Friends Like These

by Danny Wallace

  There was a silent moment as I took the information in, processed it, and then decided I’d better process it again, because somewhere along the way I’d apparently gotten the impression that Tarek had just said he’d shot a man.

  ‘Sorry, you did what?’

  ‘I shot this guy.’

  What?

  ‘You shot someone?’ I said, my eyes suddenly cartoon balls of terror. ‘You shot a guy?’

  ‘Yeah. Twice.’

  What?

  ‘In the face, I think.’

  WHAT?

  ‘You shot someone twice IN THE FACE?’ I said. Maybe if I just kept repeating what Tarek was telling me he’d realise he’d made a mistake and meant ‘hugged’, not shot, but then, how often does someone hug you twice in the face?

  ‘Yeah. And then I ran away.’

  This was all too much.

  ‘You shot someone TWICE and then RAN AWAY?’

  Tarek just nodded.

  I couldn’t quite believe it. My old friend, sitting in front of me like a gentle and respectable man, a pillar of the German hip-hop community, this German Chunk… was admitting a murder to me! Just twenty-five minutes after having met him for the first time in sixteen years! Christ… maybe he’d just been waiting all this time to tell me. Maybe that’s why he’d been so keen to meet up. I started to panic… what if I was now, by some weird German law, somehow in on it? What if I’d broken the law just listening? Was I to blame now? Those forty letters might now be considered evidence!

  ‘Well… what happened?’ I asked, desperate for a happy ending, but aware that the reason that stories that involve men shooting other men in the face never appear on Jackanory is that they very rarely feature a happy ending.

  ‘Oh, nothing probably. It was just a gas gun. It just burns your eyes for a bit. I’ve been shot with one. It’s not too bad. Why? You thought that was a real gun?’

  I thought back to when I was a kid.

  Yes! Of course I’d thought it was a real gun!

  ‘No! Of course I didn’t think it was a real gun!’

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, a bit, yes.’

  And then, as I have done so many times in my life, I found myself very grateful indeed that my friend was not a murderer.

  I bought Tarek and the best rapper in Germany a drink to celebrate.

  BRD had to go off and meet someone for a bit, and Tarek and I were wandering through Berlin, swapping stories and catching up. I told him about my address book, and who I’d already met, and about my letters to Andy Clements, and he seemed to love the idea. He’d done something similar himself, he said, but hadn’t managed to follow up on it too much.

  ‘I’d love to see more of the old gang again,’ he said. ‘People from the old days. I think it’s a natural thing. Like Josh.’

  ‘Josh, yeah…’ I said. What was that rhyme he made me learn again? The one with his address in it?

  ‘Those days were really special,’ said Tarek. ‘They meant something. Everyone accepted each other – usually in schools there are dividing lines. But with us, everyone liked each other – rock, hip-hop, grunge, sports, skaters – whoever you were, if you were cool, you were cool. It’s a pity that sometimes people let the special days go.’

  The streets were packed with football fans, all making their way to the Brandenburg Gate, not one of their faces showing anything other than happiness, or excitement. It felt like we were at the very centre of the world.

  ‘Now, we could go and stand and watch the game with everyone else,’ said Tarek. ‘But a group of friends are meeting up in a bar round the corner. We could get food, and beer, and maybe even a seat…’

  I thought about it. We were in Berlin. On the night of the final. With a chance to feel like a part of history.

  ‘I think,’ I said, remembering Ian, ‘that the World Cup was made for being in a pub with your mates…’

  ‘It’s all about friends, man,’ said Tarek, and I smiled.

  And so we turned around and went to the pub.

  ‘So you went to school with Tarek?’ asked a man in a baseball cap, tucking into his pizza.

  It was a minute before kick-off and everyone had ordered a Meaty Maxi Meat pizza – an enormous, towering thing packed with a variety of indistinguishable meats. You might as well have popped a slice of cheese on a farm and been done with it.

  ‘I did!’ I said, losing myself in the memories for a second. ‘Our school was a special school.’

  ‘You went to a special school?’ said the man, wide-eyed, and I had to correct myself.

