Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  The girls hear loud footsteps in the hallway. Men's shoes, loud and recognizable. The door swings open, and two men in black caftans, black fezzes, and long gray beards walk in, followed by two IRH soldiers. “Leila Massri?” says one of the mutatween. He looks around the room and at the girls with equal measures of disdain and contempt.

  “Yes?” responds Leila.

  The soldiers walk behind the desk, yank her arms behind her back, handcuff her, and drag her out of the room.

  The girls are stricken. Salima risks a glance at Joury, who looks mortified, her attention fixed on the empty doorway. Who talked? Who told her father about the math? Each of them is filled with guilt. They shouldn't have asked so many questions. They had asked their teacher about the war. They asked her about science. They asked her about history. She always tried to answer honestly before bringing them back to the Quran. It is their fault. They shouldn't have been so curious.

  And now they have no teacher.

  The second mutawa stays behind and circles slowly around the room, looking at the girls. He taps one girl on the head with a ruler, and says, “too much hair showing,” and she tucks in her stray curls. He tells another one her skirt is too short, and scolds another for wearing nail polish. He then spots the model of red clay in the back of the classroom. “What's this?” he demands.

  “The ancient city of Petra,” says Salima, immediately realizing she should have lied. She should have said it was Mecca.

  He glares at her for her boldness, then says, with a snarl of disgust, “A pagan city.” He strides to the doorway and calls for one of the IRH soldiers to come back. He points to the model city. “Destroy that heathen den of sin and vice.” The soldier hesitates, looking for the first time at the girls' faces, seeing their horror. Maybe he has a little sister. Would he break her dolls? “Now,” commands the mutawa, as if afraid of catching something. The soldier stands over the model city, and brings down the butt of his AK-47. A dozen strokes and it is nothing but crumbs.

  The principal walks in ten minutes after the mutaween depart with Leila. She leans on her palms on the front desk and sighs, slowly regarding the girls. “I will be taking over your class until we find a replacement. Leila was arrested because she is suspected of working for the Resistance. It was not because of anything she did here . . . anything she taught you. You are not to blame in any way.”

  A single question floats in the brains of each of the girls. What will happen to her? But no one dares ask.

  Salima later learns that Leila had refused to ask the children to “Raise your hands if your parents drink alcohol at home,” an attempt by the Islamic Council to exploit the children's inherent honesty and manipulate them to inform on their parents.

  The rest of the day they study Dutch grammer. The principal senses now is not the time to discuss Islam.

  The girls are let out a half hour before the boys' school down the street—to give the girls time to get home without any kind of interaction with the boys.

  Joury's mother won't let her walk in the street, and picks her up. Salima walks home alone. Ambling.

  She turns onto Madelievenstraat, and sees a boy sitting on her steps.

  Salima has never much liked her neighbor Deniz—he is fat and spoiled and a bit of a bully—but she is flattered he waits for her. He isn't supposed to talk to girls, but can't seem to help seeking her out. Salima doesn't mind. She finds him a little pathetic.

  When she sits down beside him, he opens his hand. “Look what I have.”

  “It looks like a plastic key covered with gold spray paint,” she says flatly.

  “They handed them out in school today. They told us that if we go to war and are lucky enough to die, this key will get us into heaven.”

  She arches an eyebrow. “You really want to go to a heaven that lets you in with a key that looks like it came out of a gumball machine?”

  “Sure. Everyone gets to live in mansions with great food, streets filled with gold and diamonds, rivers of milk and honey, beautiful gardens with flowers and fruit trees, and seventy-two virgins for every warrior.”

  “You hardly dare talk to me. What in hell would you do with seventy-two virgins?”

  “I'd fuck them, one after another.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I will. If you're fourteen, you can go to war, and they'll give your family a bonus. My mom won't let me, I bet. Not until I'm older. But I can hardly wait.”

  “You're an idiot. They only give golden keys to kids from poor families.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Practicing your charm for your virgins?”

