Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)

by Ruth Francisco

  Kahlid and Michael Chalhoub, an older beefy boy in the club, wave Kazan over to their table at lunch. “We need volunteers to help with our fundraiser,” says Michael. “We're raising money for widows and orphans from the wars in Iraq and Palestine.”

  “Sure, I'll help,” says Kazan, eager to be liked. “Just tell me what to do.”

  The plan is to drive around on weekends to local mosques. “Kahlid says you're good at languages. Are you taking German? Most of the mosques are in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. You'll meet some Turks, but most are from Albania and Bosnia.”

  Kazan enjoys the two-and-a-half hour ride north to a mosque in Glarus, even though Michael's Citroën is less than comfortable. He expects a grand mosque with a spire, such as he'd seen in Ankara, but they pull up to a strip mall of small shops—a shoe-repair shop, a laundry, a pizza joint, a grocery store specializing in Middle Eastern foods. The mosque occupies the second floor above a beauty salon. They climb up a long flight of stairs to a simple carpeted room, filled with around a hundred men. A shrivelled Albanian imam in a blue caftan greets them. They participate in evening prayer, and when the men break up into groups, Michael and Kalid make the rounds, collecting checks.

  Kazan spots a few Turks, but avoids them, preferring to watch. He likes how passionate the boys are, how they want to do something good for the world, something greater than themselves. He feels proud of them.

  Later he tells Laszlo about it and asks him if he'd like to go. “Seriously? Are you out of your mind? The widows and orphans they're raising money for are widows and orphans of jihadists! They skim off most of the funds to go directly for arms purchases to fund wars. They are raising money for jihad, you dumbass.”

  Kazan is shocked and unsure. He generally believes everything Laszlo tells him, but that sounds bizarre. “They're only kids,” he says.

  “Hitler's Youth were kids, too.”

  Kazan goes to a few more club meetings. He finds some of their opinions harsh, especially of America and 9/11. “Those people worked in finance, furthering the interests of the American empire, the empire that sustains Israel, that kills Palestinians and Chechnyans, Afghans and Iraqis. They were not innocent.”

  Kazan thinks how horrible it would be to be trapped by crushing heat, people screaming, jumping to your death. “Many of those who died were guards and waitresses. Some were Muslims.”

  “Serving the empire in their way. They deserved to die.”

  When Kazan stops by Michael's room one night, he sees him and two other boys watching the execution of an American journalist, murdered by Iraqi militants. Kazan thinks they look like gamblers at a cock fight—the same burning excitement, eyes glazed over, liquid mercury.

  His instinct is to run, but he coolly asks them if they want to order pizza. He leaves quickly when they whisper they aren't hungry, their tongues dry, stuck in their throats.

  He drops out of the club. Some of the boys bug him about it, and blame his Jew friend. Kazan tells them to go fuck themselves.

  Kazan hadn't even known Laszlo was Jewish, until an older boy, whom Laszlo had been tutoring in math, hailed them in the cafeteria, “Here comes the Muslim and the Jew,” not meant harshly, but with humor and admiration—Isn't it great how we all get along. Laszlo shrugged it off, and Kazan pretended he'd known all along. Who ever heard of a Jewish Italian? How did the other boys know?

  The smallest expression of anti-semitism or racism is enough to get thrown out of school. He doesn't want any part of it. He returns the prayer rug to Khalid and tells him he bought his own and prefers to pray in his room. He has no time for fundraising, he says.

  But it isn't so easy, dropping out.

  Michael corners him, and pressures him to come to Friday prayer. “You can't do just you and God. The prophet created a community. Without the ummah, faith is a seed that bears no fruit.” Khalid tells him he really needs his help, and that “Allah will send him a thousand blessings.”

  “I won't say I told you so,” quips Laszlo. “Those guys are fanatics.”

  Kazan thinks they are annoying, but harmless. Still, he is afraid to make enemies of them and sits with them at lunch sometimes. He knows Khalid is a huge soccer fan, and buys him two tickets for an important game in Geneva. He fasts during Ramadan and shows up to celebrate Eid al-Fitr.