  ‘Well, no, hang on, the school wasn’t a special school. It was a school that was special. It was just after the Wall came down. I hadn’t seen him until tonight, so I had no idea he was a rapper and had once shot a man.’

  ‘These things happen,’ said another man, just one of six people associated with Hitmen Music to have arrived in the past few minutes. BRD was laughing in the corner and Tarek had just given someone a complicated handshake. I felt a little out of place – mainly because I was wearing glasses and didn’t know how to shake hands like that.

  The whistle blew and the noise in the pub increased with it. This was it! The final!

  And then, like something out of a film, a slick, new, blacked-out Mercedes with blue neon involved screeched up outside the pub and two men got out, slamming the doors behind them. One of them was quite large. The other was almost exactly the opposite.

  ‘Axl and Papo are here…’ said Chris.

  Axl looked like a bit like a Hispanic gangster. Papo did not. He was what you might call a rapper of restricted height, and had kind eyes, a shaved head and a broad smile.

  ‘Danny, this is Papo,’ said Tarek, and we shook hands in the only way I knew how.

  PAPO!

  Small man very big! Papo is not new in the business – he does not rap only since yesterday, he touches with each line! With the powerful voice of a hurricane he demolishes whole concert halls! The contents of the songs mirror his past, present and future and he gives us an insight into his own thoughts, blasting our ears with the naked sounds of life! Papo is real and this is how we experience him!

  I was quite surprised that Papo was involved in the destruction of whole concert halls. He seemed a remarkably polite and quiet man, content to sup on his beer and chat.

  ‘So you’ve been finding people you used to know?’ he said.

  ‘Yup. It’s been great. In fact, I was supposed to meet a guy called Peter Gibson today but couldn’t because I was coming here. He’s an architect. But I’ve also so far found a Fijian chief whose villagers ate a vicar, a bloke who runs a carvery and who’s solved time travel, and, of course, a rapper.’

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ said Papo. ‘You’d think they’d all work in computers or some shit.’

  He meant ‘something’ there, he wasn’t implying all my friends would actually work in some shit, like IT farmhands.

  ‘Yeah, it’s been great.’

  ‘But you’re just meeting people from your address book?’

  ‘Well, they all earned their places in it, in one way or another, I guess. I mean, I’d like to meet loads of others, too, but where do you start? At least like this there’s a system.’

  ‘But what about other people? Seems a pity you can’t see them just ’cos they’re not in your book…’

  Papo was right. It seemed wrong to deny the millions of other people I have met in my lifetime the pleasure of a reintroduction. Instantly I thought of Grisha, the Russian kid who’d lived downstairs from me. And Josh! Even Tarek had mentioned Josh. But what could I do?

  There was a rising cheer as Italy took the ball and attacked the French goal mouth. I wondered whether Ian was part of the same cheer back home, or Chris, or Pete, or Cameron. I thought about what else over the years we’d been a part of without thinking about it. Those moments in time or history when all focus is on one thing. Where had they been when the Wall came down? When Diana died? W
here were they on 9/11? The world seems a lot smaller on days like that. No matter where someone is, you feel united somehow.

  I looked around and saw another complicated handshake getting under way, and wondered whether there was something I could do to feel more like I belonged. I had an idea.

  ‘Papo,’ I said. ‘I was wondering. What could my hip-hop name be?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Papo.

  ‘Well, you’re called Papo. Tarek is called Potna Pot. Chris is BRD. He’s called Axl.’

  Papo had a think.

  ‘Danny… Dan… D…’ he said.

  ‘Danny Dandy?’ I said, in disbelief.

  ‘No, no, I’m just thinking…’

  ‘Because Danny Dandy would be a rubbish hip-hop name,’ I said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to tell you your own business…’

  ‘No, you can’t be called Danny Dandy,’ said Papo. ‘But how about…’

  He looked at his beer.

  ‘D-man?’ he said. ‘Like Demon.’

  ‘Demon!’ I said, delighted.

  ‘Yeah! Demon!’ said Papo, and we slapped our hands together like they do in films, and then shook on it.

  ‘Hey, Danny, you want another beer?’ asked Tarek, sitting back down again.

  ‘Yes, I do, and it’s “Demon”,’ I said, before, inexplicably, ‘bitch.’