  “Fuck you, Salima. There's a fountain in heaven where you can drink as much booze as you want and you'll never get drunk.”

  “Sure, Deniz.”

  Salima goes inside. Jana isn't there. She has no cellphone to call her to tell her she's home. There is nothing to watch on television except the news, talk shows with women in burkas discussing how to please their husbands, and a deathly dull program where imams discuss the Quran and the hadiths. Girls are not encouraged to go out and play. She goes up stairs into her mother's bedroom.

  She lays on her mother's bed. Pieter built it out of maple in the shape of a ship. He carved waves on the sides, with dolphins and birds. Elaborate scenes of pirates digging up treasure cover the headboard, with a ship's wheel at the top. The bow rises at the foot of the bed. It makes Salima feel like a mouse sleeping in a teacup. She feels safe here, a place where she was cuddled and read to as a child. A place for the imagination.

  She feels close to her father here.

  This is where Pieter told her stories about sailing around Cape Hoorn, where he taught her how to factor polynomials and plot parametric curves to figure the area of a pyramid. She can't remember these things without remembering his body tumbling down the library steps, a red hibiscus blooming in his chest, his mouth a puckered 'O'.

  She gets up and opens a secret drawer at the foot of the bed, and takes out a book. A Brief History of Time. She climbs back onto the ship bed, opens the book, and settles down to read.

  “Black holes are not really black after all: they glow like a hot body, and the smaller they are, the more they glow.”

  It was no mistake that this book fell at her feet during the bonfire of books. Every line is a special message, just for her. Telling her how to make her way in the world.

  “In general, quantum mechanics does not predict a single definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of different possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these is.”

  Repeating the line over and over, it takes on a profundity that shakes her to her core. She reads on, and eventually gets sleepy.

  Just as she is about to nod off, her mind returns to the arrest of her teacher Leila, how the principal and the other students just seemed to accept that she was gone. She wonders if it was true that Leila worked in the Resistance, and what she did. She wonders about the “different possible outcomes” for her teacher. For her father. For herself.

  Hans and Marta

  “Oh, good God! Is that you, Jana?” Marta opens the door and sees Jana in a burka. She doesn't recognize her until she sees Salima, standing behind her in a headscarf. “It's all right. They're friends,” she yells over her shoulder.

  Banging and scraping sounds come from upstairs; shoes thud down the main staircase.

  “Come in quickly,” she says to Jana.

  Jana throws off her burka and gives Marta a huge hug. Over Marta's shoulder, she notices a painting missing over the table in the entry hall. A seventeenth-century oil by the Dutch painter Hendrick Ter Brugghen, a scantily clad devotee of Bacchus, welcoming visitors with fruit, wine, and a besotted smile, an inebriated monkey nibbling grapes on her lap. Marta adored the painting, and it had been in her family for generations.

  Marta catches Jana's gaze. “Half the things are in hiding, the other half we're selling. We only get a fraction of their value, but we make good
use of it. Who would have thought the head of the Landweer in Hoorn would be an aficionado of early Flemish painting?”

  “You're doing all right, then? I've been so worried about you.”

  “As good as can be expected. Hans lost his job with the VVV-kantoor, but there aren't any tourists anyhow. Being rich always helps.” She turns to Salima. “Let me look at you. You've grown. You have your mother's eyes. Lucky you. You'll drive men mad one day with those eyes, Katrien.”

  “My name is Salima, now.”

  “Of course. Salima. That's a beautiful name.”

  “Is Hans here?”

  “No.” It is the kind of no that invites no further inquiry. “Are you hungry? We were just about to sit down to lunch.” Marta leads them into the kitchen.

  Five men and one woman sit around the table looking pensive. They wear the unmistakable look of refugees—hungry, furtive, desperate. Sudden appearances at the front door make them nervous.

  “These are friends,” says Marta.

  Salima yanks off her headscarf, as if it were covered with spiders. They all sit down to eat.