  But he does not apologize for telling them to go fuck themselves.

  Hunger

  Kazan guesses not a single other student at Berchtold Academy has ever really been hungry. They sit at long tables in the Tudor refectory, their voices disappearing into the lofty rafters, picking at the Northern Italian cuisine—chicken cutlets, spinach braised in butter and garlic, polenta with sausage and mushrooms, Tuscan beef, tortellini, creamy risotto, arugula salads, sharp cheeses, flaky pastries dusted with sugar.

  It takes him three months not to gulp down everything in front of him.

  He doesn't recall ever going hungry in his village in Turkey, except if the winter was exceptionally cold and grain stores ran low. His family fasted during Ramadan, but that was no big deal. He remembers one time when they had nothing to eat but watery soup for weeks on end, when a bitter frost hit before they had completed the harvest, and disease spread through the lambs and goats. Yes, he remembers hunger, hunger for days on end, when the cramping disappears and you feel lightheaded and energetic and a little crazy.

  Was that why his father had left them in the country? To know hunger?

  As an experiment, he fasts for several days at school. It merely makes him irritable, and Laszlo begs him to eat something. “That's why saints go off into the desert to fast. They're too grumpy to live with.”

  “It's important to be hungry,” Kazan responds. “Hungry like a peasant. Like a wolf.”

  “My sister is anorexic,” says Laszlo, “and I can tell you, hunger does nothing for her except make her a pain-in-the-ass to live with. Starving does not made her St. Catherine of Sienna.”

  Kazan almost feels sorry for the others—not knowing real hunger. It fuels him in some way, drives his leadership. All the students recognize it. This Mongol hunger. Hunger for conquest. Hunger for challenge and conflict. Hunger for victory. It's part of what makes him such a great soccer player.

  He realizes he will never be like the others at Berchtold Academy. The other students have such a sense of self, so confident of their destiny. So proud of their heritage. So sure of their security and safety. Of family. Of love. Of home. Sure of their place in the world.

  He knows he has something equally precious. He has hunger.

  God Talk

  “Do you believe in God, Laszlo?”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you think he looks like?”

  “He doesn't look like anything, dumbass. God is physics.”

  “Physics?” Kazan loves his discussions with Laszlo. He thinks about things in ways nobody else does.

  They often hike together in the afternoons, up the Colline d'Argento, the silver mountains behind the school, picking berries and talking.

  They stop on a precipice of granite that looks out over Lake Lugano and eat granola bars. The first snow has melted, but there is a metallic wintery light in the mountains—silver blues, black greens. Ice covers higher mountains in the distance. The beauty spears him deep inside, and he feels a sense of unreality, as if they are perched between worlds.

  “Look at the world on a subatomic level,” says Laszlo. “If you take an atom, its neutron would be a quarter in Lake Lugano. A pebble would be its electron, and its protons would be other pebbles clustered around the edge of the lake.”

  “The rest is space?”

  “Nothing but air.”

  “So matter is mostly air.”

  “Yeah. At the subatomic level there are no solid objects. Scientists can't predict where a subatomic particle will be with certainty, only that it has a probability to be here rather than there. An electron doesn't move from place to place. It manifests itself as a probability
pattern smeared out over time. The essential nature of matter is not stuff, but interconnections. Atoms exchange electrons and other subatomic particles all the time. You and I are exchanging subatomic particles as we sit here. Matter is inseparable outside of relationships.”

  “So you're saying God is a probability pattern? A pattern of interconnecting relationships?”

  “He is that inexplicable thing that makes subatomic particles act as they do. That inexplicable thing that makes atoms come together to make life, to make the universe. The probability that if there is oxygen, that life will begin and mutant genes will evolve to the next stage of evolution.”

  “So God is not this all powerful, all knowning deity. He is—” Kazan searches for the right words “—the desire or inclination for atomic structures to come together and form other structures. To create life.”

  “That's how I see it, anyhow. Stephen Hawking writes that when you break subatomic particles down to their most elemental level, you are left with nothing but pure light. God is light. All the religions say that. God is literally light.”