  Papo laughed, and I attempted a complicated handshake.

  I had definitely found my place in life, and it was among the German hip-hop community.

  Tarek looked at me like I was odd.

  Two hours later and Berlin had exploded into a celebration of the green, white and orange of Italy. Suddenly there were people on mopeds everywhere. Fireworks. Hugs in the street. Taxis screeched by with happy faces pressed up against the windows, Italian flags trailing behind them. Tarek and I watched with a satisfied detachment.

  ‘Okay!’ he said. ‘So I guess that’s the World Cup done. You wanna see our studios?’

  ‘The crib!’ I said, trying desperately to remember other phrases I’d heard on MTV. ‘Let’s mosey on over to your crib!’

  ‘Mosey on over?’ asked Tarek.

  It must have been country night on MTV.

  Axl, Tarek, Papo, BRD and I squeezed into the Merc. I sat in the middle of the back seat, between Papo and BRD, who shifted about uncomfortably. Axl cranked up the stereo and rolled down the windows, and there we were, looking like a proper hip-hop crew, cruising through the streets of Berlin, waving at girls, nodding in time with the beats, looking supercool. Well, they did. To be absolutely honest, I looked like the studio accountant. Or one of those nerdy lawyers you see in films getting mixed up in Mafia capers. But I was enjoying myself.

  ‘Hey, put something of yours on the stereo,’ I said. ‘Something from Hitmen Music!’

  Axl laughed, found something, and hit Play.

  Immediately, the bass in the car started earning its money…

  Boof… boof boof…

  And then a familiar voice…

  Potna Pot!

  Who’s Potna Pot?

  Potna Pot!

  Bitch! Who’s Potna Pot?

  It was Chunk from The Goonies!

  ‘Potna Pot?’ I said, delighted. ‘That’s you!’

  Tarek nodded, happily. I was excited!

  ‘Bitch, that’s you!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah… you should maybe not say “bitch” so much,’ said Tarek, quite calmly.

  Maybe I was over-excited.

  But this was brilliant. It was like sitting in a car with someone while listening to their theme tune. And everybody should have a theme tune.

  Catch me in the club, rubbadubbin’ in some bubbly! Potna Pot!

  ‘It’s very powerful,’ I said. ‘And it’s not often you hear the word “rubbadubbin’”.’

  The boys considered this, and all agreed I was correct.

  We pulled up and stopped on a typical German street, maybe ten minutes away from where we’d been. I could just make out bakeries and a small supermarket on the corner, as we made our way through the darkness and into a courtyard, towards an arched doorway. I suddenly felt inexplicably tough. This was the lure of the gang. Now, Tarek and his pals were in no way a gang. They were a group of genuinely warm, polite and happy young men. But they were a crew. They were pals, together, in a tough city, working away at making their dream come true. And it was working.

  ‘Every cent we make,’ Tarek said, ‘goes straight back into the business. We work fifteen-hour days. We’re not interested in becoming famous. We do this just because we love it and it feels important. It’s documenting lives.’

  I loved Tarek’s attitude. And I believed what he was telling me. Too many people are driven by fame. Tarek had tasted it as a kid, thought it was okay, but knew it wasn’t important. What was important, it seemed, was who was around you. What you were doing. How you were. Tarek loves his family, loves his mates, loves his work. Tarek had it all worked out.

  Axl found the key and let us in to the world of Hitmen Music. Up ahead were studios, a lounge, a kind of green room and various offices for various office duties. There were huge speakers everywhere, plenty of soundproofing and, of course, the Hitmen Music logo – an Uzi in front of a treble clef. On the table in front I noticed two half-full bottles of Jack Daniel’s, various ashtrays, dozens of beer cans and no less than six packets of Rizlas. Hip-hop, ironically, is very rock and roll.

  ‘Check this,’ said Papo, flicking a switch.

  The lights were low, and immediately the room was filled with the voice of BRD, who looked on, proudly. It was his new single. ‘WER???’…

  WER???

  ‘WER???’ is full of clean punch lines, of which one does not have the feeling to have heard them for 1000th time!

