The newscast cuts to a clip of the imam quoting Ayatollah Khomeini. “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in what is serious."
I shake my head. Why are they so insistent on sucking the joy out of life? Especially for women.
After breakfast I throw on my burka and head to Lindengracht to pick up Pim. We are not allowed to walk together. A woman is not allowed to stroll down the street with a man who is not a relative. So Pim dresses in an abaya with a veil. He has studied how women walk, and is small enough to wear women's shoes. Passing him in the street, no one would ever suspect he wasn't a woman.
Except when he stumbles.
He grabs my arm for support. “I don't know how you can wear these damn things.”
I laugh, then look around cautiously. A woman stumbling in her abaya is a clear sign of a man in disguise. While it is illegal for a woman to be caught in men's clothes, it is not illegal for a man to dress in women's garb. However, if a mutawa discovers him, he will be taken in for interrogation.
I let out a long breath, relieved. There are only a handful of people out, and no one seems to have noticed Pim's slip. We walk south along Prinsengracht. “Did you find out anything more about Kazan Basturk?”
Pim didn't learn about my engagement from me, I'm embarrassed to say. Apparently Dilara stopped by Niko Nazar's Bakery and ordered a special platter of pastries for her nephew's engagement party. Niko, of course, asked for details, and passed them on to Pim. He appears to have taken it surprisingly well.
Perhaps he hides his feelings better than I do.
In any case, I asked Pim to tap into his network of informants to find out more about my future in-laws.
He switches his shopping basket to his other hand, takes my arm, and leans in close. “His father, Ahmed Basturk, is very high up in the Islamic Council, close to the Grand Imam of Holland. Kazan doesn't have any official position, religious or military, but seems to have plenty of meetings with both. His uncle is a diamond merchant. Ostensibly he works for him. He travels a lot. We figure he's using diamonds to buy weapons for the UNI army.”
I gasp. “Are you sure about this?”
“No, it's a guess.
“How does it work?”
“This is what we think—he buys diamonds in South Africa, sells them in London, uses the cash to buy arms in Antwerp—AK-47s, M-46 field guns, RPGs, anti-tank guided missiles, and F1M-92 Stingers—which he arranges to have delivered to UNI troops.”
“All those weapons are in Antwerp?”
“No, no. That's where the deals are made. Arms come from Serbia, Croatia, and Bulgaria, shells from Iran, Russia, and China.”
“An arms dealer?” I repeat in disbelief. It takes my breath away. He's a monster. Of the worst sort. “I'm supposed to marry him?”
Pim bristles, but quickly recovers. “You can see why Gerda wants a spy in his household. Wherever he's shipping arms, there will be an attack.”
At least he'll be out of the house a lot. “What about his personal life?”
“His mother has tried to set up three marriages. He's turned them all down.”
“Is he gay?”
“I don't know one way or the other.”
“That would solve one problem,” I say smugly.
“He goes to the Red Light District often. It appears he meets various officials in secret, rather than for the women and booze. He has filed no misyar.” A misyar is a temporary marriage license Muslim men use to sleep with prostitutes and mistresses. Makes it all nice and proper. “We think Kazan is involved in jihad at the highest levels,” Pim stops and faces me. “Are you sure you can do this, Lina? Walking into the viper's den?”
His eyes look very blue right then. “I don't know. I really don't.” I squeeze his hand.
We walk on in silence as we take a right on Raadhusstraat, heading east. I can't put off THE TALK any longer.
“I'm sorry. I should've told you . . . about the marriage.”
“It isn't important.” His voice is flat and cold.
“I wasn't sure it was going to happen. I almost didn't make it. A covey of crones pinched and poked me as if they were buying a horse.”
“You could have told me what was going on.”
“You're right.” I squeeze his hand in apology. “You saw Edda when Karel was taken. It's right that we're not supposed to hookup.”
“I don't want to hookup. I want to marry you.”
