silence for a bit, all thoughts of my saying anything now gone.

  “So when are you going to Turkey?” I asked. I hadn’t thought to ask in the bath, being more upset at the fact that she had left it so long before telling me than that she was actually going—I had already resigned myself to that. She licked her finger before turning a sheet of newspaper.

  “Saturday,” she said, without looking up. How was she going to arrange a visa that quickly? I watched her holding her hair back from her face with one hand so she could read the paper, her lips slightly pursed in concentration. With her other hand she fiddled with a thin gold chain around her neck.

  At this moment I was certain that I loved her. At this moment I also knew she had been planning to go to Turkey all along and that all these arrangements would have been made some time before; no one just flies off to look at burial sites in Turkey without arranging it with the authorities. Zorba was probably not going to Greece with his wife at all. All this went on in my head, of course, but I didn’t see the point in saying any of it out loud. Instead I slumped down in the chair. Besides, I was going to Berlin tomorrow, and had to think of a way to explain my absence just two days before she was off to Turkey.

  Thirty

  Of course I lied to Helen. My uncle, the distant relative I’d told her lived in Berlin, had taken ill. I had no problem lying to her since she was, no doubt, lying to me. I assumed that she was going to Turkey with her tutor and, had I thought it would do anything other than end our fledgling relationship, would have found proof and confronted her with the evidence. Her outward brashness hid something, I believed; I would catch it periodically in her eyes, when she relaxed her guard. I didn’t know what it was, something to do with her father, I supposed, but it made me feel protective of her. Of course I didn’t think her tutor cared about any of this and I believed, despite having no evidence to prove it, that he was taking advantage of her.

  I disembarked at Tegel after a sweaty landing and checked into a budget hotel, favored by backpacking students, near Checkpoint Charlie. You had to share toilets, but it was anonymous and had a quick turnover of guests. Once I’d stowed my bag in my room I looked like everyone else, in my worn Levis and T-shirt, as they gathered outside consulting guidebooks. I rang Abu Leila in East Berlin and he told me he would come over in the morning, we would meet at the KaDeWe.

  “I need cigarettes,” he said. “I can’t get Turkish cigarettes here—the East Germans make their cigarettes with cow shit.” He told me to bring the envelope with me. I checked for it in my jacket and wondered why he was coming over to the West, but it was not the sort of thing you could ask him, like the many other things I couldn’t ask. I’d have thought it was safer for him in the East; West Berlin was crawling with agents from every country. But then East Berlin was crawling with Stasi, so you had to take your pick.

  It was dusk as I walked through Kreuzberg and towards the river and Hallesches Tor, where many people were congregating. They were all coming out of the U-Bahn station, exiting on the south side of the river. I followed the crowd and crossed the bridge towards the park, where there was some kind of fair going on. Shawarma and doner kebab stalls were plentiful, and there was tabla playing, Egyptian belly dancing, people selling halva, falafel, Turkish Delight. A man in full Bedouin dress was leading a magnificent white stallion, giving children rides. Off to one side, a group of people were roasting a whole sheep on a spit. There were also Caribbean rum stalls, salsa dancing groups, tacos with refried beans and cocktails with umbrellas. Anarchists were smoking hashish, old Turkish men were smoking nargilehs. This was a gathering of communities celebrating their culture through food, drink, song and dance. This was a carnival of exiles giving thanks to West Berlin for being a refuge. There were information stalls with pamphlets and posters. About the Communist Party of Iraq, about the plight of the Kurds, the genocide of the Armenians, a stall celebrating the recent withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan and supporting the Mujahideen—how Vasily would have cussed. Vegetarians promoted the virtues of pulses and vegetables, waving away the smoke of barbecuing chicken with their leaflets. Someone gave me a pamphlet telling me how the Romanian people were suffering under Nicolae Ceauşescu, and I looked for Antanasia, my old university girlfriend, on their stall, but of course she wasn’t there.

  Then I came upon a stall that had the Palestinian flag draped over it. It was staffed by four German students who wore keffiyehs like the fedayeen had when they’d left Beirut in 1982, just weeks before the massacre. One of them, a thin pale woman, thrust a pamphlet under my nose. On the cover was a picture of bodies in the street after the massacre in my camp, bloated and obscene. I had seen these photos before, I had some of them in my safety deposit box. I had even seen the beginning of some film footage that I hadn’t been abl
e to watch all the way through for fear I’d see the people I had left lying there. The pale girl was saying something to me in German.

  “The perpetrators have never been brought to justice for this crime—have you heard of it?” I nodded numbly, looking at the leaflet. She continued, “Many people were killed, many disappeared. The Israelis, under the command of the Zionist general, Sharon, surrounded the camp and fired flares over it all night, to help the people who did this.” I remembered the flares; I had stood outside our house watching them turn night into day. Mama had called me in to our last supper, my father and uncles looking serious, my mother looking tired but forcing herself to be cheerful.

  “Will you sign our petition?” the girl was asking. She thrust something under my nose. I studied it but could not figure out what the petition was for. Was it to bring Sharon to justice? Was it to charge the killers? Different strains of music were fighting for my attention, different smells, different languages. People were shouting and laughing. I looked at the picture of the dead bodies again; they were on the main Sabra Street. I had walked down that street many times, to my UNRWA school, to the dirt patch that served as a football pitch. I was jostled back to the present by two drunk young Turks, who pushed by arm in arm, looking back at me and giggling. The girl in the keffiyeh was talking again, shrugging and looking at her colleagues. It appeared that I was shaking my head; I would not sign anything, no petition could fix this. She was trying to take the clipboard back but I couldn’t let go without explaining.