  “Why do religions clutter up their theology with rules and shit, and then tell everyone they have to believe it or else they're heathens?”

  “So they have an excuse to kill each other.” Laszlo throws a stone over the cliff. “Religions are outdated. You'd think we would've learned something from the last two thousand years of human thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nobody thinks disease is caused by sin or demonic possession anymore. Science proves that's bullshit. Man has always wanted to know where he came from. What makes thunder and all the rest. Modern science tells us that. You'd think people would be willing to have their beliefs modified by a few new facts. Religion is full of fear, full of denial. People clinging to ignorance. It's revolting if you think about it. Reason, spirituality, and ethics can go together. We don't need religion. It just fucks us up.”

  Kazan is quiet for a bit. His head feels light and expansive. None of the other kids at school are doing this, he thinks. This is important. And for a moment, it makes him feel important. He doesn't want it to end. “So there's no afterlife?”

  “Not as heaven or hell. Not as a place. But physics tells us energy never dies, it merely changes into something else. And consciousness is some kind of energy.”

  “What happens at the atomic level when something dies?”

  “Nothing. Cells die, molecules may break down. But atoms stay the same.”

  “So there is no death? Like the Christians say?”

  “I don't know. My point is that it's time for a new way to look at God, beyond creation myths and bullshit traditions. If we see God through science, we would be better to our planet, better to each other.”

  How could you not love a nerdy kid like that? Who thought about things the way he did? Laszlo was special. Kazan knew that. Knowing him made him feel just a little special.

  Masaccio

  Ahmed Basturk has already informed Kazan that he will not be returning to his village in Turkey over the holidays, which makes him both happy and sad. Happy because winter on the Anatolian plain is cold and bitter, and kind of miserable. He can't imagine returning to his tiny village after seeing Switzerland and Italy. It's another planet, another universe.

  Still, he misses his family. Especially his sister Melis and his brother Faruk, who flies home from America for vacations. He misses his mother's cooking, picnics and flowers. He misses listening to the old men strumming their baglamas, singing ancient Turkish folk tunes, tilting back their heads, eyes closed.

  The winter holiday approaches. When he hears nothing from his father, he gets a little nervous. Ahmed doesn't plan for him to stay here over the break, does he? He wouldn't mind so much. He'd like to explore the mountains and take trips into northern Italy. But he doesn't want to be known as a loser. Only losers spend holidays at school. Scholarship kids, who can't afford to go home, and kids whose parents have no time for them—“direct deposit” kids.

  “Why don't you come to Florence with me?” Laszlo suggests. “We don't celebrate Christmas or Hanuka, so you won't feel weird. We have a place on the beach in Viareggio. I know it's winter, but when it's not raining, it's really nice. Mom usually wants to go skiing in the French Alps for a couple days. It's fun. You'll like my parents. With any luck, my sister won't be around much. She refuses to speak English with Mom's American and Israeli friends, so don't expect much. She might speak French with you, but I'd avoid her all together, if I were you.”

  Kazan runs it by his father the next time he calls. “Is it that time already?” His father sounds preoccupied. “Sure, why don't you go. That's great.”

  Kazan doesn't tell him the Luzzattis are Jewish. He doesn't think it would matter, but why mention it?

  Laszlo's mother meets them at the train station in Florence. She is tall and big-boned, with light-brown hair cut in a short bob. She wears a tailored suit that looks like it came out of a 1940s movie.

  “You must be Laszlo's friend. Come sei bello. Just like a Donatello.” She looks at him hard for a moment, as if deciding something, then takes both boys by the arm—“Come, come I need your help. Both of you. Father Gregorio said he'd open the chapel for me, but we have to hurry”—stuffs them into a sneaker-sized Cinquecento, and zips south through the medieval streets.