  As usual, Marta serves too much food—stamppot, mashed potatoes with kale and sausage, and plenty of red wine and fresh bread. Years ago, Jana and Hans converted part of an old smuggling tunnel into a wine cellar, and filled it with hundreds of bottles. It will be quite a while before the ban on alcohol will affect them.

  All the food and wine makes the refugees oddly listless, and they soon retire to their rooms upstairs.

  “You are determined to stay?” Jana asks Marta. Marta and Hans have refused to convert, and have to pay the jizya. Things are much less strict outside the big cities. Some rules have to be modified because there simply aren't enough Muslims to run the whole country. However, police and school teachers all have to be Muslim.

  “There's a lot we can do here. We're already setting up a network to get Jews and atheists out.”

  “We've been thinking about it, and we want to give you the Allegro,” says Jana. Pieter would want Hans to have it. Maybe you can use it . . . in your work.” Jana takes the boat title out of her purse, and slides it across the table.

  “Didn't he leave the boat to Salima?”

  Jana takes Salima's hand, and nudges her to answer for herself. “If the Allegro can save people, I want you to have her.”

  Marta places one hand on each of the women's hands, closes her eyes in silent gratitude, and then sits back in her chair. “Rafik is taking good care of you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you safe with him? He never was particularly devout.”

  “He goes to mosque now,” Jana explains. “He is good with people. He calms everyone down. They need him.”

  “I'm glad. You always have a place here if you need it.”

  Salima and Jana sleep in a small bedroom off the kitchen, that was once the servant's quarters. All the guest cottages are full. “Where are they all going to go?” Salima asks Jana, later when they are alone.

  “Who?”

  “The refugees.”

  “It's better we don't know. I'm sorry, Salima. I wouldn't have brought you here if I had known Marta was doing this. It's too dangerous.”

  “Why are you apologizing? We should hide someone in our secret annex. We should help.”

  “That's for us, if we need it.”

  “We need it now to help refugees.”

  “You are my priority, Salima. I have to keep you safe. You are all I have left.”

  Salima stares at her mother, disgusted, pitying her. After Pieter died, something went out of her mother. She'd become fearful and cowering. There was no fight in her anymore. Salima doesn't know how to bring her back.

  “I don't want to be safe. I want to help. I don't understand you. Your grandparents were in the Dutch resistance during World War Two. Dad's, too. It's what we do.”

  “I'm sorry, Salima.”

  The Mask of Zorro

  When Joury doesn't show up at mosque, Salima finds Joury's mother and asks if she is all right. “Joury got her first period,” she explains. “Women do not enter the mosque when they are menstruating.”

  Two shocks. Jealousy—that her friend got her menses before her—and alarm—that looming on the horizon is a black ship that will drop its black sails on top of her in a prison of fabric. She dreads the many rules that come with becoming a woman.

  Within a few weeks, Salima, too, is on her way to the burka store.

  It is funny how quickly stores change hands, she thinks. A coffee shop, which once sold marijuana and hash, now sells tea. A used CD store sells Qurans and religious books. A web design studio sells Turkish rugs. A liquor store sells dry goods. A jewelry store sells jewelry.

  Muslim women love jewelry.

  Joury's mother takes Joury and Salima to Magna Plaza, which faces the Royal Palace. The candy-striped 19th century Neo-Renaissance Post Office was turned into a mall in the 1990s, one of the few places that hasn't changed since the Occupation. Upper-class Muslim women adore Magna Plaza. Wandering the expensive stores gives them some semblance of independence.

  Three stories of orange and white colonnades, around a sky-lit atrium. The light is lemony, the air perfumed and buoyant.

  It is Jannah, the Muslim paradise, a garden of perpetual bliss, with fountains scented with camphor or ginger, rivers of milk and honey, and fruit dripping from every tree, where angels stand by to wait on you in every corner, to clothe you in sumptuous robes, bracelets, and perfumes, and lead you to gold couches where you will partake in exquisite banquets served in priceless vessels by immortal youths.

  Not quite, but as close as a mall can get.