My mouth drops open in outrage. “If you had asked before, we could have avoided all this. So don't blame me.”
He looks crushed, and immediately I'm sorry. I can't bear his disappointment, his anger, his resentment. How to explain? “A good friend is more important to me than a husband or lover.”
“A friend?” he says with disgust. “Some consolation.”
“You're wrong, Pim—” My voice sinks; a sob catches in my throat. I have to make him understand. “Whoever you marry, you're stuck with. But a friend you choose every day, and you know every day your friend chooses you, and will always be there for you and will always wish the best for you. There is nothing in this marriage I want . . . but I don't think I could live without you as my friend.”
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. He knows I could have refused. I could've gone to the work camps. I could've disappeared underground. I could've married someone else.
We still have some choices.
I made mine.
Twelve, September 2005
Berchtold Academy, Switzerland
Placement exams are held in the library.
Kazan finishes his tests early and looks around. No sound save the scribbling of pencils. He has never sat in such a beautiful room. Long planes of light beam down through lead-pane glass windows. Dust motes rise and fall, seemingly random. White stucco walls, tables and shelves of dark wood. The twenty-foot ceiling is a delicate pattern of inlaid wood and ornately carved beams. Surfaces sparkle with cleanliness; coolness rises from the terracotta tile floor. The air smells of lemons and old books.
He watches a bird in the garden, hopping along the slate walkway, darting into the branches of a willow.
So peaceful and calm. He feels as if he is sitting in the mind of God.
The other students sit, heads bent over their tests—black, white, Asian, Indian. He never knew people could look so different. All so clean and earnest. The girl across from him wears pink nail polish. Kazan is fascinated.
A reedy boy with lank brown hair lays his head on his arms and appears to be sleeping. He hasn't moved since Kazan finished the test and started looking around. Did he try doing the exam at all? Kazan senses a rebel.
The proctor, an attractive middle-aged Italian woman with blond hair, is headed toward them. Kazan kicks his sleeping friend, who barely moves until Kazan kicks him again. Hard. He jolts up in his seat, eyes wide and sleepy.
“Are you boys finished?” the proctor asks, smiling.
They both nod their heads.
“You have plenty of time to look over your answers, if you want.”
They both shake their heads.
“Give me your tests then. You may go.”
The two boys get up, trying not to scrape their chairs. Several other students look up, more curious than annoyed, their heads dropping swiftly back to their tests.
The library is in the main building, a 17th century villa, with a tower. Together they walk through the main salon, over Oriental rugs, past suits of armor positioned in the corners and a massive granite fireplace, around massive brown leather couches with brass studs.
They step outside and down a gravel driveway to the gardens. Students in uniform wander about, reading on benches, talking in groups, playing Frisbee, listening to music on headphones. The air is pure, the light mi
sty and ethereal.
“You were sleeping when I finished,” says Kazan. “Did you finish all the questions? Even the essay?”
The boy shrugs.
Kazan doesn't know if that is a yes or no, but decides he likes his new friend very much. Not much of a talker though. He kicks out his feet when he walks, and stands impeccably straight, as if someone had just kicked him in the butt. It makes his long skinny neck look even longer. Anyone walking around like that at home would be laughed out of the village.
“My name is Kazan Basturk.”
“Laszlo Luzzatti.”
They continue through the campus, looking around. The school, nestled in the mountains between Switzerland and Italy, overlooks Lake Lugano, a platter of Wedgwood blue in the distance. Pink and white stucco buildings with red tile roofs contain classrooms, dormitories, computer labs, a 30,000-volume library, art studios, photo labs, and music rooms. The sports facility has a gymnasium, basketball court, fencing studio, fitness center, and student common room. One whimsical building, the science building, is orange and white checked, with a red tile roof. Everywhere there are gardens and colonnades and views of mountains or lakes. Laughter from the younger children bounces among the hills like sunlight.