  Kazan learns that Ana Luzzatti is an art historian, who was born and raised in Israel, and married Laszlo's father, Alberto, when she was an art history student in Rome. She has the wild enthusiasm of an outsider for everything Italian, punctuating every other sentence with “Che bella!” Her manner of speaking is slightly operatic—like Julia Child describing beurre blanc. Everything is bellissima, sfarzoso, magnifico, incredible. Her driving is equally enthusiastic, if not death-defying. Kazan adores her immediately.

  She zips over Ponte Vespucci, up some narrow streets, and parks in a piazza in front of a scaffolded church, Santa Maria del Carmine. “The Brancacci Chapel is only open a few hours a week. Come, come. Father Gregorio is waiting.” She hustles the boys inside, speaks in lightning-fast Italian to the priest, who leads them to a frescoed chapel and clicks on an electric light.

  The chapel is floor-to-ceiling color, the figures nearly life-sized.

  “Isn't it marvelous. They call it the Sistine Chapel of the early Renaissance. This one is by Masaccio, The Tribute Money. Can you believe he died when he was only twenty-six? The most important Renaissance painters all studied this painting: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Verocchio, Raphael. They all took his ideas about light, air, perspective, color, landscape, psychology, and the human body. Look at how the light sculpts the figures, as if coming from the window up there. Look at the life-like feet. Bellissimi piedi. So planted on the earth. They give an almost three-dimensional weight to the figures. The faces are so individual, so emotional.”

  Kazan immediately sees what she means. The figures almost look more lifelike than photos, and he wonders how that is possible.

  “Look at Peter's face, so surprised, full of disbelief. 'Really, you want me to get money for taxes from the mouth of a fish? You've got to be kidding.' And John's face, so serene. He believes Jesus implicitly. A masterpiece of drama and perspective.”

  She steps closer to a small panel of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. “Masaccio also painted this one. Look at Adam, how tormented he is, his abdomen, convulsed with sorrow. You can almost hear Eve's wail.” Ana's voice trembles with emotion, her hand to her chest. “No painter, before or since, as ever told the story with such angst, such physical and psychological reality.”

  “She certainly likes paintings,” observes Kazan as he and Laszlo follow Ana back into the sunlight.

  “I'm just glad she has someone else to torment.”

  “I think it's interesting.”

  They squeeze back into the car and drive to the Luzzatti home, a small yellow villa off Viale Michelangelo, overlooking the city.
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  “Wow,” Kazan says.

  “It's a sweet little place isn't it,” says Ana. “Costs a fortune, of course—all the renovations and upkeep. It's crazy. I wouldn't do it again, but I adore it.” A slight balding man greets them at the door. “There you are darling,” Ana croons, “my hero.” Alberto apparently had taken her Mercedes to the mechanic and gotten the radiator fixed.

  In Kazan's eyes, Ana seems far more Italian than her reserved husband, who obviously dotes on her.

  Alberto is a quiet gentle man, who talks in long philosophical observations. He asks Kazan what he wants to do with his future, and other thought-provoking questions. Kazan cannot imagine his father ever asking him such things. Ahmed calls him once a month at the dormitory, always on a Sunday night, and asks how classes are going. How he's doing in math. If he's playing soccer. Does he have friends. He never asks what he thinks or feels or wants.

  Kazan notices how Laszlo talks to his parents as if they were friends, and calls them by their first names.

  That evening, Kazan eats the best meal he's ever had in his life, and sleeps in a room with French doors, under a spread that looks like a tapestry, in a seventeenth century bed of black walnut. He steps onto the balcony and watches the moon rise over Florence until his lids grow heavy, then crawls into the downy bed and falls asleep.

  “Today we are going on a grande avventura.” Ana greets Kazan the next morning as he sips his cappuccino. “You and Laszlo will be my detectives, my Holmes and Watson. Pia packed us a picnic, with a nice Chianti. It'll be splendid. We'll pick up fresh bread on the way. Everyone must come.”

  Laszlo's sister, Gabriella, complains the most. She is not really anorexic. Kazan thinks she is gorgeous, aloof and glamorous. She has an odd way of posing all the time, as if she expects someone to take her picture. But in the end, she agrees to come, as long as she can bring her boyfriend.