  Authentic text which do not need to show – with a raised finger – that one is a Berliner! BRD is proud but does not glorify anything. The more one hears him, the more facets will be opened!

  BRD with his impressive career as a Hip-Hop-Artist and his versatility as a musician, producer and songwriter, proves with each song again his creative potential. One can wait with great anticipation for further hits from his pen!

  We all stood about and nodded our heads.

  I looked around and I felt like I’d made a bunch of new friends. BRD, Papo, Axl and, of course, Tarek. They’d welcomed me in, treated me so nicely, named me ‘Demon’, made me one of the gang. I was touched.

  I listened to a few more tracks, and Papo played me a short video of BRD in a dark and dingy Berlin basement club. The crowd were loving it as he rapped, loudly, confidently, fully in control, all of it in German.

  My pocket suddenly buzzed. A text.

  Hey baby. Haven’t heard from you. All okay?

  Aw. Lizzie. In all the excitement of arriving in Berlin, rediscovering old haunts and finding Tarek, I’d forgotten to tell her I’d landed safely. I wrote back.

  It’s great! I’m with Tarek! He’s a hardcore German rapper!

  Moments later, Lizzie’s reply arrived.

  What?? Are you okay?? Jesus, come home safely!

  I’d thought that was a bit of an overreaction and shook my head at the prejudice that the hip-hop community must have to deal with on a daily basis, but then I looked at my ‘Sent messages’ and realised I’d written ‘Rapper’ with one ‘p’.

  Tarek had disappeared for a second – which was probably just as well given my libellous text – but returned with a gift.

  ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘It’s one of our CDs. I hope you’ll listen to it.’

  ‘I definitely will!’

  ‘Right – the bar!’

  The night was coming to an end and Tarek and I knew it. We were sitting outside at the Strandbar, yards from the River Spree, with sand underfoot and tropical plants all around. It was a hot night, with a happy atmosphere, and the distant, irregular toot of car horns the only reminder that the World Cup had even happened.

  ‘Maybe we should get some bubbly,’ I s
aid, ‘so people could catch you rubbadubbin’ in it.’

  Tarek laughed and I looked over at his pals.

  ‘You’ve got a nice bunch of mates,’ I said.

  ‘They’re cool. And Papo even said he felt a bit inspired to try and find an old friend of his. I said he’s not old enough yet.’

  I laughed, but I didn’t know what Tarek meant.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, and Tarek nodded. ‘You mentioned you’ve been doing this too? Trying to track people down, I mean?’

  Tarek nodded.

  ‘It was all to do with turning thirty,’ he said, and I kept quiet, even though all I wanted to do was shout ‘Me too!’ But it slowly dawned on me what he’d meant about Papo.

  ‘I don’t know why, but every time I looked for someone, or found the old school website, I would think about turning thirty. When I found someone, or I talked to them, I’d always ask them if they’d turned thirty yet. I don’t know why. I don’t know why it was so important. But it started because I found this old website for my first school. There were about forty people looking for friends they’d known in the seventies. About twenty people trying to find people they knew in the eighties. But from the nineties there were only two or three. And that made me think, maybe people gradually want to reconnect with the past. It’s a cycle. It happens to nearly everyone. And I thought, well, maybe it’s my time. And it seems like you’re the same. Have you turned thirty yet?’

  ‘I’m a few months off,’ I said.

  ‘I was too. It was coming. I turned thirty-one last week. Seems like you’re exactly one year behind me.’

  It did. And it seemed strange. I’d found a kindred spirit here.

  ‘It was a strange thing, turning thirty,’ said Tarek. ‘I wasn’t scared of it. It’s just that “thirty” sounds so much older than “twenty-nine”. Your twenties are gone. That exciting period, that whole decade, when you’re becoming your own person. And now you realise you’re supposed to be your own person, and if you don’t feel ready, or you’re not sure you’re ready, it can be scary, somehow. In a way I miss being young. When you see a kid who’s seventeen, eighteen, on the streets, you can see what it feels like. Not worrying, being cool, being indestructible, and suddenly when you’re about to hit thirty you worry that all that is gone. And for me, that’s why I looked for my friends. It’s why I looked for you.’