Kazan inhales deeply. He has never smelled such refreshing air. Like the air after a snow, only warm and pleasant. Nothing like the hot stale air of his village. Crisp, clean, purifying. It tingles in his brain.
Everything is so clean! He can't get over it. No broken bricks, no mounds of earth, no open ditches, no trash. Everything is perfect.
He learns that Berchtold Academy is one of the larger private academies in Switzerland, with 900 students between the ages of nine and nineteen, representing 31 countries. Four hundred are boarding students, the rest, day students from nearby towns in Switzerland and Italy.
He and Laszlo are in the same class, along with eighty other students. More girls then boys, Muslim, Jews, Christians. Two Saudi princesses, a number of boys with fathers in the English Parliament, a handful of Americans who've been kicked out of American prep schools, mostly for drugs and breaking the rules. Many quiet Asian boys and girls, a few Indians.
Citizens of the World, is the school motto. “We are committed to transmitting the heritage of Western civilization and world cultures, the creations, achievements, traditions, and ideals from the past that offer purpose in the present and hope for the future,” Headmaster Joël Bollinger intones as he greets the new students. “We believe in the worth of each individual, and seek to instill the values of personal responsibility, civility, compassion, justice, and truth.”
“Looks like he drank the Kool-Aid,” quips Laszlo, elbowing Kazan in the ribs. Kazan doesn't know what he means.
The curriculum is liberal, but intense, designed to prepare the children for the International Baccalaureate. Boys wear blue suits, girls, maroon-and-white plaid skirts and white shirts. Muslim girls are allowed to wear headscarves, but not veils or burkas. Only a handful do.
Both Kazan and Laszlo board. Laszlo's father is the Minister of Finance for Italy, “as if that weren't a contradiction in terms,” he says cynically. Kazan isn't quite sure what he means. But then a lot of what Laszlo and the other students say goes over his head. They all seem to know the same pop musicians and movies, and make references to international politics as if they all read the papers every day. Doesn't matter where they grew up, they have this in common.
Kazan feels hopelessly unworldly.
He and Laszlo are assigned the same dormitory and are allowed to switch rooms to be together. There are four boys in their room. It is the first time Kazan has slept in a bed rather than on a rag mat. He thinks it is quite nice.
Laszlo watches his reaction to things—to his bed, to the toilets and showers, to glass windows—even though Kazan learns quickly to restrain his enthusiasm when others are around. Even clothes hangers surprise him. He declares them marvelous inventions, and immediately regrets it when his other two roommates roll their eyes. “He's kidding,” Laszlo says for him.
Kazan is astonished to learn that tuition is over 40,000 euros a year, another 20,000 for boarders, and wonders how his father could possibly afford it. If he is so rich, why had Kazan and his family lived in a house with a dirt floor? Not that he ever minded. But why toss him in among students who are a million times better than him? Why now?
But with his inimitable good humor, Kazan takes it all in stride. After all, the other students have seen all this before, but to him it is new. Every moment a new revelation. Isn't he the luckiest bastard in the world?
“O brave new world,” says Laszlo in response to Kazan's exuberance to just about everything.
“Brave new world?”
“Shakespeare. 'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't.' From The Tempest.”
Kazan is mystified and delighted, but doesn't dare say so. He has, of course, heard of Shakespeare. During their tutor sessions, his teacher had him read Hamlet. He got most of the words, but hardly understood a word of it.
“If you weren't so good in math and science, everyone would think you were a retard.”
Kazan only laughs.
Kazan and Laszlo are placed in all of the same classes. Kazan was always told he was clever, but in Laszlo he meets true brilliance. Laszlo does his homework in three or four minutes in his head. He writes it all out quickly just before class. Even his essays. Kazan struggles for hours, hunched over his class notes, memorizing dates, lists of irregular verbs in French, proofs and theorems, wanting everything to be perfect. When he gets the correct answer, he isn't always sure why.