  Salima and Joury ride up and down the escalators, wandering around, enjoying the mild chatter of sales clerks and affluent customers. They finally enter a store that used to be an Apple store.

  Salima's hands dance over all the fabrics. Who knew black could have so many colors and textures? Abayas and burkas are black. Headscarves come in many colors, squares and rectangles, nothing too flashy. Face veils are black, some nearly sheer, others with silver beads that glitter around the face. Trying to be sexy.

  In a way, Salima finds it exciting, as if she were joining a secret society.

  She tries on one that isn't too expensive. “That one makes you look fat,” says Joury, joking. Salima buys it, with a veil.

  Her excitement lasts until she walks out of the store.

  She sucks furiously at the cloth over her mouth, gasping for air. She can't breathe The air has no oxygen. Her face becomes hot and moist from trapped moisture. Her peripheral vision is gone, and it is hard to turn her head. She panics. Half of her senses seem to have been shut down. Her heart thumps loudly.

  Suddenly the world seems like a very scary place. Two dimensional. It seems as if she can only catch snapshots of the world, passing quickly before her eyes. She stumbles along the brick sidewalk, her burka catching on bicycles and bushes, bumping into people—“Hey watch where you're going!”—snagging on a million things.

  She gathers up her burka and takes off running.

  “Salima, stop!” calls Joury “You're not supposed to run!” Joury chases her all the way back to her house. She finds Salima panting on a chair, weeping, her new burka wadded up on the floor.

  “I can't do it! I'm going to cut my hair and dress like a boy. This is horrible!”

  “It'll be okay. You'll get used to it. You only have to wear it when you go outside. Think of it this way. No one knows who you are.”

  Her tears stop abruptly, in sudden revelation. “Like the mask of Zorro?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The mask of Zorro,” she repeats, imagining all the possibilities.

  I Kissed a Girl

  “Come on, Salima. Don't be a pill. Let's have some fun.” Joury tugs Salima down the street. She stumbles after, wary and excited.

  Parties are illegal. Music CDs are illegal, booze is illegal, mixing with the opposite sex is illegal, goi
ng unveiled is illegal. Dancing is illegal. Playing video games is illegal. Playing cards is illegal. Spin the Bottle is illegal.

  And kissing boys is definitely illegal.

  “Come on, Salima. Don't you want to live before you die?”

  It is easy for Salima to sneak out of her house and meet Joury and Lamya. All three pile into a van driven by a boy Salima has never seen before. “Don't worry so much, Salima!” whispers Joury hotly. While the van bumps along, Joury and Lamya change their shoes to high heels and put on lipstick.

  A wild nervous energy runs through Joury, on the edge of hysteria. Almost as if she were on drugs. But there are no drugs in Amsterdam anymore. Salima has never seen Joury look so feverish, so wild.

  Joury's idea of fun is anything that defies her parents and their notions of respectable behavior. At the mosque, Joury mouthes nonsense words during the prayers, and when she prostrates herself on her prayer rug, she contorts her face to make Salima laugh. She tells Salima stories of how she and some friends put on their burkas without clothes underneath, and parade through the city, casting come hither glances at young men. It gives them a thrill.

  Salima is astonished—frightened—by her brazenness. It seems so dangerous, even if her father does sit on the Islamic Council.

  On the other hand, Joury is cool. Pretty, popular, funny, and wild. All the girls fall under her spell.

  They drive over to Nassaukade, down Singelgracht, past Vondelpark, past Museumplein, to the Oud Zuid. Expensive stately brick mansions line wide canals with large grassy banks. Fifteen-foot laurel hedges, tile roofs, and fountains.

  The van stops at a mansion on Jan Van Goyenkade. It is a massive modern concrete building, faced in green slate with copper banisters and trim. The roof is copper, mottled green with patina. A modern interpretation of a Scottish castle. Enormous weeping willows surround a circular driveway. Like the other mansions nearby, they rent all of the docking spots in front of their house so the canal appears empty.