Bullying is strictly forbidden at the school, but where there are adolescent boys, there will be bullies. Those who prey on others because they are different. It is diminished here because everyone is so unique. Still, there are cliques.
When Kazan first befriends Laszlo, he expects he'll have to defend him. He is skinny, a little passive, and makes jokes at the expense of others. But Laszlo can take care of himself, and usually talks his way out of conflicts. He tells bullies he's fond of his crooked schnoz, and would hate to have a plastic surgeon straighten it for him. “You might think twice about punching me. I'll come back so handsome, you'll lose your girlfriend.” That usually makes them laugh.
Kazan doesn't exactly defend Laszlo, but provides interference. When his “observations” are a little too truculent.
Classes run all morning until the early afternoon, sports and activities after three, guest lectures and films at night. Kazan's dreams are restless and exhausting—so much new information, so many new sensations to process. Sometimes his heart pounds so hard he can't sleep. He wakes in the middle of the night and watches Laszlo snoring softly, and feels vaguely paternal.
Even though everything is new and different, never has Kazan felt such a part of things—the misty mornings, the clear starry nights, the meditative stillness of the gardens and the mountains. Sometimes he senses all the beauty enter his mind and body, and he feels himself inflating.
Nobody knows how insecure he is. When he tells other boys how much he admires them, they think he is charming. A natural leader. He swaggers with the best of them. He's brilliant at soccer. And he's gorgeous, or so the girls tell him. Which gives him far more mileage than he expects or thinks he deserves. It's just a face.
Often he feels exhausted and confused.
Sometimes when he can't sleep, Kazan climbs the granite steps to the tower, and watches the moon rise over the gum drop mountains, the white orb shining a wide path across the lake. He wants, more than anything, to walk on that white path.
And to keep walking forever.
The Club
Students at Berchtold Academy are encouraged to join extracurricular activities. There is the Yearbook Club, the student newspaper, Vox Populi, the Drama club, Chorus, Orchestra. Sports, of course: soccer, basketball, badminton, volleyball, swimming, tennis, lacrosse, track and field, cross country, and horse
back riding. There even is a room that is a model of the United Nations, where students engage in political debate.
Kazan wants to try everything. He is strong from farmwork, both a good team-player and an enthusiastic leader. His good humor makes him a favorite in all the clubs.
So he isn't surprised when two boys, one Arab, the other Pakistani, ask him if he would like to join the Islam Club. The school doesn't encourage religious clubs, but doesn't ban them either.
Kazan is disappointed at the first meeting to see only boys. The girls meet separately in their own club. He enjoys his new found popularity among the opposite sex. Girls pretend to swoon when he walks by, then erupt into giggles. One girl shouts out that he looks like Omar Sharif, so a bunch of them start calling him Sheik. Sharif is Egyptian, sheiks are Arab, and Kazan is Turkish, but that doesn't matter. Sheik it is. Now everyone calls him Sheik.
The president of the club is an Egyptian named Khalid Chahine, a scrawny bookish boy from Egypt. There are boys from Morocco, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia, most in highschool, but a few younger kids. Thirty boys in all. They mostly practice Islamic prayers and talk about American imperialism. Jihad is their favorite topic—whether it should be interpreted as an internal struggle against sinfulness, or war against infidels and apostates. Or both. “Jihad will continue until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule,” argues Khalid. Kazan does not know his Quran that well. He listens and says nothing. They press a prayer rug on him, and encourage him to say the salat five times a day.
“Come by the prayer room. We hang out there.”
Kazan goes to three or four meetings, drawn by the fervor of the students. Yes, he is Muslim. Yes, he fasts during Ramadan. But his family is from the Turkish Alevis sect, where men and women pray together, women are encouraged to go to school, work, and wear what they like. They strongly support Turkey's secular government. They are bad Muslims, he realizes. According to Khalid, they aren't Muslim at all.
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